Riddle of the Human Hobbits : An Equinox Special

Riddle of the Human Hobbits | Australopithecine Angle | We're Not Alone | Migration Mystery | Small But Perfectly Formed | Find Out More

Dr Martin Brookes

April 2005

Migration Mystery

How did Flo get to Flores in the first place, and where did she come from? Based on geography alone, Homo erectus populations on nearby Java would seem like the most obvious source of original colonisers. But anatomically, Flo links up much more readily with diminutive hominid fossils found in Africa and Georgia. Could this mean that Flo came from an entirely separate migration of hominids? Nobody knows.

Whichever route her ancestors took, the last leg of their journey would have been treacherous. Flores has always been an island surrounded by deep water channels and dangerous currents. Swimming is out of the question. But the recent tsunami in Indonesia has highlighted one possibility. Were Flo's ancestors washed up on the beaches of Flores, clinging to driftwood?

Of course, a raft is an obvious mode of transport, but many palaeo-anthropologists doubt whether Homo erectus ever had the intelligence and cultural skills for complex tasks like raft-building. But that assumption has been called into question. Using CT scans, scientists have been able to construct a virtual model of Flo's brain. The results show that the brain case, though small, contained an amazingly complex organ. Advanced morphological features such as enlarged temporal and frontal lobes suggest that Flo was an individual with foresight, good memory and excellent problem-solving abilities. These observations also tally with circumstantial evidence found at the excavation site in Flores. Buried among the hominid fossils were sophisticated tools and the charred remains of animal bones. She may have been small, with a brain a third the size of our own, but Flo possibly had the intelligence to make fires, to fashion tools, and perhaps even to cook her own food.

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