Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
When food was served to them they also ate the plates, which were
made of pumpkin.
6
According to numerous accounts, the
ebu gogo
became extinct around
were irritated because the
ebu gogo
periodically raided their crops and
animals. Nevertheless, they tried to get along with their little neighbors
by making kind gestures, such as bringing them cooked food. Although
they took the food, the
ebu gogo
reportedly responded rudely and con-
tinued to be troublesome. As the story goes, one day they stole a baby,
and in some reports they ate it. In retaliation, the ancestors traveled
to the
ebu gogo
's cave and set it on fire. According to Gregory Forth, of
the University of Alberta, who did ethnographic research in the Nage
region of Flores long before
Homo floresiensis
was discovered, the ances-
tors killed the
ebu gogo
by trapping them inside a cave and setting fire
Depending on the particular version of the legend, one or two
ebu gogo
may have survived the fire.
After the discovery of
Homo floresiensis,
new rumors emerged among
the villagers of Flores that the
ebu gogo
might still exist within pockets
Forth points out that the many tales he has heard on Flores about
ebu
gogo
have a ring of truth to them because of their details and matter-of-
fact portrayals. Whether or not the
ebu gogo
actually existed and, if so,
whether they had any evolutionary relationship with
Homo floresiensis,
as
some have suggested, remain as tantalizing unanswered questions—at
least for now.
Meanwhile, the researchers who believe that the new species is a
previously unrecognized hominin are currently focusing on two ques-
tions that go back to a time hundreds of thousands of years before the
ebu gogo
were supposedly raiding crops on Flores: Where did
Homo flo-
resiensis
's ancestors come from? And what (or who) did they look like?
Were Hobbit's ancestors small like australopithecines when they first
