Small skull, huge controversy: Saga of the Flores 'hobbit' continues

Small skull, huge controversy: Saga of the Flores 'hobbit' continues

By Charles Fergus
Research Penn State

In October 2004, while working in his lab, Bob Eckhardt heard a report on National Public Radio: A team of archaeologists had unearthed bones of a three-foot-tall humanlike creature on the island of Flores in Indonesia. Based on the shape and size of the skull and other skeletal remains, the archaeologists claimed they had discovered a new species of human.

The diminutive biped had a cranium no larger than a chimpanzee's, yet its bones had been found along with abundant stone tools. Radiocarbon dating of charcoal in the same stratum, along with luminescence dating of surrounding sediments, implied that the skeleton was only 18,000 years old. Considering other earlier archaeological finds on Flores, the dig team concluded that a new human species had evolved from a preceding population of Homo erectus that had been isolated for over 840,000 years on Flores, in the archipelago between Asia and Australia.

Eckhardt, a professor of developmental genetics and evolutionary morphology in Penn State's department of kinesiology, added it up. Three feet tall. A tiny brain. Complex stone tools. Evolved in complete isolation in 40,000 generations. He says: "It just didn't ring true."

Since that day, Eckhardt and an international team of colleagues have been working to debunk the claims made for Homo floresiensis. The so-called "hobbit," Eckhardt argues, "is not a normal member of a new species, but an abnormal member of our own."

For the rest of the story, go to http://www.rps.psu.edu/indepth/hobbit1.html onliine.

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