Re: Causes of floresiensis' Dwarfism

From: Algis Kuliukas (algis_at_RiverApes.com)
Date: 10/30/04 

Date: 29 Oct 2004 17:36:27 -0700

Rich Travsky <traRvEsky@hotMOVEmail.com> wrote in message news:<41807DDE.482A5687@hotMOVEmail.com>...
> Algis Kuliukas wrote:
[..]
> > It's not surprising that you pick out a snippet that seems to
> > contradict the AAH, Rich. Interesting that you don't choose, as your
>
> "Seems"? An island with all those supposed seaside resources and
> yet "a low calorific environment"?

If the coastal areas were occupied by other Homo groups then H.
floresiensis would have had little access to them. Flores isn't a tiny
island. (55 km x 350 km) and H.f. was found about as far from the sea
as you could get.
 
> > subject for a thoughtful comment, the fact that these hominids must
> > have originally crossed at least 18 km of sea to get there, or that
> > this adds yet more weight to the fact that a huge slice of H. erectus
> > evolution clearly happenned about as far away from conditions which
> > might, even by Rick Wagler, be described as 'savanna' as you can get.
>
> Rafts or even boats (dugouts and the like). Why not? They had stone tools...

Whether they crossed on rafts, dug-out cannoes, on the backs of
elephants or swam using the breast stroke it still puts H. erectus,
and hence a major slice of human evolution, decidedly in a more
aquatic context than some people here seem prepared to accept.

'More aquatic', remember, is all we're arguing for. More aquatic than
chimpanzees. I don't think chimps could have crossed the Wallace line,
do you?
  
> > That these little people lived so recently, so very close to the
> > coastal migration routes that Homo sapiens must have taken in getting
> > to Australia and elsewhere indicates that they had been driven way
> > from their most likely earliest coastal habitats on Flores and forced
> > to eke out some kind of existance in the internal forests of Flores
> > and increasing their apparent isolation. In so doing, they appear to
> > have been set on an evolutionary trajectory for ever smaller size,
> > apparently longer arms and greater body hair - all indicating greater
> > arboreality.
> >
> > So, it would be no surprise if they didn't feed off the coastal marine
> > food chain much - for at least 80-90ky, but probably much longer,
> > those niches would almost certainly have been occupied by people not
> > so little and not so arboreal.
>
> Driven? It's an island. Fish remains were found (cooked, in fact). Doesn't
> sound driven...

Aren't you contradicting yourself? I thought your point was that they
didn't eat all the fishies? Now your telling me that they did. If it
was H.f. that left traces of BBQ fish it kind of contradicts the
argument that their miniturisation was due to a low calorific diet,
doesn't it? I suspect that early H. erectus on Flores occupied the
coastal places and ate lots of fish. Later waves of H. s. displaced
them from those places ideal for human habitation (e.g. the beaches)
squeezing out some of the original H.e. occupants to eke out a living
in less favourable habitats (with less calorific nutrition) inland.

Algis Kuliukas