The Pleistocene Meets Middle Earth: The Significance of the Indonesian Hobbits in Human Evolution
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- Опубліковано 30 кві 2023
- May 10, 2012, at the Linda Hall Library
Dr. Matthew Tocheri, Paleoanthropologist at the Human Origins Program, Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, provides an overview of the scientific debates behind the controversial human species, Homo floresiensis, the so-called ‘hobbits’ of human evolution.
First discovered in 2003, these small-bodied and small-brained hominins are thought to have gone extinct approximately 17,000 years ago on the Indonesian island of Flores. Are the ‘hobbits’ a new species previously unrecognized on the human family tree? Or are they modern humans who suffered from a genetic disease?
Dr. Tocheri believes the wrist bones provide the answer to these questions. In this presentation, he leads a fascinating journey from the caves of Flores, Indonesia, to his laboratory where 3D laser scans of hobbit wrist bones showed that they were nothing at all like wrist bones found in modern humans and Neanderthals. More importantly, the findings supported the conclusion that hobbits are indeed a branch of early human and not deformed modern humans.
Dr. Tocheri also discusses the on-going excavations on Flores that are aimed at learning more about this enigmatic member of the human family tree and its relationship to our own species, Homo sapiens. - Наука та технологія
Great lecture but really annoying to watch, please just leave the screen in shot and stop zooming in and out!
Awesome video!
A hypothesis that I find attractive has chimps, humans and gorillas with a bipedal common ancestor, and that the knuckle walking characteristic of the African great apes being a derived adaptation from a bipedal precursor.
Humans were apparently sailing away quite early, but how did the mini elephants get to Flores?
walk.
Hobbit probably did not sail. Had a v small brain even for its size. Probably also walked. Homo erectus at time had a brain bigger than ours.
Probably rafted. Flores is across the Wallace line-meaning deep water even during the Ice Age, but as he explains later in the video, they could have been swept by currents from islands north of Flores. Island dwarfism explains the small size of both the humans and elephants-it’s an adaptation to living on an island.
What about the hobbit sized humans of Hawaii, the Menehune or the the Irish leprecons ?
How about the tiny people that live under the kitchen sink?
I recommend Gregory Forth's book "Between Ape and Man" Its an anthropological research into personal accounts he obtained 40 YEARS ago on the island of Flores of apelike/human like folks encounted by modern natives.
99% hunter 1% gather
40 years ago already known in the Mediterranean.
So we probably saw dwarves in ancient times
They left no tangible remains.
Actually, they left a ton of remains, given the tropical climate-remains of 15 individuals and tens of thousands of stone tools and butchered animals.