Posted on 10/09/2007 10:26:13 AM PDT by blam
Hobbits mastered use of stone tools
Leigh Dayton, Science writer
October 09, 2007
HOBBITS may have had long arms and tiny brains but our new-found cousins were agile and smart enough to make stone tools used to fashion other tools, probably for hunting and butchering animals.
What's more, they did so at least 40,000 years before modern humans arrived on their home island of Flores in Indonesia.
The discovery comes from Queensland scientists who have studied wear patterns and residue on about 100 stone tools found with the remains of hobbits (Homo floresiensis) in Liang Bua cave by Australian and Indonesian researchers.
University of Queensland and Southern Cross University archeologist and paleobotanist Carol Lentfer said: "We're talking about a creature that was fairly well advanced. It was able to use stone tools to make other tools - value-adding in a sense."
Working with University of Queensland colleagues Michael Haslam and Gail Robertson, Dr Lentfer found evidence of plant work and butchery on stone flakes and cobbles from archeological layers ranging from 12,000 to 55,000 years old.
They identified blood and bone on some tools, but more than 90 per cent of the residues were from woody and fibrous plants. That doesn't mean the metre-high people ate only a little meat, but rather that most of the tools studied so far were used for working with plants.
"Maybe they were making spear-shafts or traps or sharpening sticks," Dr Lentfer said.
"So far there's no evidence they used stone spear points for hunting. They probably used fire-hardened sticks."
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.news.com.au ...
GGG Ping.
Frodo would take offense.
Why don’t Hobbits wear shoes?....................
I have no idea.
Hobbits? There really were Hobbits?
Are you sure they were not merely crows that learned how to manipulate tools?
Isn’t that Precious!
Who would have ever thought that a female of that species would run for President of the United States.
Oh...and BTW, they can’t wear shoes because their ankles are too big.
They have hairy leathery feet with no need for shoes. Middle Earth’s climate there in the Shire was very temperate.
Frodo Lives.
This is relatively old news. There is a really interesting BBC documentary that can be watched at Stage6.com regarding this species “Homo Floresiensis†and the controversy over exactly what they were and from which evolutionary branch they originated from. It is a very fair documentary to each party in the controversy.
Dick Morris must be a Hobbit lover...............
Do they have any artist’s conceptions of these people or computer generated skull projections?....
The ring is the thing....even in Middle Earth as it is in the NFL....(chuckle)
The stone tools they found were for harvesting pipeweed.
They have fur.
I wonder if J.R.R. Tolkien knew about this?
Young Earth creationists to thread.
Yes, and Atlantis too!
These yahoos really irk. They take something in a fable or scifi and investigate it like it's actual history.
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