Liang Bua, a limestone cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. The Liang Bua Team prepares for new archaeological excavations. Credit: Smithsonian Digitization Program Office / Liang Bua Team
Posted on 03/31/2016 2:58:03 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
An ancient species of pint-sized humans discovered in the tropics of Indonesia may have met their demise earlier than once believed, according to an international team of scientists who reinvestigated the original finding.
Published in the journal Nature this week, the group challenges reports that these inhabitants of remote Flores island co-existed with modern humans for tens of thousands of years.
They found that the youngest age for Homo floresiensis, dubbed the 'Hobbit', is around 50,000 years ago not between 13,000 and 11,000 years as initially claimed.
Led by Indonesian scientists and involving researchers from Griffith University's Research Centre of Human Evolution (RCHE) the team found problems with prior dating efforts at the cave site, Liang Bua.
"In fact, Homo floresiensis seems to have disappeared soon after our species reached Flores, suggesting it was us who drove them to extinction," says Associate Professor Maxime Aubert, a geochronologist and archaeologist at RCHE, who with RCHE's Director Professor Rainer measured the amount of uranium and thorium inside Homo floresiensis fossils to test their age. "The science is unequivocal," Aubert said.
"The youngest Hobbit skeletal remains occur at 60,000 years ago but evidence for their simple stone tools continues until 50,000 years ago. After this there are no more traces of these humans."
While excavating at the limestone cave of Liang Bua in 2003, archaeologists found bones from diminutive humans unlike any people alive today. The researchers concluded the tiny cave dwellers evolved from an older branch of the human family that had been marooned on Flores for at least a million years. It was thought that this previously unknown population lived on Flores until about 12,000 years ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
Liang Bua, a limestone cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. The Liang Bua Team prepares for new archaeological excavations. Credit: Smithsonian Digitization Program Office / Liang Bua Team
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-03/gu-im032916.php
http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/post?id=3415867%2C0
Homo floresiensis seems to have disappeared soon after our species reached Flores, suggesting it was us who drove them to extinction,”...
We’re number 1!! :)
Meat is back on the menu:
“And who are you?”
“Frodo’s gardener.”
“Homo floresiensis seems to have disappeared soon after our species reached Flores, suggesting it was us who drove them to extinction,”
Drove them? In an SUV?
Mmm, tastes like pork...
took route 80 :)
I would say mmmm, long pork, but I guess short pork would be more appropriate here. ;)
True that.
Thought died out around November, 2007
But first, the invading group "did" all the women, leading to interspecies offspring. There is old folklore about something like that, the genocide of a small race that is, from Taiwan, if memory serves. Read about it here on FR.
“Lor bless you, Mr Gandalf, sir! ...Lor bless me, sir, but I do love tales of that sort...”
;’)
“Please, Mister Gandalf, don’t turn me into ana-thin ... unnatural.”
That's the Tolkien dialogue that informed the Harvard Lampoon's "Bored of the Rings" version of Samwise. "It's a long way to the Zazu Pits, Bwana."
"The last glacial period was preceded by 1000 years of the coldest temperatures of the Late Pleistocene, apparently caused by the eruption of the Mount Toba volcano. The six year long volcanic winter and 1000-year-long instant Ice Age that followed Mount Toba's eruption may have decimated Modern Man's entire population. Genetic evidence suggests that Human population size fell to about 10,000 adults between 50 and 100 thousand years ago. The survivors from this global catastrophy would have found refuge in isolated tropical pockets, mainly in Equatorial Africa. Populations living in Europe and northern China would have been completely eliminated by the reduction of the summer temperatures by as much as 12 degrees centigrade.
My 1st husband and I had a copy of the Lampoon’s “Bored of the Rings”-it was one of the most wickedly funniest satires ever with the double entendres and other clever dialog...
Damned Orcs.
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