In many ways that makes the whole thing even more fascinating due to the implications concerning the peopling of the Pacific.

Judging from the weight estimates, these people would have been noticably smaller than existing “pygmy” populations, which again raises questions concerning their origins and, perhaps more importantly, how long they had been living there. Unless they were already small when they began to migrate there, one would assume that the population would have had to be around for longer than 3000 years to acquire such a distinct environmental adaptation. Of course, maybe this could be evidence of how we can acquire adaptations over a shorter period than previously thought.

Can’t wait to hear more about this.

Thanks Loren.

While australopithecines were not the direct ancestors of modern humans, they were definitely closer to modern humans than to chimps, and the split between chimps and hominids (including australopithecines) occured at least 3 million years before the Homo/Australopithecus split.

See the Wikipedia article on A. afarensis for studies using computer modelling to show that a. afarensis would have been able to walk bipedally much more efficiently than it could walk like a chimp…

If they were found among other, larger (even if smaller than present day human-average) human skeletons, i would suggest that either:

a) there was a particular genetic type of dwarfism prevalent in the population

or

b) there was some sort of caste system involving people of different groups living alongside each other and not interbreeding - maybe a smaller ethnic group who were enslaved, or even a poorer caste who were smaller because they got less nutrition or something…

There are a lot of different types of dwarfism, some of which (including the commonest) are easily recognisable because they result in deformed, short/thick limbs relative to a near normal sized head and torso (eg. the actors Warwick Davis and Peter Dinklage). Others result in close-to-normal proportions, including a smaller head, one or more of which have been suggested explanations for the Flores skeletons - however, such people still have a modern Homo sapiens *shape* to their brain case, while H. floresiensis has a very different shape showing clear adaptations to small body size (enlargement of certain areas relative to others to maximise the “efficiency” of fitting brainpower into a small space).

Thus, i’m sure that H. floresiensis is a different species from modern humans, and the most plausible candidate for cryptids like the Orang Pendek, but these Palau skeletons sound more modern sapiens-like. If there were non-sapiens hominids that far out in the Pacific, then i think the only way they could have got there is if modern humans took them (as pets? slaves?)… which seems a lot less likely than some dwarfed modern humans.

Were feet and fingers preserved?

It was the lack of feet and fingers that allowed Johanson to promote Lucy as a hominid for so long, when other Afar skeletons were found with those preserved, the Afar apes had to be reclassified, and were not the makers of the Laetoli footprints. Which is interesting for cryptozoology, for that means that an as yet undiscovered fully bipedal primate made the Laetoli footprints.

Of course the grant money lies with claiming that the hobbits are a different species, so there is a powerful motivation to make that claim.

Personally, I find them every bit as interesting, and ‘hobbity’ if they are of the modern human race, but miniaturized, as we see with pituitary dwarfs (who have the features of the Floresians, including small brain). Little people were real, and not just story. Cool!

Not sure why they brought in the australopithicines, which we now know where simply a type of knuckle-walking chimpanzee. The similarities just aren’t there, at least not more than how a modern great ape resembles any of us.