Archives - Anthropology: Page 13
Author: paul carson (Thu Aug 24, 2006 7:13 pm)
Title: anthropology
After the 18,000-year-old bones of diminutive people were found on the Indonesian island of Flores, the discoverers announced two years ago that these were remains of a previously unknown species of the ancestral human family. They gave it the name Homo floresiensis. Doubts were raised almost immediately. But only now have opposing scientists from Indonesia, Australia and the United States weighed in with a comprehensive analysis based on their own first-hand examination of the bones and a single mostly complete skull.
The evidence, they reported yesterday, strongly supports their doubts. The discoverers, however, hastened to defend their initial new-species interpretation.
The critics concluded in an article in the current issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the “little people of Flores,” as they are often called, were not a newfound extinct species.
They were, instead, modern Homo sapiens who resemble pygmies now living in the region and, as suggested in particular by the skull, appear to have been afflicted with the developmental disorder microcephaly, which causes the head and brain to be much smaller than average.
The international team of paleontologists, anatomists and other researchers who conducted the study was headed by Teuku Jacob of Gadjah Mada University, who is one of Indonesia’s senior paleontologists.
In the report, Dr. Jacob and his colleagues cited 140 features of the skull that they said placed it “within modern human ranges of variation.” They also noted features of two jaws and some teeth that “either show no substantial deviation from modern Homo sapiens or share features (receding chins and rotated premolars) with Rampasasa pygmies now living near Liang Bua Cave,” where the discovery was made.
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