Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
neck assessed any more accurately. A more thorough critical analysis of
For the purposes of this topic, it seems appropriate to allow a picture to
be worth the proverbial thousand words (see figure 26).
If nothing else, the suggestion that the
Homo floresiensis
remains were
from cretins is imaginative. Because the cave in which all of the hob-
bit remains were found is located inland on Flores and therefore away
from coastal iodine-rich seafood, proponents of the cretin hypothesis
have speculated that hobbits ate diets that were deficient in iodine.
They have also suggested that hobbits ate other foods that might have
contained harmful chemicals, such as cassava and bamboo, and that
as young cretins they may have experienced “undernutrition arising
from lack of mobility or estrangement, further decreasing their brain
instead of agriculturalists, or so the story went, the limited mobility
of the cretins led to their separation from the others, particularly the
adult cretins. “Use of caves by adult cretins and lack of burial would
explain the cretin remains . . . , while seasonal mobility, alternative shel-
ters and systematic burial would explain the absence of the remains of
Bua that were dated to 17,000 or more years ago were all from
Homo
sapiens
cretins! Meanwhile, the majority of the population consisted of
normal humans
who systematically buried their (so-far-undiscovered)
skeletons elsewhere on the island. Creative as it is, the suggestion that
hobbits were cretins does not stand up to scientific scrutiny.
beyond sick-hobbit hypotheses:
the tooth filling that wasn't
If Scooter was taken aback by the suggestion that one of LB1's perma-
nent teeth was really a baby tooth, he was incredulous at a more recent
assertion made by Maciej Henneberg, who had been one of the first sci-
