More research is 'in' on the Indonesian 'hobbits', thought by many to be a different species of hominid. I know there has been an HP thread on this, but darned if a quick search could find it, under Science or Ancient Mysteries.
What particularly fascinated about this story in the previous thread is not only that the skeletal remains may be as recent as 8,000 years old, but also that people today claim to have seen small tribes of this hobbit species alive.
V
LOL - I heard this news on the radio yesterday and immediately thought of you, V! Only inasmuch as I remember how intrigued you were when the original story came out. IIRC you wanted to go to Indonesia to check it out. (Now wouldn't that be a great HP trip!) I do agree that the whole thing is really fascinating, I hope we find out more in the course of time.
xxx
There have been several HP threads on this topic, V, and of course I don't know what keywords you used for your search. I found several just from the word 'Flores' which featured early in your BBC link.
So just put that word in, and you don't need Advanced Search for this on specific forums, you should get a list of about half a dozen threads across the boards.
There's no point in my giving you a link to MY search results, because such links only work for the person actually doing the search, unfortunately, and it would give you an error message. 🙁 Try a search on Flores though 😉 🙂
Holistic
Hi Laura.
As you say, anyone can pick up more on this from the 'Flores' (the island) keyword. I just hadn't looked far-enough back in the respective forums. OMG 😮 ... tell me it's a software error! It seems like 12-18 months ago, but the threads are 2004-5!! Surely time doesn't pass so quickly?!
V
Hi guys,
Can I join in?
I have two observations about the BBC report.
The first concerns the size of the brains - if these were small people surely their cranial capacity (and therefore their brain size) would be small too?
I don't know, and only asking really.
The second concerns those feet. I'm on far less shakey ground here since I know a little about feet (I'm a Podiatrist) and I also did some (a very little) work in paleoanthropology a few years back.
Points:
1. The foot looks to be of normal size for a small hominid. To me the picture distorts the size so that it looks larger than it is.
2. The article talks about curved toe-bones, but there are none in the pic - that particular foot does not look as though it has curved toe-bones.
Curved toe-bones - which help with grip - are associated with a fossil skeleton called Lucy (which most interested parties will probably have heard of).
Just my thoughts.
David:)
Hi, David.
I think it's the whole picture here that's necessary, not just the latest report which is fragmentary and doesn't give a wider view. A number of complete skeletons have been found in a cave, several years back. A general search on the internet should reveal this more complete story. They are adult, but tiny.
But again, what fascinates perhaps more than anything is that a number of people on Flores have come forward, saying that they've actually encountered, or seen from a distance, these very small humanoids even in recent years, and alive in numbers. One thought he witnessed their death-rites, if I recall correctly, which involved casting a body out to sea (I'd have to remind myself exactly what was reported TBH). So the 8,000-year-old skeletons could just be the dead from among a remote and living race...
That's quite an amazing prospect.
Edit to add: Putting "flores hobbits" into Google in advanced mode pulls up hundreds of links. From that, I don't see anything however about them being seen today. Putting "flores hobbits seen alive" in does bring up some links, but still not the stories I recall from a few years back, from contemporary sightings. I didn't look too deeply though.
There is this:
V
Hi V,
I followed this story when it first hit the headlines. The discovery of the "hobbits" seemed to me to be strangely coincidental to the Lord of the Rings film on general release at that time. I guess it sounded better than the discovery of pygmy remains.
Its interesting, but how much is true, and how much is simply made up?
Cue for a visit:)?
Cheers,
David:)
Hi David.
Well, the link between the find, and the naming of the find, will just be that one of the films had recently been released (if one had). But the find is the find, and real enough.
Cue for a visit? That would be great, if only time and money allowed! It would hardly be done in a week or two. You know, quite apart from the people who actually say they've seen them, it seems unlikely to me that, if these beings were there as researchers believe even a million years ago, and then up to just 8,000 years ago, why would they suddenly be gone now?
Hmm, then again, the mammoth and the sabre tooth went somewhere around that time. And there's speculation that the mammoth, as well as the hobbit, were killed off by man. Maybe they'll remain another Bigfoot - which, as I've twice written about on these pages, mind you, a friend of mine actually encountered in the 1970s ...
V
Well, the link between the find, and the naming of the find, will just be that one of the films had recently been released (if one had). But the find is the find, and real enough.
Cue for a visit?
The film was called Return of the Hobbit or some-such - I forget now:D.
Re - the visit - go on, you know you want to!
David:)
The film was called Return of the Hobbit or some-such - I forget now:D.
Re - the visit - go on, you know you want to!
David:)
PM me then, and I'll give you my address to send the necessary finance to, to cover all costs while there's no other income! 😮 Thanks in advance!
More seriously, I just haven't taken the time, frankly, but must re-find the net links (probably even available by a simple search on HP) regarding people who've seen them, they say, in our generation.
Meanwhile, some things just get uncovered when fate dictates. Cryptozoology is the word. In just the last decade or so, UK Big Cats (pumas etc.) have progressed from being derided as myth to being an admitted feature of our nation. Meanwhile I actually know someone who encountered the Yeti, yet it remains scientifically unrecognised - for how long, I wonder? My point being that the hobbits may still exist but remain unrecognised as doing so for a fair old time yet. And what will modern man do to them when we find them?
V
PM me then, and I'll give you my address to send the necessary finance to, to cover all costs while there's no other income! 😮 Thanks in advance!
:D:D:D
I think the problem I have with these finds is that they are referred to as Hobbits.
Why not Umpaloompas, or Munchkins?
Why is is more likely that hobbits are real, but the other two are not?
No problem with Big Cats or Bigfoot BTW.
David:)
You should hear my pal tell his actual story of a yeti encounter! It's even more dramatic as it happened in the same day that he got snow-blind in the Himalayas, and was resigned that he would die (right after service in Vietnam). But the yeti didn't get him either - though apparently it wanted to. It was all very real, and he's an honest bloke, so I really do tend to believe these things are out there...
V
wow! this bbc article was quite interesting.....thanks for posting it. incredible!