Re: Flores Man
From: Raimo Kangasniemi (raimo.kangasniemi_at_kolumbus.fi)
Date: 10/29/04
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Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 13:08:29 +0300
> Brain to body proportions are more important than just the size of the
> brain. If these people were only 1/3 the size of erectus, than their
> brains weren't smaller. Anyone ever considered this? One of the
> problems here is that this story is being reported by
> non-anthropologists. Steven Jay Gould in "Mismeasure of a Man" showed
> the problems that arrived when early "social darwinists" would measure
> the intelligence of different ethnic groups using skulls from
> ununsually small non white groups. Also, the remains are female, and
> that can affect the results as well, since women on average are
> smaller than men, but the brain to body proportions are the same.
The important thing is that the brain size is so small not just compared to
other
members of Homo, but to compared to any hominid. The brain is the same size
as many early australopithecines or even that of Sahelanthropus tchadensis,
6-7 mya.
Thatīs the reason why there are claims that the H. floresiensis couldnīt
have made those
tools which resemble those that Homo sapiens at the time made, couldnīt have
language,
couldnīt have hunted in groups etc. Hominids with the size of brain of H.
floresiensis are
not to be expected to have these things - except that hunting in groups
thing, as chimpanzees
are capable of it - and certainly not language. If we then approve that H.
floresiensis was
capable of relatively high level of intelligence, "consciousness" etc, then
what are we to made
of these more ancient hominids? Already there are claims that those tools
were made by
Homo sapiens - whose remains just havenīt been found - who then may have
hunted Homo
floresiensis. (I really donīt understand this eagerness to claim that our
own ancestors
would have hunted other hominid species; it comes up always when they and
some other
hominid species have been living at the same area at the same time. Like
"Did the Homo
erectus eat Paranthropus out of existence?" etc.)
The measuring of intelligence is hard even with currently living human
beings -
and apes&monkeys - and so much more with extint human beings. But as long
as a living H. floresiensis is not found from some Indonesian jungle, it has
to be
compared to older specimens and living primates with the same brain size.
Maybe
itīs brains were wired in a more efficient way than those of H. erectus, so
that it
canīt be claimed to have "devolved", but how to prove it?
New skull finds - and those of males - should certainly be interesting, as
we would find
how average member of the species this "Ebu" was. A jackpot would be
transitional
remains from the time Homo erectus in Flores evolved to Homo floresiensis -
if it did
so and H. floresiensis didnīt arrive from some other island.
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