Homo Floresiensis Hypothesis

754 Words2 Pages

LB-1 is name of the Homo floresiensis adult fossil, who was shorter than average human today. LB-1 fossil was discovered in Liang Bua, a cave on island of Flores in Indonesia. Generally Homo floresiensis are referred to as dwarf human with an average height being about 3.5 ft. Also, this is how they’ve earned the nickname “hobbit.”
Homo floresiensis brain, prior to this paper, was estimated to be about 380 to 430 cc (cubic centimeters), which is very small. Reasons for such small brain size have been greatly debated. There are two main hypothesis. First of them is that an ancestor Homo erectus, whose brain is approximately 1000 cc, wandered onto the island Flores, and his descendants underwent brain shrinkage. Second hypothesis is that Homo floresiensis is directly descended from smaller-brained species like Homo habilis ( about 600 cc) or …show more content…

floresiensis. Some hypothesize that H. floresiensis originated from H. erectus, while others hypothesize origin from H. habilis or Australopithecus, but there is no conclusive evidence to prove these hypotheses. Given that most of findings prior to this study indicate possibility that it was particularly Indonesian H. erectus and not general H. erectus that is hypothetical ancestor to H. floresiensis. They’ve taken ECV and femoral head diameter (FHD) for 20 chrono-regional groups of Holocene H. sapiens worldwide. Then, they’ve predicted ECV values after simulated body size reduction in two speculated ancestors to H. floresiensis, which are H. habilis and Indonesian H. erectus. Males and females were analysed separately. The male data showed that if a body of H. habilis reduced to the size of LB1, then ECV would be 447-449cc, which is 11-12% larger than the measured ECV of 426 cc. If a body of the earliest Indonesian H. erectus reduced to that of LB1, then ECV would be 522-58

Open Document