Early hominins known colloquially as “hobbits” may have been shorter than scientists thought, a new analysis of teeth and bones has revealed.
The 700,000-year-old fossilized remains belonged to Homo floresiensis, an extinct species of exceedingly small humans that once inhabited Flores, an island south of mainland Indonesia, according to a study published Tuesday (Aug. 6) in the journal Nature Communications.
The new research may shed light on when H. floresiensis first evolved its diminutive height.
“Acquiring a large body and large brain and becoming clever is not necessarily our destiny,” lead author Yosuke Kaifu, a professor at the University Museum at the University of Tokyo, told Live Science in an email. “Depending on the natural environment, there were diverse ways of evolution not only for animals in general but also for humans.”
Imagine being alive with all these other hominids so closely related to us. It sounds like a fantasy world.
It was. And then we murdered or fucked them all until we get the mostly homogeneous form of humanity we see now.
All that separates modern humans, even across races, is a fraction of a fraction (0.1% variation) of the total amount of genes. It would be so fascinating to see full comparisons of genome variation across all the extinct species and how it affected cognition, behavior, and digestion.
It makes me wonder what has been lost to the tides of history. We will never truly know the stories that unfolded between all these older than ancient peoples. Time is the great void that swallows us all.
I do often daydream about what magical stories were told around campfires for those tens of thousands of years… How many Odyssian struggles did people endure? How many wars and conquests will we never even know the combatants existed, let alone what they were fighting about or how they did so.
There is endless mystery in our past and I wish we could see even a glimpse of it.
Given the amount of hatred and racism humans have for out-groups within that tiny variation of 0.1%, I’m not surprised we murdered everyone else. Except for the individuals we fucked.
I’m not surprised that we fucked them to extinction.
I dunno, we already have so much diversity to offer on our own and we treat it as a mundane world.
"Acquiring a large body and large brain and becoming clever is not necessarily our destiny,”
I would bet good money that they were just as smart and clever as other humans of their time. It isn’t like shorter people are less intelligent than taller people.
Except the Belgians of course
Article spoilers: previously believed to be 1m/3.2ft average height, adjusted down 2.4 inches - just under 3 feet average.
It would be so cool if humans were like 50% our current size. Same proportions and whatnot, just smaller everything.
Could make farmland and resources go so much further. So many less trees to build a house, or space to build a neighbourhood and road network.
In other (fake) news, dragons existed and drinking a cup of motor oil a day is actually good for you!
