Recently a study of the cranial bones using high tech scans concluded that Flores Man is not Homo Sapiens but could be Homo Erectus or a new species.
Homo Erectus lived in Indonesia and other places but was believed extinct at least 143,000 years ago.
Now the discovery of fossils on the island of Flores has cast doubt on whether a dwarf form of Erectus existed into recent times.
The views of palaeoanthropologists regarding human evolution have changed a lot recently with new fossil finds around the world.
One of the most unexpected and controversial new finds was the discovery of dwarf fossils in a cave on the island of Flores. These had survived into modern times it seems and even perhaps into the nineteenth century from local anecdotes.
The team was not looking for such a creature, they were trying to trace our own species movements in prehistory, and the discovery of the short skeleton was a complete surprise.
Some hailed it as a dwarf form of Homo Erectus, some as a new species and some as a dwarf form or a diseased form of Homo Sapiens.
Recent work tends towards it being a new species and not a diseased human of our species or of Homo Erectus. The question is not definitely agreed yet, with new studies frequently contradicting each other.
However even the dwarf Erectus idea is giving way to the obvious conclusion from the beginning, that Flores Man is really for want of a better name a type of Australopithecus.
It may have originated in Asia, but if it did evolve in Africa it probably went around the globe around two million years ago,
perhaps a million years before the bigger Homo Erectus is thought to have left Africa.
Actually many are now wondering if Erectus itself evolved in Asia itself, possibly from the ancestors of Floresiensis.
A recent study at ANU in Canberra using a large amount of data has come to the conclusion that infact it is not descended from Homo Erectus at all, but is a sister species of the earlier and smaller Homo Habilis.
It seems Homo Habilis or a closely related earlier species migrated from Africa perhaps around two million years ago. This theory seems very compelling, and fits in with the obvious evidence from the beginning.
Of course it might have originated in Asia for all we know, our knowledge of what really happened in the past is pretty limited.
For example they have found a clay tablet now in Iraq which details the rebuilding of a huge seven stepped Ziggurat in Babylon around 600 BC by Nebuchadnezzar the Second, in which he explains that he brought workers from all around the known world to help build the enormous building. There would have been language problems of course.
Although this is not really the origin of the Tower of Babel Story in the Bible, which actually relates to events at the end of the last Ice Age, it does show that a single chance find throws light onto something which otherwise is unknown or only dimly known, such as the rebuilding of the top layer of the Babylonian Ziggurat with foreign workers by the king.
Obviously the real seven storey tower in Babylon did not reach up into the clouds as in the Bible story, but the point is that without written evidence we simply do not know most of what went on even in 600 BC let alone millions of years ago.
Apart from mainly chance finds we are in the dark about human evolution and even far more recent human history, even in literate societies of the 600 BC period.
Other species outside of Africa may well be found for all we know.
EBU Gogo stories on Flores
Indeed the widespread Ebu Gogo stories on Flores also make it clear that their behaviour does not fit in well with something like the more evolved Homo Erectus anyway. It would fit in better with Homo Habilis or a similar species, even the size and gait described in the Ebu Gogo stories do not fit with Homo Erectus.
So as is often overlooked we already have detailed eyewitness descriptions of Homo Habilis type living habits and skills from the Flores stories.
Of course other evidence including a Japanese study of the teeth considered they were a close match for the teeth of Homo Erectus. Perhaps the ancestors of Homo Floresiensis were also the ancestors of Homo Erectus.
On the whole I still would be cautious of coming to definite conclusions, there seems to be evidence in so many directions that we should keep an open mind even now about what exactly Flores man is and how it evolved and migrated to Flores and when!
I think the theories of it being Pre Erectus are quite convincing, based on the morphology, but the past 13 years since it's discovery have thrown up so many surprises that we should be wary of making too many ironclad conclusions.
This discovery on Flores has turned our previous ideas on their head, showing how little we really know and how silly are the fixed ideas from textbooks that we refuse even to question, particularly in so called "scientific circles". These circles often seem to think more like the Spanish Inquisition than scientists, accusing anyone out of step as heretics.
A DNA study of the well known pygmy sized people who still live on Flores in some villages such as Rampasasa might be worthwhile, incase some trace of Erectus DNA or other DNA is found that might tie them however tenuously to Flores Man. Of course Flores Man and Homo Erectus DNA would be needed first.
Science is bedevilled by things like competition for funds and honours, jealousy and personality clashes just as much as any other field of human action, and this has been obvious in the Flores Man controversy.
Various people espouse specific theories about human evolution, which then tend to get set in concrete in textbooks and it is seen almost as a heresy to challenge those theories.
Actually we know very little about human evolution, yet whole theories are constructed on the basis of a few bones.
This may partly explain the intense disagreements about Flores Man. Some cannot accept that the accepted paradigm is suddenly turned on it's head.
Recent work suggests that Flores man might have been on Flores for at least a million years, another fact hard to fit in with Out of Africa theories or single place of evolution ideas so popular in the last few decades.
Flores Man stood it seems about three feet high and some feel it could be a species of Australopithecus, familiar from Raymond Dart's work in South Africa. Its brain size is similar to a Chimpanzee, but brain size can be very misleading, it is not the whole story about capability and intelligence.
Infact a parrot has learned over 200 words of English and in many computer tests Chimpanzees score better than university students, especially in more visually based tests.
Probably because we wish to exploit them, we have become arrogant towards animals but in past times they were understood better and were more respected. So called modern science has a lot to answer for!
The discoverers of Flores Man included Mike Morwood whose team named it Homo Floresiensis, possibly a bit prematurely as since then controversy has raged on as to whether it is a new species at all.
Many have been convinced it is a form of cretinism or other rare disease such as genetic Laron syndrome that accounts for it's unusual size and morphology.
Others feel it is a dwarf form of Homo Erectus, dwarfed by living on an island with limited food supplies, but if so then it means Homo Erectus survived possibly into modern times, another controversial idea for many.
Stories on Flores of the Ebu Gogo people, dwarf language poor folk living in caves, may infact be memories of Flores Man. The earliest Portugese explorers also reported these sightings. If so then Flores man was alive and kicking at least until four hundred years ago. Infact some villagers on Flores claim that the last Ebu Gogo were deliberately killed in the 17th century.
However I think the Ebu Gogo legends may date from tens of thousands of years ago, people underestimate how long a story can be handed down. When our species arrives anywhere older and weaker species seem to get killed off pretty quickly. But on Flores the two species may have been more symbiotic for various ecological reasons, so perhaps the Ebu Gogo survived into modern times.
This idea of survival into modern times seems unsettling to many, but there are strong indications from oral legends on Flores that they were finally killed off in the 17th century and Portugese sailors also seem to have seen them from early reports. This tends to be ignored by many writers who baldly state that they died out 50,000 years ago. This is another example of only being willing to believe (or even seriously consider) whatever fossils were found so far.
If our species killed them off it might have taken a very long while, and as some have suggested they might have lived for a long time in some sort of symbiotic relationship with Homo Sapiens on Flores.
As I said earlier, opinion seems to be moving towards the new species idea, and away from both the dwarf Erecus hypothesis and the cretinism etcetera theories. This is partly based on studies of the wrist and arm bones that seem closer to Chimpanzee and Australopithecus bones, this rather rules out the human pathology explanation for Flores man.
Infact when the bones were first examined by a specialist Flores Man was to be put into a new Australopithecus genus originally, but the specialist who wanted that was "talked out of it" by his esteemed colleagues! No doubt too many academic feathers would have been ruffled.
However if Flores Man had been unearthed in Africa it would immediately have been put into the same groups as Australopithecus or Homo Habilis, so much for objective science. Of course the late date would have amazed people, and created some controversy, but it would not have created the ten years of absurd attempts to see it as a dwarf or diseased Sapiens or a dwarf Erectus.
A new study in 2014 has claimed that Downs Syndrome accounts for the original skeleton of Flores Man being so unusual. However the study emanates from a group that again and again has come up with pathology explanations for Flores Man and been proved wrong, and from a group that nominates it's own peer reviewers so the study is dubious on several counts. People who disbelieve in the theory of evolution anyway seem to be involved in some of these pathology explanation studies.
The evidence generally seems more likely to support the new species theory, with the species closer to Chimpanzee morphology in several respects and thus pre Erectus/Ergaster
in overall type.
On the other hand recent dental studies seem to indicate the teeth are very similar to Erectus but also with significant differences such as four cusps instead of five. Recent scans of the skull indicate Flores Man is definitely not Homo Sapiens but could be Homo Erectus.
The whole saga of Flores Man is confusing so far, maybe the incredibly high cost of dental bills just as in modern Australia could have been the reason Flores Man went extinct in the first place!
Actually I feel it is still too early to be at all certain which theory is correct about Flores Man. Perhaps the microcephalic or cretinism human theory will prove correct in the end, although various evidence is contradicting it.
However so far its discovery has stimulated research and advances in several fields of knowledge because of the intense interest and competitiveness involved.
Several established theories have been put under the microscope with the discovery of Homo Floresiensis including ideas on dwarfism, the capacities early hominids such as their ability to travel long distances and the nature of intelligence.
Basically its discovery shows how misguided we are to build virtually unchallenged theories on previous discoveries without stressing how tentative those theories really are in the first place. What else is out there waiting to be found?
Recently the Denisovans were found and now Flores Man
has been found, neither even suspected to exist by most scientists until very recently.
If it is a new species then did it evolve on Flores or came from Africa or what? Is it Australopithecus of some sort? Is it Erectus and if so did it evolve locally or come from elsewhere? Fascinating stuff.
Actually 3 million years ago Elephants migrated out of Africa so why not Australopithecus? The only reason is that they were not found before!
Dwarf forms of other animals existed on Flores such as the dwarf Stegodon elephant and other species. It seems too that the brain can shrink in such dwarf forms more than the body so Flores Man could be a Dwarf form of Erectus (more likely from the cranium) or of Homo Sapiens (ourselves).
The stone tools found with Flores Man also seem to fit into the human toolkit we already know, a telling point in favour of it being a dwarf homo sapiens after all. However this could just indicate that Homo Sapiens also used the cave in some periods.
In spite of their small brain Flores Man seems to have had cooperative hunting and made use of fire, maybe other indications that it is really is Homo Sapiens or at least Erectus.
Or more likely that we seriously underestimate the capabilities of earlier hominids such as Australopithecus or Homo Habilis.
Underestimation of our ancestors and other species.
Many animals use tools, and these skills once learned are copied and handed down to the next generation by the parents,or by mimicry.
So an animal that had language, tools and the use of fire would easily have learned how to cross rivers on logs, then moved to making some sort of raft and then perhaps even worked out how to hollow out a log as a sort of boat.
There seems nothing impossible about this, actually it seems entirely logical. So we do not need to believe they got to Flores or Sulawesi or a thousand other places by accident, such as being swept out on vegetation by a tsunami.
Infact rafts can be very capable of ocean navigation, as the Kon Tiki expedition in 1947 showed. Also by using simple Polynesian steering and buoyancy technology (such as simple adjustable center boards) a raft can weather huge storms and stay on course in spite of strong currents and other navigation challenges.
Even fish collecting underneath the raft could have provided food and drinkable water for long voyages. So Homo Habilis or the like could have gone around the world on rafts no problem at all.
They had at least rafts and possibly canoes of some sort, and probably already had them to some degree when they left Africa. If indeed they did evolve in Africa at all !!
Our underestimation of animals, including our own ancestors, is due to a desire to exploit them without our conscience getting in the way. Infact the difference between us and other animals is not as great as we imagine, we are just a logical extension of them.
Of course by gaining new abilities we have lost a lot of old ones, so earlier species would have had knowledge and direct perception of nature and its possiblities which were superior to ours in some respects.
Ongoing controversy.
As I say, the controversy may well not be totally solved yet. Some believe that the species could still exist in the forests of Sumatra (there are local legends of Orang Pendek which means short man) but I think this is extremely unlikely due to the overpopulation in Indonesia nowadays which has spread everywhere.
Still recent stories of sightings still come in from one of the more inaccessible National Parks on Sumatra so maybe it is not totally impossible that Australopithecus or something very like him/ her is still running around.
People love to believe that there are places where ancient species survive but they do not realise how humans have travelled to every nook and cranny in the globe with our tremendous overpopulation.
There are no Dinosaurs etcetera hidden away on this planet, if we are realistic. I think it is just possible maybe a small ape-man or dwarf Homo Erectus might still exist but very very unlikely.
It seems obvious that human evolution is more complex than we thought and other finds of new species may well emerge. DNA studies seem to show that at least four Homo species contributed to our DNA, Erectus, Neanderhals, Denisovans and another still unknown which might be Flores Man of course.
On the other hand DNA studies should also be treated with caution, recently it has been suggested our Neanderthal genes do not come from interbreeding between Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals but from our shared ancestry further back in time before Sapiens or Neanderthals even existed.
It is surprising that Flores Man types have not been found until now in other places away from Africa, but then it might have something to do with what you are expecting to find in the first place. Finds that do not fit in might well be explained away.
Of course it could also be that they only existed on Flores because they are Homo Erectus in a dwarf form because of island conditions such as lack of resources or even inbreeding.
Of course various giant types of Hominid have been found too such as Gigantopithecus and Meganthropus, and seem hard to fit in with general theories. Exactly how big they were is also disputed, it may have been mainly their teeth that were big, but some may have been really big, bigger than gorillas.
Are these giants separate from our evolutionary tree or very much part of it, and were they robust types of Erectus or robust types of Australopithecus or something else?
Some people have suggested Chimps, Apes and all Hominids including Australopithecus and others, should be all in one genus with us, and that may well be a good idea, as our uniqueness has been greatly exaggerated in the past.
Anyway Flores Man has really put the cat amongst the fossil pigeons and I think we have not heard the last of the arguments yet.
A strong contender to be Flores Man is our old friend Australopithecus, familiar from mid twentieth century fossil finds in South Africa.
But Flores Man may have evolved in Asia and gone to Africa for all we really know.
But Flores Man may have evolved in Asia and gone to Africa for all we really know.
Flores is a dry island at least nowadays, and it seems Flores Man had to live side by side with the Komodo Dragon, the largest living lizard.
A formidable predator, the Komodo lizard would have made life exciting for the three foot Flores guys.
Homo Habilis (whose skull appears below in the picture) now seems a likely close relative of Flores Man
and if it spread out of Africa two million years ago that is a big change to our previous understanding of human capabilities and history.
A formidable predator, the Komodo lizard would have made life exciting for the three foot Flores guys.
Homo Habilis (whose skull appears below in the picture) now seems a likely close relative of Flores Man
and if it spread out of Africa two million years ago that is a big change to our previous understanding of human capabilities and history.