The Hobbit Debate

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/blog.html
January 23, 2005: The Hobbit debate

The Guardian newspaper from Britain has an interesting article about the scientific debate surrounding Homo floresiensis, a.k.a. the Hobbit. There are some modern Indonesians living on Flores who are extremely short, not much more than 4 feet tall (122 cm). This is quite close to the Hobbit skeleton's height of 1 metre. If, as its discoverers believe, the Hobbit is descended from Homo erectus, this closeness in height is only coincidental. If, as some dissenters interviewed in the article claim, the skeleton is only an unusual Homo sapiens, it might not be coincidental: the Hobbit could conceivably be ancestral to some modern Indonesians. Anthropologist John Hawks has a new blog entry about H. floresiensis, as does science journalist Carl Zimmer, who links to an essay by Teuku Jacob , an Indonesian paleoanthropologist at the center of the dispute. Finally, there's a reportedly excellent article on floresiensis by Kate Wong coming out in the February issue of Scientific American.