Whence Homo floresiensis ? - The Fossil Chronicles - page 180

erectus ancestor who had lived on Java at the same time hominins of some
sort were making stone tools on Flores (now thought to have been over
1 million years ago). The form of the jaw, cranium, and the rest of the
skeleton, along with the limb proportions, thickness of the bones, brain
size, and details of LB1's wrist, led Brown to conclude, “It is unlikely that
the Liang Bua hominins are insular dwarfed descendants of H. erectus. ” 87
Jungers and his colleagues also think that the primitive features
throughout Hobbit's entire skeleton were probably not the result of
island dwarfing, because they would have entailed too many evolution-
ary reversals. 88 That is, Homo floresiensis would have had to reevolve
numerous australopithecine-like features, including short hindlimbs,
body proportions, and flat feet with apelike lateral toes. Jungers thus
sees Homo floresiensis as having been too primitive to be a dwarfed descen-
dant of Homo erectus. Instead, he thinks, “The comparative and functional
anatomical evidence . . . suggests that H. floresiensis possesses many char-
acteristics that may be primitive for the genus Homo. It follows that if
these features are primitive retentions, then H. floresiensis could be a
descendant of a primitive hominin that established a presence in Asia
either alongside or at a different time than [Asian] H. erectus. ” 89
Brown does not share the belief of some anthropologists that there
may have been a close relationship between Homo floresiensis and the
Dmanisi hominins, which were taller and proportioned more like mod-
ern humans, with larger braincases and heavier bodies. Instead, Brown
thinks, “Comparison with Dmanisi H. erectus suggests that the Liang
Bua hominin lineage left Africa before 1.8 Ma [million years ago],
and possibly before the evolution of the genus Homo. We believe that
these distinctive, toolmaking, small-brained, australopithecine-like,
obligate bipeds moved from the Asian mainland through the Lesser
Sunda Islands to Flores, before the arrival of H. erectus and H. sapiens in
the region.” 90 Brown's hypothesis is seconded by Morwood and Jungers:
“We hypothesize . . . that the H. floresiensis lineage exited Africa between
1.8- 2.6 Ma— i.e., before hominins occupied Dmanisi, but after they
began making stone artifacts. . . . This was a time when the extent of