Newswise — The December 2008 issue of Discover magazine included in its top 100 science stories of the year studies that back the “new species” theory of the 18,000-year-old hominid found on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2004. The discovery of Homo floresiensis, nicknamed the “the hobbit” because of its diminutive size and strikingly large feet, remains controversial and could lead to rewriting the story of human evolution. Stony Brook University paleoanthropologists William Jungers, Ph.D., and Susan Larson, Ph.D., are among the researchers who suggest the hobbit represents a different species of human.
In the a section titled “Smackdown Over Ancient ‘Hobbit’ Continues” – number 85 in the top 100 – Discover cites the findings of “Hobbit” researchers. Regarding the work of Dr. Jungers, the section notes that he “studied the foot of the hobbit and found it, true to its namesake, strikingly large relative to the size of the body, with very short big toes. Jungers argues that this foot structure links the hobbit to earlier hominids.”
Commenting on the significance of the hobbit foot and its distinction as part of a top science story of the year as described by Discovery, Dr. Jungers adds that “the hobbits are not tiny pathological humans, and this implies that we shared the earth with other human-like creatures until very recently.” He further explains that “together with other skeletal parts, the foot evidence indicates that either island dwarfing produced the hobbits from Asian Homo erectus, or that there was an earlier ‘Out of Africa’ migration of an ancient ancestor that resembled australopithecines in many respects.
Drs. Jungers, Distinguished Teaching Professor and Chair of the Department of Anatomical Sciences, and Larson, Professor of Anatomical Sciences, continue their research on the hobbit. Their anatomical findings on the foot, wrist, and shoulder of the Hobbit have appeared in scientific journals such as Science and the Journal of Human Evolution. Most recently, they have undertaken descriptions of all the postcranial material known for H. floresiensis, which are now available online in the Journal of Human Evolution.
Discover is one of the world’s leading popular science magazines. The content of the magazine includes topics in health and medicine, technology, the living world, and human origins. The citation of the Hobbit as a top science story of 2008 is online at http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jan/085.
The Department of Anatomical Sciences is one of 25 departments within the Stony Brook University School of Medicine. The department includes graduate and doctoral programs in Anatomical Sciences. Fields of study include research on human evolutionary anatomy, morphology and vertebrate paleontology. Many faculty members in the department are also participants in an interdepartmental graduate program in anthropological sciences that is recognized worldwide for its faculty and research strengths in functional morphology and human evolution.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
"Hobbit" Controversy Makes Top 100 Science Stories
Late Neandertals and Modern Human Contact in Southeastern Iberia
Newswise — It is widely accepted that Upper Paleolithic early modern humans spread westward across Europe about 42,000 years ago, variably displacing and absorbing Neandertal populations in the process.
However, Middle Paleolithic, presumably Neandertal, assemblages persisted for another 8,000 years in Iberia. It has been unclear whether these late Middle Paleolithic Iberian assemblages were made by Neandertals, and what the nature of those humans might have been.
New research, published Dec. 8 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is now shedding some light on what were probably the last Neandertals.
The research is based on a study of human fossils found during the past decade at the Sima de la Palomas, Murcia, Spain by Michael Walker, professor at Universidad de Murcia, and colleagues, and published by Michael Walker, Erik Trinkaus, professor of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, and colleagues.
The human fossils from the upper levels of the Sima de las Palomas are anatomically clearly Neandertals, and they are now securely dated to 40,000 years ago. They therefore establish the late persistence of Neandertals in this southwestern cul-de-sac of Europe. This reinforces the conclusion that the Neandertals were not merely swept away by advancing modern humans. The behavioral differences between these human groups must have been more subtle than the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic technological contrasts might imply.
In addition, the Palomas Neandertals variably exhibit a series of modern human features rare or absent in earlier Neandertals. Either they were evolving on their own towards the modern human pattern, or more likely, they had contact with early modern humans around the Pyrenees. If the latter, it implies that the persistence of the Middle Paleolithic in Iberia was a matter of choice, and not cultural retardation.
From the Sima de las Palomas, other late Neandertal sites, and recent discoveries of the earliest modern humans across Europe, a complex picture is emerging of shifting contact between behaviorally similar, if culturally and biologically different, human populations. We are coming to see them all more as people, flexibly making a living through the changing human and natural landscapes of the Late Pleistocene.
Artifacts, Documents Reveal Info About Those Columbus Met in Cuba
Newswise — Interpretations of a now defunct form of Spanish writing, in combination with a joint U.S.-Cuban archaeological effort, are granting researchers insight into the Cuban people who Christopher Columbus encountered on his first voyage to the “New World.”
During the two previous summers, an archaeological effort in eastern Cuba has recovered several thousand pottery and stone artifacts from the site of a former large native village, El Chorro de Maita. The effort is co-led by The University of Alabama and the Central-Eastern Department of Archaeology of the science ministry of Cuba and sponsored by the National Geographic Society. Roberto Valcarcel led the Cuban contingent.
Dr. Jim Knight, a UA professor of anthropology who set up and is advising the project, said the artifacts from the site, in combination with the research of documents archived in Spain, are shedding light on the early history of the Indians of Cuba.
“We should be able to put together a map of who was where – where the different towns and tribes were and which Spaniards were where and what they were up to,” Knight said. Handwritten documents originally produced by the early Spanish colonizers of Cuba recorded, as it were, some of the 16th-century “news of the day,” Knight said. On at least one occasion, a detailed inventory of the possessions of an early Spanish colonizer provides insight into 16th-century life. The researchers’ insight, however, doesn’t come without effort.
“It’s handwritten in a script that is barely recognizable as Spanish, even to a native speaker,” Knight said. Dr. John Worth, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of West Florida who is trained in interpreting the period’s writings, traveled to Spain to review the material and ordered relevant copies for further study. “Our hope is to correlate the documents with what we’re finding at the site,” Knight said.
The people Columbus encountered during his first voyage to northeastern Cuba in 1492 are known as Arawakan Indians. There is no concrete evidence, Knight said, that Columbus visited El Chorro de Maita, but this large village was occupied by Arawakans. There has been speculation since the 1940s, Knight said, that Columbus did visit the site. “That’s never been proven, but it’s in the right area,” he said.
The Arawakans of that day were of a similar level of sophistication, although quite different culturally, as the Mississippian Indians, their contemporaries, who lived at Moundville, some 13 miles south of Tuscaloosa and which Knight has studied for more than 30 years.
“They were chiefdoms, as were the inhabitants of Moundville,” Knight said. “And they were agriculturalists, but they primarily grew root crops instead of corn.”
Chiefdom is the name given to societies of the period that were headed by a chief, who would have unusual ritual, political or entrepreneurial skills. The societies were very hierarchical, with power concentrated within other kin leaders, who would then redistribute the resources to the others.
Artifacts recovered from the site, including evidence of the manufacturing of “idolillos,” or little idols, at portions of the site is among the evidence that the society had both elite and non-elite members, Knight said. The elite members of the group would have produced and worn these small, human-shaped figurines as part of a necklace. “They probably represent a god-figure, but we don’t know which god,” Knight said.
Working alongside the Cuban and U. S. professional archaeologists during the excavations were students from Syracuse and Penn State, and three students from The University of Alabama.
The project is a part of the UA Cuba Initiative, which provides opportunities for UA students to pursue their education under a special academic license granted by the U.S. government. Since 2002, UA has received academic travel licenses from the U.S. Department of the Treasury which permits travel to Cuba for specific academic activities.
