New Human Species Discovered
 

Hey there,
Wow. A new human species. :eek: These guys are tiny. I've seen them most referenced to as "hobbits". From what I've learned they had the ability to make fire, use tools and hunt in groups. But what I'm wondering is how do they know they weren't just little kids? Maybe the kids were kept together while the fathers went out and hunted. Pretty interesting stuff nonetheless.

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- Undercover_Man

You're kidding, right?

How do they know they weren't kids?! LOL


Mr Mephisto


PS - Why is this in Paranoia?

Oh, they were so cute! They lived on an island with huge lizards and tiny elephants! Man, I wish I could have seen that. They died out 18 000 years ago though.

Regarding the kids thing, apparently you can judge the age of the individual by looking at certain things on the skeleton, so they know the little people were fully grown.

It paranoia because maybe Tolkien knew that Hobbits really existed :thumbsup: and then the whole of middle earth may not be a story but creditable documented history. May be Tolkien was talking to the hobbits when he was writting the account of their history.

Or maybe its got nothing to do with that at all. But still a funny story, i liked the idea of hobbits, then again i like the idea of jedi knights. Ohwell i'll go back to my fantasy land and keep on dreaming about who would win a fight, Gandalf or Yoda. This is heading towards tilted nonsense. Maybe the hobbits found were small yodas?

I like the way you think man, and BTW Gandalf would kick yoda's ass.
see here http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=74357

I thought the same thing...hobbits may have existed...

Seriously, though, what a find! It's interesting to see that evolution even pushes the boundaries of the human form, since we see the sometimes-strange results of evolution all the time (weird fish, mammals, lizards, etc.)

They're probably just the end of another branch of primate evolution. They weren't adapted properly to the environment and their eco-niche was conquered by the ancestors of homo sapiens

Apparantly they evolved from Homo Erectus.

And what they weren't adapted to was large volcanic erruptions, the same that wiped out the miniature elephants:
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=30692

Oh and it looks like they never co-existed with Homo Sapiens. We probably would have wiped them out much faster...

All in all an amazing find, it will be interesting to see if they can get mitochondrial dna and/or Y chromosomes.

I think they did think they were kids at first but when they looked at their teeth they noticed that they had wear that well surpassed normal wear for kids that size.

i guess those hobbits weren't so farfetched after all

It's interesting because many, many cultures have myths about "the little people." I've always wondered if those myths originated from some evolutionary offshoot.

While surprised people haven't started making jokes about "Mini-me," I won't be the first. But the discovery of an new branch on the human evolutionary tree is, indeed, an awesome find. Thanks.

I was an archaeologist this summer. That's right, just for the summer, and I would say that this is quite an exciting find.

As for the whole possibility of these 'dwarfs' being kids, it is quite possible. It would be possible for the adults to bury their kids in selected areas, such as on an island, and bury the humans somewhere else, due to religious beliefs, or something similar.

Now, they have proven that these humans are indeed dwarfs, but the possibility of these being kids for sure passed through archaeologists minds.

Also, more on me being an archaeologist for a summer. I did field archaeology for a company in my home town this summer. I got the job because my friend is in archaeology, and he found out about the job, so i applied and got the job too. You actually learn a lot about archaeology when you do it for 50 hours a week. I'm really an astronomy nerd, though.