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Land of Little People?

By Kathyrn Satterfield

Small discoveries in†Indonesia are making a big splash in the science world. Researchers have unearthed tiny bones that they believe belong to an entirely new human species. If that's true, it will change how we think about our primitive ancestors.

Clues that a tribe of little people may have lived long ago were first revealed last year in the scientific journal Nature. Scientists said that they had found the bones of a three-foot-tall female on the island of Flores, in Indonesia. When they looked more closely, they saw that the nearly complete skeleton belonged to a full-grown adult. Researchers nicknamed her Hobbit, after the tiny heroes of the Lord of the Rings books.

Now the team is saying it has unearthed even more pieces of the puzzle, including a jawbone and parts of arms, legs and hands from several individuals, as well as stone tools. They reported their find in Nature this month. "The new evidence makes it very clear that these people are a new species, distinct from modern humans," Peter Brown, a scientist with the excavation, told TFK. They named these ancient humans Homo floresiensis.

A Changing History
This discovery has caused a stir among scientists. Brown says that these little people lived as recently as 12,000 years ago. Scientists had believed that early humans known as Neanderthals were the only other human species on the earth at the same time as people of our species, Homo sapiens. Neanderthals died out 30,000 years ago. If Homo floresiensis was a different species from modern humans, that would make our family tree bigger than we knew. It means, says Brown, that "until recently, a relative shared the planet with us."

Many scientists think a new species is unlikely. Some argue that the bones must have belonged to modern humans whose small size was the result of a genetic problem.

Daniel E. Lieberman, a paleontologist at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, thinks that the debate over the discovery is healthy. He believes that the questions and arguments raised by critics will help us learn more about these unusual specimens. "Disagreement is an important part of the scientific process," Lieberman told TFK. "As far as I'm concerned, the story's only just begun."

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