This week we received a bombshell report from the world of paleoanthropology: the distant and unknown to many island of Flores in Indonesia, they found remains belonging to a new hominid species that inhabited the island will be about 18,000 years.
Before commenting on the findings, I will give brief reports on the island.
BEAUTIFUL ISLAND WITH UNKNOWN NAME
Flores Island is an island of Indonesia, part of the Sunda Archipelago, situated in the southern part of the Flores Sea.
With an area of \u200b\u200bsome 14000 square kilometers and a population estimated at around one million and a half inhabitants, the island of Flores is a natural paradise. Among its varied fauna include by popularity, the Komodo dragon.
The fact that it is an island and there has been no communication with the ground emerged from long ago (as opposed, for example, the next island of Java) has to develop a fauna.
is a volcanic island, with basalts and andesites, in which soil, its people (mostly of Malaysian origin) grow maize and tubers. It has a number of active volcanoes and earthquakes are not uncommon. The relief of plateaus, and the highest point is in the 2400 meters.
Shortage rain occurs frequently famines and disasters are not, unfortunately, absent. In 1992 an earthquake left 2000 dead. And this year, the alarms have jumped to arouse Egon stratovolcano located in the east of the island.
This makes me feel a bit cynical: the island has always been there, and we only noticed it when we did this discovery, forgetting that what matters are the problems of its inhabitants.
A BIT OF HISTORY ON FINDINGS ON THE ISLAND OF FLOWERS
Flores Island is located immediately to the right of the so-called Wallace Line.
In the second half of nineteenth century, Alfred Russel Wallace biogeographer (famous for being, along with Darwin, who first proposed the model of evolution by natural selection) established an imaginary line between Bali and Lombok, which separated the faunas of Asian origin and source Australian.
As between the islands to one side or another has always been water (to be deep, even in times of low sea level, have always been separated), has always argued that there was never any exchange of faunas naturally between the two margin. This statement was made, of course, extend to humans before the development of navigation (ie, about 50000 years).
However, 100 years later this vision for humans began to change. In 1968 Vehoeven
made the discovery of stone tools, dated around 750,000 years, associated with mastodon fossils on the island of Flores. Further
dating, refined this time to 850,000 years.
In 1998, in Nature, Morwood and colleagues turned to put the tools of the island to the fore.
The rough cut of the tools made many calling into question the anthropogenic nature of the stones. Interestingly
take a look at the oldest fossils in Southeast Asia, because they can be related to the current finding.
And there's also controversial.
To Carl Swisher, the "boy Modjokerto", discovered in Java in 1936 would be around 1.8 million years. However, subsequent authors have taken issue with this dating and do not take more than one million two hundred thousand years the occupation of the island of Java.
Anyway, it seems clear that Southeast Asia was already occupied a million years ago by residents of singular morphology: cranial capacity about 800 cc, cranial walls thick, bone in the neck flanges, protruding brows, the middle region of the face pointing outward, and no Chin.
"EXCLUSIVE" IN NATURE: a hominid OUT OF PLACE AND TIME
What we are announcing in Nature as indicated above, along with PeterBrown Michael Morwood of the University of Armidale (Australia) and Bert Roberts, Wollolong University (Australia) is this: the individual has found a hominid female, five feet tall with a brain volume of 380 cc, dated the stunning age of 18000 years ago, and what is even more curious, on the island of Flores and associated with stone tools that otherwise would have been assigned to Homo sapiens.
Come on, that the news has it all.
I know that giving of it is still early, and that so far as they send the royalties, there must be a distant and skeptical stance.
But the temptation is very strong, I can not ramble, and these speculations I will translate them into the next paragraphs (warning: they are nothing serious, it is a vagary):
- First, on the islands is common for evolutionary rates are high. In the islands, having more opportunities for newcomers, the trend may accelerate the effects of genetic drift is increasing, and so it is not surprising that new species arise.
Moreover, the islands offer a number of advantages (there large amounts of food and resources, and lack of predators and competitors), along with other disadvantages (risk of storms and other disasters, difficulties in avoiding the few predators, ...)
Thus, the evolution leads to strange things: when it is scarce a resource on an island, the smallness of size may be a good solution for better resource sharing among members of the population. This is common in mammals, and we have many examples: the pygmy elephants that were in many islands in prehistoric times, small monkeys Madagascar, ... There are even examples among the dinosaurs.
Sometimes the opposite happens and animals become "versions" increased: think of the giant tortoises of the Galapagos or the same Komodo dragon. However, this is not normal in high metabolic rate animals such as mammals, where the norm is usually decreasing in size.
What happens is that this fact has never been found in humans. Can be, and this is already my reflection, this discovery dissipate a bit more the differences between humans and other mammals.
- We know the peopling of Southeast Asia since at least a million years ago. And we have some evidence that the island of Flores was inhabited 800,000- years.
- To have only 18000 years, I am surprised that so far we have not had evidence of the existence of this species. I am surprised that, despite its "youth" had not been found before. That confirms to me on the assumption that Homo floresiensis is a unique endemism of the island
With this in mind, I can not speculate on the following idea: could it be that the first inhabitants of Java, managed to get by knowledge or by chance, the island of Flores, and that experience evolved relatively quickly, that would lead to these special forms? The small brain would be a strategy to reduce consumption energy, even when he held all neural connections.
I leave there my "contribution". It UNPOC early to tell, because there is still dimorphisms details as possible, or whether the issue is no exception, and learn more about this unique relative.
I'm surprised at the barrage of speculation that we have submitted this news, did not have enough time for some people to say that this finding strengthens the argument of those who think that the legends of Sasquatch, Big Foot and Yeti, are real . Anyway, everyone sees on the news what you want.
That is all.
A greeting.
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