John C. and I leave in another day or 2 (Whenever my bags arrive with my equipment. Bloody airline!) to investigate a Wall Street Journal article by David P. Hamilton about Dr. Richard Roberts' find on Flores. We chose it because we are both archaeologist, and want to some have fun once in awhile. Luckily, for us, the Lazlo Society does have an interest.
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Archaeologists sifting through the remains of pygmy elephants and Komodo dragons may have also turned up evidence of humanity's newest cousin -- skeletal remains of a previously unknown species of short-statured people who lived on the Indonesian island of Flores as recently as 18,000 years ago.
Last year, an Indonesian-Australian team of archaeologists on Flores unexpectedly unearthed a partial skeleton of a person who appeared to be about three feet tall, with a skull roughly the same size as that of a chimpanzee.
Initially, the team assumed it to be a child's remains, but further analysis of the skeletal teeth and bones indicated that they most likely belonged to an adult woman. The excavation team quickly nicknamed the skeleton "Hobbit," after the pint-size race featured in "The Lord of the Rings," and later decided it represented an entirely new human species.
The find, described yesterday in two papers in the journal Nature, holds the potential to upend scientific understanding of humanity's evolutionary history. The new species -- dubbed Homo floresiensis, or "Man of Flores" -- appears to have lived much more recently than any other close human relative. Neanderthals, the next most-contemporaneous relative to modern humans, became extinct roughly 30,000 years ago.
Some members of the team speculate that the Flores people might even have coexisted with modern humans, citing folk tales of "little people" on the island. "The stories suggest there may be more than a grain of truth to the idea that they were still living on Flores up until the Dutch arrived in the 1500s," says Richard "Bert" Roberts, an archaeologist at the University of Wollongong in Australia.
Equally intriguing is what the Flores fossils might reveal about the surprisingly elastic capabilities of human evolution. Over time, close relatives to modern humans have generally grown larger bodies and brains, and exhibited more complex behavior, anthropologists say.
The Flores people, by contrast, appear to have shrunk in both stature and brain size over time, perhaps as an adaptation to the scarcity of food and other resources on their isolated island. That, at least, is the working hypothesis of the discovery team, which noted structural similarities between the "hobbit" skeleton and those of other -- but much larger -- early humans known to have lived throughout Asia.
As a result, anthropologists believe Homo floresiensis shows just how drastically humans can evolve, given the right environmental conditions. "If you didn't know any better and looked at a wolf, who'd know you could breed from its genome everything from a Chihuahua to a Great Dane?" asks Milford Wolpoff, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Michigan. "What this shows is that [the same sort of variation] is all there in our genetics."
The Flores find may also spark some fresh controversies over the cognitive abilities of humans with such small brains. For instance, the discovery team argues in Nature that despite its small brain, Homo floresiensis appeared to use tools, make fire and hunt a primitive pygmy elephant called Stegodon.
"The association of these small-brained people with fairly advanced stone tools is completely unexpected," Peter Brown, a leader of the team from the University of New England in Australia, wrote in an e-mail interview. "This will, I think, result in a major reconsideration of what it is to be human."
Prior to the Flores discovery, the only known human relative with a comparable height and brain size was a species known as Australopithecus, an African plains-dweller thought to have died out two million years ago. The skull and other bones of the Flores skeleton differed from those of Australopithecus in significant ways, but turned out to be similar in other respects to those of Homo erectus, the first large-brained human cousin, common in Asia until about 50,000 years ago.
Eventually the researchers concluded that the "hobbit" skeleton was evidence of an entirely new species, possibly one that had diverged from Homo erectus sometime in the previous 100,000 years or so. The idea fit with previous evidence that early humans had lived on Flores roughly 840,000 years ago.
Furthermore, scientists knew that large mammals such as elephants and rhinoceroses often "dwarfed" over time when isolated on tropical islands, presumably because smaller, less energetic individuals were more likely to survive in environments with limited food. Such dwarfing hadn't previously been seen in humans, although some anthropologists think a similar factor may explain African pygmies and other short-statured indigenous tribes.
Some anthropologists, while acknowledging the importance of the discovery, still worry that the findings might collapse if the Flores woman turned out to have suffered from an aberrant form of dwarfism. Dr. Brown, one of the team's leaders, dismisses such concerns, noting that the researchers have since found remains of between five and seven individuals, primarily consisting of a complete lower jaw and several limb bones.
"All are from individuals of the same body size," Dr. Brown wrote in an e-mail. He said the Nature papers only described the team's findings from its September 2003 "field season," and doesn't include data from its recently completed September 2004 work.
Next Assignment...
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Lightning Plant
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Ron Caliburn
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We are to assist the Dr. (the FUN part!), document, look for objects of power and magic, scout out the island, and look out for things that are "said to be there".
Oh, and Ron...while that is true there is no evidence suggesting they are over 840,000 years ago. Sorry Chap!
The airline has called, they have located Mr. P's in Alaska...DON'T ASK! Though, this does give us 2 days to try to adapt to a new time zone and get a bloody tracking chip for our stuff.
Oh, and Ron...while that is true there is no evidence suggesting they are over 840,000 years ago. Sorry Chap!
The airline has called, they have located Mr. P's in Alaska...DON'T ASK! Though, this does give us 2 days to try to adapt to a new time zone and get a bloody tracking chip for our stuff.
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Ron Caliburn
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Ron Caliburn
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Oh I forgot, I found this one today:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1291341.htm
Hope it helps you with the Hobbitses.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1291341.htm
Hope it helps you with the Hobbitses.
PSC27 wrote:It was quite easy to resolve the dispute...Sweets are the faeries weaknesses. So, in order to get them to leave the ladies bee hives alone, We suggested she leave a cake on the edge of the woods with a letter basically saying: if you leave my bees alone and I will bake sweets for you, once a week.
That was a good route to take. My colleages would have probably suggested lots of salt. Oh, was there any evidence of Fairy Rings on the women's property?
The Silence holds the answer
Never forget.....nature adapts
Never forget.....nature adapts
Cipher wrote:PSC27 wrote:It was quite easy to resolve the dispute...Sweets are the faeries weaknesses. So, in order to get them to leave the ladies bee hives alone, We suggested she leave a cake on the edge of the woods with a letter basically saying: if you leave my bees alone and I will bake sweets for you, once a week.
That was a good route to take. My colleages would have probably suggested lots of salt. Oh, was there any evidence of Fairy Rings on the women's property?
Well, not actually on her property. However, in the Queen's (or what you would call government owned) woods that adjoined it; there most assuredly was! We got a call this morning, thinking us for our suggestion and told us that she got to meet them. And that she had a chance to explane to the little buggers (actually, she used the translation to of it; which I shall not use on here) why she didn't want them messing with her bee hive in the middle of winter. She said they had brought her a gift to try to make peace...a bottle of wine. Respectfully she excepted it, then when they were gone she mailed it to us, marked as faerie wine.
John and I have seen the remains of peoples homes who have tried to fight with the fae. Coming to an understanding and trying to make peace with the little blighters is the only way you can do it.
erg. Fairy wine. Um....thats some pretty potent stuff. That and the side effects it sometimes causes. I'd be careful with it. My grandpa always used to tell me "what what you eat when fairies are about". Then he'd start mumbling about frog's legs.
The Silence holds the answer
Never forget.....nature adapts
Never forget.....nature adapts
Cipher wrote:erg. Fairy wine. Um....thats some pretty potent stuff. That and the side effects it sometimes causes. I'd be careful with it. My grandpa always used to tell me "what what you eat when fairies are about". Then he'd start mumbling about frog's legs.
Yes, as did mine. Only it wasn't frogs legs, but with peanuts.
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Ron Caliburn
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Lightning Plant
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Ron Caliburn
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Ron, let us just say that it's something you REALLY do NOT (To the infinet power) want to eat or DRINK if you don't know about them. I don't have my grandfathers journal handy, it lists what he thought was all of the food and the effects there of. I can only recall 3 of them. Peanuts give the eater the trots every hour for 1 day per nut and it doesn't happen until an hour runs out or something like that. Uh, one on the wines make you do like Harry Potter's Aunt in the movie. And frog logs transforms ones legs into that of frogs. I am not 100% sure. It has been too long since I read his journal.
Some, as I recall, can AT TIMES be are quite useful. But I have forgot what they were.
Some, as I recall, can AT TIMES be are quite useful. But I have forgot what they were.
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Ron Caliburn
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Joseph Darkhold
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Joseph Darkhold
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faerie food
Fairy food consists principally of things intended for human food, of which the elves take the substance, fruit, or benefit, leaving the semblance or appearance to men themselves. In his manner they take cows, sheep, goats, meal, sowens, the produce of the land, … Cattle falling over rocks are particularly liable to being taken by them, and milk spilt in coming from the dairy is theirs by right. They have, of food peculiar to themselves and not acquired from men, the root of silver weed (brisgein), the stalks of heather (cuiseagan an fhraoich), the milk of the red deer hinds and of goats, weeds gathered in the fields, and barleymeal. The brisgein is a root plentifully turned up by the plough in spring, and ranked in olden times as the `seventh bread'. Its inferior quality and its being found underground, are probably the cause of its being assigned to the Fairies.
Faeries are often portrayed in Western children’s stories as tiny, winged, and good hearted. However, this description varies widely from worldwide folk traditions in which beliefs concerning hidden races sharing the earth with us have resided for most of human history.
Within different regions different descriptions of faeries grew, all were more or less human in form although sometimes taller or shorter, but never bearing wings. Much of their behaviour was much like humans as well; they had governments, societies, marriages, children, and war. They were often mortal and therefore, could be killed. However, unlike humanity, they had supernatural powers, which made them, at best, unpredictable and at worst, dangerous. Few people sought out the company of faeries and most went out of the way to avoid it.
Faeries are often portrayed in Western children’s stories as tiny, winged, and good hearted. However, this description varies widely from worldwide folk traditions in which beliefs concerning hidden races sharing the earth with us have resided for most of human history.
Within different regions different descriptions of faeries grew, all were more or less human in form although sometimes taller or shorter, but never bearing wings. Much of their behaviour was much like humans as well; they had governments, societies, marriages, children, and war. They were often mortal and therefore, could be killed. However, unlike humanity, they had supernatural powers, which made them, at best, unpredictable and at worst, dangerous. Few people sought out the company of faeries and most went out of the way to avoid it.
rainbow, fruit flavers
Well, I have some good news to report...We found what we think to be power crystals high in P.P.E., so we know that magic played a part in their lives, maybe even led to them and the other animals being small. Who knows? How much P.P.E. is rather hard to get an exact reading with our equipment. They were found in a cave, along with several skeletons of "hobbits" and animals, and what looked like the remains of one VERY large lizard. It is unlike anything we've seen before. I am taking a bone back with us to study. John is not feeling well. He said his I.S.P. is not recovering here. We shall be returning to England early, I fear.
