In 2003, archaeologists looking for evidence of the migration of modern humans from Asia to Australia found a small and somewhat complete skeleton of an extinct human species on the Indonesian island of Flores, which became known as Man of flowers Or, as it became better known, o Hobbitafter the little creatures having breakfast by JRR Tolkein O Hobbit.
This species was initially thought to have survived until relatively recently, around 12,000 years ago, before further analysis pushes that date back to About 50,000 years. But a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta says evidence for the species’ continued existence may have been overlooked, and the hobbit may still be alive today, or at least in living memory.
In an opinion article on the world Promote your next book Between ape and manGregory Forth argues that paleontologists and other scientists have overlooked indigenous knowledge and accounts of “ape-men” living in Flores forests.
“My goal in writing the book was to find the best explanation – that is, the most rational and the best empirical support – of Lio’s accounts of creatures.” wrote in widget. This includes reports of sightings from over 30 eyewitnesses, with whom I spoke directly. I conclude that the best way to explain what I was told is that hominids have survived on Flores up to the present or more recently.”
He writes that the local folk zoology of the Lio people who inhabit the island contains stories about humans who turned into animals as they moved and adapted to new environments, a kind of LamarckO inheritance of acquired physical properties.
“As my fieldwork has revealed, these putative changes reflect local observations of similarities and differences between putative ancestral species and their distinct descendants,” he says.
Lio identifies these creatures as animals and they don’t have the complex language or technology that humans do. However, their curious resemblance to humans is noted.
“For Leo, the appearance of the ape-man as something non-human makes the creature anomalous and therefore problematic and disturbing,” Forth wrote.
At the moment the closest date we can definitely decide H. fluorescence Survival is still 50,000 years ago. But Forth insists that indigenous knowledge must be incorporated as we research hominid evolution.
He concludes: “Our initial instinct, I suppose, is to regard the ape-men of Flores as entirely fictional. But taking seriously what people say, I haven’t found any good reason to believe that.” “What they say about the creatures, supported by other types of evidence, is very consistent with the surviving hominid species, or a species that has only gone extinct in the last 100 years.”
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