Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
been a feeble-minded journalist indeed who failed to make the connection
between the tiny woman of Flores and the Hobbits of Middle Earth. The
name has stuck and has even worked its way into the scientifi c literature as a
shorthand synonym for the oi cial name, Homo fl oresiensis .
Robert Martin of Chicago's Field Museum posed an alternative hypoth-
esis for the evolution of these little people. He suggested that they were mod-
ern humans who had suf ered some developmental abnormality such as
microcephaly, accompanied by a selection-driven reduction in stature. Dean
Falk of Florida State University and her colleagues investigated this possi-
bility. They showed that the Hobbit skulls are clearly dif erent from those
of modern-day microcephalics, and their later studies also ruled out other
possible pathologies such as Laron Syndrome. As the bones are examined
more and more minutely, the list of dif erences between the skeletons of the
Hobbits and those of modern humans continues to grow. The list is now so
long that it is clear no single pathology af ecting modern humans could have
been responsible for all of them.
Figure 140 Digging a second shaft at Liang Bua in search of more bones and artifacts.
 
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