Indonesia, Flores island. 150 kilometers up a steep mountain serpentine from the tourist port city of Labuan Bajo, five hours on the road. We drive to the Liang (Lyang) Bua cave, where the fossil remains of the Floresian people, colloquially known as hobbits, were found. There was no rain for several months, the trees lost their leaves, the earth withered, the rice crop burned to the ground. While we are driving, I am tormented by the question - what brought our distant relatives to these inhospitable places? And why did the Portuguese, who discovered this mountainous volcanic island for Europeans in the 16th century, call it Blooming? It never blooms, only green - during the monsoon period. However, it was not the first time for Portuguese sailors to get into a mess - Magellan called Pacific Ocean, famous for its storms, Quiet.
But the road from Labuan Bajo to the city of Ruteng is still flowers, especially since the drivers here are surprisingly polite, and our driver Marco drives the car very smoothly. But the last fourteen kilometers to the cave immediately brought to mind the native mountain roads in the North Caucasus, and the dearest Dorothy, a guide, translator and part-time wife of Marco, all this segment of the way scolded her government for corruption, because of which a decent road to the “National Treasure” was never built.
Finally we stopped at a small house - the office of the cave. On Flores, every self-respecting cave has its own office, tickets to the failure are also sold there ... that is, to the cave. "National Treasure" in this moment(beginning of October) was empty, the next expedition was expected only in mid-January, then life will boil here. We were met by the keeper of the cave, Liang Bua Benyamin, who also serves as a guide for those rare travelers who get here. The office is equipped with a small museum, however, there are only casts and some ceramics (some minor artifacts are stored in the Bihon-Blevut Ethnographic Museum in Maumere, the capital of the island, and most of the main finds in Jakarta).
But on the stands, the history of the cave itself and life in it are beautifully shown in pictures.
Of course, a copy of Flo's skeleton (LB1) in a glass sarcophagus in the most prominent place, under her picturesque portrait. Lots of photos from the excavations. Since the captions for the figures are exclusively on Indonesian, then I gave my companions a short lecture about the history of the cave and the "hobbits" in mixed English-Russian. In response, she received puzzled looks and her husband’s question: “If you already know everything, then why did you drag us here?” For what? To feel the atmosphere of this place. To see everything with my own eyes.
Benjamin leads us to a cave that opens wide over a narrow path and canyon, the river below dried up. Huge stalactites, already overgrown with greenery, hang right above the entrance. The cave is simply huge, although the exact measurements of Australian speleologists in 2006 "reduced" it a little: 51 meters long, 27 meters deep, the height of the dome is 13 meters. Age approximately 380,000 years. In the left corner next to the entrance, a small area is fenced off: this is the excavation itself, a staircase with bamboo railings leads down.
There, as Benjamin explains, it is impossible. What a question - of course, you can’t, let tourists go there - and archaeologists will have nothing left.
A flashlight snatches out in the corner to the left of the entrance, behind the excavation, a dark hole is a well 23 meters deep. "Don't get too close, don't fall," my husband warns me, knowing my tendency to fall wherever possible. I look inside; perhaps, if I fall there, I won’t fly far - the hole is narrow, suitable only for the girls from the ice discoverer team. Or for hobbits.
The bottom of the cave is quite flat, without any special potholes and rises, only one large white stalagmite stands almost in the middle, either like an obelisk, or like a fragment of a giant column. Deep footprints are clearly visible on the floor, but alas, they were left quite recently - during the rainy season, water drips from somewhere above, and the top layer of clay softens. We wander through the cave, admiring the stalactites and walls that nature has painted like a skilled craftsman. Many patterns can be seen even without a lantern - the space near the entrance is flooded sunlight. Ancient people should have been comfortable here (although, in my opinion, the too wide entrance simply invites predators to look inside). And not only to the "cave people", but also quite modern - after Indonesia gained independence, there was a Catholic school here, in 1949 the Dutch missionary Theodore Verhoeven (1907 - 1990) taught there.
It started with him modern history Liang Bua caves (in the language of the Mangarai people who live in this area - "Cool Cave").
In 1950, Verhoeven organized trial excavations here, and in 1965 he took up the cave for real. The instinct of the archaeologist told him that there was something here.
And although he managed to go deep only two meters, but even at this depth he found six Neolithic burials, stone artifacts, pottery. He could only excavate on holidays and weekends, but the scale of what he did is amazing. For seventeen years of service, he explored almost the entire island (Flores reaches a length of 425 km), discovered and explored many caves, including the Mirror Cave, beloved by tourists, near Labuan Bajo, where visitors are shown fossilized fish and a turtle. The missionary also examined the neighboring islands of Sumbu and Timor. But his most important discoveries do not relate to Liang Bua; in the Soa basin, fifty kilometers from the cave, he found stone tools and dated them, judging by the bones of stegodons (extinct pygmy elephants) found in the same layers, 750 thousand years old.
They didn't believe him. Think, some amateur, what he can understand in archeology? In addition, it was published in German editions, on German and contacted "the wrong ones", that is, scientists with whom the most important specialists in Indonesian archeology were at enmity.
Pithecanthropes from Java could not get to this distant island, and that's it! It can't be, because it can never be.
Let's talk a little about geography to understand where this opinion came from. Rather, about biogeography. Alfred Russel Wallace (1823 - 1913) was not only a famous zoologist, evolutionist and even anthropologist, but also the founder of the science of zoogeography. Wallace divided the entire planet into six main faunal zones: Palearctic, Ethiopian, Eastern (Indo-Malayan), Australian, Neotropical and Nearctic. Basically, this classification, slightly modified, has been preserved to this day. The boundary between the Asian and Australian zoogeographic zones, which was named after the scientist the Wallace Line, runs along the strait separating the islands of Bali and Lombok. The width of the Lombok Strait at its narrowest point is 24 km, the maximum depth is 1400 meters, on average 300 meters. But the point is not even in the distance and not in the depth, but in the currents raging here, which cannot be overcome by animals that do not know how to swim or fly well. All animals living to the west of the Wallace line belong to the Indo-Malay fauna, and to the east - to the transitional zone, which is now called Wallace. Its eastern boundary is the Lydekker Line, which separates the Moluccas and Lesser Sunda Islands from New Guinea, respectively, from the Australian faunal zone. How and why did such a sharp border between animals living on neighboring islands form? It turns out that it was between the islands of Bali and Lombok that the border of two ancient continents, Sahul and Sunda, lay. The first broke up into the islands of Indonesia and Southeast Asia, the second - into New Guinea, Australia, Tasmania and other islands and islets lying east of the Wallace line. The average depth of the Lombok Strait allows us to give an “upper estimate” of the ocean level during the era of the great glaciations: this level never fell below 300 meters, otherwise the land would lie between Bali and Lombok and there would be no Wallace line. During the last glaciation, the islands of Sumatra, Java, Bali and Borneo located to the west of the Wallace line were connected with the Asian continent, and some of the islands to the east of it, including Sulawesi and Lombok, with the Australian continent. But the island of Flores, which is located in Wallace, has always been an island that is separated from the nearest land - the island of Sumbawa - by a strait 9 kilometers wide. Before the arrival of people of our species, the fauna of Flores was extremely scarce. In addition to the Komodo dragons that have survived to this day, which swim well, there lived pygmy stegodon elephants, also excellent swimmers, and giant rats that can travel on floating logs. It was believed that the Javanese pithecanthropes - erectus - could not cross the Wallace line, and even somehow cross another strait.
But Verhoeven was right! Alas, this became clear after his death, in 1992.
Modern dating, and by several methods, has aged the artifacts found by Verhoeven by almost a hundred thousand years - people used these tools about 840 thousand years ago.
And by the way, the priest was by no means an "amateur" - at the University of Utrecht, he attended a four-year course in archeology and defended his doctoral dissertation on excavations in Pompeii, in which he participated. In 1966, upon reaching retirement age, Verhoeven was recalled to his homeland. In the Netherlands, he continued his teaching activities, dismantled his collections and wrote articles. The artifacts he found - he found 150 pieces of Neolithic axes alone! - are in various museums, including in Maumere. He took a keen interest in the excavations in Flores, especially in Liang Bua Cave, where Prof. Raden Sojono from 1979 to 1989 excavated indonesian national research center archeology (his group went deep 4.25 m, but they did not find anything special). According to the stories of people who knew Verhoeven, he was a wonderful person and a great teacher. Until the end of his life, he spoke Dutch with an Indonesian accent. In the 1970s he resigned and married his co-worker, a former nun. They did not live too long - the age was no longer the same - but happily, his wife survived him by only two years. On Flores, the locals still pronounce Verhoeven's name with enthusiastic aspirations and rejoice when they know we've heard of him. An extinct rodent, the giant rat Papagomys theodorverhoeveni, was named after him.
But let's get back to the question of how erectus from Java and Bali could get to Flores. After all, it has always been believed that only people of our species, sapiens, invented the boat, oar and sail. Australian scientist Robert Bednarik tried to answer this question. His passion, which is connected with his main profession - archeology - recreating the technology of ancient people. In particular, following the example of Thor Heyerdahl, he conceived and implemented several maritime projects "First Navigators".
In 2001, a bamboo raft was built in Bali using vines and rattan, and only the same tools used by people in the Pleistocene.
Then, on this raft, strong rowers tried to cross the Lombok Strait. They succeeded, but with great difficulty, one of the testers fainted due to overwork, and he had to be replaced. In 2004, on almost the same raft, the participants of the new experiment set sail from Sumbawa (the largest island closest to Flores), only for its construction they no longer used stone tools, but large machetes, traditional tools of local islanders - time was running out, the expedition was funded by National Geographic, and filmmakers are always in a hurry. The raft was named Rangki Papa (Father of Rafts). The small island of Komodo near Flores, which separates the Sape Strait from Sumbawa, was chosen as the final destination. Unlike sailing through the Lombok Strait, the rowers periodically changed, transferring to the escort vessel and returning back; after nine hours of desperate rowing, having zigzag across the sea - due to oncoming currents - more than 36 kilometers, the raft safely reached the shore of Komodo. The crew did not include professional sailors; In addition to local residents who agreed to participate in this adventure (and many refused for fear of never seeing the land again), on board were Robert Bednarik himself, videographer David Hemlin, writer and television writer David X, as well as three people directly associated with the excavations at Liang Bua: archaeologists Mike Morewood and Thomas Sutikna and geologist Richard (Burt) Roberts. Thus, it was proved that, in principle, the archanthropes had sufficient intellectual and technical skills to move around the sea.
So in our story - and in the cave - Professor Mike (Michael John) Morewood (1950-2013) appears. He began excavations at Flores in 1997, by which time he was already an internationally recognized specialist in rock art. He was born in New Zealand, where he graduated from the university with a degree in archeology and anthropology, continued his studies in Canberra, then worked and taught in Australia, first at the University of New England, and since 2007 at the University of Wollongong. Those who knew him intimately noted that there was something of Indiana Jones in him, with his eternal old wide-brimmed hat. He seethed with energy, infected those around him with it, was ready to work for days on end; even when he was diagnosed with cancer, he thought and talked about new expeditions. All his colleagues agree that without him there would be no amazing discoveries, there would be no hobbits. Although when they began excavations in Liang Bua, no one expected to discover a new kind of person.
Morwood was one of the first to become interested in the discoveries of Theodore Verhoeven, whose merits he fully appreciated.
He took part in the dating of the artifacts he found, conducted excavations in the Soa lowland, where the missionary once dug, and found ancient stone tools similar to his finds. Unfortunately, in moist soil, the bones simply could not survive. And Morwood also showed interest in the cave of Liang Bua. He visited the cave for the first time in 1999, and in 2001 a joint Australian-Indonesian expedition led by Morewood and Sojono began working in the cave, funded by the Australian Council for scientific research. At one time, Professor Sojono stopped searching when he stumbled upon solid ground, which seemed to him the rocky base of the cave. But it was a hardened layer of ash, traces of a volcanic eruption that occurred about 12 thousand years ago; above this layer, the remains of people of our species, that is, sapiens, were found. Having opened this layer and delving even lower, archaeologists found many tools of the same type that were found in the Soa lowland.
The breakthrough in the excavations occurred on September 2, 2003, when the field season was actually over, Morewood flew to Australia, Sojono was in Jakarta. This happened at a depth of 5.9 m. Here is how the discoverers themselves wrote about it: “For a few days before the end of the expedition, luck smiled at us. First we saw a piece of bone. Then the upper part of the skull appeared, and then almost the entire skeleton of the "hobbit". We knew we had made a startling discovery, but we couldn't bring ourselves to take out the bones to examine them better. The water-soaked skeleton was not strong, so we left it to dry for three days, then applied a hardener, and only then lifted all the remains of people along with the deposits surrounding them. ” (The hardener is a mixture that Thomas Sutikna created from instant glue and nail polish. Real scientists often think outside the box and come up with unexpected solutions.)
Who exactly discovered the remains of an individual, which was later nicknamed Flo?
The question of priority arose, the Indonesian side was offended when reports appeared in the media about the discovery, allegedly made by Australian archaeologists and Morewood in particular. Morwood himself named five researchers from the Indonesian National Research Center for Archeology as the discoverers: Thomas Sutiknu, Wahyu Saptomo, Jatmiko, Sri Wasisto, and Rocus Awe Due (the latter being a student and named son of Theodore Verhoeven). That is, all the specialists who remained at the excavations. But in fact, the first to see the bone was Wahyu Saptomo, who supervised the work in sector 7, and the skull of a local worker named Benyamin Tarus came across the skull. They called Rokus, a bone specialist, he looked at the find and said - no, it's definitely not an animal, it's a man. And not a child, as they first thought - the skull is too small, and the skeleton too - but someone completely different. Thomas Sutikna was not in the cave at all that day - he fell ill and was in bed at the hotel. But when Wahyu informed him about the find, the fever immediately subsided from him. The next morning he sketched the bones and faxed the drawing to Morwood, who rushed over at once; paleoanthropologist Peter Brown was called to Jakarta, who very carefully measured the volume of the skull and described the find. It was an almost complete skeleton of a tiny woman (1m 6 (or 8) cm tall, with a brain volume of about 400 cc) who lived 18,000 years ago. That is, the volume of the brain is like that of a chimpanzee, and the structure of the skeleton is almost human. Undoubtedly the new kind. At first it was decided that even new genus, but then they still attributed this creature to the genus Homo.
And then the most ugly scandal broke out. Raden Sojono decided to show the find to Teuk Yakob, the elder of Indonesian paleontology, and invited him to the laboratory. Dear old Professor Jacob, who had nothing to do with the excavations at Liang Bua, simply put the bones in a suitcase and took them to his fiefdom, in Yogyakarta. Then Sojono was accused of having voluntarily given away the precious find. But what was he to do? Lie across the threshold? I probably would have done that, but Indonesians are brought up differently.
Of course, a howl went up, the Australian side gnashed its teeth.
In the end, Teuku Yakob was forced to hand over the bones after three months. But in what state! Partly broken, something was completely lost. Peter Brown was shocked - from fragile bones, which did not petrify under the conditions of lime deposits, casts were taken in the most rude way! Reading about this, I always remembered the episode that happened with Konrad Lorenz. Studying the behavior of his beloved geese, he became very upset when it turned out that they were not at all examples of marital fidelity, as previously thought - and was upset until his assistant told him: “What do you want? After all, geese are the same people. So, paleoanthropologists are the same people. By the way, Morwood's character was also far from angelic.
Alas, Jacob did not rest on this. Through his connections in the government, he achieved in 2005 a ban on excavations in the cave, which was lifted only in 2007. It's okay, you say, because only two years have been lost - what is this compared to thousands of years of life in Liang Bua? But for some, it was two precious years of active life, like Mike Morewood, who was destined to die early.
In October 2004, Nature finally published an article about the discovery of the Floresian man, Homo floresiensis, or hobbit. By the way, where did the nickname "hobbit" come from? This is not a journalistic fantasy at all, the author of the idea was Morwood, he even wanted to name the new look in Latin, but more sensible members of the team intervened, in particular, Peter Brown, who pointed out not only the unacceptability of such a name in scientific circles, but also possible friction with Tolkien's heirs. The type specimen was the first find, a tiny female LB1 (Flo), who lived 18,000 years ago (by that time, fragments of the skeletons of five more individuals had been found, but only LB1 had an almost complete skull). Here is what Morwood wrote about this: “The characteristics of LB1 have characteristics of both Homo and Australopithecus. Its skull… is similar to Homo erectus – long, low and relatively wide… The main difference is the size: in LB1 it is just tiny, with a volume of 380 cubic centimeters (according to the new, refined data using computed tomography - 426), but in shape it is also close to Homo erectus – except that it has enlarged anterior and temporal lobes – just those parts of the brain that are “responsible” for cognition and planning. It was unexpected... Homo floresiensis challenges us because it does not fit many of the ideas about how humans evolved and behaved, how they should look.”
The remains of the hobbits were in sediments 12 - 96 thousand years old, below again there was a layer of volcanic ash. Obviously, the end of this population was put by a powerful volcanic eruption - what, we do not know. In this place of the Pacific Ring of Fire, encircling the planet from Kamchatka to New Zealand and Antarctica, something always erupts. For example, when we were leaving Indonesia, a volcano woke up on the island of Sumbawa close to Flores. Together with the bones, stone tools were found similar to those found in the Soa lowland, but smaller.
In scientific circles, this message caused a shock. The discovery turned all ideas about the evolution of man and his fossil relatives upside down.
First, the hobbits were contemporaries of the sapiens, they lived when all people of other species had already died out. Secondly, it cannot be sentient being with such a small brain. There was a hypothesis that these dwarfs are sapiens, but freaks, microcephals. A zealous supporter of this theory was, of course, Teuku Jacob, now deceased. The debate about who the hobbits are - a new species of Homo or sapiens degenerated in isolation - continues to this day. Although now that the remains of seventeen individuals have been found, it is difficult to imagine a population of Downs that successfully survived in an extremely hostile world.
And their life was very difficult and required great intellectual and physical effort.
Komodo dragons were the highest predators on the island, which even now sometimes attack our contemporaries, but then, judging by the fossil remains, they were larger, up to 6 meters in length, and the growth of hobbits did not exceed 1 m 10 cm, and more often was about a meter. Undoubtedly, many hobbits ended their lives in their stomachs, but they themselves fed on monitor lizards! The charred remains of these monitor lizards were found in the cave. Apparently, the hobbits not only owned fire, but, perhaps, knew how to get it. The main "dish" on their table were giant rats up to half a meter long; there are two of them, Papagomys theodorverhoeveni and Papagomys armandvillei, the first one died out 3-4 thousand years ago, the second one is now extremely rare, it is no longer on Flores, the remaining small population is protected in national park Komodo. Lots of rat bones were found. The hobbits also hunted stegodons, on Flores the stegodons of the species Stegodon florensis lived at the same time (by the way, they died out 12,000 years ago at the same time). Although dwarfed, these elephants were the size of a buffalo, it was easier to kill the young, whose bones are found in the cave. Obviously, the hobbits used primitive spears. A great many of their stone tools were found, a real workshop was unearthed in one place, and in total 100 thousand artifacts were found in the cave!
Not so long ago, the bones of a giant stork (Leptoptilos robustus), similar to a marabou, but only 1m 80 cm tall, were discovered here. It was a heavy flightless bird, most likely a carnivore, possibly a scavenger, not disdainful and live prey, like its relatives that have survived to our time. Did he hunt hobbits? It is terrible to imagine: a sort of fororacos with a long beak is chasing a tiny little man. However, it may be the other way around: it was the hobbits who hunted him, and then ate him.
In any case, the ancestors of the hobbits, whoever they were, were far from heaven. If we discard the “microcephalic” hypothesis, there are two hypotheses about their origin: the first is that they descended from erectus - Javanese pithecanthropes who came to Flores about 850 thousand years ago, and the second is that their ancestors are habilis, who came out of Africa much earlier than erectus, they have a lot of primitive Australopithecus features. Or people from Dmanisi. This hypothesis has now found many supporters among serious scientists. But here again the question arises: how did they get there? It is unlikely that they had the intelligence to knit rafts ... And it is hard to believe that a few individuals were brought to the island by a tsunami wave (this assumption was put forward by Morwood).
I am much more impressed by the hypothesis of the origin of hobbits from erectus. Of course, I am not an anthropologist and do not claim to be competent in this area, but I rely on biological laws. In particular, on Foster's principle, or on the rules of insular dwarfism and insular gigantism. Island gigantism usually concerns those animals that have no natural enemies and competitors in a given isolated space and have a lot of food. Giants abounded on the island of Flores: extinct giant tortoises, cat-sized rats, Komodo dragons. The huge size of these monitor lizards is often explained by the fact that it is a relic of the Australian megafauna. But why didn't they become extinct like their Australian cousins? Obviously, only because on isolated islands this monitor lizard turned out to be the highest predator, standing at the top of the food chain. Large animals entering a small isolated area with limited food resources willy-nilly must decrease in size in order to survive and not destroy the food supply. Some stegodons on the mainland were larger than modern elephants, but on the mountainous Flores, with its sparse vegetation, they shredded. Perhaps the same thing happened with the erectus that got here.
Another question arises - why do hobbits have such a small brain?
Indeed, in modern pygmies, the brain does not differ in size from the brain of people of ordinary height. Initially, researchers doubted that island dwarfism could shrink the brain to the extent that we see in the Hobbit. In dwarf forms, brain volume usually decreases more slowly than body weight. But in 2009, a study published in the journal Nature showed that pygmy hippos in Madagascar had brains that were disproportionately small compared to their bodies. This means that in conditions of isolation, the brain can shrink at an abnormally fast pace, because big brain requires a lot of energy. The brain of LB1 was distinguished by a number of features, one of them being the extremely developed temporal lobes. In modern man, this part of the brain is associated with the recognition of objects and persons. Another distinguishing feature is the powerful convolutions in the anterior prefrontal cortex, which in our case is responsible for abstract thinking, planning our actions and imagination. That is, very important, human parts of the brain in hobbits have been preserved.
Of course, it is unlikely that the hobbits chose this cave as their place of residence - but there are a lot of caves on Flores! So far there are more questions than answers. For example, what does the Floresian people have to do with erectus, who lived on the island 800 thousand years ago? Who existed here in a huge span of 700 thousand years, from the appearance of erectus to the most ancient finds in the Liang Bua cave? Let's hope that subsequent excavations in different parts of the island will give us new information. In the meantime, painstaking work in the Liang Bua cave continues. More recently, under Luang Bua, another cave was discovered, a smaller one, which was called Liang Bawah, it is connected to the upper one by a narrow tunnel; excavations also began there.
It is assumed that there was a kind of pantry here, besides, it served as a refuge in case of danger.
The current director of the excavations at Liang Bua is Thomas Sutikna. Currently, Sutikna is a staff member at the University of Wollongog, and in 2014 he was awarded a personal postdoctoral fellowship in honor of Mike Morewood, his friend and colleague.
Of course, it is a pity that we were not able to meet with scientists at the excavations and interview them. But who knows, maybe we'll come back here again...
The authors express their gratitude to Dmitry and Marina Khayatov, owners of OlympDive Komodo, for organizing the trip. They are practically the only tour operators in Flores that offer excursions to the cave. It's nice that our compatriots - and they have been here a lot - are distinguished by such curiosity.
Leaning over a picnic table, an Indonesian researcher carefully sorts through the bones in search of a possible clue to the origin of man. Here, on the remote island of Flores, an international team of archaeologists is trying to shed light on the 18,000-year-old skeletal remains of a dwarf cave woman. They were discovered here in 2003, and this find immediately became a sensation all over the world. His scientific name– Floresian Man (Homo floresiensis), nickname - "hobbit", and the hunt for him began to prove that this woman and dozens of others are not just a freak of nature, but members of a distant species of man.
“This is where they butchered the animals,” says researcher Raucus Dew Oh, examining toothpick-sized rat bones, probably left over from a hobbit feast. Behind him, workers carry buckets of soil out of a cathedral-shaped cave adorned with stalactites 40 meters underground. The discovery of Floresian man shocked scientists and divided their opinions. Obviously, a group of distant relatives of man lived here, which developed habits not seen for millions of years, but they lived at the same time as more modern people. Almost overnight, this find could change our understanding of the entire evolution of man.
(Total 13 photos)
1. Archaeologists excavate in a cave in Liang Bua, Indonesia, on September 12, 2009, where the skeleton of a dwarf cave woman was discovered in 2003. There is a version that this Floresian man and dozens of his relatives, called "hobbits", are a new type of hominid. (AP / Ahmad Ibrahim)
2 A worker excavates at Liang Bua Cave on September 14, 2009, where human remains were found in Ruteng, Flores Island, Indonesia. (AP / Ahmad Ibrahim)
3. Workers are working at the excavation site in the cave Liang Bua. (AP / Ahmad Ibrahim)
4. Workers are excavating in the Liang Bua cave, where the remains of a caveman were found in 2003. (AP / Ahmad Ibrahim)
5. Australian archaeologist Mike Morwood works in Liang Bua Cave. (AP / Ahmad Ibrahim)
6. Workers at the excavation site in Ruteng,. (AP / Ahmad Ibrahim)
7. With a short stature (1 m) and a small brain (400 cc - three times less than the brain volume of a modern person), this type of hominid was capable of processing stone tools. (AP / Ahmad Ibrahim)
8. Indonesian archaeologist Yatmiko examines a piece of prehistoric stone in the Liang Bua cave on September 14, 2009. (AP / Ahmad Ibrahim)
9. Due to the small size of the brain of the found remains, scientists immediately had a question, how could a person with such a brain size make complex tools. (AP / Ahmad Ibrahim)
10. According to one version, this is not a separate type of person, but a modern person (Homo Sapiens), who suffered from microcephaly. This was indicated by the small size of the brain, the double root of the incisors and fangs, and the cut off chin. (AP / Ahmad Ibrahim)
11. Scientists - supporters of the hypothesis of a separate species - argued that the "hobbit" was a subspecies of Homo erectus and was subject to a decrease in size due to prolonged isolation on the island. (AP / Ahmad Ibrahim)
12. Victor Jehabut (second from left) is only 1.22 meters tall. This 80-year-old man is often referred to by tour guides as the "descendant of the Floresian man" - dwarf cave people who lived on the island of Flores 160,000 years ago. Jehabut says that these rumors are not true, in fact, his growth was affected by an illness in childhood. (AP / Ahmad Ibrahim)
13. Left: A researcher holding a human skull in Indonesia. Right: Human floresian skeleton found in Liang Bua Cave in Ruteng, Flores Island, Indonesia.
The progenitors of Frodo and Sam from The Lord of the Rings could well have been completely real characters - the dwarf people of the Floresians, who died out approximately 12 thousand years ago.
And this, of course, is not news. The hypothesis about this has been circulating in scientific circles for a long time, but recently, in one of his lectures, the famous anthropologist Stanislav Drobyshevsky spoke about it in more detail.
“It is possible that some real events of the distant past of the existence of ancient hominids could affect mythology and folklore, and maybe vice versa - folklore was reflected in some ideas that people perceive as scientific,” said Stanislav Drobyshevsky.
Recall that in 2004, the remains of a very unusual species of hominids, which were called hobbits, found earlier on the island of Flores in the Liang Bua cave, were described. famous characters Tolkien. The fact is that the remains belonged to a woman who had a height of less than one and a half meters. But this was not the sensation - on Earth, as you know, today there are quite a lot of very short populations (for example, African or Indonesian pygmies). Archaeologists were struck by something else - the skull of Homo floresiensis, which had a number of features. The main one was the extremely small volume of the brain - only about 400 grams. That is how much the brain of a chimpanzee weighs, and on average even a little more - 400–450 grams. It is also interesting that the remains of the hobbits, by anthropological standards, turned out to be very “young” - they are from 95 to 12 thousand years old. Thus, the Floresians could live in those times when our ancestors on Ancient East already tamed a goat, that is, 12 thousand years ago.
Stone tools were also found among the remains of the hobbits. It turned out that a creature with a brain, whose weight is 400 grams, could make chisels, scrapers and axes from stone. Until now, it was believed that the brain rubicon is 700–750 grams. Brain sizes below this limit are critical for the manifestation of purely human properties, such as complex communication, the manufacture of stone tools, the use of fire, etc. However, no traces of fire were found in the Liang Bua cave, nor were burials found - the bones of the Floreseans are scattered in a chaotic manner throughout the cave.
Therefore, the remains of hobbits are very often “attacked”: some groups of scientists have long been trying to prove that the bones and skulls belong to microcephals (microcephaly is a significant decrease in the size of the skull and, accordingly, the brain with normal sizes of other parts of the body; accompanied by mental insufficiency - from mild imbecility to idiocy. It is rare, on average, in one case per 6-8 thousand births - NS), and not so long ago an article was published where the authors put forward and the assumption that these are the remains of people with Down syndrome.
However, most scholars are of the opinion that this is not so and we are dealing with the remains of healthy, but, of course, primitive and not like us hominids. The main argument is that the remains of not one or two hobbits, but as many as seventeen were found in the cave. It is too unlikely that they all suffered from microcephaly, Down syndrome, etc. The microcephalic population simply could not survive (especially in those days). Most likely, the Floresians are the ancestors of the Pithecanthropes, who came here about 1 million years ago from the island of Java. In island conditions, as is often the case, hominids shrank (some living creatures, as we know, under such conditions, on the contrary, "enlarge", becoming much larger than their ancestors on the continents - NS) and, unfortunately, degraded (probably due to the conditions on the "paradise" island and the possible absence of predators, as well as a small amount of food - NS).
On the same island of Flores, not far from the Liang Bua cave, there is the village of Rampasasa, where wild tribes of people live, who are also small in stature - about one and a half meters, only a little taller than hobbits - but quite modern.
It is noteworthy that when archaeologists told the locals about their find, they immediately had their own myth that these hobbits are none other than their ancestors. But the most interesting thing is that the ethnographers working on the island recorded the legend of the locals about some Ebu gogo, which sounds like this. When the ancestors of modern Floresian aborigines, farmers, came to this valley from other parts of the island, they met there some little furry men - Ebu gogo, who led a very simple lifestyle and spoke a strange chirping language. At first everything went peacefully, and the inhabitants began to communicate with them, exchange products, etc. But then Ebu gogo began to steal food and children from the inhabitants, so the natives exterminated all Ebu gogo, and those who remained were driven into a certain cave, filled it with stones and logs and burned. This is not the Liang Bua cave, the locals even showed it to scientists, but while it really remains littered, it has not yet been excavated. All this is presented by the natives not as a myth, but as historical fact which, they say, happened just before the arrival of the Europeans on the island. The latter sailed there around the 16th century. Of course, among anthropologists and ethnographers, the version immediately spread that Ebu gogo are the same hobbits that were found in the Liang Bua cave.
The most amazing thing is that other ethnographers working with the local population in other places found that the same variant of tradition exists, for example, on the island of Sulawesi, which, like Flores, belongs to Indonesia. Also in Taiwan and Sri Lanka. Thus, the natives of Sri Lanka told ethnographers the following legend. When their ancestors came to a certain valley, they met there furry little men who spoke in a strange chirring language. At first, they communicated with them and exchanged food, and then they began to steal food and children, and the ancestors of the natives drove them into a cave and burned them. Meanwhile, from Sri Lanka to Flores, as you know, there is a huge distance as wide as at least half the Indian Ocean. How could the Floresian legend (or vice versa - the tradition of Sri Lanka to the inhabitants of the island of Flores) get to the locals?
Scholars have put forward several explanations for this. The most incredible of them is that the events were repeated. Another is that this is just a mythological story that goes around the world (as mentioned above, a similar legend, with slight variations, exists among the natives of Sulawesi and in Taiwan; perhaps the same myths exist in other places in Indonesia). True, the legends, as we remember, date back to the arrival of Europeans - the 16th century, and the youngest dating of the remains from the Liang Bua cave is 12 thousand years, which is not quite the same thing. But it is possible that later remains of hobbits exist in other parts of the island of Flores (although in a tropical climate the remains are very poorly preserved, so it will not be easy to find them). It is also possible, of course, that the above events really took place on the island of Flores, and then the legends about them spread to other islands. True, the locals of Sri Lanka - the Veddas - lead a very isolated lifestyle. Therefore, they should have received such a legend a very, very long time ago, certainly not in the 16th century. There is also a version according to which this myth is common and has little to do with reality. And when people, knowing him, came to Flores and met hobbits there, they realized a terrible story, as they say, in practice: the discoverers of the island already knew for sure that when they met with little furry men they needed to be driven into a cave and burned.
It is also possible that a similar mythological plot could have arisen when people first encountered lemurs (on the island of Madagascar, where there is also a legend about a certain little furry man, however, the similarity of the plot ends there), monkeys or very undersized tribes, which, as you know, exist to this day.
Floresian man(lat. Homo floresiensis) is an extinct species of the genus People (lat. Homo). Features of this species are small stature, weight and brain volume.
Opening
For the first time, the remains of this species were discovered in 2003 on the island of Flores in Indonesia by a joint Australo-Indonesian group of archaeologists who were looking for evidence of the migration of modern humans from Asia to Australia. The group was led by Mike Morwood and Peter Brown. The researchers did not expect the discovery of a new species at all and were surprised to find a well-preserved skeleton, which was designated LB1 (from the name of the Liang Bua cave in which it was found) and became the type specimen (holotype). It is believed to be the skeleton of a woman in her 30s. He was nicknamed "The Little Lady of Flores" or "Flo".
During subsequent excavations, 7 more skeletons were found, aged from 38 to 13 thousand years. One of the discovered hand bones attributed to Floresian man is about 74 thousand years old. The remains were not fossilized (fossilized) and had the consistency of "wet blotting paper", they had to be thoroughly dried before being removed from the ground. They have become the subject of intensive study in order to determine their species.
Also, many complex stone tools were found in the cave, located in archaeological horizons aged from 13 to 95 thousand years, suitable in size for people about 1 m tall.
The new species was announced on October 28, 2004 and was soon nicknamed " hobbit"(named after a fictional people in the book of the same name by J. Tolkien). A scientific name for Homo hobbitus has even been proposed. The species was originally placed in its own genus and named Sundanthropus floresianus. However, after it became clear that the skull had human features, the creature was assigned to the genus Homo.
Anatomy and morphology
The Floresian man stands out among all other extinct species of people with its dwarf size. The height of adults was only slightly more than 1 m. Thus, the approximate height of LB1 is 106 cm, LB8 (based on measurements of the tibia) is 109 cm. This growth lies outside the normal range for a modern person and is noticeably less than the average height of adults of the shortest living peoples.
Body weight was about 25 kg. This is noticeably smaller, not only in comparison with modern man, but also compared to Homo erectus, which some scholars consider to be his immediate ancestor. Moreover, H. floresiensis is even lighter than the Australopithecus that lived several million years before it. That. it is the smallest and lightest hominin species discovered to date.
The volume of the brain was also small - in LB1 about 426 cm3, which is close to the volume of the brain of chimpanzees and australopithecines. The ratio of brain mass to body mass lies in the range between H. erectus and great apes. However, despite the total volume of the brain, which is almost four times smaller than that of a modern person, certain areas of the prefrontal cortex responsible for higher functions have a size comparable to that of a modern person.
The skeleton of H. floresiensis had features that confirm its independent species status. A study of the bones of the wrist showed that their structure is similar to the structure of the bones of a chimpanzee or Australopithecus, but differs from the structure of the bones of a modern person. Similar results were shown by studies of the bones and joints of the hands and feet. In particular, in a modern person, the upper head of the humerus is rotated relative to the plane of the elbow joint at an angle of 145-165 degrees. In Floresian man, this angle was approximately 120 degrees. Combined with a relatively shorter collarbone and shoulder blade shape, this resulted in his shoulders being slightly pushed forward, as if he were "shrugging". His feet were unusually flat and long compared to the size of his body. Such a structure made them bend the leg at the knee joint much more when walking and made H. floresiensis a very unimportant walker. The toes had an unusual shape, with the big toes being very short.
Origin
There are several hypotheses explaining the dwarf growth of the Floresian man.
Microcephaly
Shortly after the discovery of H. floresiensis was announced, Indonesian anthropologist Teuku Jacob expressed doubt that the remains belonged to the new species. He suggested that this is a modern man with microcephaly. However, studies conducted by paleoneurologist Dean Falk rejected this possibility. Computed tomography of the skull, the results of which were published in 2005, did not reveal any evidence of defects in the formation of the skull and brain. Findings from a 2007 study provide additional evidence for the absence of microcephaly. A comparative study of the virtual endocast of the LB1 skull, the brain of nine microcephalians and ten normal people was carried out. As a result, it was found that the shape of the LB1 skull is similar to the skull of a healthy person, but has additional unique features that can be expected from a new species. Unlike microcephals, the frontal and temporal lobes are well developed, but their structure differs from the structure of the corresponding lobes in modern humans.
The results of comparative studies by other authors, published in 2008-2009, also prove the failure of the microcephaly hypothesis.
Laron syndrome
In June 2006, anatomist Gary Richards presented a new hypothesis, the essence of which is that the dwarf growth of the Floresian man is explained by Laron's syndrome, an inherited disease in which tissues become insensitive to growth hormone. The following year, a group of scientists, which included G. Richards, published a paper stating that the morphological features of H. floresiensis do not differ significantly from people with Laron syndrome.
However, the document notes that it is possible to reliably establish the presence or absence of Laron syndrome only through DNA testing, if it is possible at all. Critics of the hypothesis point out that, with the exception of small stature, people with Laron syndrome look different than Floresian people.
endemic cretinism
In 2008, Australian researchers Peter Obendorf, Charles Oxnard and Ben Kefford suggested that LB1 and LB6 suffered from myxedemic endemic cretinism caused by congenital hypothyroidism and were part of the affected island population. This disease is caused by various factors, incl. iodine deficiency, and is still found among the local Indonesian population.
People affected by this disease are born with a non-functioning thyroid gland, resulting in small stature and brain volume. However, their mental retardation and motor impairments are less pronounced than those of nerds of neurological origin. According to the authors of the study, critical conditions environment formed on the island of Flores about 18 thousand years ago - during the time period to which the remains are dated. According to the authors, numerous features of the remains (such as an enlarged "Turkish saddle", unusually straight and slightly twisted humerus, relatively thick limbs, double-rooted lower premolars, and primitive carpal morphology) can be explained by their hypothesis.
However, D. Falk objected that, according to the results of computed tomography, the size of the "Turkish saddle" is no more than usual. Peter Brown remarked to this that the "Turkish saddle" was very poorly preserved and no significant conclusions could be drawn from its measurements.
In 2009, Colin Groves and Catharine Fitzgerald submitted a paper to the Australian Society for Human Biology comparing Floresian bones with those of ten patients with endemic cretinism. The study was focused on the anatomical features characteristic of this disease. No similarities were found in the study.
In 2012, Brown compared the morphology of the skeleton and teeth of a Floresian human and those with cretinism. He concluded that H. floresiensis is not a modern human suffering from this disease.
Last survivors
Existing evidence supports the hypothesis that Floresian man is the last descendant of early African human species, with which he shares many morphological features. This hypothesis provides a more acceptable explanation for the features of H. floresiensis compared to previously put forward hypotheses of genetic mutations and diseases.
However, none of the existing hypotheses can explain either the full range of features inherent in this species, or why these features are so similar to signs of diseases.
DNA analysis
In 2006, two groups of scientists simultaneously tried to extract DNA from a tooth found in 2003, but both failed. Among possible causes failures are extraction of DNA from dentine (whereas dental cement has a higher DNA content) and too high drilling speed, which could lead to DNA destruction due to heat.
Sample damage scandal
In early December 2004, T. Jacob removed most of the remains from storage at the National Research Center for Archeology in Jakarta with the permission of only one of the project leaders, and hid them for 3 months. Some scientists have expressed concern that important scientific evidence will be appropriated by a small group of researchers who will neither allow other scientists to access it nor publish their own research results. Jacob returned the remains on February 23, 2005, but to the dismay of his colleagues, some of them were seriously damaged, and 2 leg bones were missing altogether.
Jacob denied his guilt, claiming that the damage was caused during transportation from Yogyakarta to Jakarta. However, according to reports by other scientists, the nature of the damage is completely different - physical evidence speaks of the destruction of samples during the manufacture of castings. For example, one of the jaws was broken and then glued together, with the pieces assembled at the wrong angle.
In 2005, the Indonesian authorities closed access to the cave. Some media outlets (such as the BBC) have speculated that the reason for this ban was an attempt to protect Jacob, who has been hailed as "Indonesian king of paleoanthropology", from being proven wrong. Access to the cave was allowed again in 2007, shortly after Jacob's death.
"Hobbits" from the Indonesian island of Flores are a unique species of Homo, and not Homo sapiens suffering from neurological diseases, scientists have found. The journal Nature tells about the study of the remains of the dwarf ancestors of the “Floresian man” of the early Pleistocene era.
For the first time the bones of "hobbits" were discovered in 2003 in the Liang Bua cave. Skeletons of varying degrees of preservation were originally dated at 13-95 thousand years old, but in 2016 the estimate was corrected: 60-100 thousand years. Most important was the incomplete skeleton of a very small adult female, which included the skull, lower jaw, and most of the teeth. It was he who made it possible to reconstruct the appearance of a “hobbit” woman (she was called Flo). Along with the bones, scientists found stone tools, burnt bones of Komodo monitor lizards and stegodons - traces of the economic activity of hunters.
The species name "hobbits" Homo floresiensis owe to the island where the find was made, and small growth - only one meter. In the volume of the brain - from 380 to 417 cubic centimeters - "hobbits" are noticeably inferior to a reasonable person. A brain of this size is characteristic of the extinct ancestors of humans (Australopithecines) and their modern relatives - chimpanzees.
The publication of 2004 became sensational: a new kind of people, and even dwarf ones, and even lived up to almost contact with people of the modern type who settled Indonesia! It seemed that the real basis of the ancient myths about gnomes and similar creatures had been found. Publications about the Floresian hominid appeared in tens of thousands of newspapers and magazines around the world.
A sick person or a unique species?
However, as is often the case, the sensation was followed by heated debates and scandals. The head of the excavation, Australian anthropologist Michael Morwood, suggested that the "hobbits" are the descendants of Homo erectus, Homo erectus, crushed in island isolation. The patriarch of Indonesian paleoanthropology Teuku Yakob did not agree with him: he was sure that the remains of ordinary Homo sapiens of a short subrace of the Australo-Melanesian race, suffering from hereditary microcephaly (which gave a reduced volume of the cranium) were found on Flores.
Image: Kinez Riza
With the permission of fellow excavator Panjit Sujono (who had been friends with Jacob since the joint struggle against the Japanese invaders in the 1940s), Jacob removed the bones. Other scientists expressed outrage, and three months later he had to return the remains to the public, but the bones were returned damaged, with traces of fractures and unsuccessful gluing. In order to “freeze” the scandal (and prevent Jacob from embarrassing himself), the Indonesian government generally banned further excavations in the Liang Bua cave, and lifted this ban only in 2007, after Jacob’s death.
However, the great controversy about the dwarfism of the Floresian hominid (a unique species or sick people?) only flared up. Jacob, who managed to publish his microcephaly hypothesis in the prestigious American journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found many supporters. When no traces of microcephaly were found, they proposed new versions: cretinism due to iodine deficiency, Laron's dwarfism - just not to recognize the "hobbits" as a separate species. About how these hypotheses were put forward and refuted, Lenta.ru was detailed in 2009.
The last salvos of the dispute died down in 2014. In the same Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Maciej Henneberg and his colleagues: from the point of view of scientific logic, it is impossible to “establish” a new species on the basis of the skull from Liang Bua alone, which has signs of abnormal development (even if a specific medical diagnosis is not yet possible to make). Unusual properties are not the same as unique. The mere presence of anatomical features characteristic of many congenital malformations (asymmetry, small brain size, short stature) in the type specimen makes it impossible to isolate a new species according to the criteria of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. The craniofacial asymmetry, fronto-occipital size, and short femurs of the creature from Flores, according to Henneberg, indicate Down's syndrome.
Photo: Dr Gerrit van den Bergh/ University of Wollongong, Australia
However, after publication, a flurry of criticism fell upon the article. “It is characteristic that the authors did not provide a single photograph of the skeleton of a person with Down syndrome. Then the reader would immediately see that he has nothing to do with the Floresian man, "- neuroanthropologist Dean Falk (Dean Falk) from the University of Florida - the main proponent of the hypothesis of the uniqueness of Homo floresiensis. The authors of the PNAS article have long been trying to prove that the "Flores Hobbit" is a common person. “At first they said that he suffered from microcephaly. We have proven them wrong. Then they put forward a hypothesis about the dwarfism of Laron. Our scientific group disproved it as well. And now they've decided to try their luck with Down syndrome," says Falk.
Even more scientists were outraged by the fact that the article was published in PNAS “by pull”, bypassing the normal procedures for reviewing a manuscript - thanks to the high status of one of the authors. One way or another, Fok and her supporters spent a few more years and in June 2016 defeated the Down syndrome hypothesis: Flo’s skull is much smaller than that of Homo sapiens, whether they suffer from this syndrome or not (the size of the cranial vault and the anatomy of the chin are also far from human).
ancient dwarfs
This debate could continue for a long time, and supporters of the "pathological" version could find other congenital and acquired diseases that explain Flo's anatomy. But it was decided (in favor of the uniqueness of the Floresian hobbits) by the discovery of new remains of the ancient inhabitants of the island.
In the Mata Menge area (Soa basin, 74 kilometers east of the Liang Bua cave), an international team of scientists (including Mike Morewood, the author of the first discovery) found the fossilized remains of hominids - a fragment of a jaw, a piece of a skull and six teeth. Most importantly, the owners of these bones were as dwarfed as Flo (or even smaller, judging by the size of the jaw).
Scientists devoted a separate article to dating the finds: dwarf people lived on the island of Flores already 700 thousand years ago! Stone tools, remains of victims and neighbors of the Floresian "hobbits" were found in the same sandstone layer: bones of pygmy proboscis stegodons, rodents, Komodo dragons and other island fauna. In other words, hundreds of thousands of years ago, people who got to the island sharply decreased in size and built their own economic system, which remained unchanged until the time of the extinction of the "hobbits" - the reasons for which are not yet clear.
The uniqueness of Homo floresinensis as a species can be considered proven, but the deciphering of the mysterious history of these creatures is just beginning. Main question: from whom did they originate? So far, two hypotheses have been proposed. According to the first, "hobbits" are the descendants of erect people (Homo erectus), reduced due to island dwarfism: this often happens to animals on the islands due to the lack of predators and poverty natural resources. Or the ancient Floresians descended from skillful people closer to monkeys (as an option - from small Australopithecus). The second hypothesis suggests that such "ancestors" should have left Africa (the cradle of mankind) already two million years ago, for which there is no evidence yet.
Only new fossils will finally prove the truth of these hypotheses. Few anthropologists would believe such a dramatic decrease: the "hobbits" weighed half as much as erectus, were one and a half times shorter than their height, and their brain volume was reduced from 860 to 420 cubic centimeters. But the migration of Australopithecus for thousands of kilometers, along the Indian Ocean or the coast of Eurasia, seems no less fantastic. One way or another, all explanations for the phenomenon of the Floresian "hobbits" are outside the comfort zone of the classical scenarios of human evolution, scientists are sure.
Quickly "shrink"
Fortunately, anthropologists found one important piece of evidence: stone tools from another excavation site on Flores - Volo Sega. They were made about a million years ago - most likely by an upright man. If the new finds of tools unequivocally connect with Homo erectus, we will have to agree that the hominids on the island have decreased in just 300 thousand years.
However, such a short period seems incredible only for representatives of the genus Homo. Other mammals have experienced a similarly rapid transition to dwarfism - for example, the brain volume of Madagascar hippos decreased by 30 percent, and deer on the island of Jersey "shrank" six times in six thousand years. In general, calculations of the evolution of the body mass of mammals have shown that in order to increase by a hundred times, they need at least 1.6 million generations, and to decrease - ten times less (160 thousand). That is, the Floresian "hobbits" do not represent a biological anomaly - this is the norm of island dwarfism.
Finally, the founder effect known to geneticists could play an important role in the evolution of “hobbits”: a small number of initial individuals with gene allele frequencies that randomly deviate from the species-specific average, give rise to new populations. This effect well explains the combination of primitive and "advanced" anatomical features of Homo floresinensis.
