May 1, 2005

Hobbits or Pygmy Negritos?

Japan Today reports:

Indonesian scientists have found a community of Pygmy people in the eastern island of Flores, near a village where Australian scientists discovered a dwarf-sized skeleton last year and declared it a new human species, a newspaper said Thursday.

Kompas daily reported the community had been found during an April 18-24 expedition in the village of Rampapasa, about 1 kilometer from the village of Liang Bua, where the species called Homo floresiensis was found in September. The newspaper quoted Koeshardjono, a biologist who discovered the village, as saying that in the expedition, 77 families had been found living in the village.

A reader writes:

There is a common aphorism in medicine, 'When you see hoof prints, think horses - not zebras.' Maybe some of our paleo-anthropologists need to think pygmies, not hobbits.

Curiouser and curiouser ...


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

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