Homo floresiensis

Oh please, Mike. You know better than this. Why is it every time some new discovery occurs in anything, all the creationists immediately jump to the conclusion that evolution is dead? Assuming the identification is borne out, I think this might be the neatest thing to happen since the discovery of Australopithicus afarensis. In spite of journalistic hyperbole to the contrary, this find may represent a different species of human - not a putative ancestor. I'm really excited to realize that there were three species of Man living contemporaneously within the last 50,000 years. It doesn't overturn human evolution - it provides even more evidence for it. Facetious commentary aside, how does this call into question dating methods? Oh good grief. Did you even read the article? They've found the remains of seven different individuals. As to the dating discrepency, there are any number of explanations - from contamination to a 5000-year-long continuous occupation of the site. As more studies are conducted, the dates will undoubtedly be refined. Happens ALL THE TIME. That's how science works. Or rather seven human children. And if it's an undescribed species of ape, then it's going to be the most advanced ape anyone ever found. After all, the remains were found with chipped stone tools. And the ape classification would be even MORE devastating to the creationists - after all, this would mean humans aren't the only species to develop worked tools. So much for the great divide between ape and human, hunh?

Au contraire, the answer to your question is simple: I define Man (note the capital "M"), as "any member of the genus Homo". In this I follow the standard taxonomic categorization. It's an inclusive, vice exclusive, viewpoint. Now, YOU define "kind", and explain what the basis for your exclusionary definition is. Nice try. Hey, there's actually a legitimate question in your post. I'm impressed. Although I'm going to have to speculate a bit, since I haven't read the original literature to know what all the data is on this particular species (IOW, the details on why they decided on the Homo genus), I think I can make a case as to why this provides evidence of evolution:1. The profile fits with geographic isolation leading to allopatric speciation.2. Morphology (what few details have been released), indicates that the samples are most closely related to H. erectus, an acknowledged precursor of H. sapiens. However, there are substantial differences in the shape of the skull, let alone size, which makes classification difficult - and makes them not simply aberrant erectus either. The skull apparently does not resemble any fossil or modern ape. It will be interesting to see what the final classification is - if it's not Homo, then we have an even more fascinating example of convergent evolution - some other primate from another lineage developed intelligence (tools, fire, evidence of cooked food). As a creationist, you better PRAY that it's classified as genus Homo - because otherwise your entire worldview about humanity's privileged place in God's creation has just been obliterated.3. Nanism (dwarfism) is one of the two likely outcomes of long isolation on islands. Examples include Elephas falconeri, an elephant the size of a pony from Sicily, and Stegodon sondaari, another pony-sized elephant relative from Flores itself. It is well within the realms of evolutionary theory that an isolated population of early erectus or other hominid got to Flores, found things to their liking, and lived there for anywhere up to a million years or more up to the present. In the absence of predators and due to chronic food shortage, dwarfism could have been the result.Anyway, you get the picture. Once the final reports are published, we should have a lot more info to go on. As a forewarning, it will be a hotly contested classification - but remember that everyone outside creationist circles arguing this subject will simply be arguing over the details of evolution - not the fact. Why is it that you have such a difficult time accepting that there were multiple species of human? If H. floresiensis does finally get classed as human, we'll have THREE different human species living at the same time (if not at the same location): floresiensis, neanderthalensis, and sapiens. I can't imagine anything neater than that. Doesn't it thrill you to know we're (or at least weren't) not alone?Now, having disposed of your quibbles, please address the substance of my post - which you completely ignored.

Thanks PaulK. I agree. I thought of putting something along those lines in as one of my points. However, I remembered just in time that we're talking to people who deny that 95-98% genetic homology (say between Pan troglodytes and Homo sapiens) means the two are even remotely related. As an aside, I think it's enormously fitting that this newest find occurred in Indonesia: the island archipelago where Wallace independently "discovered" natural selection and evolution using just this kind of close relationship among species on different islands. Whittaker is right: "...islands, being discrete, internally quantifiable, numerous, and varied entities, provide us with a suite of natural laboratories, from which the discerning natural scientist can make a selection that simplifies the complexity of the natural world, enabling theories of general importance to be developed and tested." (Whittaker, RJ 1998, "Island Biogeography: Ecology, Evolution and Conservation", Oxford Uni Press, pg 1).

I just (well, a couple of weeks ago) finished reading it for the third or fourth time. It's one of my favorites, even tho' some of his conclusions may be questionable (f'rinstance the dodo-tambalacoque linkage is disputed). However, his writing style is incredible. The description of the death of the last dodo never fails to move me - lyrical, almost poetic, and infinitely sad. I can't imagine any creationist ever reading that book (among others) and not becoming convinced of both evolution and what we humans, with our God-given dominance over nature, are losing.

Why is it that you're always ignoring the substance of my posts to focus on the tangential? That could get irritating fairly quickly there, Mike. Really? I didn't know Noah spoke Sanskrit. Learn something new every day. Certainly the Indo-European root of the modern word "man" comes from the Sanskrit "manu", although I thought "manus" was Latin for hand. However, we were discussing the scientific classification of the species, not some religious myth. In any case, you don't really want to go down the Noah road unless you're prepared to deal with the lack of genetic markers in all humans from the extreme population bottleneck he represents. Wrong thread for that. Really? That's nice. Of course, you have just loads of objective evidence to indicate that this bare assertion has some support? Again, another thread. We're talking about a new hominid fossil species, right? But here, my friend, you run smack into the point I made earlier: if this critter ISN'T "man" in the sense I used the term originally, then the creationists are dead in the water - even the "sort of" creationist you claim to exemplify. After all, the evidence indicates the species was tool using, used fire, lived communally, etc. I.e., was intelligent. Unless God made TWO intelligent creatures, you've got a problem. Another good question. Are you limiting yourself to one good question per post, or something?As an answer (and I'm speculating a lot here), I would say if it's not classed as Homo, then we have another tool-making-and-using primate that evolved seperately. Convergent evolution, as I noted in my previous post. Obviously, its relationship to our species would then be "cousin" at best - like the chimp. A very, very human-level intelligent chimp. As to the morphology, that's one of the strong indicators the species is closely related to ours, possibly as an off-shoot of erectus. If it's shown that the species isn't an offshoot of our line, then convergent evolution - two species developing similar responses to similar environments - is the most likely. Not really "coincidence" as we usually use the term.

Okay, Mike. You just need to remind me occasionally with a simple phrase stating you either accept or don't want to rebut something I said. Otherwise it appears you're ignoring the most important bits. After all, we're communicating through a medium that doesn't lend itself to interpretation of body language, etc. As the saying goes, "You say what you mean and mean what you say." (With a nod and tip-o'-the-hat to WT). I'd say "certainly" a(nother) problem with Genesis. Your approach is admirable, although after this much time on EvCforum I'm surprised you still think there may be something to Genesis in the first place...On the "one intellgent being": I think you're right. I don't remember anything in the Bible that explicitly limits God-given intelligence to humans, although that's definitely the interpretation the fundamentalists use. I think I'd quibble with your "most intelligent" caveat, however. Intelligence is a continuum, and defining "most" is subjective and anthropocentric. We certainly have developed the most toys, but I'm not sure what that implies for the capacity for intelligence. More of a philosophical argument, IMO. In any event, I would certainly classify tool and fire using/making, cooperative societies as "intelligent". Too bad we can't make them take a Turing Test or something. Well, whether they talked (as we understand it) or not is not a question that probably could ever be answered. It appears from what's been published that they were cooperative, so obviously they had to communicate effectively. How much and how complicated these communications were is probably unanswerable at this remove. As to brain capacity - don't forget that in addition to what RAZD mentioned on surface area, the key to "brain power" is the brain-body ratio - not the mere size of the brain. Tiny tool-makers obviously had the intelligence to not only make relatively complicated tools, but pass on the learning to subsequent generations. This is the key difference between human-level intelligence and say chimp-level: chimps use tools, and can even modify them to be more appropriate for the task and pass on the knowledge laterally (through imitation), but apparently have to reinvent them each time. Humans don't.

And in this, we have absolutely no disagreement. Read as a parable or allegory, it's a pretty neat chapter although I think Revelations is much more fun - appeals to my love of fantasy stories, I guess. And yeah, the literalists are really toast on this one, pretty much regardless of how the classification of these specimens plays out. We pretty much beat 'em all to the punch. Once we became the dominant critter, it's unlikely any other intelligent critter was able to compete effectively, although it appears neanderthalensis co-existed with us for quite a while before finally giving up... Maybe they're the only ones that were able to give us a run for our money. H. floresiensis was waay too isolated to have had to compete with modern humans - possibly up until the very end. Well, therein lies the rub, as it were. We'll have to wait until the experts finish examining it. As Nosy pointed out, it does have supraorbital ridges, which is inconsistent with modern humans, but doesn't have the flat sides of erectus either. The teeth and jaws from the available photos don't appear to have any of the diagnostic characteristics of apes, and the chin appears hs vice erectus. As far as being a dwarf, sure why not? At least, in the sense of island isolation --> nanism. They've found some seven different specimens, all of which are consistent as to proportion, but I don't know how many skulls. I think she may be the most intact one found so far. I can't wait for the reports.

And in an interesting additional bit of speculation, one anthropologist seems to think the critter might be more closely related to the Australopithecines. Now wouldn't THAT be a kick? They were thought to have died out around 1.4 mya. Here's his blog/article.Oooh, this one's going to be fun...

I'm not sure how much credence to lend to the Australopithecine-descendent claim. The anthropologist in question is basing his suggestion on a couple of details that are IMO rather far from compelling. His principal point is something along the lines of trying to correlate nanism in an island population with "loss of intelligence". IOW, a "smart" H. erectus whose body got proportionately smaller over the generations due to the known selection pressures that create nanism on islands would of necessity lose intellectual capacity (for things like tool-making and fire, etc). Since "brain power" loosely speaking is related not so much to size (although there appears to be an absolute limit somewhere), but rather to brain-body ratio and brain complexity, I think he's making pure speculation on little evidence. He maintains that it is more likely that a derived Australopithecine, who were roughly the same size as the new specimen, maintained or even increased intelligence that would have been lost in a "reduced" erectus. Again, there's no evidence that would indicate nanism equates to loss of capability in any other organism that has undergone this type of size reduction, so why it would apply to floresiensis and no other critter is beyond me.

This is true. Which is why, in point of fact, that there continues to be some discussion on reclassifying at least the two species of Pongids as hominids. If we are simply looking at genetic distance, then there is some validity to the classification of Homo troglodytes. However, there is also some validity to making the current classification system stick - ex. Homo spp are all obligate bipedal, have substantially greater brain/body ratios and neurological complexity than our nearest genetic relatives, fashion tools designed for more than one-time useage, etc. IOW, a case can be made that Homo spp represent a unique ecomorph and are justifiably classified in their own genus. At what point (or even if) we draw the line depends on what we're measuring, IMO. I honestly haven't settled on an opinion one way or the other - although I lean to the reclassification based on genetics.

Hey bencip! Let me add my welcome to EvCForum. The issue is the "current classification scheme", based on morphology mostly, is being rapidly replaced by cladistics, which strives to come closer to the actual evolutionary relationship between different species, with a given clade representing the last common ancestor and all descendents. I think that cladistics probably in general provides a closer match with reality than the "old" style of taxonomy. However, The Great D put his/her finger directly on one of the more unusual and recent problems with cladistics: Class Reptilia is polyphyletic, and hence is invalid. If we go by the way cladistics is supposed to work, then just about everything from crocodilians to birds to shrews to monkeys to humans falls under Reptilia - as reptiles were everybody's last common ancestor. Cladists have thus had to invent new terms (such as Eutheria, Afrotheria, etc) to fix this and similar problems. However, we still use "Reptilia" and "Aves", for example, in "common useage" or perhaps as working terms because they are familiar, I guess.As to your comment concerning our current inability to map genetics to phenotype (which is what I assume you meant by "functional abilities"), I don't disagree with you. This is one of the main critiques of re/classification based solely on genetic distance. OTOH, genetics does at least provide a quantitative (vice interpretative morphology) basis for classifying different organisms - something that has been sadly lacking in taxonomy since Linnaeus. It's still early in the game. I consider the state of play to be analogous to the state of play of ecology back when MacArthur and Wilson developed the first mathematical model for ecology in the '70s - it might be incomplete or flawed, but at least it places things on a solid theoretical footing rather than the ad hoc way things have been done up to now.

Outstanding work, Andya. Thanks.I think the controversy points to another example in the long, long list of unpleasent and occasionally vituperative relations between hominid specialists (c.f., Leakey-Johannson). I'm just glad I "grew out" of my youthly desire to become a paleoanthropologist. I don't even think the controversy over Margulis' extreme endosymbiosis theories was this nasty.On the details Prof. Jacob provided - the microcephaly etc are logical explanations only to an extent. On the one hand, it is entirely possible (and even likely) that severe inbreeding depression in a highly isolated population could cause and reinforce genetic disorders of the nature Prof. Jacob suggests. On the other hand, I find it difficult to credence that such a population could have survived for any length of time if the majority of the members suffered from mental retardation or other inbreeding-caused genetic problems of this magnitude. Has the professor provided any further details on how this could be?

Any additional info would be greatly appreciated.I agree we'll have to wait for Prof. Jacob's team report. Not an unusual situation - how long did we have to wait for Thewison's stuff on Pakicetus? Years! He dribbled it out over a decade, and jealously guarded his bones until he could milk the finds for all they were worth. Understandable, if somewhat irritating for those of us awaiting the results...I can understand Prof. Jacob's desire to counterattack his critics in the open press, although I find the whole situation an unpleasant way of doing science. Note, I don't blame Prof. Jacobs - I just don't like the way things get done in that field in general.