Race and Human Evolution:
A Fatal Attraction
by Milford Wolpoff
and Rachel Caspari
hardcover
Posted on 04/20/2009 10:39:56 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Thousands of small, sharp-edged flakes of volcanic tuff and chert have been unearthed from the cave of the "hobbit," the roughly 1-meter-tall ancient human found on the island of Flores in Indonesia. The stone tools have puzzled researchers: How could a hominid with a brain the size of a grapefruit craft tools? Now a detailed analysis sheds light on the hobbit's technological capabilities and raises a new mystery: Why did the modern humans who arrived later on Flores make tools the same way hobbits did?
Archaeologist Mark Moore of the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, and his colleagues studied 11,667 stone tools recovered from Liang Bua Cave on Flores. Excavators have unearthed hobbit bones in cave layers dated to between 17,000 and 95,000 years ago. These older layers lie beneath a layer of volcanic tuff dated to 12,000 years ago. Above that layer, at 11,000 years and younger, researchers have found Holocene burials of Homo sapiens along with more tools...
Moore concludes that the hobbit, H. floresiensis, made the older tools, and then H. sapiens arrived and made similar tools. He even suggests that there was contact between the species, with modern humans copying H. floresiensis toolmakers before they went extinct: "I can see how different hominins might converge on the techniques themselves, but I find it more difficult to understand how those permutations [combinations of techniques] could be so similar without more direct observation or interaction."
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenow.sciencemag.org ...
Race and Human Evolution:
A Fatal Attraction
by Milford Wolpoff
and Rachel Caspari
hardcover
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Apparently not. We let Sauron back into a position of power. ;^)
University of New England in Australia. That must of been some earthquake for this to happen! :)
Perfect observation!
Apparently not. We let Sauron back into a position of power. ;^)
And he just jacked up the pipeweed tax.
By RAPPING.. posturing.. and making strange noises..
“Why did the modern humans who arrived later on Flores make tools the same way hobbits did?”
Well, you see the hobbits’ were hard to break.
I suspect that these “little people” survived a lot longer in the Pacific than is currently believed.
This is because the Pacific “little people” myths have a very different character than other “little people” myths around the world, a far more “realistic” view. They sound much more like disappeared tribe myths found when one tribe remembers another tribe that lived near them but were wiped out or left the area without explanation.
In Hawaii, for example, there are legends of the “Menehana” little people, but unlike Leprechauns, for example, who were thought of as magical, doing very specific things, the Menehana are thought of as just sort of generically “lucky”, but otherwise there is something of an ambivalence about them, like people have with neighbors who keep to themselves.
This contrasts markedly with other Hawaiian mythology, which is very complex and entertaining, full of gods with rich characters, and lots of stories about what they did. Compared with that, the Menehana myth is dreadfully dull and ordinary.
One other element that is noteworthy is despite not assigning magical properties to the Menehana, they do share the “half belief” of other myths. That is, Hawaiians are loathe to do things known to annoy the volcano goddess Pele; but they are also hesitant to talk about the Menehana, as they might still be around, invisibly spying on what people say about them.
All told, like other Pacific “little people” myths, they seem to be too close to have long been extinct. A bit too ordinary.
Ping please.
/rimshot!
Sure, that’s what happened to Numenor.
Maybe not “we”, but others in the country have barad-dur.
Heh... in before the zot... ;’)
There’s an anecdote I read years ago about the wee folk of Ireland... an American girl was studying there, and her host mom referred to them. “Surely you don’t believe in leprechauns”. “No, I don’t. But they’re there anyway.”
Apparently not. We let Sauron back into a position of power. ;^)
FR post of the Year!
Is the writer suggesting these researchers don't know that some birds use tools? How big are their brains?
Chimp brains are smaller than that, I believe, and those dirty bastards use sticks as weapons to kill bushbabies sleeping in hollows in trees.
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