Fellow Anthropologists: Where do we stand on Homo Floresiensis?

Question

I graduated college with a degree in Anthropology in 1997. I am not working in that field though. I have gotten a little rusty. What's the best data and current data on Homo Floresiensis?

Answer 1

I am an amateur anthropologist.  I read Moorewood's book a few months ago.  It is very compelling.  I think it is pretty certain that floresiensis is a rather primitive hominid probably descended from H. georgicus or H. habilis (or both).  The arguments for her being a microencephalic are ridiculous in my opinion.  There are other fossil specimens that match her and they have features of primitive Homo.  I am eager to for them to find other evidence.  In addition, the stories of historic sightings are extremely interesting in that they match the fossils very well.

Note:

Peter Brown, a world renowned paleontologist and the one that named H. floresiensis at first thought that she came from Homo erectus but later acknowledged that he thought he was mistaken.  It made more sense that she had smaller bodied ancestors.  If you read Moorewood's book, the discoverer of floresiensis, I think you could only conclude that the small bodied ancestor he was refering to was H. georgicus which may be very closely related to H. habilis.  I think the island theory was more popular with those that were less familiar with the fossil and the resemblence to the species I just mentioned.  Peter Brown seemed  somewhat reluctant to discuss it because of the "out of africa" crowd that tends to attack all evidence that doesn't point toward Africa.

Answer 2

.If it's not human it's ape

Answer 3

I'm not an anthropologist, but you'll find the latest thinking here:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/bein...

Some of th links are to stuff you can't se without subscribing, but others are to free stuff.

Answer 4

Last I saw, it's thought to be a isolated Homo Erectus species that underwent insular dwarfism. Their brain to body mass was slightly more than Homo Erectus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_dwar...

It's belived Homo Erectus could manage primitive rafts, and they are believed to have reached the island about 100,000 years ago..  There's still some bickering as to whether they are really a new species.