HOMO FLORESIENSIS: DISCOVERY, CHARACTERISTICS, SKULL - HISTORY - 2025

The Homo floresiensis corresponds to an extinct species of the genus Homo which is also referred to as "Man of Flowers" and "Hobbit". This last nickname responds to the small characteristic size of this specimen that was discovered in 2003.

According to this publication in the journal Nature (2016), the skeletal remains of H. floresiensis and the deposits that contain them date from approximately 100,000 to 60,000 years ago, while the stone artifacts attributable to this species vary from approximately 190,000 to 50,000 years. old.

Homo Floresiensis skull. By Ryan Somma (originally posted to Flickr as Flores), via Wikimedia Commons

Despite all the great achievements of the human being and the incredible technological advances that have been made so far, even the issue that has to do with our origin is an unresolved enigma.

Although it seems that we have covered even the most remote corners of the planet in this mission, so far in this 21st century we continue to come across discoveries of remains that have seen the birth of new species of hominids.

Discovery

Discovery site in Liang Bua, Indonesia.

By Rosino (), via Wikimedia Commons

Just as many discoveries have occurred by accident or chance, others have been the product of the perseverance of some scientists in an effort to prove their theories.

This is the case of Australian professor Mike Moorwood (1950-2013), who began his career as a professor at the University of New England and who, since the mid-1990s, has been tracking the possible expansion of hominids that could occur since Africa to the South Pacific Seas.

Being a native of Australia, he had great interest in showing that human migration had not been as simple as it had been in the scientific media until then. This motivation led him to dedicate his life to studying and looking for evidence of the first human species that inhabited this part of the planet.

However, his work focused on finding evidence of the first Homo sapiens that occupied the oceanic zone of Southeast Asia. He never thought of meeting a new species.

Work team

Raden Soejono -who became the director of the National Research Center for Archeology (ARKENAS) in Indonesia- and Morwood spearheaded the excavation, collection and preservation of these fossil deposits extracted from the Liang Bua cave on Flores Island, located about 1000 km north of the western tip of the Australian continent.

Already with the clear suspicion of the importance of the find, after digging about twenty feet from the surface, Peter Brown, Morwood's colleague at the University of New England, got involved, who was in charge of the initial description and its subsequent classification.

Publication

His work was published in 2004 in the scientific journal Nature, already with the certainty that it was a new hominid that, due to being discovered on Flores Island in Indonesia, was baptized as Homo floresiensis.

Remains of nine other individuals were found at the site, which also provided valuable information. However, the only skull located was that of a female body that was nicknamed "Flo", and for the purposes of the investigation it was assigned the nomenclature LB-1.

Experiments on the skull

Although all the pieces of the find configured the information to reach the conclusion that it was a species not yet known until now, without a doubt what provided the greatest evidence was the skull found, since its characteristics were decisive in this work of classification.

Tests made based on carbon 14, luminescence and electronic resonance showed that this new species existed in a period between 38,000 and 18,000 years, which indicates that it coexisted on the planet with Homo sapiens -modern man-, although at the same time to this day there is no evidence that they interacted.

Despite its relative closeness in the evolutionary line of hominids, it has a morphology that was presented by much older species. It is believed that the fact that it reached an island and remained isolated, made it less affected by evolutionary forces and preserved primitive features.

Physical and biological characteristics

Facial reconstruction of Homo floresiensis. By Cicero Moraes et alii, via Wikimedia Commons

The remains that were initially found, at first glance seemed to be of a child due to his height that was barely one meter.

However, when assessing the wear of the teeth, the studies concluded that it was a female of about 30 years of age, of a height of 1.06 m and about 30 kg of weight.

This was impressive to the members of the expedition, as it was unusual to find features considered so ancient in relatively recent remains. At the end of the first stage of the excavation, the almost complete remains of the aforementioned female skeleton were collected.

Skull

The skull is extremely small and in principle resembles that of the chimpanzee due to its sloping forehead and lack of chin. However, somewhat delicate details of the face and the size of the teeth evoke more modern elements.

Hips and legs

The hips are primitive, like those of Australopithecus, and the legs are more evolved, suggesting that they were exclusively bipedal beings. The feet are proportionally larger than ours.

Ancestor

According to experts, Homo floresiensis may come from Homo erectus that spread to South Asia and then crossed the Polynesian archipelago in times when the sea was much less high and there were connections between all the territories that are now islands.

Despite the fact that Homo erectus had dimensions similar to the current human, scientists explain that this clan that arrived in these remote places could be isolated once the level of the sea flooded the area, and this conditioned them in terms of their stature due to scarce resources.

What puzzles the scientific world is that a hominid with cognitive abilities limited by a small brain has been able to move to these regions, since it is not entirely ruled out that they could have used primitive boats in some cases.

Likewise, the evidence shows a fairly decent degree of knowledge to achieve the manufacture of weapons with which they managed to hunt larger animals in groups.

All this suggests that Homo floresiensis descends from Homo erectus and that it suffered an involution in terms of its dimensions given the isolation conditions it had to face on Flores Island.

This isolation and the low caloric intake offered by the environment favored the smallest individuals who, thanks to natural selection, managed to survive.

Cranial capacity

The cranial capacity of the individual found on Flores Island is only 380 cc. Let us remember that the current human in this aspect exceeds 1300 cc; in other words, it is somewhat less than a third of what we have today.

That is why this discovery continues to feed the thesis that even ancestors with small brains were also capable of developing skills that we previously thought were reserved only for individuals with larger volumes of brain mass.

It seems that the belief that the greater the brain, the greater the dexterity is not entirely true.

The shape of the skull is flattened on the forehead and protruding superciliary arches. In addition, the chin is absent, which results in an appearance that resembles a chimpanzee.

However, despite the size of its brain, the prodigious thing about this species is that it can be said that it had a very advanced evolution, especially with regard to its posterior temporal lobe. This has been underlined by Dean Falk, professor of anthropology at Florida State University in the United States.

Falk has pointed out that the evidence of the presence of this advanced thinking was evidenced in the examination of the frontal lobe, the place where human beings concentrate this activity, as well as in the temporal lobe, where cognitive processes related to memory are managed and emotions.

Habitat

It is still an enigma for researchers how they arrived at the complex archipelago located in this corner of the globe.

The tools found on Flores Island indicate that a million years ago the first hominids were present at the site. Many of these are associated with the presence of Homo floresiensis, being very similar to those found in earlier times in both Asia and Africa.

He also used weapons to hunt unique animals that developed in this peculiar ecosystem. The Komodo dragon and dwarf elephants (also known as Stegodon) appear to have been part of the diet of this native of Flores Island.

This is indicated by the abundant remains found in the vicinity of the explored caves, many of which have thrown remains of these animals in which clear signs of having been predated are observed, showing cuts from this primitive type of weapons.

Behavior

Despite the fact that it may be thought that the smallness of its brain was not that bad, this species was capable of hunting in groups, making utensils and stone weapons and, in addition, it had command over fire.

Homo floresiensis took advantage of limestone caves for shelter; However, the significant isolation that being in island territory meant greatly limited the risk of facing unexpected predators.

On the other hand, despite assuming that he had limited cognitive development due to the size of his brain, he was able to put in his favor the few resources he had to survive for more than 80,000 years.

Direct ancestor

Despite the fact that everything points to its direct ancestor being Homo erectus - which reached similar dimensions to modern man - the condition of isolation determined this kind of involution in terms of size.

However, it is very possible that the legacy of this ancestor could have been fully exploited by Homo floresiensis, even with such a small brain.

Curiously, this group of hominids assumed the nickname of "hobbits", alluding to the short characters present in the homonymous work written by JR Tolkien, published in 1937, which were more recently integrated into the imaginary of the series of film productions that make up the trilogy of The Lord of the Rings.

Extinction

In 2014, when H. floresiensis was discovered, it was thought to have survived until 12,000 years ago. However, a more extensive stratigraphic and chronological work (Nature, 2016), has led to the dating of the most recent evidence of its existence to 50,000 years ago.

These dates are close to when modern humans approached this area of ​​the planet, so it is possible that they would have contributed to the extinction of H. floresiensis. This would be consistent with the disappearance of H. neanderthalensis from Europe around 40,000 years ago, 5,000 years after the arrival of modern humans.

Another widely spread theory has to do with the volcanic activity in this entire area, so it is not unreasonable to think that the awakening of a volcano has wiped out all the inhabitants of the island, which barely covers an area of ​​14,000 km².

This is something that will surely clarify the excavations that continue on the island and in surrounding areas, which until now have been prolific in remains and material for archaeo-paleontological analysis.

Controversy

There has been a certain degree of controversy since the work presented by the entire scientific team involved with this site was published in 2014.

Some researchers insist that it could be an individual or group of individuals affected by a disease of circumstantial dwarfism or some case of microcephaly that caused both their size and their features.

However, as time passes, most give credit to all the research carried out, accepting that Homo floresiensis is actually a valid taxon and a human species apart from Homo sapiens.

It remains to know the relationships that will emerge from these findings and how this species is located in the evolutionary line with the rest of the species of the genus Homo. Does it really come from Homo erectus or could it be a descendant of earlier smaller species? Almost three decades later, no thesis is totally ruled out.

References

1. What does it mean to be human? Homo Floresiensis ”(August 31, 2018) at Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Retrieved on September 6, 2018 from: si.edu
2. "Hobbits discovered in Indonesia". Christian Darkin (September 6, 2004) on History Channel. Retrieved on September 6, 2018 from historychannel.com.au
3. "Archeology and age of a new hominin from Flores in eastern Indonesia". (October 28, 2004) in National Center for Biotechnology Information. Retrieved on September 6, 2018 from nlm.nih.gov
4. "Mike Morwood." Iain Davidson (Annual report 2013-2014) in Australian Adademy for the Humanities. Retrieved on September 6, 2018 from humanities.org.au
5. "A new small-bodied hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia" (October 28, 2004) in Nature Publishing Group. Retrieved on September 6, 2018 from cogsci.ucsd.edu
6. What does it mean to be human? LB-1 ”(March 30, 2016) at Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Retrieved on September 6, 2018 from humanorigins.si.edu
7. "The 'homo floresiensis' was an intelligent being despite his small brain" (March 3, 2005) in El País. Retrieved on September 6, 2018 from elpais.com