The discovery in 2003 of the remains of the Flower Man in Liang Bua, a cave on an Indonesian island, sparked a great controversy among scientists about its possible origin and various hypotheses were raised. The possibility that it was a dwarf Homo sapiens was even raised. But a new study published in the Journal of Human Evolution points in another direction. According to the Australian National University researchers who have carried out the research, Homo floresiensis , also called a hobbit because of its short stature, was probably a species related to Homo habilis , one of the hominin species that lived in Africa 1,750 ago .000 years . It does not seem possible, according to this study, that Homo floresiensis evolved from Homo erectus , the only other hominid whose remains have been found in the area, specifically on the Indonesian island of Java.
Debbie Argue, the researcher at the Faculty of Archeology and Anthropology of the Australian university who led the study, confirms that the examination of the bones clearly indicates that Homo floresiensis was a species very close to Homo habilis , with which it must surely have shared a common ancestor . Argue believes that either this common ancestor of Homo habilis ” evolved in Africa and then migrated, or it left Africa and then evolved into Homo floresiensis elsewhere .” Homo floresiensis lived on Flores and still existed as such a mere 54,000 years ago.
While previous studies on the Flower Man had focused primarily on the skull and lower jaw, the new research analyzed 133 features in the skull, jaws, teeth, arms, legs, and shoulders . As a result of this exploration, Argue believes that the theory that Homo floresiensis evolved from Homo erectus cannot be sustained: “all the evidence says that this theory is not viable.” There are even traits of Homo floresiensis , such as the structure of the jaw, that are more primitive than those of Homo erectus .
It doesn’t seem to make sense that the Homo erectus jaw evolved into a more primitive form. In addition, the new study indicates that the Flower Man must have separated earlier in the evolutionary trunk, more than 1.75 million years ago. If this were the case, ” Homo floresiensis would have evolved before the first Homo habilis , which would make it very old,” concludes Argue. According to Mike Lee of the Museum of South Australia, ” we can be 99% sure that Homo floresiensis is not related to Homo erectus and 100% that it is not a deranged or deformed Homo sapiens .”
Credit: KATRINA KENNY / SA MUSEUM
