Uusi ihmisen sukuun kuuluva laji on ilmeisesti fossiililöytöjen perusteella löytynyt Indonesiasta. Pienikokoisesta mutta ilmeisen älykäästä sukulaisestamme kuullaan varmaan vielä enemmänkin. Muutama artikkeli aiheesta:
FLORES MAN
It sounds too incredible to be true, but this is not a hoax. A species of tiny human has been discovered, which lived on the remote Indonesian island of Flores just 18,000 years ago.
Researchers have so far unearthed remains from eight individuals who were just one metre tall, with grapefruit-sized skulls. These astonishing little people, nicknamed 'hobbits', made tools, hunted tiny elephants and lived at the same time as modern humans who were colonizing the area.
Fans of The Lord of the Rings may be interested to know that a remote Indonesian island has yielded the remains of pint-size people — a surprising new human species — that paleontologists say lived just 18,000 years ago.
(lisää artikkeleja aiheesta)
http://www.nature.com/news/specials/flores/index.html
New York Times kirjoittaa myös perusteellisesti:
Once upon a time, but not so long ago, on a tropical island midway between Asia and Australia, there lived a race of little people, whose adults stood just three and a half feet high. Despite their stature, they were mighty hunters. They made stone tools with which they speared giant rats, clubbed sleeping dragons and hunted the packs of pygmy elephants that roamed their lost world.
Strangest of all, this is no fable. Skeletons of these miniature people have been excavated from a limestone cave on Flores, an island 370 miles east of Bali, by a team of Australian and Indonesian archaeologists. Reporting their find in today's issue of Nature, they assign the people to a new human species, Homo floresiensis.
The new finding is "among the most outstanding discoveries in paleoanthropology for half a century," say two anthropologists not associated with the study, Dr. Marta Mirazon Lahr and Dr. Robert Foley of the University of Cambridge, in a written commentary in the same issue.
The little Floresians lived on the island until at least 13,000 years ago, and possibly to historic times. But they were not a pygmy form of modern humans. They were a downsized version of Homo erectus, the eastern cousin of the Neanderthals of Europe, who disappeared 33,000 years ago. Their discovery means that archaic humans, who left Africa 1.5 million years earlier than modern people, survived far longer into recent times than was previously supposed.
The Indonesian island of Flores is very isolated and, before modern times, was inhabited only by a select group of animals that managed to reach it. These then became subject to unusual evolutionary forces that propelled some toward giantism and reduced the size of others.
(Vaatii ilmaisen rekisteröitymisen)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/28/science/28tiny.html?oref=login&oref=login&hp&ex=1098936000&en=4c11ed811d6f2be2&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Lisää pohdiskelua aiheesta:
The small size of these island hominids is a testament to the universality of natural selection, as islands tend to shift many animals away from their worldwide modal size. Additionally, the fact that it seems probable that a form of Homo erectus must have crossed a non-trivial body of water is really amazing. The possibility of "advanced" tools are easy to quibble with, and I'm not so sure about that, but the geological history is something that is less amenable to spinning. In my post about Out-of-Africa revisions because of possible ancient Asian genes in modern East Asians I noted that many of my recent books are being rendered obsolete, well, this will probably push that process along.
http://www.gnxp.com
FLORES MAN
It sounds too incredible to be true, but this is not a hoax. A species of tiny human has been discovered, which lived on the remote Indonesian island of Flores just 18,000 years ago.
Researchers have so far unearthed remains from eight individuals who were just one metre tall, with grapefruit-sized skulls. These astonishing little people, nicknamed 'hobbits', made tools, hunted tiny elephants and lived at the same time as modern humans who were colonizing the area.
Fans of The Lord of the Rings may be interested to know that a remote Indonesian island has yielded the remains of pint-size people — a surprising new human species — that paleontologists say lived just 18,000 years ago.
(lisää artikkeleja aiheesta)
http://www.nature.com/news/specials/flores/index.html
New York Times kirjoittaa myös perusteellisesti:
Once upon a time, but not so long ago, on a tropical island midway between Asia and Australia, there lived a race of little people, whose adults stood just three and a half feet high. Despite their stature, they were mighty hunters. They made stone tools with which they speared giant rats, clubbed sleeping dragons and hunted the packs of pygmy elephants that roamed their lost world.
Strangest of all, this is no fable. Skeletons of these miniature people have been excavated from a limestone cave on Flores, an island 370 miles east of Bali, by a team of Australian and Indonesian archaeologists. Reporting their find in today's issue of Nature, they assign the people to a new human species, Homo floresiensis.
The new finding is "among the most outstanding discoveries in paleoanthropology for half a century," say two anthropologists not associated with the study, Dr. Marta Mirazon Lahr and Dr. Robert Foley of the University of Cambridge, in a written commentary in the same issue.
The little Floresians lived on the island until at least 13,000 years ago, and possibly to historic times. But they were not a pygmy form of modern humans. They were a downsized version of Homo erectus, the eastern cousin of the Neanderthals of Europe, who disappeared 33,000 years ago. Their discovery means that archaic humans, who left Africa 1.5 million years earlier than modern people, survived far longer into recent times than was previously supposed.
The Indonesian island of Flores is very isolated and, before modern times, was inhabited only by a select group of animals that managed to reach it. These then became subject to unusual evolutionary forces that propelled some toward giantism and reduced the size of others.
(Vaatii ilmaisen rekisteröitymisen)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/28/science/28tiny.html?oref=login&oref=login&hp&ex=1098936000&en=4c11ed811d6f2be2&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Lisää pohdiskelua aiheesta:
The small size of these island hominids is a testament to the universality of natural selection, as islands tend to shift many animals away from their worldwide modal size. Additionally, the fact that it seems probable that a form of Homo erectus must have crossed a non-trivial body of water is really amazing. The possibility of "advanced" tools are easy to quibble with, and I'm not so sure about that, but the geological history is something that is less amenable to spinning. In my post about Out-of-Africa revisions because of possible ancient Asian genes in modern East Asians I noted that many of my recent books are being rendered obsolete, well, this will probably push that process along.
http://www.gnxp.com
Vastaukset 1
Vanhimmat
niin: on löytynyt jostain piilosta, kätköistä
viitteitä täysin uuden homo sapiensin, siis meidän
seuraajan, olemassaolosta. Tämä ei ole millään tavoin todistettua, oletetaan vain että he valtaavat aika pian meidät teknisesti ylivertaisena lajina. Se lieneekin helppoa nykyaikana; ei mitään nuijasotia tarvinne käydä.