The Hobbit women named her Flo. Scientists: "Hobbits are not people"

Man of Flores ( Homo floresiensis) is an extinct species of dwarf people. Representatives of this species were very small in stature, which is why they were also given the name “hobbits.” Initially, it was even planned to give the new species the name “Homo hobbitus”.

The remains of Homo flores were found on the island of Flores, Indonesia. In the Liang Bua cave, which was once inhabited by this man, many bones were found that are of great interest to paleoanthropologists studying the problem of human evolution. According to rough estimates, the age of the finds ranges from 13 to 95 thousand years. The growth of this species was very low and was approximately one meter - from 1.04 to 1.09 m. Also, Homo flores had a small brain size - 400 cm3, which is even less than that of a modern chimpanzee, and three times less than at modern man. However, despite the small size of the brain, Homo floresiensis was able to make tools from stone and also used fire.

Judging by scientific research, Homo flores is a subspecies of Homo erectus "". Also, many scientists agree that the “hobbit” became a descendant of Pithecanthropus, which lived in Southeast Asia. As a descendant of , who was engaged in making tools from stone and probably knew how to make and maintain fire, Homo floresiensis adopted these abilities, but was greatly reduced in height (Pithecanthropus had a height of 1.5 meters). Scientists associate such a strong decrease in growth with the island isolation of this species, when over millennia of living in a small island, the subspecies of Homo erectus became much shorter than its ancestors. As evidence, scientists also cite real cases where even representatives of Homo sapiens became smaller during island isolation.

Homo florescanus bones and reconstructions:

Liang Bua Cave, where Man of Flores lived

An ancient man known as "the hobbit" has taken evolutionary biologists on a very unexpected journey. In 2004, a team led by archaeologists Mike Morwood and Peter Brown announced the discovery of a one-meter-tall hominin skeleton with an unusually petite build and small skull. A skeleton was discovered in the Liang Bua cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. Reports published in 2009 suggested that scientists had found many more fossil remains at the site, including eight hobbits.

Known to scientists as the Man of Flores, the hobbit has a very unusual skeleton. In part, its anatomical structure is similar to very ancient people. According to the analysis, the found skeleton is about 18 thousand years old. This means that primitive-looking hobbits lived at the same time as modern humans (Homo sapiens), who appeared about 200 thousand years ago. In other words, it appears that the Hobbit is the last surviving human species other than our own.

This week marks ten years since the first publications describing the hobbit appeared in the journal Nature. But even after a debate-filled decade, the tiny skeleton continues to stir controversy and disagreement. Some experts argue that the skeleton does not represent separate species, but is simply a deceased modern person. It's easy to get lost in the competing theories about the origins of Flores Man and how he got to Indonesia. So here's a guide to what scientists know about this unusual find and what they don't.

Why is the hobbit so strange?

At first, archaeologists suspected that they had found the bones of a modern human child. However, a more thorough analysis forced them to change their minds. The older hominin, known as Australopithecus afarensis and represented by the remains of the famous "Lucy", had strong jaws, flared femurs and short legs. Flores man has the same features. The hobbit's small skull suggests the species had a brain the size of an orange, reminiscent of another ancient species, Homo habilis, or Homo habilis, which lived 2.4 to 1.4 million years ago. The hobbit has prominent brow ridges, a thick skull and the same brain structure as Homo erectus, which appeared almost two million years ago. As scientists delved deeper into the study of the hobbit, it became clear that he had a very interesting mixture of modern and primitive features. "It's like suddenly we had in our hands a laboratory of human evolution that took place on planet Earth that we knew nothing about," says paleontologist Rick Potts, who heads the human origins program at the National Museum of Natural History. stories.

Are we sure that a hobbit is not just a very short modern man?

Given the young age of the skeleton, some experts have suggested that Flores Man represents a modern person with dwarfism, Down syndrome or another pathology, which explains his small stature and brain. But none of the modern human pathologies can explain all the features of a hobbit. What is noteworthy is that the bones of Flores man lack some characteristic features bones of the foot, face and wrist of modern humans, such as the trapezius bone in our wrists. But this has not stopped scientists who continue to debate whether Homo flores is truly a unique species.

So where did the hobbit come from in the process of evolution?

Not from the Shire. Perhaps the most common version is that Flores man evolved from some kind of erectus, or homo erectus. Coincidentally, the remains of erectus were discovered on the Indonesian island of Java. The very first remains of Homo erectus were found outside of Africa, in the Georgian town of Dmanisi. They also showed that these hominins weren't always big and tall as we thought. The skeletons from Dmanisi are smaller and retain some primitive features. All this indicates that a group of early Homo erectus could have reached mainland Southeast Asia, and some part of the population ended up on Flores, giving rise to the hobbits.

Or maybe he is even older?

That would be quite interesting. Given the anatomical similarities between Lucy and Homo habilis, it is possible that the hobbits had more ancient ancestors. If this is true, we will have to take a fresh look at resettlement ancient man from Africa. "This means we were missing an entire branch of the tree of human evolution until these important finds at Liang Bua were made," anthropologist Chris Stringer, who works at the Natural History Museum in London, wrote in comments published in Nature. However, Australopithecines like Lucy could not cover the distance from Africa to Indonesia through all of Asia. We see the strong legs of hominins that allow them to overcome long distances only in erectus.

In short, it has shrunk. The most common theory is that the ancestors of Flores man may have been affected by insular dwarfism. Islands are subject to unique evolutionary pressures, including resource scarcity and irregular availability. To somehow compensate for this deficiency, some animals shrink in size, which allows them to expend less energy. “If you want to survive on the island, you have to physically shrink every organ in your body, which becomes an unaffordable luxury,” says Potts. Among the animals found during excavations at Liang Bua along with Flores man were a dwarf species of the ancient elephant, Stegodon, and normal-sized Komodo dragons. Morwood and Brown suggested that because the insular dwarfism effect played a role on Flores, it determined the size of the hobbit, and it was this effect that could explain the reappearance of primitive skeletal features.

Why is this small brain?

Proponents of the later origins of Flores Homo link the small brain size to developmental disorders such as microcephaly, which stunts brain growth. At first, researchers doubted that insular dwarfism could reduce brain size to the extent we see in a hobbit. But in 2009, the journal Nature published the results of a study that showed that hippopotamuses in Madagascar, susceptible to insular dwarfism, had brains that were disproportionately small compared to their bodies. Large brains require expensive care, and therefore it is possible that they are subject to greater evolutionary pressures.

How did the hobbit get to Flores?

Even during the Last Glacial Maximum, when sea levels dropped greatly, Flores was never connected by land isthmuses to either the other Indonesian islands or the mainland of Southeast Asia. The ancestors of Flores man needed a boat or raft. Although it cannot be ruled out, there is no evidence to suggest that Homo erectus built boats. Another option is more likely here. Some upright people could have ended up on a cluster of some kind of vegetation or on a miniature island that broke away from the mainland and collided with Flores. This happens in coastal areas during typhoons and tsunamis.

When did the hobbit come to Flores?

Volcanic ash in the sediments around the remains of Flores Man indicates that they are between 18 and 38 thousand years old. But other archaeological finds, say, stone tools found in the Liang Bua cave, range in age from 13 to 98 thousand years. Scientists from the Smithsonian Institution are conducting tests on the skeletons, hoping to more accurately determine the age of the hobbits. The oldest stone tools found on Flores are 1.02 million years old and could have belonged to Flores Man or, more likely, his ancestors.

What answers will the next decade bring?

Those skeletons that may be found in Liang Bua or elsewhere on Flores will help fill gaps in our knowledge, and perhaps solve the most important question about the origin of the hobbits. The answer to this question could influence our understanding of human evolution in mainland Asia and even the theory of human migration from Africa.

ALL PHOTOS

In Indonesia, a team of scientists, after ten years of intensive searches, discovered the remains of the ancestor of an ancient species of people - Homo flores, nicknamed the "hobbit" for his dwarf stature (by analogy with the creatures invented by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien). The sensational discovery is reported by the journal Nature.

The latest findings show that the process of decline took place much faster than previously thought - the size of the found remains is much smaller than that of the species Homo erectus. This led scientists to suggest that its ancestor approached the size of the “hobbit” in just 300 thousand years.

In 2003, a team of Australian professor Mike Morewood discovered the remains of unusual dwarf creatures on the island of Flores. The ancestor of modern people was dubbed a “hobbit” - by analogy with Tolkien’s characters “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings”. There were suggestions that the discovered creature was a representative of an unknown breed of hominid.

For four years, there has been controversy in the scientific community over the findings. Some scientists believed that the bones belonged to pygmies, whose descendants still live on the island. Others were of the opinion that these were the remains of a special species of people who lived here 10-120 thousand years ago at the same time as Homo sapiens. A version has also been put forward that the remains belong to people who suffered from microcephaly. However, in 2007, scientists announced that the Indonesian "hobbit" is a separate species of human.

It was found that the "hobbit" is a representative of a side branch of ancient human ancestors, which appeared before Homo sapiens and Neanderthals formed the modern type of wrist. All three species had a common ancestor that lived between 1 million and 500 thousand years ago. "Hobbits" are descended from a species that migrated from Africa and separated from the main line of evolution before the common ancestor of modern man and Neanderthal evolved from it.

Stone artifacts comparable to similar African finds were discovered near the remains of the “hobbits” on the island of Flores. This confirms the hypothesis that the first hominids, who mastered the technique of stone processing and the use of stone tools, had a primitive type of wrist. Modern type appeared between 1.8 million and 800 thousand years ago, which made the manufacture and use of tools more convenient.

Professor Mike Morwood died in 2013, and Australian paleontologists continued excavations on Flores Island. According to The New York Times, in addition to the remains of the ancestors of the “hobbits,” 149 stone tools allegedly made 700 thousand years ago were also discovered.

In 2003, the world spread the news of a sensational discovery made by archaeologists in Indonesian. In one of the natural caves, called Liang Bua, the remains of a previously unknown to science dwarf species of ancient people were found, distinguished by their unusually small stature, not exceeding one meter, and amazingly small brain volume. This the new kind received the name Homo floresiensis, or otherwise - Floresian man.

The first finds of the expedition

This amazing discovery was preceded by a long process, and a joint Indonesian-Australian expedition led by Mike Morewood and Panjit Sujono began excavations on Flores Island back in 2001. It was not by chance that they chose the Liang Bua Cave, since Sudzhono had previously worked in it with another group of scientists, and by that time part of the upper ones had been opened by him.

Already the first year spent on Flores brought many interesting finds. Delving deeper into increasingly ancient layers of sediment, archaeologists discovered a large number of bones of various animals that became extinct tens of thousands of years ago. Among them were found fragments of the skeletons of stegodons - distant relatives of modern elephants that disappeared from the face of the earth twelve thousand years ago, as well as the famous Komodo dragons - the largest living lizards, reaching a length of three meters.

Remains of an ancient cave dweller

In addition, they were discovered obvious signs stay in these places This was evidenced by the remains of stone tools dating back to the Paleolithic era, which were at least two and a half million years old. In the same year, the first fragment of one of the ancient inhabitants of the Liang Bua cave fell into the hands of scientists. It was clearly a radius bone, part of the forearm, but it was unusually small and strangely curved.

The year 2003 brought even more discoveries, and along with them, mysteries to researchers. Back in January, an incomplete skeleton was found that belonged to an adult female, but was also strikingly small in size. According to experts, its age was approximately eighteen thousand years. In addition to other bones, scientists have acquired a fairly well-preserved skull of an ancient inhabitant of the cave. Even at first glance, everyone was struck by the small volume of the cranium, and consequently, the brain that once contained it.

Working with found material

A certain difficulty in working with bones was due to the fact that, due to the moisture of the soil, they were not fossilized, but had a rather loose and pliable texture. I had to be extra careful. To preserve them, a special preparation was developed and manufactured right on the spot, consisting of quick-drying glue and nail polish. It’s not hard to imagine that a woman could have come up with such technology. Indeed, the inventor of this method was Thomas Sutikina, a representative of the Indonesian archaeological group.

Hypothesis explaining the safety of the find

Ritual burials have been taking place in Liang Bua Cave for thousands of years, as evidenced by the large number of human bones found there, painted with ocher and lying mixed with jewelry made from sea shells. However, the little man was clearly not one of them. It was also surprising how well his skeleton was preserved. Even the articulations of some bones were not damaged.

According to scientists, such preservation could be explained by the fact that this relict hominid (the term used to designate the family of higher primates, which includes humans) after death was immersed in a shallow body of water or simply in liquid mud. This saved him from wild animals feeding on carrion.

If this assumption is correct, then Homo flores is not the only find preserved as a result of such “conservation.” The same fate was shared by the remains of a three-million-year-old man found in Ethiopia and the bones of a boy discovered in Kenya who lived one and a half million years later.

Additional information about the find

The following year, 2004, the cave gave scientists new finds of bones of small people, which made it possible to sufficiently recreate them appearance and more accurately establish the dating. If at first it was believed that this relict hominid lived on earth from 12 to 95 thousand years ago, then a more detailed study of the remains using radioisotope analysis made it possible to narrow the time range and limit it to a period from 60 to 100 thousand years.

It is characteristic that very primitive tools made of stone were also discovered. This indicates that Floresian man already knew how to process the resources available to him. natural materials for use during hunting and construction.

Disputes about the name of the found species

After scientists came to the conclusion that they had discovered a new biological species, its representatives were immediately given the nickname hobbits. That's what they were called fairy-tale heroes from the work of the famous English writer John Reuel Tolkien “The Lord of the Rings”. Accordingly, the little man should have been called Homo hobbitus.

However, a number of scientists, among whom was the prominent Australian paleontologist Peter Brown, had doubts as to whether it could be classified as genus Homo, that is, to people. The reason for doubt was characteristics, which this fossil species possessed. In particular, everyone was embarrassed by his unusually small stature and unprecedented brain volume - about three times smaller than that of an ordinary person. Brown personally suggested the name Sundantropus for the find. However, as a result of lengthy discussions, we settled on the above-mentioned Homo floresiensis - Floresian man.

A sensation that spread around the world

For the first time, information about the amazing discovery made in the Liang Bua cave appeared in 2004 in the journal Nature. Before this, it was kept secret for almost a year, since its appearance in the media could interfere with publication in this purely scientific publication. However, immediately after the appearance of the magazine issue, the man of Flores (the hobbit) became one of the main topics of seven thousand newspapers and magazines and about one hundred thousand Internet sites. A popular science film was even made about him, commissioned by the famous National Geographic TV channel.

An attempt to establish the truth

As mentioned above, from the very first days disputes flared up between scientists around the remains found on the island of Flores. They were talking about whether it is right to say that in front of them is a fossil dwarf species of people, previously unknown to science, or is it the result of pathological changes that ordinary primitive people, known as Homo sapiens, underwent for one reason or another.

To answer this question, leading Indonesian paleoanthropologist Teuku Yacob took all the found bones from a research center in Jakarta and placed them in his laboratory. He managed to do this thanks to personal contact with Panjit Sujano, one of the leaders of the expedition. Scientific world I was waiting for the results of the research, but within three months the famous scientist remained silent.

Scandal in the scientific world

Finally, the patience of his colleagues ran out, and they began to demand that Jacob provide access to the remains to other scientists and end this practice of monopoly, which extended only to him and his assistants. As a result, the bones were returned to Jakarta, but not in full and partially damaged. A major scandal broke out, since at that time the Flores man was still on the front pages of newspapers, and the matter received a big

The result of this was a ban by the Indonesian authorities on the continuation of excavations in the Liang Bua Cave. On this occasion, there were suggestions in the world media that the authorities’ refusal to allow scientists to access the site where the relict hominid was discovered was explained by their fear for the reputation of Jacob, who was considered the pride of national science.

The fact is that he was an ardent opponent of the assertion that the remains belonged to a new unknown species, and since continuation of the work could bring data refuting his point of view, and thereby undermine the authority of Indonesian science, it was decided not to risk it. The study was resumed only in 2007.

Continuation of work

After the events described above, for a long time information about the progress of the excavations did not penetrate the media, and only in 2015 it became known that a new international expedition was working on the island of Flores. This time she explores a previously discovered cave connected by an underground passage to Liang Bua. It is assumed that it must contain the earliest sediments. According to scientists, ancient people could have used this cave as a warehouse and a possible escape route in case of unforeseen danger.

Some external differences of Homo floresiensis

As stated above, the main distinctive features Flores man is his small stature and tiny size of the cranium, which is also strikingly different in structure from that of Homo sapiens. For example, the skull lacks a chin protrusion. In general, the shape and proportions of the skeleton, as well as its individual parts, make it possible to classify its owner as lower forms primitive people such as australopithecines.

Soon after publications related to the discovery of Flores Man, attempts began to recreate his appearance. Many leading artists and sculptors specializing in the field of anthropology took part in them. The first reconstruction was due to Peter Schouten, who created a drawing based on a careful study of the skeleton of this individual.

Following him, sculptor Elisabeth Deine presented her voluminous work. She owns a whole series of figures exhibited in 2007 at the Paris Museum of Man and representing an evolutionary reconstruction of what hominids turned into from the most ancient forms known to science to modern people.

In 2012, a new step was taken in this direction. Dr. Susan Hayes from Australia, using forensic techniques, reconstructed Flo's face, the name given to a female specimen whose remains were discovered in Liang Bua Cave. Following her, a group of researchers from New York carried out a meticulous computer analysis of the skull. The general conclusion was that, for a number of characteristics, Flores man is close to and, therefore, the hypothesis about the pathological changes that caused him unusual looking, should be considered untenable.

Anthropologists have long debated the remains of miniature humans who lived about 15,000 years ago on an Indonesian island. According to a recently completed study, these people do not belong to the species Homo sapiens.

Fossil remains of Homo floresiensis, for its small size nicknamed the “hobbit”, were found on the island of Flores back in 2003. Controversy immediately arose as to whether "hobbits" were an unknown branch of early humans or a variety of modern humans deformed by a genetic disease.

Researchers, having analyzed the skull bones, clearly state that miniature people do not belong to the species Homo sapiens.

Up to this point, academic scientific works pointed first in one direction, then in another, and the scientific discussion sometimes turned into an exchange of barbs. Followers of one school believe that Flores man is a member of the dwarf species Homo erectus, which has shrunk over hundreds of generations in conditions of island isolation. For example, on the same island of Flores, the remains of stegodons were discovered - miniature creatures resembling an elephant. So an adult hobbit was about a meter tall and weighed about 25 kilograms.

Another group of scientists believes that Homo floresiensis is a relative of modern humans, and its tiny size and small brain, no larger than a grapefruit, are a consequence of a genetic disorder. One of the reasons was called “dwarf cretinism”, which occurs due to a lack of iodine in a woman during pregnancy in combination with other negative factors environment. Another possible reason there could be microcephaly, as a result of which not only the brain, but also its bone shell decreases.

The work of two scientists from France, published in the Journal of Human Evolution, shed some light on these theories. They took a new approach by looking at high-resolution images of the bone tissue of the Hobbit's skull. More specifically, they studied the remains of individual LB1, whose skull was the best preserved.

The first skeleton found turned out to be a bipedal primate, just over a meter tall and weighing about 30 kg. The age of the remains dates back to between 38 and 18 thousand years.

The mystery has only been partially solved. “Until now we have been based on images that are not of very high quality,” says study author Antoine Balzo of the French Museum of Natural History.

Balzo worked with paleopathologist Philippe Charlier of Paris Descartes University, who specializes in solving medical mysteries. Scientists carefully analyzed high-resolution images taken from Japan to develop maps of changes in bone thickness.

According to Balzo, the layers of bones in the skull contain a lot of information. “The results are clear,” says Balzo. “The characteristics do not correspond to our species, that is, Homo sapiens.”

And while they found signs of minor illnesses, they didn't find anything resembling the serious genetic diseases that other researchers had pointed to.

Now that one part of the puzzle has been solved, the other still remains a mystery. So far, scientists cannot determine for sure whether the “hobbits” are a smaller version of Homo erectus, who migrated from the neighboring island of Java about a million years ago, or whether this is a separate branch of evolution. “At the moment we cannot give a definite answer,” Balzo admitted.

Other related articles: