Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
grassland savanna from Africa to China offered no barriers to faunal
exchange.”
91
If we consider the two body plans (including relative brain size) rep-
resented by the ten most complete skeletons from the early part of the
hominin fossil record, the one that is the closer match for Hobbit is
clear. LB1 more closely resembled the little, short-legged, and small-
brained australopithecines. But she also had some of the same features
as
Homo erectus,
in addition to other traits that were unique, like her odd
feet. Such peculiarities may best be explained as the result of a
long
period of isolated evolution on Flores. As Brown suggests, the ances-
tors of
Homo floresiensis
could possibly have been australopithecines who
This possibility is underscored by the nature of the stone tools found
in the hobbit-bearing strata of Liang Bua and at another, much older
at least 840,000 years ago and resemble those that were produced right
up until
Homo floresiensis
disappeared, around 17,000 years ago. (Similar
stone tools that are at least 1 million years old have recently been dis-
covered at the Flores site of Wolo Sege but are not yet as thoroughly
Flores were very similar to those used to produce the Oldowan tools
associated with australopithecines and early
Homo
in East Africa. The
stone tools from both Africa and Flores included very similar bifaces,
choppers, burins, discoids, and awls (figure 30). Thus, as observed by
Mark Moore and Adam Brumm, there was “remarkable . . . similarity
between the 1.2-1.9 Ma stone artifact assemblage from Olduvai Gorge—
made by hominin(s) with less cranial capacity and cognitive develop-
ment than modern humans—and the stone artifact assemblage from
mately 1.8-million-year-old stone tools from Dmanisi are similar to
Oldowan artifacts.
As we have seen, researchers vary in their ideas about what Hobbit's
ancestors will turn out to look like once their remains are discovered.
