Flores Hobbits' eating habits offer clues about their evolutionary past
Until about 60,000 years ago, diminutive hominin cousins, Homo floresiensis (affectionately nicknamed Hobbits for obvious reasons), shared the island of Flores with Komodo dragons, pygmy elephants, and giant rats. Based on the presence of hominin and pygmy elephant bones in the same layers of cave sediment, it originally looked like the Hobbits had hunted and butchered dwarf elephants—an impressive feat for such a tiny hominin. But according to University of Tübingen anthropologist Elizabeth Veatch and her colleagues, it was the Komodo dragons that were the hunters, while the Hobbits only showed up to scavenge what was left. If Veatch and her colleagues are right, their findings may challenge some of the assumptions we’ve made about Homo floresiensis —and about which hominin species was the first to venture into the wider world beyond Africa. Read full article Comments
Until about 60,000 years ago, diminutive hominin cousins, Homo floresiensis (affectionately nicknamed Hobbits for obvious reasons), shared the island of Flores with Komodo dragons, pygmy elephants, and giant rats.
Based on the presence of hominin and pygmy elephant bones in the same layers of cave sediment, it originally looked like the Hobbits had hunted and butchered dwarf elephants—an impressive feat for such a tiny hominin. But according to University of Tübingen anthropologist Elizabeth Veatch and her colleagues, it was the Komodo dragons that were the hunters, while the Hobbits only showed up to scavenge what was left.
If Homo floresiensis wasn’t a fire-using hunter, its origins could be different than we thought.
These small hominins weren’t big-game hunters
Extinct pygmy elephant bones unearthed at Liang Bua (the cave site that also seems to have sheltered Homo floresiensis ) are covered in marks from Komodo dragon teeth, as well as cut marks from stone tools. Based on these bones, we know that Hobbits and the ancient ancestors of today’s Komodo dragons shared a taste for the same type of meat: pygmy relatives of modern elephants, called Stegodon. At least three species of Stegodon lived on Flores, ranging from 1.25 to almost 2 meters tall and weighing anywhere from 500 kilograms to 1.5 tons.
