Category: Hobbitmania

I don’t think so.

You might have heard the lastest on the Flores hobbit story; that some Australian researchers are claiming they were actually modern humans suffering from cretinism (myxoedematous endemic cretinism, to be precise). The researchers include iodine deficiency as a cause of the cretinism.

Iodine deficiency is usually caused by a lack of seafood (in the days before idodized salt, of course), but remember the skeletons were found only 15 miles from the ocean shore. So my first thought was… when has 15 miles ever been much of a barrier to stone age hunters and gatherers? This just doesn’t add up.

An article on Scientific American shows most scientists don’t agree with this interpretation, and it is pointed out that the researchers didn’t even read the data correctly:

Scientific American: Hobbit Watch:
Experts slam the cretin hypothesis

Looks like my second guess might have been right (or closer to the truth). Assuming this wrist bone study was done right, it sure tilts the likelihood strongly in the direction of the Hobbit being a non-human species (but still a primitive, upright hominid). It may not be exactly Homo erectus, but something along those lines. This makes the find more fascinating than simply dwarfed or diseased modern humans. As always, I’m interested in the truth, whatever that turns out to be.

There are similar cases of a branch of a primitive species surviving on much longer in isolation. Sometimes it’s as if an island’s isolation can trap it’s species in time. You might know that mammoths died out around 9,000-10,000 years ago (7,000-8,000 BC). However, a dwarfed species of mammoth (also dwarfed by the island-dwarfing effect originally proposed to explain the Hobbit’s small stature) persisted on Wrangel Island (off Siberia) until 3700 years ago (1700 BC)! By 1700 BC, civilization was well underway in Egypt, the Middle East, China, India and elsewhere, and there were still little mammoths running around up there! The Great Pyramid at Giza and the Sphinx had been built nearly a thousand years before. Imagine what an interesting pet that could have been for the Pharoah, had they known about them.

Scientists: Hobbit wasn’t a modern human

Homo floresiensis on Wikipedia