Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
about human origins. As discussed in chapter 3, numerous discover-
ies including Neanderthals,
Pithecanthropus,
and the Taung juvenile had
accumulated by the end of the first quarter of the twentieth century,
which made it increasingly difficult to dismiss them as aberrant apes or
pathological humans. There were just too many of them! This added to
the discomfort within the American Biblicist movement, which inter-
prets the Bible literally, and helped fuel a surge in the militancy that
from the contemporary reaction to the discovery of
Homo floresiensis,
dis-
coveries of new hominin species continue to be a sore point with those
This does not surprise me. I am surprised, however, by the extent to
which the discoveries of new hominins continue to provoke bitter con-
unearthing of Neanderthal raised scientific eyebrows, since Darwin's
On the Origin of Species
would not be published for another three years.
The painfully slow acceptance of
Australopithecus africanus,
regrettable as
it was, also makes some kind of sense when one takes into account the
awful and prolonged influence of the Piltdown fraud. The reasons for
the acrimonious reaction of some scientists to the 2004 announcement
of
Homo floresiensis,
on the other hand, are not as clear. Contemporary
paleoanthropologists have read their Darwin, and Piltdown was de-
bunked half a century before Hobbit's discovery.
Although LB1's little skeleton and tiny cranial capacity were, indeed,
odd, we had already heard whispers from Dmanisi, Georgia, that some-
thing might be of in our textbook models of hominin evolution. LB1
and the other fragmentary remains of her species discovered at Liang
Bua suggest that something probably is. One can't help but wonder
whether Hobbit's potential for upsetting our views of human evolution
was responsible for igniting the intense paleopolitics that continues to
shroud the interpretation of
Homo floresiensis.
What will settle the matter
is more remains, of course. The scientist in me is praying fervently for
their discovery.
