
Ancient teeth make H. sapiens the lead suspect in extinction of H. floresiensis - diodorus
http://www.nature.com/news/human-remains-found-in-hobbit-cave-1.20656
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btown
"Lead suspect" is actually a very apt analogy here in its purest form: while
there is no new evidence indicating that H. sapiens and H. floresiensis were
actually in competition for resources, there is evidence consistent with that
theory, and other explanations for the latter species' demise are less
plausible.

We should be careful, in this and when reading about modern-day criminal
accusations, to not exaggerate what "suspect" actually means and jump to a
presumption of guilt, or even believe that there is evidence for guilt!

In this case, H. sapiens teeth were found in a cave where H. floresiensis was
known to live some 4000 years prior. But this itself is no evidence of
overlap. From the article:

> Other evidence presented by Sutikna puts humans in Liang Bua very soon after
> H. floresiensis vanished, which adds weight to the possibility that humans
> played a role in the extinction of hobbits, possibly by out-competing them
> for limited resources on Flores.

> “What we don't yet know is whether there was at least a short overlap in the
> populations, thus raising the question once again of the possible role of
> modern humans in the extinction of floresiensis,” says Chris Stringer, a
> palaeoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London who attended
> the meeting.

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justjonathan
If you haven't read Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Harari, it
is a great read and has lots of insights into the way early Homo sapiens may
have behaved. Hint: we won, probably not by accident...

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traject_
Enjoyable read but, as a sacrifice for being entertaining, it sometimes falls
into the wayside of hasty sensationalist conclusions.

~~~
jawilson2
I agree. There were several times that it made a statement like "Early homo
sapiens likely killed off Neanderthals. AND IF WE DON'T CHANGE, WE WILL WIPE
OUT ALL HUMANITY WITHIN A GENERATION." The bias showed a little too strongly
in places.

