Hobbit News: Fossil Indicates Homo floresiensis Smaller than Thought
The origin of this people group
has nothing to do with evolution
As is true for most fossils purported to be missing links
between our primate ancestor and modern humans,
much controversy exists about the so-called “Hobbits”
by Jerry Bergman, PhD
Background
The Hobbits’ formal name is Homo floresiensis because the fossils were determined to be part of the human family that lived on the remote island of Flores in Indonesia. The island is located about 500 kilometers to the east of Java where the infamous Java Man was found in 1891 by Eugène Dubois. Dubois uncovered the top half of an early human-like skull and the find has been controversial ever since.[i]
The fossil family reviewed here is often called “The Hobbit” after a fictional group of small people in a J.R.R. Tolkien novel. The fossil Hobbit was about half the height of the average European male today, and was discovered in a cave in the year 2003. The fossil bones was of a male about one-meter tall (3 feet, 7 inches), that weighed 25 kg, had a very small skull.[ii] His brain about 420 cm3 (420 ml) compared to the modern male size brain of 1,274 cm3 and the average female brain which measures 1,131 cm3.
An Australian-Indonesian team of archaeologists recovered the nearly complete, small-statured skeleton in the Liang Bua cave called LB1. Subsequent excavations in 2003 and 2004 recovered parts of seven additional skeletons[iii] initially dated by evolutionists as being from 13,000 to 38,000 years old. (The dates in the articles about the Hobbit were all over the place, from 13,000 to 700,000 years).[iv] Hobbits were likely tool makers as indicated by the fact that the cave where the bones were found yielded over ten thousand stone artifacts, mainly lithic flakes.
The questions raised as a result of the find include, “Was the abnormally small stature due to disease, heredity, or were they a people group of small stature like the pygmies of Africa which were close to 4 feet, 11 inches tall on average?” The difference between the Hobbit and the average pygmy was only 1 foot, 4 inches.[v] Given these are averages, we would expect that a taller Hobbit could be very close to the height of a short pygmy.
Human size variability
A man named Chandra Dangi was verified to be the shortest adult human ever documented, measuring 54.64 cm (21.51 inches ). His height was confirmed by Guinness World Records staff. The tallest man was American Robert Pershing Wadlow who, when last measured on 27 June 1940, was 2.72 m (8 ft., 11.1 in) tall. The problem with both of these cases was that they each were suffering from disease. Likewise, one theory is that the Hobbits were also suffering from disease.
As is true of other human and pre-human finds, “[t]here has been much debate about the origin of the mysterious humans from Flores. It was first hypothesized that Homo floresiensis was a dwarfed descendant of the early Asian Homo erectus. Another theory is that the Hobbit is a late-surviving remnant of a more ancient hominin from Africa that pre-dates Homo erectus and was small in stature to begin with, in which case possible candidates include Homo habilis or the famous ‘Lucy’ (Australopithecus afarensis).”[vi]
The new find
In an effort to shed light on this recently discovered human, a Nature article published the analysis of an 88-millimeter-long arm-bone fragment of a Hobbit.[vii]
The bone used to research the Hobbits. From Kaifu, Y., et al., “Early evolution of small body size in Homo floresiensis,” Nature Communications 15(6381),
Insular dwarfism is the process and condition of large animals having a reduced body size when their population’s range is limited to a small environment, primarily islands. One major reason for the Nature analysis was to test for a specific type of insular dwarfism called island dwarfism. Island dwarfism theory is the process whereby, as a result of being isolated on a small island, an innate response to the environment includes retardation of height and weight development of the new generations. It is well documented that mammals such as deer, birds and even fish and other animals that were trapped on small islands often adapt to their new environment by shrinking in size.
Island dwarfism is triggered, according to one theory, because there often is less food available on small islands and on these islands there are often fewer threats from large predators. Smaller size is also advantageous from a reproductive standpoint because it entails shorter gestation periods and generation times.[viii] Although this response to an island environment is common for a variety of animals, according to the University of Tokyo anthropologist Yousuke Kaifu, “no one thought it could happen to humans.”[ix]
Speculations about Homo floresiensis Origins
Island dwarfism theory postulates that the origin of the Hobbits was a group of humans, specifically Homo erectus, washed up on Flores Island after a tsunami or a large storm. Evidence supporting the island hypothesis include small Hobbit type jawbones and teeth that were discovered on another site. One problem is that inferring body size from teeth or facial bones is difficult. To obtain a more reliable measure, researchers tested bones from the limbs or other skeletal parts.
The bone selected was a humerus (the bone connecting the shoulder to the elbow). Although the bone was missing both ends, the researchers attempted to obtain data from this fragment. They first analyzed the bone to determine if it was from a child or an adult. The method used was applying the two common parameters which were indicative of bone maturity, namely the Osteon Population Density (OPD)21 and Haversian Canal Index (HCI), SOA-MM9. After researchers determined by these tests that it was from an adult, the fact that
all four (or more) individuals are extremely diminutive supports the argument that small body size was not an idiosyncratic (individual) character but a population feature of the early Middle Pleistocene hominins of Flores. The markedly small deciduous teeth from at least two individuals, which are almost outside the large variation range of modern humans, also indicate that the Mata Menge hominins had diminutive dental size at birth. Additionally, the strikingly small adult humerus (SOA-MM9) reported here demonstrates that this character was not limited to the dentognathic elements but also extended to upper arm size.[x]
They proposed a scenario for how the small humans came to Flores:
The earliest Flores hominins appeared on this Wallacean island… unintentionally (i.e., through accidental ‘rafting’, perhaps on tsunami debris), and possibly as part of the initial colonization of the Sunda Shelf region by early H. erectus. The Flores hominins experienced substantial body size reduction soon after this event.[xi]
Conclusion
This research did not support any evolutionary theory but rather the view that, when forced to live on a small island, smaller size is a common inbuilt adaptive technique designed to deal with living in the new environment. This technique has been observed in a wide variety of animals including mammals, fish, and birds, designed to be able to survive on the reduced diet opportunities typical of small islands. Although good evidence for the Hobbits’ diminutive stature has probably been answered by the island dwarfism theory, the researchers admit that “the evolutionary story of these small-bodied hominins is still shrouded in mystery.”[xii]
For further reading:
-
This book by Sanford and Rupe examines all the “hominins” and evolutionary myths about them.
Apes as Ancestors (2020), coauthored by Jerry Bergman, contains a chapter on Homo floresiensis by Peter Line.
- Contested Bones (2019) by John Sanford and Christopher Rupe has a chapter on Homo floresiensis.
References
[i] Bergman, J., “Java Man: A creature between apes and humans, an extinct ape, or a primitive man?” Answers Research Journal 15:109-120, 2022.
[ii] Brown, P., et al., “A new small-bodied hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia,” Nature 431(7012):1055–1061, 27 October 2004.
[iii] Morwood, M.J., et al., “Further evidence for small-bodied hominins from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia,” Nature 437(7061):1012–1017, 13 October 2005.
[iv] Griffith University, “Smallest arm bone in human fossil record sheds light on the dawn of Homo floresiensis,”
https://news.griffith.edu.au/2024/08/07/smallest-arm-bone-in-human-fossil-record-sheds-light-on-the-dawn-of-homo-floresiensis/, 7 August 2014.
[v] Tishkoff, S., “Penn geneticist researches what makes Pygmies short,” https://penntoday.upenn.edu/2012-05-03/latest-news/penn-geneticist-researches-what-makes-pygmies-short#:~:text=Pygmies%20of%20western%20Africa%20are,just%204’11”%20tall, 2012.
[vi] Griffith University, 2014.
[vii] Kreier, F., “Tiny arm bone belonged to smallest ancient human ever found,” Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02548-6, 6 August 2024.
[viii] Raia, P., and S. Meiri, “The island rule in large mammals: Paleontology meets ecology,” Evolution 60(8):1731–1742, August 2006.
[ix] Kreier, 2024.
[x] Kaifu, Y., et al., “Early evolution of small body size in Homo floresiensis,” Nature Communications 15(6381), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-50649-7, 2024.
[xi] Kaifu, Y., et al., 2024.
[xii] Michael M., “Hobbit hominins from Indonesia may have had even smaller ancestors,” New Scientist,
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2442686-hobbit-hominins-from-indonesia-may-have-had-even-smaller-ancestors, August 2024.
Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,900 publications in 14 languages and 40 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,800 college libraries in 27 countries. So far over 80,000 copies of the 60 books and monographs that he has authored or co-authored are in print. For more articles by Dr Bergman, see his Author Profile.