» ScienceNerds.info

Arthur C. Clarke, whom I consider the best Science Fiction author ever, died in Sri Lanka at age 90. Sri Lanka had been Clarke’s home since 1956. I loved his books because I love “realistic” science fiction. In other words, he really pondered the scientific/technical feasibility, and many of his depicted scenarios were quite feasible in potential technology and cultural contexts. I can never watch that crap on the Sci-Fi Channel after reading Clarke’s books! Arthur C. Clarke might be best known to the general public as co-author of the book/movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. He wrote over 100 works of fiction and non-fiction, including the books Childhood’s End and Rendezvous with Rama.

Location of Palau

A fascinating discovery has been made that may shed light on the Homo florensis mystery. Thousands of bones (dated 900 to 2,900 years old) have been found in caves in the Pacific island of Palau, the older of which are of humans 3 to 4 foot in height. Although the estimated brain size is twice that of the “Flores Hobbits”, the bones exhibit primitive characteristics.

Researchers are leaning on classifying these remains as Homo sapiens, with insular dwarfism, the island-dwarfing evolutionary effect.

See more on the story below:

National Geographic:
Ancient Bones of Small Humans Discovered in Palau

Scientific American: Hobbit Watch:
Tiny bones from Palau don’t detract from hobbit’s uniqueness

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

You might have heard of a movie called “10,000 BC” coming out in March of 2008. If you saw the trailers you might have noticed some things that were inaccurate, or at least grossly exaggerated, if you have some basic knowledge of prehistory. Were saber-tooth tigers (smilodons) really that big? Did they really have sailboats, domesticated mammoths and cities back in 10,000 BC?

It’s been a while since a real movie has been made based on prehistoric times, but it appears that this movie shamelessly embellishes to be more entertaining to the average Joe. I guess why should I expect anything else from Hollywood by now? Don’t see this movie expecting it to be a scientific documentary. Think of it more as a fantasy film, merely similar to earth-like events, more like The 300, or even The Mummy or Lord of the Rings. Maybe it’s the science nerd in me, but I just can’t stand any movie that implies it is based on historical (or in the case, prehistorical) life or events, but then ignores the likely realities of the time. Maybe that’s why I like documentaries.

Let’s look at some of the items from the trailers:

• Saber-Tooth Tiger Size: Smilodon populator, the largest of the saber tooth cats, which went extinct around 10,000 B.C., was no little kitty, but was the size of a large lion. It is known to have been 120 cm, or about 4 feet at the shouder. The scene I am looking at on the 10,000 B.C. movie website shows a smilodon that is more like 7 feet or so at the shoulder, assuming the man is only 4 feet, 6 inches tall!
• Saber-Tooth Geography: Another problem. Smilodon species existed in North and South America, whereas the man in the movie who encounters one does not look Native American. Ancestors of Native Americans were just now migrating into the North American continent at about 10,000 BC.
• Sailboats: The trailer shows boats with red sails on a river, as well as big, wooden boats. Possible, but not likely… there is no evidence of sail or big boat technology for the time. Mesopotamians had sailboats on their rivers by 4,000 BC, however.
• The Wheel: The wheel is not known to be used, until invented by the Mesopotamians by 3200 BC, and may have been invented independently elsewhere.
• Domesticated mammoth: One trailer version shows humans leading mammoths with some sort of harness. Again, possible, but not likely. Animals, other than dogs and goats, are not known to be domesticated by this time. And used as a beast of burden to help build the pyramids? C’mon! See next.
• Cities or large man-made structures: No structures or cities this large and advanced are known by science to have been constructed by 10,000 BC. The structures and cities shown in the trailer look more like middle-eastern cities, closer to 5000-3000 BC. No pyramids, like shown in the trailer, are known to have been built by 10,000 BC. Wikipedia: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities
• Helmeted horseback rider: A man with a stereotypcial-viking-style helmet (were helmets even “invented” yet? … and see knife/metallurgy discussion below) is seen riding on horseback. There is no reason to believe that humans rode horses at this stage in prehistory or had even domesticated them yet. Horses were hunted and eaten at this time however!
• Bows/Spear Points: A bow is shown in the trailer. Bows were almost invented by 10,000 BC, but likely they were another mellennium or two away yet. And what’s up with that fancy spear point in the aforementioned scene with the over-sized saber-tooth? That’s an unlikley style – if anything, something made for ceremony – but probably useless for hunting. Some real Stone Age points can be seen here.
• Knives/Swords: At least one of the trailers shows what appears to be something like a steel knife and you can hear what sounds like clashing swords. Well, assuming it’s not steel, but bronze, it’s still thousands of years too early. Although there is a possible early (7500 BC) site for copper metal working, it is generally accepted that bronze (alloy of copper and tin) was not discovered until 3500 BC. As far as iron goes, the earliest known iron-based weapons were Egyptian and made from meteoric iron. Iron extraction from ore was not done until 1200 BC. Wikipedia: Metallurgy
• Shaving: Maybe. Plucking seems to have pre-dated shaving in human history, but it’s hard to know for sure from the archaeological record. I’m guessing that most men that could (as with today, depends on one’s genetics) grow full beards did grow full beards at this time, though they could have also been decorated, braided, cut short, etc.. There surely would have been much variation in customs and technology from tribe to tribe.
• Hunting Tactics: A scene shows a hunter squirming along the ground between unaware grazing mammoths. Now, you don’t have to be a seasoned hunter or zoologist to correctly guess it would take about a half second for the mammoth to stomp the $%&@ out of him.

Where do you learn about the real life of 10,000 BC? From an authoritative scientific source or something that get it’s information from a scientific source. Here are some sources to get you started:

10th Millennium BC, on Wikipedia

The History Channel: Journey to 10,000 BC: Describes the lives and people of the 10,000 BC era, including theories about the origin and fate of the Clovis people and ice age animals.

The National Geographic Channel: Birth of Civilization: Does a good job of covering the evolution of culture in the middle east from about 12,000 BC through 3,000 BC.

Around 10,000 BC, there were less than 5 million people on earth, scattered among all continents except Antarctica. The earth was going through a period of global warming. Receding glaciers allowed the ancestors of Native Americans to migrate from Asia. Humans were hunter-gatherers and many nomadic. Agriculture has not really taken off yet, although goats were domesticated in Persia, and figs domesticated in the Jordan River valley at about this time. In Mesopotamia, people began making beer (hey, gotta have your priorities!) from the grain they were gathering. Evolutionarily, humans were essentially the same as now, though there are likely some slight changes since then.

Despite the inaccuracies, I will still see the movie when it comes out, but I will, of course, consider it a fantasy film. I guess we’ll imagine it as a world that could have been – maybe on another planet!

10,000 B.C. Official Site

10,000 B.C. on Rotten Tomatoes

Yahoo! Movies Presents: The 10 Most Historically Inaccurate Movies

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

An Araucana hen. Araucanas, an odd-looking, colored-egg-laying breed, are possibly descendents of chickens brought to South America by Polynesians decades before Columbus.

As a teenager, I had read that the odd, colored-egg laying chicken breed, Auranacas (some of which my son has raised), were originally from a South American Indian tribe. Well, even as a teenager, I knew enough about natural history, archaeology, etc. to know that just didn’t fit. These chickens didn’t look like other European chickens (called Mediterranean type chickens) and I thought the laying of blue/green eggs was a very odd trait to just pop up out of the chicken gene pool out of the blue (pun intended).

Chickens are known to be bred from original ancestors in southeast Asia. It was assumed, by most, that the Spaniards or Portuguese had introduced chickens to these South American Indians, but it seemed to me they must have had them already.

Now, a study has been done comparing the DNA of chicken bones found at an archaeological site in Chile with chicken bone DNA in the Polynesian islands of Samoa and Tonga with a very good match. The most likely scenario is that Polynesians traveled by boat to South America, and traded with Indians there. This also explains another anomaly – sweet potatoes in pre-Columbian Polynesia – when they were native to South America. The carbon-dating of the bones shows the chickens were there by around 600 years ago – about 100 years before Columbus. There could have been contact and trading for hundreds of years up to that point – or perhaps the contact was just a limited one or few visits. Hopefully, future scientific findings will paint a more complete picture.

While we’re on archaeological anomalies… there is speculation and study that the Chinese discovered America decades before Columbus. There are a few little bits of interesting evidence, but not enough to “write home” about.

An anomaly in science means one of two things, either:

1. It’s a mistake in observation/or a hoax/otherwise not true… or…
2. It is a valid finding, and your current theories are wrong or at least incomplete.

Perhaps some other scientific anomalies should be taken more seriously, to determine if fall under category 1 or 2, above.

Versions of the story on other sites:
Did chickens reach America before Columbus? (ScientificBlogging.com)

More about Araucanas:
Araucanas on Wikipedia
AraucanasOnline.com: a knowledgeable website on Araucanas.