Homo Floresiensis (Flores Island Hobbit) was more primitive than we believed

The Flores Island hominin, known as the hobbit (Homo floresiensis) was originally believed to have mastered fire, but new research published in Science on July 3, 2026 (E. Grace Veatch et al., Taphonomic analysis at Liang Bua reveals the behavioral and technological capabilities of Homo floresiensis. Sci. Adv. 12, eaeb7219(2026). DOI:10.1126/sciadv.aeb7219) suggest that they were much more primitive.

The paper's abstract indicates that "Since its discovery, Homo floresiensis—an extinct, short-statured, and small-brained hominin species from Flores, Indonesia—has often been ascribed unexpectedly advanced behaviors, such as hunting large game and using fire. Here, we report... that Komodo dragons likely had primary access to these remains leaving behind only low-utility elements for H. floresiensis to scavenge. Moreover, no signs of intentional use of fire are present in the stratigraphic units associated with H. floresiensis. Together, these results suggest that H. floresiensis was not as behaviorally advanced as originally suggested and provides critical insights into the behavioral repertoire of H. floresiensis, raising important questions about its ancestry."

The authors point out that the traces of fire usage in the sites where hobbits were found are more recent, and ocurred after these hominins became extinct. Fire was made by modern humans:

"The controlled use of fire and coordinated hunting of large game are considered critical milestones in hominin evolution ... The fact that H. floresiensis was originally described as having these behavioral adaptations continues to be a source of intense debate. However, with no evidence of in situ burning in the Stegodon or murine assemblage sampled thus far from H. floresiensis–bearing sediments at Liang Bua, it is reasonable to conclude that past fire use at the site was the sole result of H. sapiens behavior that occurred from ~46 ka until present day, well after H. floresiensis and Stegodon disappeared from the area."

This isn't surprising, the paper notes that although fire has been used for about 1 million years (My), it was only used widely over the past 400,000 years. Since the H. floresiensis reached Flores earlier than 1 My ago, they probably never mastered the art of fire making.

The researchers report that they were not hunters either, only scavengers. Since they couldn't cook meat, and ate it raw, they did not benefit from a better use of animal protein derived from cooking. The authors attribute this limited "behavioral repertoire as ... possibly due to an ancestry in which large game hunting and controlled use of fire did not evolve." This suggests that they evolved from a primitive, or more archaic branch of hominins and not from Homo erectus.

Comments

As mentioned in a previous post (about Stringer's remarks about the Out of Africa origin of humans), the origin of the hobbits is a mystery. It could be possible that they originated from an early lineage of hominins like those that led to Dmanisi - Homo georgicus, predating the Homo erectus line. They could even be the original basal line that originated in Eurasia, and in Europe, led to the hobbits proposed by Ludovic Slimak as living in France over 400 ky ago (see my previous post about Slimak).

Ancient hominins like these would have developed primitive stone technologies (Stringer calls them "prehuman"), and they may have not learned to use fire. They were probably the first hominins (were they even members of the homo clade?) who left Africa (or probably evene originated in Western Eurasia). They could be the ancestors of the Dmanisi people in the Caucasus (H. georgicus), and the erectines, and migrated into Africa to originate the hominins there.

In my next post we will look into the hominins that are said to have preceded Homo erectus inside Africa, and discuss Homo habilis, H. ergaster, H. rudolfensis.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Hobbit hominins in Europe? Ludovic Slimak and his current research

An article published in the Spanish daily El País in its Science section, (read it here, in English) on Feb 16, 2026, was an interview of the French archaeologist and paleoanthropologist Ludovic Slimak (b. 1973). In the final part of the interview, Slimak mentions an amazing discovery: the possible existence of pigmy hominins that predate the last Ice Age, in France; creatures similar to the Flores Island hobbits (Homo floresiensis).

This is the full text that final part (highlighted text is mine):

"Q. Do you have any new discoveries?
A. Yes. I can’t give out any details because we’re going to publish it in a scientific journal, maybe in two or three years. And I’ll write my next book about this, which will be called something like The People of the Forest. It’s possible that other, completely unknown human populations existed. We’ve found a body in a deep cave. In a layer of soil that predates glaciation. It’s fascinating because the morphology is very specific. It looks like a seven-year-old child, but it’s the body of an adult. From what we’ve seen, there are no Neanderthal features. And we don’t know what it is. It could be a population like the one in Hobbit of Flores, isolated in a very dense forest, as they were at that time. There may be several more bodies. We have work ahead for years. I can’t say more."

Censured and Redacted

The European Hobbit is also mentioned in an article published in Human Evolution News titled Hobbit Neanderthals? Top French Scientist may have revealed a new species of Diminutive Hominin in Europe? (April 27, 2026). It echoes the same theme, mentioning the interview published in El País and adds a suggestive remark: the interview was edited and something was deleted from it: "... according to the channel Highly Compelling, the original version of the interview contained something far more explosive — and it was quietly removed."

Highly Compelling is a video feed on Youtube, and this is the link to the video mentioned above.

The removed part is evident, as can be seen in the current version of the El País' article, that ends as follows (after he mentions the name of the book —People of the Forest:

"...We are working on layers dating back over 100,000 years, corresponding to an Europe covered by vast primary forests. It is a fascinating and still largely unknown phase. We know very little about how human populations lived in those dense, closed landscapes. Our image of Neanderthals is too heavily shaped by the cold and the glaciations, but before the ice, there was forest. These could be populations that developed very specific lifestyles in those environments. We are only just beginning to understand it. We have years of work ahead of us."

The paragraph is very vague and completely different from the original text! No reference to unknown dwarf-like people, only some comments about how different people could have lived in Europe before glaciations, when it was covered by forests, and non-Neanderthal "populations" adapted to that environment.

The following image, shows the original, and the current text, that was redacted.

The video suggests that the search for the hobbit has already begun: The renewed excavations at the Orgnac 3 site in southeastern France implies that they are working on this find. The site's lower levels are around 375,000 to 400,000 years old. Previous digging there in the 1970s described remains of "neanderthal, mostly from juveniles, and lacking clear Neanderthal features" juveniles seem to imply small body size (like a seven-year-old), and the lack of Neanderthal features agree with the comment in El País. The video suggests that they could be Homo habilis or Naledi. They are small and ancient creatures. It hints that pygmy proportions could provide an evolutionary advantage such as less demand for resources, easier mobility in thick forests, quicker reproduction rate. They would compete in a different niche with other hominins and avoid conflict. The change in climate conditions during the glacial periods probably marked their demise. The video also says that the original 1960s excavations found modern-looking teeth that, however, were around 400,000 years old, a "warmer" interglacial period during which the are was forested.

Bahain et al., 2022 provide a good summary about the Ognac-3 site. Another paper by Moncel et al., 2012 about the site mentions the "... several hominin teeth attributed to Pre-Neanderthals" found there. Both are paywalled.

Slimak et al., 2024 describe the teeth (see p. 100 "Hominid Remains") unearthed at the site: "Seven hominid teeth were discovered from Levels 5a, 5b, and 6. An adult upper right canine was discovered in 1962, and two deciduous incisors and 4 deciduous molars were discovered between 1968 and 1971. M.A. de Lumley (de Lumley 1976) reports that two of the deciduous molars come from a juvenile around 9 years old, whereas two incisors come from a juvenile around 5 years old.... Based on these comparisons, M.-A. de Lumley attributed the hominid remains from Orgnac 3 to ‘pre-neanderthal’ (de Lumley 1976). No information is given about the two remaining molars, and no photographs or drawings of any of the specimens have ever been provided, except a photograph of one of the deciduous molars in situ during excavation in 1968 (fig. S3; Combier 1968, 1971)." Are the teeth attributed to the children actually teeth of dwarfish hominins? Does pre-neanderthal imply a primitive variant of hominin?

Closing Comments

Speculating wildly, we can imagine different scenarios to account for these tiny hominins.

First we must consider if Homo habilis was a homo or an australopith (see this post), and the H. naledi probably never left Africa, and maybe isn't even a member of our homo lineage (see this post). This could discard both species as the source of European pygmy hominins.

An interesting alternative could be that the homo group originated in Eurasia instead of Africa (see this post) evolving into the Dmanisi - H. georgicus people in the Caucasus region, and Homo erectus (who have been in Eurasia for around 2 million years).

This ancient Eurasian ancestor, the first of the homo lineage, could be the ancestor of the Flores Island hobbit (H. floresiensis), who, as mentioned in my previous post, Chris Stringer suggests, is "...a relic of an earlier stage of human evolution that got all the way over there" (in Indonesia) before Homo erectus reached that region.

Could those who lived in Western Eurasia be the tiny-bodied hominins mentioned by Slimak?

We will have to wait a couple of years for the paper promised by Slimak to learn more.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Chris Stringer on reviewing the Out of Africa theory

This will be a very short post about a relevant subject: how the Out of Africa theory has been upset by the discoveries that have taken place over the past twenty years. I came across a podcast by Chris Stringer RETHINKING "OUT OF AFRICA", and I encourage you to read it.

Christopher B. Stringer (born 1947), is a British anthropologist who has always backed the Out of Africa (OOA) theory (as the source of modern humans). However, the genetic evidence of admixture between Neanderthals, Denisovans, archaics and even super archaics with humans has led him to reconsider his position. Stringer has come to admit that we are a complex mix of different hominins. He now supports a modified version of the OOA theory that contemplates interbreeding.

In the podcast, Stringer describes the original concept on which the OOA theory was built: a single, isolated group in Africa, evolved into modern humans, and spread across the globe replacing all other hominins without mixing with them. He recognizes that it was very simplistic. The presence of Neanderthal DNA in Eurasians, Oceanians and Amerindians hints at a first contact in Southwest Asia and not a gradual intermingling as modern humans trekked into Europe. Furthermore, the presence of Denisovan ancestry in Eastern and Southern Asia and Oceanians also shows that humans also met these mysterious hominins and intermingled with them.

Below are some quotes from this work with my comments.

On Neanderthal Introgression; how, when, and where

Stringer points out a remarkable fact: the uniformity of Neanderthal introgression in Eurasians. If we had met them in Europe, the Europeans would have more Neanderthal DNA than other groups, after all, Neanderthals lived in Europe, but the situation is different. Stringer says: "The extraordinary thing is the level of DNA is about the same in a modern European, a modern Chinese and a modern New Guinean. One possibility is that an interbreeding event happened early on in southwest Asia. As modern humans first emerged from Africa, they met some Neanderthals —maybe only 25 Neanderthals and 1,000 modern humans. That would be enough. And then that DNA gets carried with those modern humans as they spread out from that area and diversify."

This is the first time I have seen the admixture event quantified. It is rather small-scale, isn't it? But it sounds realistic. The location in SW Asia (the Levant) is also reasonable.

On Archaic admixture inside Africa

Just as in Eurasia, ancient hominins survived in Africa until recently and admixed with African humans. This is something that I have posted about several times : "...some African people have acquired [DNA], perhaps even from Homo heidelbergensis... In Africa itself, archaic humans could have lingered in parts of the continent as well. From some recent genetic analyses, there is evidence of an input of archaic DNA into some modern African populations as recently as 35,000 years ago. So even in Africa, the process was more complicated than we thought."

Regarding this point, I notice that it seems to be a taboo-like subject in academic circles. Do scholars consider it discriminatory to suggest archaics or super archaics had sex with modern humans in Africa? Why can we say this about Eurasians and Oceanians, exchanging body fluids with Denisovans and Neantherthals, but not about Africans? It is just pure wokeness.

On the Flores Island "Hobbit" the Homo floresiensis

This hominin is remarkable, it survived until very recently (17,000 years ago), it has a large brain in relation to its size, it crossed a deep sea barrier to reach Flores Island and thrived in its island ecosystem. Where did they come from? Are they Homo erectus that shrunk in size to survive on the island? Are they the outcome of an even earlier hominin? Stringer ponders:

"... The suggestion is now that this [hominin] might represent an even earlier stage of human evolution, one that's closer to Homo habilis or even to Australopithecus, creatures that lived two million years ago or more in Africa. Although we've got no evidence of it happening yet, the argument is that one of those more primitive forms got out of Africa more than two million years ago, somehow found its way over to southeast Asia, and survived in isolation on the island of Flores until 17,000 years ago, when it went extinct. That would be an even more extraordinary story than a Homo erectus getting there and dwarfing, that you've actually got a relic of an earlier stage of human evolution that got all the way over there."

Unsolved questions

Stringer also mentions that "We've got a whole unknown history" for the Flores Island hominins and also for the Denisovans. More on this subject in my next posts.

He suggests that the Homo erectus probably evolved in Europe, resulting in the Homo antecessor, in Spain. That the Homo heidelbergensis evolved into Neanderthals in Europe, and also into Denisovans and modern humans (Though he does not say where the H. heidelbergensis originated!).

He hints that H. heidelbergensis who also lived in Africa, survived there until recently, possibly admixing there with modern Africans: "Africa had an overlap of modern and archaic humans, with the possibility in a continent so large that there were other descendants of heidelbergensis living there alongside Homo sapiens. These populations could have exchanged DNA too, evidence of which might be found in the genomes of living Africans."

Stringer concludes (highlight is mine): "We end up with quite a complex story, with even some of this ancient DNA coming back into modern humans within Africa. So our evolutionary story is mostly, but not absolutely, a Recent African Origin."

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Homo antecessor is possibly the common ancestor of Neanderthals and Modern Humans

A research paper published a few days ago, on August 3, 2026, has looked into the the microstructure of the skull of Homo antecessor,a hominin that lived in what is now Spain, 800,000 to 900,000 years ago.

The article, Parietal thickness and Homo antecessor: A description of three new fragments from Gran Dolina, Atapuerca, Spain🔒, by Gallareto-Sande, Bruner, Saladié, and Martinó,n-Torres focuses on the similarities of the bone structure of H. antecessor and Neanderthals, and H. sapiens.

The authors note that although it had initially been "proposed as the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans based on a combination of derived facial features and primitive postcranial and dental traits" later studies suggested it was a branch or "stem" within our clade.

According to Phys.org the paper found that the the "total cranial vault thickness of these adult individuals falls within the range observed in modern humans and Neanderthals and is clearly lower than that found in Homo erectus and other early Pleistocene hominins."

The sample used bones from four adult individuals which were analyzed using computer microtomography. This allowed the researchers to study each layer of the bone structure. Though they caution that the sample is small, the layer knwon as diplo%ë on the inner side of the bone is very similar, in its thickness to that of humans and Neanderthals. Howver, the outer and inner layers show differences between antecessor and Neanderthals and humans, they are slightly thinner and thicker, respectively, than theirs. Even so, they are very unlike those of the other hominins like Homo erectus and the African species.

The paper does not say so, but it makes me wonder if this European hominin evolved there, in situ, from older erectus populations, and is, in fact, the Last Common Ancestors of Modern Humans and the Neanderthal-Denisovan lineages. See my post about this possibility, and also this post, and this post.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Homo erectus in Australia (Forbidden subject)

Back in the 1970s, in the days before the Out of Africa theory, a multi-regional evolution of humans was widely embraced. The analysis of fossil skulls from Australia suggested they had evolved from Homo erectus. Later, in the 1980s, woke winds blew across Australia. New policies were enacted by the Australian government, who handed over to the Aboriginal people the remains that had been discovered in the preceeding decades. They were buried. Data, photographs, and sites were restricted. Archaeology in Australia ground to a halt.

Let's look into some unique human specimens, those found in Australia.

In 1972, Thorne and Macumber published an article titled Discoveries of Late Pleistocene Man at Kow Swamp, Australia in the prestigious journal Nature (vol. 238, pp. 316–319), stating that "The late Pleistocene human remains from Kow Swamp display archaic cranial features which suggest the survival of Homo erectus in Australia until as recently as 10,000 years ago." And, nobody was upset or surprised by that proposal.

Kow Swamp skulls were heavily built ("robust"). Thorne had unearthed the remains of 22 people in Kow Swamp between 1968 and 1972. The site was chosen because, in 1925, a partial skull had been found there, known as Cohuna cranium (pictured further down). The site was dated to around 13,000 years ago. Below is an image of the Kow Swamp 5 specimen.

The following image from Durband, 2009, is captioned ""Robust" Pleistocene Australian crania. From top to bottom: Cohuna, Kow Swamp 5 and WLH 50. All crania are casts. Note the flatter foreheads, larger brow ridges, and more heavily built features on these specimens." The first two are from Kow Swamp, WLH 50 is from another site (more on it further down)

The thick brow ridges and flat foreheads give these skulls a primitive appearance. But, some scholars did not agree with Thorne, arguing that the shape was due to artificial deformation.

However, Kow Swamp skull 1, pictured below does not present signals of being artificially deformed, yet it has a robust appearance and heavy brow ridges.

We can't re-examine them now because the local Aboriginals reburied them for good in 1990, effectively removing them from the spotlight of science.

WLH 50 (Willandra Lakes Human) are the remains found in 1980 on the surface of an arid region close to the Willandra Lakes. The skull is large (1540 cm³), as large as a modern human, and with a strong resemblance to the skull of the Ngandong Homo erectus. It is approximately 26,000 years old, and prompted Hawks et al., 2000 to link it to the erectus specimen: "...the Ngandong hominids of Indonesia... are classified as Homo erectus... [our studies] indicate that the Ngandong hominids or a population like them may have contributed significantly to the ancestry of WLH-50.."

The erectus Ngandong specimens were alive until quite recently (see my 2019 post), roughly 100 kya, in Indonesia.

Wolpoff, a champion of multiregionalism, published an article in Science, 2001 which included the following image: (original caption reads: "Figure 1 Ngandong 1 (left) compared with WLH-50 (center, cast) and Qafzeh 9 (right, cast), shown in lateral view to the same scale. In its simplest form, the issue we address is which two are alike and which one is different. WLH-50 is the youngest of the three."

The article aimed at disputing the Out Of Africa theory finds that "there is no evidence suggesting that WLH-50 can be grouped with either Late Pleistocene Africans or Levantines to the exclusion of the Ngandong sample" it mentions that Ngandong are considered "archaic humans or late surviving Homo erectus."

I am under the impression that the Aboriginal people of Australia somehow resent the notion of pre-sapiens peopling of the continent-island (see this post). They may have valid reasons for this, such as the past desecration of their sacred sites, the exploitation and neglect that they suffered after Europeans discovered (for the West) and settled Australia. They also oppose to notions that go against their ancient oral traditions which enshrine their Creation myths during the Dreamtime. Conflict with these ancient stories could undermine their position as "original" or "first" people in the continent. So, it is reasonable to imagine that they want to exercise more control over their cultural heritage, past, and present. What is not reasonable is to rebury specimens of our common human past, and attempt to erase them from the body of human knowledge.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Rock Apes: possible Homo erectus sightings during the Vietnam War

In yesterday's post about a strangre sculpture which, according to Richard Thornton, depicts an homo erectus I mentioned his comments about extant Homo erectus in Vietnam, which were encountered by U.S. troops during the war in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and early 1970s. Today's post will look into this claim.

I found an article about hominins (wild men) in that area Research on Wildmen in Vietnam, published in The Relict Hominoid Inquiry 10:6-28 (2021), written by Tran Hong Viêet, Tran Hong Hai, and Jeff Meldrum. Which reports the presence of surviving hominins in the jungles of Central Vietnam. The evidence they present includes the descriptions in local folklore, and tracks and footprints. They identify two varieties, a big one and a small one. The larger creature has feet larger than those of humans but smaller than those attributed to the American bigfoot. It is hairy and roughly 1.8 - 2 m tall (5 ft 11 in – 6 ft 7 in). The paper wonders if they are surviving Gigantopithecus blackii or Homo erectus or even Homo heidelbergensis.

The smaller creature is also hairy, 1.2 - 1.5 m (3 ft 11 in – 4 ft 11 in).

Ciochon R, Long VT, Larick R, González L, Grün R, de Vos J, Yonge C, Taylor L, Yoshida H, Reagan M. in an article titled Dated co-occurrence of Homo erectus and Gigantopithecus from Tham Khuyen Cave, Vietnam. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1996 Apr 2;93(7):3016-20. doi: 10.1073/pnas.93.7.3016. PMID: 8610161; PMCID: PMC39753, report that Gigantopithecus and erectus overlapped in the same ecosystem and time in a cave in Vietnam during the Early and Middle Pleistocene.

Some references to Vietnamese hominins

I found some mentions of "rock apes" and bigfoots in Vietnam, but they are all relatively recent, from the 2020s. For those interested in reading other sources, see the following: Some US troops reportedly saw Bigfoot in Vietnam — No one knows how he felt about communism by Stilwell, 2025; The Mysterious 'Bigfoot' That Horrified Troops In The Vietnam War by Russell, 2024; and Moore, 2024, My uncle and the rock apes of Vietnam, and Rock Apes: How Vietnam’s ‘Rock Apes’ Confounded American GIs by Hemmings, 2019.

Surprisingly all of these articles are relatively recent. Didn't anyone write about them in the '60s or '70s?

Apparently they did, but not in the way you would expect. The rock apes were Vietcong (enemy soldiers) named so because instead of calling them "guerrillas" they were refered to as "gorillas" (a pun!) see this source. However, an American Sergeant named James Austin while describing the wild jungle animals, mentioned "Rock apes that throw rocks at you...."

These bipedal "apes" got their name because they threw stones at the American GIs. They were named Batutut or Người Rừng (forest men) by the Vietcong troops or North Vietnamese Army (NVAs).

An article published in 2025 mentions an incident that took place in 1968, when US Marines were attacked by rock-throwing apes in Da Nang at a place called Monkey Mountain. In 1969, close to the city of Hue, a group of male apes confronted soldiers, who had to fire shots to scare them away. It also has some other anecdotical evidence.

I found an even older reference (Coleman, 1999, see p. 180) that states that in 1974, shortly before the end of the war, a NVA General named Hoang Minh Tha sent a group of ment ot hunt one of these creatures, apparently it included three scientists named Vo Quy and Le Vu Khoi (Hanoi University) and Hoang Xuan Chinh (Hanoi Institute of Archaeology). The general was a real person (born in 1921, died 2008) (source) and the scholars were also mentioned in the Research on Wildmen in Vietnam paper.

As a closing remark, I leave this link to an article written in Vietnamese (thankfully Google translated it for me): In a Place in the Truong Son Mountains by Tran Hoai Thu, 2015, which describes the war, and an expedition by the author to the area where Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia meet, the home of these creatures.

We could imagine that any of the local native monkeys that live in Vietnam could explain the "rock apes" without having to invoke an extant prehistoric hominin. For instance, there are Tonkin snub-nosed monkeys (Rhinopithecus avunculus) and several types of gibbons (Nomascus) in Vietnam.

I also want to point out that the jungles of this region have sheltered large mammals that only recently were discovered by science: the Saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) in 1992 a cow-antelope-like being, the Giant Muntjac (Muntiacus vuquangensis) in 1994, a deer; and the Laotian Rock Rat, a rodent, in 2005 (Laonastes aenigmamus). Therefore, they could also be the hideout of intelligent hominins.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Homo erectus in the Americas, some things I found on the Internet

I came across some short texts posted by Richard Thornton (his mini bio), in which he discusses a statue protraying an ape-like creature found in Mexico. Thornton suggests that it is the depiction of a captive Homo erectus.

In Homo Erectus in the coastal marshes of Tabasco State, Mexico? (October 25, 2024) he includes some pictures he took in the 1970s, including one that he describes as "...quite controversial after public exposure, since it does not portray a Homo Sapiens with typical Indigenous American features. However, mainstream archaeologists still refuse to admit the possibility that the millions of animals that crossed back and forth across the Bering Land Bridge over the past two million years were followed by primitive hominids."

A second post Homo Erectus in the Americas? (April 15, 2022) includes the following image:

Statue supposedly depicting an Homo erectus. Richard Thornton, 2022.

Thornton wrote: "It looked like a primitive hominid, such as Homo Erectus, not a New World Monkey. He is portrayed standing erect with his hands tied behind his neck. This is the typical way that Mesoamerican art portrays prisoners of war or people captured to be made into slaves. Monkeys were always portrayed with their arms and legs tied together, hanging from poles."

The final post is titled: Did Homo Erectus live in the Americas until fairly recently? (December 6, 2023) and includes this text "There are stories, both in the Lower Southeastern United States and in Southeast Asia of primitive humans with tails, who were capable of hurling rocks and sharpened sticks at Homo Sapiens humans. Those in what is now the United States disappeared soon after the arrival of Europeans. Apparently, they were extremely vulnerable to European diseases. During the Vietnam War, such creatures supposedly attacked both U.S. and Vietnamese soldiers, who ventured into an uninhabited mountain range in what was then South Vietnam."

Some comments

The spider and howler monkeys are common in the southern areas of Mexico. They represented good fortune, happiness, lust, pleasure in the Central American lore. They were sacred animals and were not used for sacrifices nor eaten (source). Below are some Mesoamerican depictions of monkeys (same source), they have a monkey appearance:

Thornton is right in his posts when he says the statue has been moved. It ended up in the Villahermosa museum and is known as "Monument 56", its name is "Monkey Looking at the Sky."

The sculpture although it is shaped as a column is believed to be a peg-like structure which was to be displayed horizontally. It shows a head and a torso of a simian (anthropomorphic) figure with its arms bent backwards, behind the neck. It has a round-shaped eye and a narrow bridged nose. The creature wears a hat or helmet, and the back of the hands have been lost. It has triangular ears. It is 1.36 m long (roughly 4.5 ft.) and 53 cm wide (21") and 48 cm thick (19"). It is made of a tough hornblende andesite.

"It is highly likely that this sculpture was originally embedded horizontally; that is, the section resembling the body is the tenon that secured it as part of a building's architectural structure." (Source, and also source of the following images):

Finally, the comments about Vietnam and sightings there during the war are new to me. I will look into it. The remark about them being vulnerable to European diseases makes sense. Illnesses like measles, human flu, and small pox would affect hominins but not monkeys.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

The shape of the human face helps identify our distant ancestors, and they were Eurasians!

A paper published in Nature by Lacruz, R.S., Stringer, C.B., Kimbel, W.H. et al. in 2019 (The evolutionary history of the human face. Nat Ecol Evol 3, 726–736 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-0865-) — which can be read for free here suggests that our ancestry derives from Eurasian hominins, not African ones.

The authors discuss the last common ancestor (LCA) of modern humans and place it in the Mid Pleistocene (MP). They wonder which of the known MP hominins is our ancestor. They use the human face as a standard to define our LCA. The paper, published in an orthodox and renown journal like Nature can't go against the estsablished Out of Africa (OOA) dogma, so it has to somehow acknowledge the African origin of modern humans, but does it in a grudging, reluctant way. The paper states that "...the LCA should predate the appearance of a modern face, which begs the question: what is the earliest evidence of a modern human face? In considering the origins of the human face, we should take into account that mounting genetic and morphological data support the notion that H. sapiens first appeared in Africa. But these same data also imply that, while fully fledged H. sapiens likely had an African beginning, the evolutionary origins of traits that are characteristic of the modern face, represented by the LCA, may be found elsewhere." And elsewhere can only mean outside of Africa, in Eurasia.

After suggesting that Homo heidelbergensis, also found in Africa, as Homo rhodesiensis could be our LCA, the authors raise some questions about this idea (they seem to be too robust), and state that:

"This issue is further complicated by the apparent presence of a more H. sapiens-like midfacial morphology in Chinese fossils from the MP, such as Zhoukoudian, Nanjing (Fig. 3d), Dali and Jinniushan. This morphology is especially apparent in the newly announced (but not yet published scientifically) cranium, said to be from Harbin, North East China. These examples could perhaps be the result of gene flow or an independent evolutionary trajectory convergent on that of H. sapiens, raising the issue of whether these differences are phylogenetically informative. However, an alternative and plausible scenario implicates the morphology of the early European hominin species, Homo antecessor...
... In this scenario, a more ancient and taxonomically distinct LCA for the H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis lineages is based on the ‘modern’ maxillary conformation of the ATD6-69 H. antecessor face from Gran Dolina, Atapuerca, dated at ~850 ka...
The evidence instead suggests that the large and non-H. sapiens-like faces of Bodo and Broken Hill 1 (Fig. 3b,c) represent taxonomic diversity in the African MP record, which could exclude the large fossils assigned to H. heidelbergensis and H. rhodesiensis as representative of an ancestral morph for H. sapiens. Given other shared and more H. sapiens-like facial morphologies, ranging from the late lower Pleistocene of Europe to the MP of China and Africa, it begins to look more parsimonious to interpret a H. antecessor-like facial morphology as primitive for the clade containing H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis. This symplesiomorphic morphology was also present in at least some fossils assigned to Chinese H. erectus, in other archaic Chinese hominins and in the lineage of H. sapiens present in Africa from ~500 Ky, while it was apparently lost in the H. heidelbergensis/H. rhodesiensis and H. neanderthalensis lineages."

This suggestion is relevant, it somehow implies that non-African hominins, from China, and others from Eurasia, including Homo erectus, and also the Homo antecessor fossils from Spain are more human-like than fossils found in Africa older than 500,000 years ago. So, there is plenty of evidence of ancient human-like faces in Eurasia before it appeared in Africa! The authors, tacitly suggest that modern humans did not originate in Africa. They appeared in Eurasia and back-migrated there from Eurasia around 500 kya!

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Archaic Admixture (within Africa) a new paper (Science Jul. 30, 2026)

A paper published in the non-peer reviewed BioRxiv last March (see my post on it) has been now published in Science, on July 30, 2026 (Yulin Zhang et al., Recovering signatures of archaic hominin introgression using ancestral recombination graphs. Science 0,eaef8874 DOI:10.1126/science.aef8874). It discusses ghost introgressions in modern human populations. My original post highlighted its main points. Today, re-reading the article, I found some interesting points, which I discuss below.

Heterozygosity and archaic introgression

All research about Amerindians and all other non-Africans, stresses that they have higher homozygosity than Africans, a signal of a lower diversity in their genes. They are less heterozygous. I have argued in several posts that the higher heterozygosity observed in Africans could come from their recent admixture with archaics that survived until recently, within Africa.

This paper reported that (highlighting is mine) "Several additional lines of evidence support our results of ghost ancestry in modern humans. First, we find that genomic regions harboring ghost ancestry exhibit elevated heterozygosity levels, a pattern also observed for Neanderthal and Denisovan segments (fig. S25). The elevation in heterozygosity is consistent with a model of introgression from a deeply divergent lineage..."

The authors note that sub-Saharan Africans have the highest levels of super-archaic ghost admixture, and non-Africans have much lower values, but they attribute it to a bottleneck effect following the Out Of Africa (OOA) migration, ignoring the possibility of recent admixture within Africa: "We find that ghost ancestry peaks are over-represented in sub-Saharan African populations relative to non-African populations, which is consistent with the lower genetic diversity in non-Africans."

Africans and admixture there, in Africa

Regarding "deserts" where ghost presence is lacking, they attribute it to the same cause, the OOA migration: !We also identify 97 deserts of ghost ancestry (i.e., regions that are at least 10 Mbp long and have less than 0.1% frequency of ghost ancestry). These deserts are only found in non-African populations, with nearly half (43.3%) shared between different non-African groups, likely formed during the OOA bottleneck (supplementary section S6.3 and figs. S37 and S38). We do not identify any ghost ancestry deserts in sub-Saharan Africans." A plausible explanation for this is that ghosts introgressed within Africa, leading to a total lack of deserts there, while in the rest of the world, deserts point at a lack of superarchaic admixing.

In my original post I highlighted their comment about the source of the ghost population, I will once again quote the authors comments: "The ghost lineage, with a divergence time similar to Neanderthals, could plausibly correspond to Middle Pleistocene Homo groups or African Homo heidelbergensis populations that directly admixed with modern human ancestors before the OOA dispersal. For the super-archaic lineage, one potential candidate—compatible with the split time of approximately 1.8 Mya—is Homo erectus, as suggested by earlier studies."

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Denisovan may have split from Homo erectus

A recent research article (not peer-reviewed) published in BioRxiv (Scalable ARG-free Detection of Denisovan-mediated Superarchaic Introgression Reveals Heterogeneous Patterns across Populations. Noel McAllister, Sebastian Zöllner, Xinjun Zhang, bioRxiv 2026.06.25.734355; doi: https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.06.25.734355), used simulations based on a specific computing program to explore the sites in our genomes where superarchaic introgression may be found. Introgression that reached us via Denisovans.

It looks into the genome of modern populations and finds that HLA/MHC loci have higher introgression scores than other sites. This, according to the authors, "...is consistent with previous evidence that immune-related loci retain archaic variants. At the same time, HLA/MHC is among the most polymorphic regions of the human genome and has been shaped by pathogen-mediated and balancing selection, both of which can preserve deeply divergent haplotypes and generate unusually deep local genealogies..." However, they caution that these high scores may not only be due to archaic introgression: " ...HLA/MHC is also one of the clearest examples of long-term balancing selection, which also preserves deeply diverged haplotypes without recent introgression... We therefore interpret the HLA/MHC signal cautiously. It should not be treated as definitive evidence for superarchaic ancestry by itself. Nonetheless, its repeated elevation across all three populations is notable and suggests that immune-related regions may be especially informative targets for future local haplotype, ARG-based, and functional analyses."

It makes sense that alleles linked to immunity, received from superarchaics, if they provide a benefit, will be preserved across generations.

The paper then discusses Denisovans and mentions an interesting fact, that Denisovans could have evolved from Homo erectus: "Our results also intersect with the recent paleoproteomic evidence suggesting that some Denisovan superarchaic ancestry may ultimately derive from populations related to H. erectus."

It also notes that population structure can be mistaken for introgression: "A further limitation is that deep population structure and introgression remain intrinsically difficult to separate. Structured ancestral populations can generate old coalescent times and divergent haplotypes, and some recent models have shown that deep structure may explain signals previously interpreted as archaic or ghost admixture."

It presents a scenario that I had not read about before: "Hominin evolution may have involved both long-lived structured populations and episodic admixture among deeply diverged groups." Which is very plausible, we can imagine, especially in Africa this scenario, with archaic populations and ancestral modern humans living in isolated, deeply structured populations admixing sporadically, and adding diversity to the Homo sapiens group.

The other branches of the human tree also followed that pattern, with Neanderthals in western Eurasia and Denisovans in the Eastern part of Asia. Mixing with modern humans as our ancestors met them.

Homo erectus has been shown to have admixed with Denisovans (see this post), but, this article suggests that Denisovans evolved from Homo erectus, which is a very reasonable assumption. I recently posted about Denisovans and Homo heidelbergensis being related (also Neanderthals), it is possible that the common ancestor for these groups evolved from erectus (via Homo antecessor) in Eurasia.

Evidence seems to be building a stronger case for an Eurasian origin for hominins.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Genealogical research, some interesting thoughts

For several years I have been exploring my family tree, building on the work of my maternal grandfather and my father who pieced toegether information they had into two branches of ancestors.

It is far easier now than when my grandfather did his research in the 1980s, and my dad did his in the mid 1990s. In those days you had to go to the sites where the records were preserved (Register Office, cemeteries, churches — for baptism, burial, and marriage records). Now, online websites, offer free or paid services that let you browse document collections online. Government offices have searchable data (census, weddings, births, deaths, migration, etc.)

So, building on the work of my predecessors, I have added more information and found interesting data about my family.

It also helped me put in perspective things like generation times, the size of families, the terrible mortality rates of past ages, and the effects of these factors on the genetic mixup that I carry.

Each generation dupicates my direct ancestors (two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, sixteen great great grandparents, and so on), by the time you have gone back seven generations to, say, James Whitehall, born in 1741, you have 128 great great great great great grandparents. Each of them contributed genes to their offspring, but even though you'd reckon that you received 1/128th of their genetic material (or 0.78%), it is very likely that you did not get any!

This is because genetic material is sliced into chunks, and recombined. Although on average a child gets 50% of its genes from each parent it may not be exactly 50 percent because these chunks aren't equal. So, alleles are passed on in a random way. So as you go further back in time, the chances are that a given ancestor's genes may have got lost on their way to you. Below I quote Bird, 2025 to clarify this fact:

"For example, while each of a person's four grandparents is expected to contribute to 1/4th of their autosomal genome, ten generations (~250–300 years) ago, a person can have at most 2¹⁰ = 1024 ancestors. Thus each of these more distant ancestors is expected to contribute to < 1/1000th of their autosomal genome, with a ∼58% chance of no detectable relationship at all. At fourteen generations ago (∼420 years), this probability goes up to <95% (Donnelly 1983; Ralph and Coop 2013). For this reason, our genome is necessarily only a snapshot of a fraction of a person's complete set of ancestors and carries no information about the ancestors that did not contribute any DNA to this particular descendant."

I am certain that my mother's mtDNA is in my body's cells, and that it came from her mother, and so forth, along that matrilineal line. But, many mothers' mtDNA never got a chance to pass on because they only had sons, their daughters dying before they managed to reproduce.

Regarding the man, I am also certain that I carry the Y chromosome along a patrilineal line which may or may not be that of those who passed on the Whittall surname given the proclivity to stray that we humans have when it comes to making babies. A study by Guerrini, 2022 published in Cell, found that "3% of the total sample learned that the person who they thought was their biological parent is not." So, who provided your Y chromosomes may not be too certain.

My X chromosome came from my mom, but... which of her two X chromosomes did I inherit? The one she got from her Dad, and therefore, originating in his mother, or the one that came from my maternal grandmother, which in turn could have come from either of her parents... Complexity increases as we move deeper into the past.

Regarding the autosomal DNA, I carry a cocktail of alleles in my chromosomes, passed down from past generations, but, as mentioned further up, some ancestors are not represented, and their signature has been lost. This is like a bottleneck. Genes got lost despite the fact that there is a continuous line of descent between those ancestors and me.

Generation times vary. For instance James Whitehall, is 7 generations from me, and this spans 218 years between our birth dates: 31.14 years per generation. Taking another random ancestor on my maternal line is James Paterson, born in 1781, seven generations away, 178 years, 25.42 years per generation. I didn't average all 128 ancestors of those seven generations ago, but as you can see, the spread is large; roughly 28 ± 3 years.

A study published in Science by Wang et al., 2023 found "an average generation time of 26.9 years across the past 250,000 years" which seems more or less similar to the one of my family tree. However, the paper states that "The average human generation interval was at a recent minimum of 24.9 ± 3.5 years at ~250 generations ago (6.4 ka ago), roughly concurrent with the historic rise of early civilizations. Before this, it had declined from a peak of 29.8 ± 4.1 years at ~1400 generations ago (38 ka ago), just before the beginning of the Last Glacial Maximum." So, bearing this in mind, my family seems to have a longer generation time, roughly 10% longer than this paper's value for the recent past.

Finally, I was surprised at how people died at a young age. Women bore children from age 20 to their mid 40s, as many as 14 children, and most died in their youth. Women and men lost their spouses and remarried in their 30s and 40s, some did so even twice! The world was deadly in those days before vaccines, antiseptics and antibiotics. These deaths also erased many genes that my distant cousins and great great uncles and auntes carried.

So, just looking back at my family, I wonder how can we be so certain about the genetic diversity of some populations, generation times, admixtures, bottlenecks, when chance and probabilities rule how genes are passed down from our distant ancestors, even in a healthy population in Modern Scotland, England, and Ireland.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Homo heidelbergensis from Africa and Denisovans are linked

A research paper published in 2025 (Candidate Denisovan fossils identified through gene regulatory phenotyping, by Nadav Mishol, Gadi Herzlinger, Yoel Rak, Uzy Smilanksy, Liran Carmel, David Gokhman, bioRxiv 2024.04.18.590145; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.04.18.590145 and in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences doi: 10.1073/pnas.2513968122) reported the study of the shape of different skulls from the Middle Pleistocene, spanning Eurasian and African specimens, including Neanderthal, Homo erectus and modern humans to try to identify the traits that indicate the Denisovan morphology. The study found something quite interesting besides the similarity between Denisovans and some East Asian fossils, below I cite their conclusions and highlight the relevant part:

"these analyses revealed that the East Asian specimens of Harbin and Dali show an exceptionally high concordance with the Denisovan profile, surpassing all other examined Middle Pleistocene hominin specimens, including Neanderthals. Specifically, 15 out of 18 of Dali’s features and 16 out of 18 of Harbin’s matched Denisovan predictions. These findings are robust to overall skull size and to correlations between phenotypes. We also found that Kabwe 1 shows a strong affinity to the Denisovan–Neanderthal clade and might be placed near its root"

Kabwe the African fossil

Kabwe 1 was unearthed in 1921 in Kabwe, in what is now Zambia. It is a fossil skull also known as the Rhodesia man or Broken Hill, and has been classified as a member of the Homo heidelbergensis group. It is rather primitive, with heavy brow ridges, and a flat forehead, its shape resembles that of Homo erectus yet it is relatively recent, dated to around 324,000 - 274,000 years old (source) which makes it contemporaneous with the first members of our species, Homo sapiens who are said to have appeared in North Africa 300,000 years ago.

Besides the oddity of archaic and moderns co-existing in Africa 300 kya. Kabwe 1 is extremely close to Denisovans! Which is an unusual finding because Denisovans are not known to have migrated into Africa, they are better known as East or Southeast, or Central Asian populations that admixed over there with modern humans as these entered that region around 50 ky ago.

Let's see what the paper has to say about this similarity:

"Several test subjects, most notably Kabwe 1, exhibit unexpectedly high concordance with the Denisovan profile, despite being unlikely to be Denisovans. Although discovered in Africa, Kabwe 1 not only aligns well with the Denisovan profile (Fig. 4) but also clusters closely in the PCA with Dali, a potential Denisovan (Fig. 6 and SI Appendix, Fig. S3). Although our current knowledge of Denisovan habitat is lacking, it is unlikely that they reached Southern Africa. Hence, Kabwe 1 is unlikely to be directly positioned on the Denisovan lineage. A more plausible explanation is that the resemblance of some of these specimens to Denisovans reflects a proximal phylogenetic affinity with the Neanderthal–Denisovan clade, perhaps close to its root."

So, the authors assume that there has been no migration of Denisovans into Africa, and based on this assumption they suggest that the African fossil is similar to Denisovans because it was a close relative to the Denisovan-Neanderthal group that left Africa, and split into Neanderthals and Denisovans. A conclusion repeated again in the closing part of the paper, as you can read below:

"The resemblance of several specimens attributed to H. heidelbergensis to the Denisovan profile, and specifically the African specimen Kabwe 1, is particularly intriguing. The similarity between Kabwe 1 and other high-scoring specimens is evident in all PCAs (Figure 4 and Supplementary Figure 10), suggesting that this resemblance is not limited to Denisovan-like phenotypes. Despite our limited knowledge of the true range of Denisovans, it is unlikely that they reached Southern Africa, hence Kabwe 1 is unlikely to be directly positioned on the Denisovan lineage. A more plausible explanation is that the resemblance of some of these specimens to Denisovans reflects a proximal phylogenetic affinity with Denisovans. For example, H. heidelbergensis specimens were positioned either close to the split between modern and archaic humans or close to the split between Neanderthals and Denisovans [29]. If H. heidelbergensis is indeed phylogenetically closer to the Neanderthal-Denisovan split than Neanderthals are, it is expected to exhibit an even greater similarity to the Denisovan profile than Neanderthals do. Another alternative explanation is that Denisovans might have retained several ancestral phenotypes observed in H. heidelbergensis [59], or that these phenotypes were affected by gene flow into Denisovans, originating from contemporaneous H. heidelbergensis [17]."

The authors don't explain how the African fossil can be closer to the Denisovans than the Neanderthals. It is assumed that neither group entered Africa. That the common ancestor of Denisovans and Neanderthals left Africa, splitting from the group that would lead to us, modern humans. Then, in Eurasia, the ancestral group of Denisovans and Neanderthals split into two species, one heading East, the other colonizing the West of Eurasia. So, how could a primitive hominin in Zambia be closer to a group that split in the Levant?

The second explanation requires explaining why the Denisovans ended up with the primitive ancestral form found in Kabwe but not the Neanderthals. The final explanation of gene flow into Denisovans via contemporaneous Homo heidelbergensis would require them being alive and kicking in Western Eurasia around 600 ky ago!

The nice part of this paper is that it is thought provoking: Denisovans and Homo heidelbergensis are linked. Notice that Heidelbergensis got its name from a site in Heidelberg, Germany where it was found in 1908 (source). It is found in Europe and Africa. Of course, it is claimed to have evolved in Africa. But, could these people have evolved in Eurasia, leading to the ancestor of modern humans, Denisovans and Neanderthals, adding more genes to the Denisovans who carried them east, and finally, a group of heidelbergensis moved into Africa resulting in the Zambia fossils?

The current bias against an Into Africa flow makes this hypothesis unlikely to be accepted. But it seems the most logical one. Furthermore, flow of the heidelbergensis into Atapuerca people and then from Spain into North Africa seems a plausible explanation for the evolution of Modern Humans separately from the Neanderthal-Denisovan group.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Black Quetzalcoatl

Even though Quetzalcoatl has been depicted as a bearded white man who came from Europe to civilize the Mesoamericans, I came across an interesting article that says he was dark skinned.

The article, published online titled Quetzalcoatl Negro (Black Quetzalcoatl) by Rosario Nava Román "Although this Quetzalcoatl was a man, he was revered as a god... The adornments with which he was worshipped were as follows: a miter on his head, with a plume of feathers known as 'quetzalli'... his face was dyed black, as was his entire body."

Two depictions of Quetzalcoatl with black skin. From Quetzalcoatl Negro

Bernardino de Sahagún (c. 1499-1590) was a missionary in what is now Mexico, starting in 1529. He wrote a History of New Spain (Mexico) and the famous Florentine Codex is a manuscript version of this history. The illustrations it includes, done by native artists depict Quetzalcoatl in the traditional way, with dark, black, skin.

Other manuscripts, like the Borgia, Vindobonensis and Nutall codex depict him with a black body.

Nava Román points out that other gods such as Tezcatlipoca, Tláloc, Ixtlilton, etc. are also portrayed with black body paint in those codex. The high priests, sacrifice, penitents and man-gods are all black skinned.

The practice was noted by Jerónimo de Mendieta (1525-1604) who in his Historia Eclesiástica Indiana written in 1595-96, described (see p.108 in Chapter 37) how the Kings were enthroned in Mexico, in Tezcuco and Tlacuba: "The first thing the high priest did was to dye the lord's entire body black with very black ink; he had prepared a swab made of cedar and willow branches and reed leaves, and—with the lord kneeling—he would sprinkle him four times with water from a vessel of holy (or cursed) water, greeting him with brief words; then he would dress him in a mantle painted with the heads and bones of the dead, and upon his head..." The dark skin tone caused by the dye gave them a god-like appearance and strenghtened the link between mortal king and gods.

Nava Román mentions how this practice continued during the colonial period, and cites plate number 15 in the codex known as Tira de Tepechpan which depicts the conqueror of Mexico, Hernán Cortés in black (it can be seen below, with the Spaniard, with black skin, on the left).

The author argues that the white, bearded man from across the Atlantic was an invention of the Spaniards to justify their conquest, erasing the real black-skinned gods of the natives and replacing them with the superior white caucasians.

As I have posted in the past, (see here and here for some examples), I do not believe that there is evidence of African black people in America in pre-Columbian times, so the dark-skinned Mexican gods are not African people or Olmecs.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Duration of the Out Of Africa Migration, it was much slower than believed

Reading a paper about the peopling of Sundaland by Homo erectus (Husson et al., 2022, Javanese Homo erectus on the move in SE Asia circa 1.8 Ma, I learned something about the time it took these ancient hominins to people this southeastern part of Asia, and it was much longer than I expected.

The authors report that " H. erectus reached Java and dwelled at Sangiran, Java, ca. 1.8 Ma.... The dispersal of H. erectus across Sundaland occurred over at least tens to hundreds kyr."

Migration pathways of H. erectus across Sundaland during Early Pleistocene. (a) Reconstructed landscape ca. 1.8 Ma (model goSPL32). The underlying physiography, with overprinted modeled rivers, converts into a map of resistance to displacement that serves to compute the migration pathways, either using a least-cost path algorithm shown for the Myanmar entry point (purple), or a mechanistic movement model (SiMRiv30) exemplified for the Vietnam entry point (orange). Blue star locates the Thailand entry point.. Husson et al., 2022

The map above shows how different the landscape was around 1.8 million years ago, with an emerged area spanning not only the Indonesian islands but also a land bridge from Vietnam into Sundaland, separating the seas of China and Thailand. It also depicts in orange and purple, possible entry routes from the mainland Asian area to Sanigran in Indonesia.

The time spent walking

The point they studied is how long did the trek of these erectus people take. After all, there are remains in China and also in Georgia, at the Dmanisi site, around 1.9 to 2 million years old, and the Indonesian remains are just 100,000 years younger. Let's see what the authors say (my comments are underlined) and I highlight some relevant parts:

" How long did the journey take? While least-cost paths are 6,000 km long on average from mainland Asia to Java (Fig. 4a), the mean travelled distances are 50 times longer for Markovian walks (327 x 10³km), regardless of the north entry point, and almost always in excess of 100 x 10³ km. The corresponding time span depends on the migration speed. Estimates are available for more recent palaeolithic hominins, ranging from 1 to 10 km/yr [I will comment on this point further down]. At similar speeds, the least-cost paths convert into an optimal travel time of 0.6 to 6 kyr, which is thus the minimal time to cross Sundaland. Markovian walks imply much longer durations before hominins reached Java, between 25-40 kyr at fast moving rates, and 250-400 kyr at slow moving rates (Fig. 4b). These relatively long delays at average or slow moving rates are difficult to reconcile with the early arrival to Java ca. 1.8 Ma, following departure from Georgia or China only a few 100 kyr before. We suggest that because these characteristic travel times scale with the characteristic time scale of changes of the physical environment, external forcings impelled hominins to migrate and boosted their displacement.... We find that H. erectus migrated across Sundaland at remarkably fast rates (>10 km/yr) with respect to their prior journey across Eurasia, and to the displacement rates of other lineages of the genus Homo"

In other words, they estimate that the joureny could take between 25,000 and 400,000 years, to move from northern Thailand or Vietnam to Sanigran in Indonesia. And say that the erectus people walked faster than that because there were external forces pushing them forward (?).

They adopt a quicker pace to fit the timeline of not more than 100,000 years between the oldest Asian specimens in China and Georgia, and those found in Indonesia. So, the authors suggest a slow pace across Asia from Georgia to East Asia, and then a very quick entry into Indonesia.

The paper assumes a speed of 10 km per year for Homo erectus which is the speed at which the fastest "recent palaeolithic hominins" move at (see further up, where it places that speed at 1 to 10 km/y). In my opion, this is quick.

So, just taking straight lines as a course (this would assume the travelers knew in advance where they were going, which they didn't), the distance however from northern Thailand to Java is roughly 3,000 km (2,000 miles). Which they. Taking figure 4b in the paper, at 10 km per year this journey would have required between 7 and 62 ky, on average 32 ky. If these people would have moved at the slower limit found in more recent palaeolithic hominins, they would have required 320 ky to do so (70 to 620 ky).

Interestingly, the modern humans of the Out Of Africa wave are said to have trekked from the Sinai (starting 60 kya) to Beringia in only 40,000 years. That is a much longer distance (10,700 km - 6,700 mi) than the one into Sunda from northern Thailand. So, moving at the pace of the erectus that peopled Sunda, to cover this distance that is 3 times longer, it would have taken almost 100 ky on average. So if they set out 60 kya, they still haven't arrived in America! And walking at the lowere speed limit, it would have taken 1 million years.

Something is wrong in the dispersal speeds.

The paper seems to understand this implication, because it ends with an interesting conclusion: "At a more general scale, our TCN ages obtained for the first appearance datum of H. erectus in Sangiran advocate for an early peopling of Sundaland by H. erectus, contemporary with their Chinese and Georgian counterparts, whose endocranial capacity was much smaller than specimens from Sangiran. These results reignite the long-standing controversy over the origin and dispersal pathways of archaic humans and invites a reexamination of the out-of-Africa paradigm, which provides a global roadmap for the dispersal of the genus Homo, but which one-way direction may be questioned."

Directionality suggests Asia-To-Africa migrations, and the smaller-brain sizes of contemporary erectus in China and Georgia vs. Indonesia requires some explanation. Why would the more advanced erectus be those most distant from Africa, in Sangiran?

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

The Apostle St. Thomas in America: A native myth with European origins?

In my previous post about Quetzalcoatl, the civilizing god that visited Mexico, and then departed eastwards across the Atlantic Ocean, returning to his homeland, I mentioned the myth about the Apostle Saint Thomas visited America.

Thomas Didymus (from the Greek word for twins, Thomas means precisely that in Aramaic), was also known as Doubting Thomas, after the description given in the Bible (see John 20:24-29) describes as "Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” Now a week later his disciples were again inside and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”"

Tradition says he visited India (and possibly China and Indonesia) spreading the gospel, and died, as a martir in India at St. Thomas Mount in Chennai (December 21st 72 AD),

St. Thomas in America

There is a very interesting article by Carlos Page, in Spanish, with the revealing title: El Apóstol Santo Tomás en América según los relatos de los antiguos jesuitas del Brasil y Paraguay (The Apostle Saint Thomas in America according to the accounts of the ancient Jesuits of Brazil and Paraguay). It's abstract in English summarizes the paper: "The history of Saint Thomas the Apostle preaching in America was debated from the time it became a widely discussed topic of conversation during the sixteenth century. Although there is reliable evidence that the story began with the arrival of Columbus to the supposed “Indies”, where the apostle did preach, the Jesuits are attributed for its invention. Undoubtedly, religious leaders arriving in 1549 embraced the story to justify and validate their evangelizing project, taking storytelling to the extreme. Even though Christian hagiographies had ruled it out, by the end of the eighteenth century the story was still being written about..."

Page also mentions Peru where Calancha likened the Inca god Tunupa in that region, where another apostle, St. Bartholomew was said to have preached according to Guaman Poma de Ayala (1615). In Colección de libros y documentos referentes a la historia del Peru. (1918), (see p. 153) the myth of the civilizing god Viracocha is discussed, and it mentions the theory put forward by Joan de Santacruz Pachacuti Yamqui, in his Relación de Antigüedades deste Reyno del Pirú suggesting that Viracocha was Saint Thomas.

Pachacuti wrote: "A bearded man of medium build arrived in these provinces and kingdoms of Tahuantinsuyo. He had long hair and wore somewhat long tunics; he was described as a man past his youth, showing signs of graying hair, and thin of frame. He traveled with a staff and taught the natives with great love, calling them all his sons and daughters. Although the natives paid him little heed, he performed many visible miracles as he journeyed through the provinces, healing the sick simply by touching them. He sought no material gain and carried no possessions; it is said he spoke all the local languages better than the natives themselves. He was known by names such as Tonapa, Tarapaca, Viracochanpachayachicachan, Pacchacan, Bicchhaycaniayoc, and Cunacuycamayoc. Since this man was called Tonapa Viracochampacachan, could he not be the glorious Apostle Saint Thomas?"

Brazil and Patagonia

But going back to Brazil, the first mention of St. Thomas there dates back to 1515 where a German text called Copia de Newen Zeytung Auss Peszilg Landt, stated that the local natives "also cherish a memory of Saint Thomas on the rocky coast or within the land; they also tell the Portuguese that he is said to have gone inland. And when they speak of Saint Thomas, they say he is a lesser deity, yet there is another god who is greater. It is quite credible that they hold a memory of Saint Thomas, for it is well known that Saint Thomas lies buried at Meliapur on the Coromandel Coast, in the Gulf of Ceylon. In the land, they even name their children Thomas."

Strangely the author comments about Brazilian natives and associates the memory with the Coast of Coromandel in Southwesterb India! The idea of a journey from there to Eastern South America didn't seem to bother him.

At that time, in 1507, German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller (1470-1520), published his map of the New World, naming it America, and included in Patagonia a Serra de S Thome, Serra = "sierra" or range of hills or mountains named for St. Thomas. See it in this Source (zoomable) from which I made the following image:

1507 map "Universalis cosmographia secundum Ptholomaei traditionem et Americi Vespucii alioru[m]que lustrationes". Waldseemüller, Martin, 1470-1519

The Guaraní people's myth

Del Barco Centenera (1535-c.1605), a Spanish friar who lived in Paraguay, recorded the myth in his ode Argentina, published in 1602. In it, he mentions an encounter that an old native chief had with a holy Christian man who gave him a cross before the Spanish arrived in America (p. 340): "A man stepped before me, Of handsome bearing and countenance... [God] will remember you in the final hour. Saying this, he extended his right hand, and gave me this cross, which I believe, is the gift of my rest and my desire. " the footnote that del Barco Centenera included for this comment reads (p, 386): "A very common story among the Guaraní concerns a holy man who once went among them preaching; known today as Pa'i Sumé, or Saint Thomas. I have seen with my own eyes a stone, measuring some nine feet in length and four in widthm bearing the marks and traces of human footprints. These are not Indian footprints, for the marks left by their feet are easily recognized and quite distinct from those of a Christian, even when both are barefoot: Indians have splayed toes, whereas Christians have theirs close together, a trait also observed in Black Africans."

The missionaries who visited the region in the early 1500s recorded the belief in a Pay Zumé (pai in Portuguese means Father or Priest, and Zumé is a deformation of Tomé = Thomas). De Angelis in his history of Argentina, published in 1836, cites fathers Lozano and Cataldino who tell about the route taken by St. Thomas among the Indians, as he trekked inland from the coast of Brazil, also mentioning the footprints in the rock, and a trail he used, that still exists; he names it Peabirú. See my post on this ancient native trail.

Finally, there is as cholarly paper published in 2016, written by Marcela Pezzuto, Desde el Titicaca hasta el Guayrá: el gran viaje de Santo Tomás según dos cronistas (From Titicaca to Guayra: Saint Thomas's great journey according two chroniclers), that looks into the texts written by Ruíz de Montoya and Guaman Poma de Ayala and suggests that Montoya did so to promote the power of Christianity in the New World, while de Ayala's goal was to paint the Native American Inca realm as an utopian place in contrast to the ruthless Spanish conquest.

Those interested in an English language reference can read Daniel Garrison Brinton who mentions Pai Zumé and the other demigods (like Quetzalcoatl and Viracocha) in his book "American Hero-myths A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent" published in 1892.

Comments

Of course, St Thomas didn't visit America. The Jesuits believed that an angel had transported him to the New World, it is most likely that the idea was implanted in the natives by now-unknown priests who visited the region during the first period that followed the discovery of America.

The myth probably reflects the visit of mariners from Europe in pre-Columbian times, not necessarily Christians, possibly Carthaginians or Phoenicians.

As part of the myths describing civilizing gods, Pai Zumé / St. Thomas is on par with Quetzalcoatl, Amalivaca, and Viracocha. An intreresting common legend among the natives of South America.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall ©