Posted on 01/15/2007 7:38:13 AM PST by blam
Monday, 15 January 2007
Hobbit like humans show Indonesia was "middle earth"
Anna Henderson
In a world first, a book detailing the discovery of a lost species of hobbit-like people who lived on a remote tropical Indonesian island less than 20,000 years ago was launched in Armidale in northern NSW on Saturday. According to research completed by University of New England Professor, Mike Moorwood, the artefacts his group unearthed during a 2003 archaeological dig on Flores Island suggest a kind of "middle earth" existed there, with metre-high humans hunting miniature elephants, giant rodents and Komodo dragons.
Professor Moorwood wrote "The Discovery of the Hobbit" about the Liang Bua limestone caves on Flores Island in consultation with colleague Penny Van Oosterzee. The Armidale-based project included a team of Australian and Indonesian specialists and was facilitated through the local Flores community.
The book details the existence of an ancient group of people, "a previously unsuspected, tiny species of human living on a remote island in east Indonesia, and overlapping considerably in time with us," and explains the modern day politics that have surrounded the breakthrough.
The near complete preserved skeleton found by the team was affectionately known as "The Hobbit" because it bore striking similarities to JRR Tolkien's famous characters in Lord of the Rings.
The bones are thought to be those of a Homo Floresiensis, a hairless adult female about one metre in height with a head the size of a grapefruit, long neck and arms, a flat nose, large teeth and no chin, a previously unknown human species.
Homo Floresiensis was a major international evolutionary find, sending shockwaves through the scientific community across the world with far reaching potential historical, religious, social and biological implications.
The international media response was frenzied with Professor Moorwood and his colleagues fielding hundreds of calls for interviews daily, gaining coverage across the globe.The authors describe the flurry of media activity in the book; "This was a scientific discovery being talked about in villages, towns and urban centres everywhere. It was a topic of conversation in beauty salons and barbershops, school and university staffrooms and every type of workplace imaginable."
The revelation of a human with small brain and dwarfed feature was made more groundbreaking by the complex tools found in the same area of the excavated site. The existence of these implements suggested the species was able to hunt, use fire and even developed a language many years before the characteristics of modern human civilisation.
Professor Moorwood said the implications were "far-reaching" and "staggering" because if correct they showed brain size may not be the predicator of intelligence.
The find was not without controversy and the legitimacy of the claims was put into question by scientists around the world. The evidence flies in the face of much accepted research into the evolution of the modern human.
Claims that a group of Indonesian academics hijacked and sabotaged the bones to conceal the truth of the discovery are all documented in the book along with the arguments of many of the critics.
The authors welcome the response of the cynics but have used the book to reveal their first-person account of the discovery.
"Skepticism and rigour in assessing new findings and claims are fundamental in science, but so are objectivity, an open mind and the capacity to take on board the unexpected," Professor Moorwood said.
pygmies
Lots of people laugh at this "Hobbit" story. Fair enough: they interpret life from what they have personally experienced.
Since moving to the South Seas I have learned that this is a very ancient place -- much older than I could possibly conceive when I lived in Canada: it's much, much older.
There is much that we do not know about what happened in the Pacific for these past hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. This is an old, old place: full of secrets and mysteries and yes -- even Evil.
Evil of a darkness that modern mankind cannot easily understand or assimilate. Wicked behavior, darker than the darkest heart of mankind that Western civilization has yet experienced. That includes Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot: no, I am talking about pure, undistilled Evil.
The Pacific is, in my opinion, under-explored and under-understood, if that makes any sense. From whence the peoples, and how? Explain it if you can: they claim that they navigated the whole jolly lot -- without instruments, without technology. Perhaps they did.
Others claim that various peoples of various Genetic makeup shipwrecked on our various islands. Quite by accident.
Others still claim that they all evolved in situ.
Some claim the Vikings, the Celts, the ancient Chinese, the pre-Shogun Japanese, the Spaniards, all found us. Some instead say the Maori were the only, great explorers.
So now they are saying "Hobbits" in Indonesia. I am unsurprised. OK fine, it sits easily. The South Pacific has much more important discoveries yet to be found than jolly jumping Hobbits!
Crikey!
*DieHard*
Don't worry, government at all levels seems to be doing its best to see that we never grow up.
Yes. The same.
We discover something new every day which flies in the face of accepted scientific "evidence".
There is a great variety of speciation in mankind and this just looks like another variant - not part of some "evolutionary" breakthrough.
I suspect the people involved with this project here are probably trying to describe their discoveries in terms more people could relate to, like mythical halfling people in "The Hobbit". Everything about "Middle Earth" is purely imaginary, of course.
This is a fascinating discovery, but should not be looked upon as proving anything except a tiny, oddly shaped human is still a "human", not a new species of creature as one might infer from the description given by melding the fictional with the real.
You ought to read this book:
Dare I say: drowning old ideas on the centre of civilisation, 30 May 2001
Reviewer: A reader
The book I wish to review is "Eden In The East" by Dr Stephen Oppenheimer. As a graduate of Indonesian and Malayan Studies from Sydney University, who has taught Indonesian language and history for many years, I have some experience in the area of study advanced by Oppenheimer's book.
In short, Dr Oppenheimer advances a chain of theories, some of which run counter to accepted views of South East Asian Prehistory and the influence of this area upon the rest of the world. Based upon archaeological, medical (esp. DNA) evidence and oral literature, Dr Oppenheimer asserts that, even should there be an ultimate homeland for the ancestors of the Austronesians and Austro-Asiatics in China, the development and spread of Austronesian culture began in South East Asia itself at the end of the last Ice Age, when the SEA islands were separated from the mainland and the lowlands flooded.
This is not the accepted theory held by most linguists, which has the Austronesians leaving China via Taiwan and the Philippines at a much later date. Dr Oppenheimer shows, using strong evidence that Austronesians spread from an area around Sulawesi, both westwards to Madagascar, northwards to the Philippines and Taiwan and eastwards to coastal PNG and ultimately to the islands of the Pacific.
In doing this, he asserts, they followed trade routes already pioneered by prehistoric traders of obsidian. However, the Austronesian stimulus for migration was not trade, but the drowning of their lands. Dr Oppenheimer further promotes that the Austronesians took with them farming methods they had mastered long before similar innovations took place in the so-called "Old World"- in fact, he claims (with evidence) that the Austronesians introduced these innovations to the Middle East and India.
He uses universal flood myths to further back his evidence, making the strong claim that these myths indicate that the Biblical flood did indeed happen,and that "Eden" was in South East Asia, not Mesopotamia.
Dr Oppenheimer's evidence is weighty and deserving of respect.There is much that needs to be taken seriously in his findings. I have long thought that current linguistic theories and the archaeological record regarding the peopling of the archipelago and the Pacific sit together uneasily.
While I cannot go as far as Oppenheimer to see that the universal flood myths indicate that Eden was in SEA (although I DO believe in a literal Flood!), I do agree that SEA has had more effect on world cultures than previously believed. It is not impossible to believe that SEA refugees/immigrants drastically influenced European and Middle East Culture The traffic between East and West was certainly more than one way, and has operated long before many experts would give it credit.
A major catastrophe, such as the end of the Ice Age,makes perfect sense as a stimulus to migration. SEA was and is a dynamic area and its people innovative, anxious to learn and extremely able to take initiatives in order to survive and prosper.The more I travel there, the more I believe this. The more I mix with Austronesians, the more they fascinate me.
Apparently the Buddhists don't think so.
Nancy Yaw Davis
Did a group of thirteenth-century Japanese journey to the American Southwest, there to merge with the people, language, and religion of the Zuni tribe?
For many years, anthropologists have understood the Zuni in the American Southwest to occupy a special place in Native American culture and ethnography. Their language, religion, and blood type are startlingly different from all other tribes. Most puzzling, the Zuni appear to have much in common with the people of Japan.
In a book with groundbreaking implications, Dr. Nancy Yaw Davis examines the evidence underscoring the Zuni enigma, and suggests the circumstances that may have led Japanese on a religious quest-searching for the legendary "middle world" of Buddhism-across the Pacific and to the American Southwest more than seven hundred years ago.
Nancy Yaw Davis holds an M.A. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Washington. Author of numerous articles, she has long researched the history and cultures of the native peoples of North America. Her company, Cultural Dynamics, is located in Anchorage, Alaska, where she lives.
BTW, this is a pretty good book.
ping
Islam is the return of Sauron's spirit.
Mordor is within the ring the of the caldera, in the Land of Earth-Vomit.
Frodo threw the Ring into Toba....
"undistilled evil"
Can you expand that a little bit to give a general idea of what you speak?
> Can you expand that a little bit to give a general idea of what you speak?
OK, I'll try.
Cannibalism was a common practise, as was headhunting, in the South Pacific. Two of their milder practises. To a Western mindset, difficult to understand. Dig into it a bit, and you find that there were reasons -- good reasons -- why they did this. From "our" viewpoint, evil reasons, completely foreign to our experience as a Civilization. From theirs, it made perfect sense.
Difficult to describe what I mean by this Evil: it's something you almost need to feel and be attuned to experientially.
Ever read Goulding's "Lord of the Flies?" It comes about as closely as possible to what I mean.
I loaded crude oil from an offshore submarine hose in Borneo once. Locals came on board to haul up the hose and connect it to our ship's headers. The pilot mentioned that the workers were only a generation or two away from (past) cannabalism practices.
They had nice teeth.
The insects that flew on board while we were anchored were huge. One night an insect which was the size of a small bird flew screeching into the pilot house and scared the H out of the mate on watch.
But have they found the "Smurfs" yet?
hey, i have hair on my feet!! am i a tall hobbit?
my gramps was a seabee during WWII in the south pacific. he loved to tell his story of the guide that helped them on an unnamed island. i dont know how much truth it was or if the guide was just messing with them but my grampa told of the guide trying to trade for some of the lower ranked crewmen because they looked tasty.
while my grampa loved telling tales, he assured us this was true. even if the guide was just messing with them, the sailors must have been horrified. my grampa brought back a couple of spears and knives back, so who did he sell? and better yet, was it a good trade!
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