Squid Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 Dead hobbits. (work safe link) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
selkirk Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 I wonder how hard they could climb? High muscle to wait ratio like little kids and those little fingers for jamming thin seams?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glacier Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dru Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 There are some cool articles about this find here: http://www.nature.com/news/specials/flores/index.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EWolfe Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 I've got this bad hobbit I just can't shake Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dru Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 Even a bad hobbit is better than no bit at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catbirdseat Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 There was a much longer story in the New York Times. One of the interesting things it mentioned was that the modern peoples of Flores have legends of "little people" who lived in caves up until the arrival of the Dutch in the 16th Century. Scientists would give their right arm to get a sample of intact DNA from a Homo erectus, or to actually study a living creature. Could you imagine what that could have done for paleontology and anthropology? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catbirdseat Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 I wonder how hard they could climb? High muscle to wait ratio like little kids and those little fingers for jamming thin seams?? Jesus H. Christ! "Wait ratio"? WTF, are you trying to compete with Muffy or Dave_Schuldt? There is only one Muffy. To me "wait ratio" is the ratio between climbing time and belaying time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
selkirk Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 Hey, just becus i'm not as edumacated as you, no need to be meen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scott_harpell Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 CBS has gone aggro! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dryad Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 I'm reading more about the Flores man find in the Nature articles that Dru linked to, and what I don't understand is why everybody is so surprised. Neoteny is a very common means of evolution. There are modern small humans in existence (ie. pygmies in Africa). Regarding brain size, a modern child is the same size and has the capability to pick up a rock and beat things with it. So it's not like this has no explanation or logical precedent. I'm not suggesting this isn't a significant find - of course it is. I just don't understand why some biologists are clinging to the linear theory of human evolution when there has been so much evidence to the contrary. This is just one more branch of a complex and interesting tree. There was a quote in one of the articles that said, "The species' diminutive stature indicates that humans are subject to the same evolutionary forces that made other mammals shrink to dwarf size when in genetic isolation and under ecological pressure, such as on an island with limited resources." Well duh! Why would humans NOT be subject to the same evolutionary forces as other animals? I understand religious fundies clinging to the idea of the specialness of Homo sapiens, but scientists should know better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thelawgoddess Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 "... humanity took a giant step backward to survive." hmm ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dryad Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 That's exactly the kind of linearist crap I'm talking about. To call one species more advanced or more evolved than another is a meaningless value judgement. A species is as evolved as it needs to be to survive in its environment, whatever that happens to be. There is no such thing as evolving toward some ultimate goal, some epitome of fully evolved awesomeness. Evolution has no direction. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dru Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 People are so hyped because Homo Erectus, in the Flores version and H sap coexisted for hundreds of thousands of years. This totally overturns the rapid replacement hypothesis and the Out of Africa dogma. It's not any different than finding a live Sasquatch - this is one of the most interesting and paradigm-shifting discoveries in anthropology in the last 100 years. Also finding out that these "hobbits" had a chimp-sized brain but made tools and fire expands the boundaries of our knowledge of what is possible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catbirdseat Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 That's exactly the kind of linearist crap I'm talking about. To call one species more advanced or more evolved than another is a meaningless value judgement. A species is as evolved as it needs to be to survive in its environment, whatever that happens to be. There is no such thing as evolving toward some ultimate goal, some epitome of fully evolved awesomeness. Evolution has no direction. This is what Humanity is ultimately evolving towards... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dryad Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 (edited) Dru: Exactly! This is important and exciting because it adds to the diversity of the human family tree. But it shouldn't be all that surprising because there was already a lot of diversity, and already precedence for different humans coexisting for pretty long periods of time, such as Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals. Edited October 28, 2004 by dryad Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dru Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 Not just hobbits but oliphants (pygmy elephants anyways) and Smaug (Komodo dragons) too Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slothrop Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 What, the future of climbing is "rope-swinging"? Will fringed singlets become the attire of choice due to global warming? Intelligence and ability to reason is way overrated as an indicator of success. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dru Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 The evidence for Neandertals and Cro-Mags coexisting for a long period of time is rather contentious though, right? The DNA studies imply one thing, there are some hybrid fossils that imply another, and no one can agree so everyone stakes out a position based on a personal opinion Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dryad Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 Well, everything about human evolution is pretty contentious, starting with whether it happens at all! But the general trend is for greater diversity, more species, more subspecies, etc. And the more variants there are, the more likely it is that some of them had to coexist. So I'm willing to believe that Neandertals and Cro-Mags coexisted for some time. For example, this family tree shows overlap between H. erectus, H. sapiens, and H. neanderthalensis. This one is somewhat different. The book is definitely not anywhere near being closed on this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dru Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 of course it happens. sport and trad climbers coexist nowadays, and sometimes even interbreed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bogen Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 Maybe myths of little people and ogres might have some basis in our cultural memory, from a time when similar species or sub-species co-existed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gidget Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 DEEP YO!! Don't forget, the world was created in 7 days. This is all a prank Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stavrogin Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 Interesting, now if only those remains had been captured in amber and fossilized. Then we could extract the DNA from the hobbit blood and create an island full of hobbits and charge outrageous prices for people to see them. However, due to the use of homeless human blood to fill in the gene sequence gaps the hobbits would be prone to disease, drug addiction and homosexuality causing a horrific disaster when a group of scientists came to observe them. After a significant amount of deaths and plenty of staggering law suits the park would be closed down and the hobbits would be free to go about their destructive ways. After another 12,000 years, scientists would again discover the remains of small human-like creatures and the whole cycle would begin again... makes you think eh? Uhhhhhh........... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.