
Stone Tools in Sulawesi Point to Neighbor of Flores ‘Hobbit’ - r0muald
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/01/160113-stone-tool-sulawesi-hobbit-flores-archaeology/
======
grayje
Fascinating.

I believe we're nowhere near a full understanding of the diversity of pre-H.
sapiens species. Just last year the discovery of another Homo species, H.
nadeli, was claimed [1]. I feel like we're going to keep finding more and more
of these folks, and - like the Neanderthals and Denisovans - discovering
through genetic analysis that we interbred [2].

Also, the thing that complicates paleoanthropology, especially in regions like
the Indonesian archipelago, is that most of the areas where prehuman Homo
populations would have lived for significant lengths of time are now
underwater.

Frustrating, but if we knew all the answers, what fun would that be?

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/10/new-
species-o...](http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/10/new-species-of-
ancient-human-discovered-claim-scientists) [2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_human_admixture_with_m...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_human_admixture_with_modern_humans)

------
afshin
"... perhaps descended from Homo erectus individuals washed eastward atop
tsunami debris"

Is this really the general consensus about how pre homo sapiens human species
traversed bodies of water?

~~~
douche
It sounds a little ridiculous, but it seems just about as plausible as most
things in paleo-archeology[1]. I've been on a kick of reading a lot of
nautical fiction and autobiography, and you come across a lot of accounts of
plant and animal life transported surprising distances in the aftermath of
severe storms.

[1] Could archaeologists, or really, the media reporting on it, be more
upfront about the fact that virtually everything they are talking about is
wild speculation based on very tenuous evidence? I don't want to knock the
people doing the work of digging this stuff up and trying to understand it;
but really, when you find one jawbone and extrapolate an entire organism,
complete with artists renderings and even taxidermied monstrosities, or
compare incomplete, fragmentary, dried out, degraded DNA material from Hominid
A and B to conclude which is more closely related to modern man, my bullshit
detectors start going off. The sample size is just too small.

