Hominins and stone tools in Sunda 1.48 Ma - Implications

A paper published last August in Nature (Hakim, B., Wibowo, U.P., van den Bergh, G.D. et al. Hominins on Sulawesi during the Early Pleistocene. Nature 646, 378–383 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09348-6) reported finding stone tools and flakes older than 1 million years, and possibly up to 1.48 Ma on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia.

The oldest tools that had been found in the area were found at Wolo Sege on Flores Island, home of the minute Hobbit Homo floresiensis, that were 1.02 million years old. Some stone tools and bones with man-made cut marks were discovered in Luzon, and island in the Pilippines, dated to 777-631 thousand years ago. These are much older.

The paper states that> "The dispersal of archaic hominins beyond mainland Southeast Asia (Sunda) represents the earliest evidence for humans crossing ocean barriers to reach isolated landmasses... On Sulawesi, the largest Wallacean island, previous excavations revealed stone artefacts with a minimum age of 194 ka at the open site of Talepu in the Walanae Depression, long preceding the earliest known presence of modern humans (Homo sapiens) in the region (73–63 ka in Sunda). Here we show that stone artefacts also occur at the nearby site of Calio in fossiliferous layers dated to at least 1.04 Ma and possibly up to 1.48 Ma... The discovery of Early Pleistocene artefacts at Calio suggests that Sulawesi was populated by hominins at around the same time as Flores, if not earlier."

Primitive Stone "artifacts"

The authors found "seven flaked stone artefacts... All stone artefacts are made of chert, alternately known as silicified limestone in some of the related literature. This source material is abundantly present among the naturally occurring pebbles, but the stone artefacts differ statistically by their larger size compared with unmodified pebble-sized clasts excavated from the same fluvial sandstone deposits... These results suggest that the stone artefacts were produced by hominins outside the Calio site and carried there for use as tools, further underlining the anthropogenic origin of these objects. It is also possible that some or all artefacts could have been eroded out of riverbanks by laterally migrating fluvial channels, and may therefore be older than the layers in which they were found."

They are not Acheulean, a mark of H. erectus, these are stones used simple tool-making techniques that hint at an Oldowan origin. However, the stones were carefully struck, and retouched: "The flakes were struck by the hard-hammer freehand percussion technique and range from 21.9 to 60.1 mm long along the percussion axes... The reduction of large flakes into smaller flakes, which were themselves retouched, suggests that a two-step reduction process was sometimes used to reduce the natural chert cobbles into suitably-sized tools. The evidence for reduction of cores-on-flakes, frequent core rotation and understanding of hard-hammer fracture mechanics attests to expert technical knowledge within the context of a straightforward, ‘least effort’ approach to toolmaking.".

The authors conclude that "it now seems possible that hominin occupation of this large Wallacean island preceded that of Luzon to the north and is at least as old as, and potentially earlier than, the hominin presence on Flores to the south. However, precisely when hominins first crossed to Sulawesi remains an open question, as does the taxonomic affinity of the colonizing population."

These people predate the hominins of Luzon and the hobbits of Flores. Their stool-making techniques suggests that they were not H. erectus, could they have been the easternmost members of the group that reached Georgia (Dmanisi people), a branch of H. georgicus?

Sulawesi stone artifacts (Fig. 2) in Hakim, B., Wibowo, U.P., van den Bergh, G.D. et al. (2025)

A 2024 paper (D. Ma,S. Pei,F. Xie,Z. Ye,F. Wang,J. Xu,C. Deng, & I. de la Torre, Earliest Prepared core technology in Eurasia from Nihewan (China): Implications for early human abilities and dispersals in East Asia, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 121 (11) e2313123121, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2313123121, 2024) noted that in Niwehan, in northern China, west of Beijing, stone tools dated to 1.1 million years ago, were Acheulean style (or mode-2 technology - compared to Oldowan or mode-1), despite the lack of the characteristic handaxe that this type of stone knapping produces. They attribute the lack of handaxes to the poor quality of the raw materials used. They find that these tools "at 1.1 Mya now constitutes one of the world’s earliest occurrences of prepared core technologies... This may suggest that mode 2 hominins dispersed into East Asia much earlier than previously thought and, given that the earliest occupation of China could be over 2 Ma, our results may also point at multiple migrations of early hominins into East Asia throughout the early Pleistocene."

The tools, in my layman opinion, seem to be Oldowan. The authors explain that they are Acheulean because they display higher mental abilities required to perform additional steps in knapping, elaborate techniques, and "standardized end products". They admit that "the differences between CJW (and by extension other Nihewan sites) and the typical Acheulean should not be ignored, and the absence of handaxes in East Asian sites cannot be attributed to raw material availability only... we propose that these mode 2 hominins with complex technical abilities were led to produce smaller tools due to the poor local raw material quality and environmental conditions, which may have also required the development of new survival strategies and/or technological innovations to adapt to the local environmental conditions in this region of northern China."

If we accept their explanations, then two (or more) different populations peopled Asia 1.1 Ma, one in Sunda another in China, with different tool-making techniques. This was way before Denisovans, Neanderthals and modern humans. Were they H. erectus? Dmanisi - H. georgicus? Another unknown hominin?

Could any of these groups have moved north and then east, into America? They would have had 1 million years with the New World for themselves before modern humans arrived around 30 ky ago, or perhaps Neanderthals and⁄or Denisovans arrived during the past 500 ky. Who knows? Nobody ever digs deep enough to look for any remains older than 20,000 years in the New World.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

On the origin of Homo Floresiensis, the "Hobbit"

I had imagined that the Flores Island small-bodied people descended from some ancient wave of Asians. My expectations were that they preceded H. erectus and were linked to the first people to leave Africa, H. georgicus or even H. habilis. Now we have some proof that they derive from Homo erectus.

A paper published ten years ago (Kaifu Y, Kono RT, Sutikna T, Saptomo EW, Jatmiko, Due Awe R (2015) Unique Dental Morphology of Homo floresiensis and Its Evolutionary Implications. PLoS ONE 10(11): e0141614. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141614) found that tooth morphology placed the hobbit closer to H. erectus than to modern sapiens or older hominins like habilis:

"This evidence contradicts the earlier claim of an entirely modern human-like dental morphology of H. floresiensis, while at the same time does not support the hypothesis that H. floresiensis originated from a much older H. habilis or Australopithecus-like small-brained hominin species currently unknown in the Asian fossil record. These results are however consistent with the alternative hypothesis that H. floresiensis derived from an earlier Asian Homo erectus population and experienced substantial body and brain size dwarfism in an isolated insular setting. The dentition of H. floresiensis is not a simple, scaled-down version of earlier hominins. "

A more recent paper (Kaifu, Y., Kurniawan, I., Mizushima, S. et al. Early evolution of small body size in Homo floresiensis. Nat Commun 15, 6381 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-50649-7) published in August 2024 states thtat H. floresiensis descends from dwarfedH. erectus and not from older and less evolved ancestors like the Australopithecines or H. habilis. It reaches these conclusions after studying bone sizes and molar features. It also gives a timeline for their settling in Flores Island:

"Coupled with the recently revised arrival date for H. erectus on Java ( ~ 1.1 Ma, or at most younger than 1.3–1.5 Ma) and hominins on Flores (1.0–1.27 Ma), as well as the reported craniometric and odontometric analyzes which almost unanimously support strong affinities of H. floresiensis with H. erectus (particularly early H. erectus from Java), the following evolutionary model emerges. The earliest Flores hominins appeared on this Wallacean island ~1.0–1.27 Ma, probably unintentionally (i.e., through accidental ‘rafting’, perhaps on tsunami debris), and possibly as part of the initial colonization of the Sunda Shelf region by early H. erectus. The Flores hominins experienced substantial body size reduction soon after this event (within ~300,000 years), despite the presence of large-bodied predators such as ~3 meter-long Komodo monitors and crocodiles from the earliest paleontological record ( ~ 1.4 Ma) onwards6. This implies that giant reptilians did not represent a serious predation threat for early H. floresiensis or its progenitors. This early evolutionary event was followed by long-term stability in hominin body size, possibly also in cultural adaptations (e.g., stone technology), and minor morphological specialization in the dentition. How the small brain size reported for the ~60,000 years old LB11, evolved still remains unknown. At present, however, the available fossil data imply that small body size had been a functional adaptation for these insular hominins during and slightly beyond the Middle Pleistocene and indeed potentially up until the arrival of H. sapiens on Flores around 50,000 years ago; an event that, we suspect, precipitated the demise of H. floresiensis."

Perhaps the minute humans of Luzon share the same origin.

I doubt that these small people ever moved out of their islands, so there is no way that they could have reached the New World to inspire myths about dwarves. However, they could have left an imprint in the legends and tales of the Southeast Asians who came across them in the jungles of Sahul and Sundaland 50,000 years ago. Myths that were taken by humans and spread across the World.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

H. luzonensis and H. floresiensis possible link to Denisovans

Just a brief post to share a paper published yesterday (Introgression, hominin dispersal and megafaunal survival in Late Pleistocene Island Southeast Asia Joao C Teixeira, Guy S Jacobs, Chris Stringer, Jonathan Tuke, Georgi Hudjashov, Gludhug A Purnomo, Herawati Sudoyo, Murray P Cox, Ray Tobler, Chris SM Turney, Alan Cooper, Kristofer M Helgen bioRxiv 2020.07.24.219048; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.24.219048).

The authors were looking into the "super-archaic" hominins that were discovered in the Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) region: Homo luzonensis and H. floresiensis, which were contemporary to anatomically modern humans (AMH). As modern populations in the region have a high level of Denisovan introgression they wanted to find out if there was also a signal of introgression from the super-archaics in the region.

Their analysis failed to detect super-archaic admixture but they reached an interesting conclusion:

"An alternative explanation is that H. luzonensis and H. floresiensis belong to a hominin clade that is considerably less divergent from AMH than is currently accepted, possibly being the latesurviving descendants of an earlier radiation of a Denisovan-like lineage across ISEA.
This would imply that hominin occupation of Flores (1.2Ma) and the Philippines (700ka) was not continuous and that the ubiquitous Denisovan ancestry across ISEA, which includes signals of admixture from a Denisovan population that diverged from the Altai Denisovans ~280ka, results from AMH admixture with one or both of these groups.
Indeed, the patterning of Denisovan ancestry across ISEA is consistent with separate Denisovan introgression events in the Philippines and, potentially, in Flores. Despite the complete lack of support for this scenario from current morphological interpretations, it is possible that pronounced dwarfism and prolonged periods of endemic island evolution for H. floresiensis and H. luzonensis complicate morphological assessments and phylogenetic placement of these groups.
While it would simplify the search for ‘southern Denisovans’ if they could be linked with the dwarfed hominins of Flores and Luzon, existing archaeological and morphological data and Flores as a more likely location for the sources of Denisovan-like DNA."

Below a map of the sites where Denisovan, Flores and Luzon hominins' remains were found:

Could the Denisovans be a link to the Homo erectus population of Asia? Current research links them to Neandertals in western Eurasia.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2020 by Austin Whittall © 

Relatively quick origin for Homo floresiensis pigmies: 150 to 675 generations to shrink in size

The Flores Island Homini shrunk in height over a relatively short period of time according to an article published on October 9, 2019:

The paper written by José Alexandre F. Diniz-Filho, Lucas Jardim, Thiago F. Rangel, Phillip B. Holden, Neil R. Edwards, Joaquín Hortal, Ana M. C. Santos and Pasquale Raia (Quantitative genetics of body size evolution on islands: an individual-based simulation approach - 15Biol. Lett. http://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2019.0481), simulated models to explain how hominins could have reduced their size over time:

"We applied the model to evaluate body size differentiation in the pigmy extinct hominin Homo floresiensis, showing that dwarfing may have occurred in only about 360 generations (95% CI ranging from 150 to 675 generations). This result agrees with reports suggesting rapid dwarfing of large mammals on islands, as well as with the recent discovery that small-sized hominins lived in Flores as early as 700 kyr ago. Our simulations illustrate the power of analysing ecological and evolutionary patterns from an explicit quantitative genetics perspective."

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2019 by Austin Whittall © 

The most recent information on Admixture with archaic hominins

A paper (Using hominin introgression to trace modern human dispersals, Joao C. Teixeira and Alan Cooper, PNAS first published July 12, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1904824116 - behind a pay wall), reports admixture with several groups of hominins other than Denisovans and Neanderthals during the dispersal of modern humans around the globe.

The abstract says the following:

"bstract The dispersal of anatomically modern human populations out of Africa and across much of the rest of the world around 55 to 50 thousand years before present (ka) is recorded genetically by the multiple hominin groups they met and interbred with along the way, including the Neandertals and Denisovans. The signatures of these introgression events remain preserved in the genomes of modern-day populations, and provide a powerful record of the sequence and timing of these early migrations, with Asia proving a particularly complex area. At least 3 different hominin groups appear to have been involved in Asia, of which only the Denisovans are currently known. Several interbreeding events are inferred to have taken place east of Wallace’s Line, consistent with archaeological evidence of widespread and early hominin presence in the area. However, archaeological and fossil evidence indicates archaic hominins had not spread as far as the Sahul continent (New Guinea, Australia, and Tasmania), where recent genetic evidence remains enigmatic."

Apparently the following admixture events took place between our unchaste ancestors and the other humans they met during their travels:

1. Neanderthals: in the Middle East (?) 50 - 55 kya
2. Unknown human similar to Neanderthals and Denisovans. More recent than 50 kya. In Northern India. Modern Punjabi and Bengal populations have some DNA from this admixture event.
3. Humans that headed into Central and Eastern Asia: Admixture with Denisovans.
4. Humans heading south into the Malaysian Peninsula: mixed with a relative of the Denisovans which had split from those living in Central Asia some 280 kya. This introgression took place in Malaysia or Borneo.
5. This group split: those heading into the Philippines mixed with yet another group of Denisovans and the hunter-gatherers living there nowadays carry this genetic imprint.
6. The group heading south towards Australia met some humans which were not Homo erectus, or Neaderthal or Denisovan, they were not the Flores "Hobbit" either. The genetic signals of this archaic group has been found int he short-statured people living on Flores nowadays.

Nobody seems to have admixed with the other known species of that region: the Homo luzonensis (from the Philippines) and the Flores Island hobbits.

The following images are from this paper:

 

 

These unknown hominins are indeed a very interesting find! We will have to await for further studies to learn more about them.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2019 by Austin Whittall © 

Homo habilis left Africa 2.4 Million Years ago

Brazilian media has reported that today, Saturday July 6, 2019, Quaternary Science Reviews magazine will publish a paper authored by a Brazilian-Italian team who conducted a series of excavations on the Zarqa River in northern Jordan between 2013 and 2015. Their key discovery are stone tools dated 2.4 Million years old.

At the time that I published this post, I hadn't been able to find the article in Quaternary Science Reviews, but I will share what these news reports say (I am translating them more or less freely from Portuguese to English):

The fact that these stone tools are 2.4 Million years old is significant because it places them 500,000 years further back in time than the commonly accepted earliest date of hominid migration out of Africa.

The team unearthed some 450 pieces of stone of which at least 100 are really old. Images shown below depict these tools:

Tools dated 2.4 My Old, from Zarqa River, Jordan.

The age of these tools means that they predate Homo erectus and therefore, they are the work of the only hominid that existed at that time: Homo habilis.

Furthermore, it places H. habilis in the Middle East, that is, out of Africa and in Asia.

One of the paper's authors, Walter Neves, a Brazilian biologist, archaeologist and anthropolgist stated that "With our discoveries, we demonstrated that man left Africa some 500 thousand years earlier, and that the transition from Homo habilis to Homo erectus took place in the Caucasus and not in Africa".

Their discovery would, as Neves says "solve one of the biggest problems of paleonanthropology fo the last 20 years" by explaining the skulls found in Dmanisi, Georgia, in the Caucasus as belonging to H. habilis.

These five skulls, pictured below, had been originally assigned to a local branch of Homo ergaster, now they are considered as being Homo erectus and their age of 1.8 My makes this feasible, as it coincides more or less with the date of the supposed migration of Homo erectus out of Africa. However the size of the Dmanisi skulls was problematic: they were very different to each other and far smaller than Homo erectus skulls... they were more like Homo habilis skulls.

-The five Dmanisi skulls of Homo erectus georgicus (credits; M.S. Ponce de Leon & P.E. Zollkofer, University of Zurich).

The Dmanisi remains data (from David Lordkipanidze et al., (2013). A Complete Skull from Dmanisi, Georgia, and the Evolutionary Biology of Early Homo. Science 18 October 2013. Vol. 342 no. 6156 pp. 326-331; doi: 10.1126/science.1238484):

• Similar to the "African" H. erectus (known as H. ergaster) but have smaller crania and therefore closer to H. habilis.
• Skull sizes from 546 to 730 cm³, compatible with theH. habilis' 509 to 687 cm³.
• Small bodied: 146 to 166 cm, 47 to 50 kg, similar to H. habilis but in the lower range of H. erectus.

Neves believes that they were Homo habilis, and that they are the forebearers of Homo erectus, who evolved in Asia out of H. Habilis stock.

He also suggests that this can explain the tiny Flores Island hominids and the old stone tools recently discovered in China, which are 2.1 Million years old, in line with what we wrote in our post on those tools (Hominins in China 2.1 Million years ago... pushing back the dates in Asia):

"And this is in China, surely the hominins who made those tools reached western Eurasia far earlier than the 2.12 My age assigned to those tools. Which may imply that they were not Homo erectus, maybe Homo habilis or even an australopithecine species! (maybe the ancestors of the primitive Flores island "Hobbit")."

The Flores - Homo habilis link was proposed by Debbie Arguea et al., (see my post First Asians were not Homo erectus revisited) in June 2017, and Neves' dates seems to support it.

We will update this post once the paper is published.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2019 by Austin Whittall © 

Short Stature evolved twice on Flores Island

A Report (Evolutionary history and adaptation of a human pygmy population of Flores Island, Indonesia by Serena Tucci et al. Science 03 Aug 2018, Vol. 361, Issue 6401, pp. 511-516.DOI: 10.1126/science.aar8486) tells us that the pygmy-sized Hobbits of Flores island evolved their own short stature independently from the small-sized Homo sapiens that live nowadays in Flores (pygmies).

The background is (quote from the magazine):

"The genetics of human short stature
Flores Island in Indonesia has a long history of hominin occupation, including by the extinct Homo floresiensis and a more recent settlement by modern humans. Furthermore, Flores has an extant population of pygmy humans, and H. floresiensis exhibited a diminutive adult size relative to other hominins. Tucci et al. examined genetic variation among 32 individuals, including 10 sequenced genomes, from a population of pygmies living close to the cave where H. floresiensis remains were discovered. These individuals exhibit signatures of polygenic selection explaining the short stature and have genomic content from both Neanderthals and Denisovans, but no additional archaic lineages. Thus, restricted height is under selection at this location and has evolved independently at least twice in hominins."

Twice because it evolved once in Pygmies in Flores and again (or rather before) in the H. floresiensis.

The Abstract tells us the following:

"Flores Island, Indonesia, was inhabited by the small-bodied hominin species Homo floresiensis, which has an unknown evolutionary relationship to modern humans. This island is also home to an extant human pygmy population. Here we describe genome-scale single-nucleotide polymorphism data and whole-genome sequences from a contemporary human pygmy population living on Flores near the cave where H. floresiensis was found. The genomes of Flores pygmies reveal a complex history of admixture with Denisovans and Neanderthals but no evidence for gene flow with other archaic hominins. Modern individuals bear the signatures of recent positive selection encompassing the FADS (fatty acid desaturase) gene cluster, likely related to diet, and polygenic selection acting on standing variation that contributed to their short-stature phenotype. Thus, multiple independent instances of hominin insular dwarfism occurred on Flores."

So the pygmy population that is now living on the island has Denisovan and Neanderthal admixture -but no additional archaic lineages. The latter is interesting. Maybe this has been concluded as the only genetic components are that of Denisovans, H. sapiens and Neanderthals.

But, as a BBC News article points out today: "Unfortunately, the wet and tropical conditions on Flores mean that all efforts to isolate hobbit DNA have so far failed. Dr Serena Tucci told the BBC: "Like many other scientists, it is my dream to find ancient DNA from the Hobbit. No DNA was recovered in the original Hobbit fossils, but DNA methods have improved markedly in the last few years.".

So no genetic comparison was made between both short statured groups.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2018 by Austin Whittall © 

Hominins in China 2.1 Million years ago... pushing back the dates in Asia

The paper Hominin occupation of the Chinese Loess Plateau since about 2.1 million years ago by Zhaoyu Zhu et al, published today in Nature, is very interesting as it pushes back the date of an early hominin migration into Asia well beyond the Dmanisi hominins found in Georgia:

The abstract states:

"Considerable attention has been paid to dating the earliest appearance of hominins outside Africa. The earliest skeletal and artefactual evidence for the genus Homo in Asia currently comes from Dmanisi, Georgia, and is dated to approximately 1.77–1.85 million years ago (Ma). Two incisors that may belong to Homo erectus come from Yuanmou, south China, and are dated to 1.7 Ma; the next-oldest evidence is an H. erectus cranium from Lantian (Gongwangling)—which has recently been dated to 1.63 Ma—and the earliest hominin fossils from the Sangiran dome in Java, which are dated to about 1.5–1.6 Ma. Artefacts from Majuangou III5 and Shangshazui6 in the Nihewan basin, north China, have also been dated to 1.6–1.7 Ma. Here we report an Early Pleistocene and largely continuous artefact sequence from Shangchen, which is a newly discovered Palaeolithic locality of the southern Chinese Loess Plateau, near Gongwangling in Lantian county. The site contains 17 artefact layers that extend from palaeosol S15—dated to approximately 1.26 Ma—to loess L28, which we date to about 2.12 Ma. This discovery implies that hominins left Africa earlier than indicated by the evidence from Dmanisi."

And this is in China, surely the hominins who made those tools reached western Eurasia far earlier than the 2.12 My age assigned to those tools. Which may imply that they were not Homo erectus, maybe Homo habilis or even an australopithecine species! (maybe the ancestors of the primitive Flores island "Hobbit").

Maybe there are older tools at the site. The ones found are cobbles similar to those found in Africa with a similar age.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2018 by Austin Whittall © 

First Asians were not Homo erectus revisited

Back in 2011 I posted The first Asians were not Homo erectus, and proposed some migration routes including one (shown in green in the map included in the post) leading to Flores Island, home of the Hobbit.

Today after reading the article on the 709,000 year-old evidence of hominins in the Philippines (see my previous post), I checked some recent papers on the Flores Island "pigmy" hominin, and found a paper suggesting that they descended from Homo habilis: The affinities of Homo floresiensis based on phylogenetic analyses of cranial, dental, and postcranial characters by Debbie Arguea, Colin P.Groves, Michael S.Y.Lee, William L.Jungersde. Journal of Human Evolution Volume 107, June 2017, Pages 107-133 Journal of Human Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2017.02.006. Below I quote from the abstract (paper behind a pay wall): note, I highlighted the bold text.

"Although the diminutive Homo floresiensis has been known for a decade, its phylogenetic status remains highly contentious. A broad range of potential explanations for the evolution of this species has been explored. One view is that H. floresiensis is derived from Asian Homo erectus that arrived on Flores and subsequently evolved a smaller body size, perhaps to survive the constrained resources they faced in a new island environment. Fossil remains of H. erectus, well known from Java, have not yet been discovered on Flores. The second hypothesis is that H. floresiensis is directly descended from an early Homo lineage with roots in Africa, such as Homo habilis; the third is that it is Homo sapiens with pathology. We use parsimony and Bayesian phylogenetic methods to test these hypotheses. Our phylogenetic data build upon those characters previously presented in support of these hypotheses by broadening the range of traits to include the crania, mandibles, dentition, and postcrania of Homo and Australopithecus. The new data and analyses support the hypothesis that H. floresiensis is an early Homo lineage: H. floresiensis is sister either to H. habilis alone or to a clade consisting of at least H. habilis, H. erectus, Homo ergaster, and H. sapiens. A close phylogenetic relationship between H. floresiensis and H. erectus or H. sapiens can be rejected; furthermore, most of the traits separating H. floresiensis from H. sapiens are not readily attributable to pathology (e.g., Down syndrome). The results suggest H. floresiensis is a long-surviving relict of an early (>1.75 Ma) hominin lineage and a hitherto unknown migration out of Africa, and not a recent derivative of either H. erectus or H. sapiens."

So, the Flores hominin was not afflicted with Down syndrome, instead it was a relict of an ancient (1,750,000 year old) migration out of Africa, which as you can see above is most likely Homo habilis.

Could these "primitive" relatives have moved across the sea into the Philippines... or across Asia and into America, long before Homo erectus appeared on the face of Earth?.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2018 by Austin Whittall © 

Hominins in the Philippines 709,000 years ago: watercraft?

This paper published in Nature a few weeks ago: Earliest known hominin activity in the Philippines by 709 thousand years ago, by T. Ingicco et al. (Nature volume 557, pages 233–237 (2018) doi:10.1038/s41586-018-0072-8) is amazing: the authors find stone tools and the remains of butchered megafauna several hundreds of thousands of years older than expected. These hominins were not Homo sapiens, and the Philippines was separated from the rest of Sundaland by open sea. So how did they get there? Did they use boats?

The paper says the folowing:

• The remains are between 631 and 777 Ky old. So this is +600 ky older than the alleged Out of Africa event of modern humans.
• They found dozens of stone tools, rather primitive, lacking retouching.
• They also found rhinoceros bones with cut marks and percussion marks (to break the bones), a clear indication of hominin activities.

The authors write: "Our excavations at Kalinga and the numeric dating results clearly provide securely dated evidence for human colonization of the Philippines by the early Middle Pleistocene epoch, and long before the appearance of modern humans in both the local context and wider Island South East Asia region. Although the identity of these archaic toolmakers remains unknown, it is likely that they dispersed over at least one sea barrier to reach Luzon Island. The most likely points of origin are Borneo through Palawan to the west, or China through Taiwan to the north, this latter island was connected to mainland Asia during periods with low sea levels..."

Then they wonder if these hominins are related to more recent remains found at Callao Cave, those of a small adult human:

"...a question clearly linked to our discovery is the origin of the Callao Cave hominin that has been dated to 66.7 ± 1 ka. This diminutive Callao hominin may represent a direct descendent from a Pleistocene migration stock related to these early Kalinga toolmakers—similar to what happened on Flores Island—or may be derived from a more recent migration wave of anatomically modern humans..."

The Callao Cave hominin was reported (New evidence for a 67,000-year-old human presence at Callao Cave, Luzon, Philippines,Armand Salvador Mijares et al. Journal of Human Evolution Volume 59, Issue 1, July 2010, Pages 123-132 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2010.04.008) after the discovery of a metatarsal bone (foot bone) of a diminutive hominin, which may have been or not a modern human:

"[The] metatarsal definitely belongs to the genus Homo. Morphometric analysis of the Callao metatarsal indicates that it has a gracile structure, close to that observed in other small-bodied Homo sapiens. Interestingly, the Callao metatarsal also falls within the morphological and size ranges of Homo habilis and H. floresiensis. Identifying whether the metatarsal represents the earliest record of H. sapiens so far recorded anywhere east of Wallace’s Line".

So it may have been a Homo habilis or even a Flores hominin! or, as the authors of the most recent find suggest, a migration of Homo erectus (see below) that became tinier due to insular dwarfism, see what Ingicco et al say about the rhino slayers:

"Despite the current evidence, it still seems too farfetched to suggest that H. erectus, or another unknown Pleistocene ancestral candidate for the Kalinga toolmakers (for example, Denisovans), were able to construct some sort of simple watercraft and deliberately cross sea barriers to reach these islands. However, considering evidence of overseas dispersal during the Middle Pleistocene stage is increasing in number, such a hypothesis cannot currently be rejected."

For me the important thing is precisely that: they crossed open sea to reach the Philippines. This means they dominated the art of building and sailing watercraft long before humans appeared, at the time that Neanderthals were splitting from the ancestors of H. sapiens (if the Out of Africa theory is correct). But do note how hesitant the authors are, to admit this (they write "too farfetched" instead of admitting that they did build a boat...)

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2018 by Austin Whittall © 

The Hobbits were a mix of human and Homo erectus.

A paper published today (Kaifu Y, Kono RT, Sutikna T, Saptomo EW, Jatmiko, Due Awe R (2015) Unique Dental Morphology of Homo floresiensis and Its Evolvotionary Implications. PLoS ONE 10(11): e0141614. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0141614) refutes a previous paper [2] that suggested that the Hobbit of the Indonesian Flores Island was a microcephalic human. Instead it suggests that the Hobbit was a primitive human species that underwent insular dwarfism.

Above: reproduction of a Hobbit skullby Javier Truebamsf

To settle the issue of "new species" vs. "degenerate human" they took a peek at the Hobbit's teeth. And found that "H. floresiensis had primitive canine-premolar and advanced molar morphologies, a combination of dental traits unknown in any other hominin species. The primitive aspects are comparable to H. erectus from the Early Pleistocene, whereas some of the molar morphologies are more progressive even compared to those of modern humans."

Their paper disproves an even older origin (i.e. Australopithecines or H. habilis) but, and this is interesting their results suggest that " H. floresiensis derived from an earlier Asian Homo erectus population and experienced substantial body and brain size dwarfism in an isolated insular setting.".

They studied many variables and concluded that " the dental morphology of H. floresiensis is derived relative to H. habilis s. l. and is comparable to post-habilis grade Early Pleistocene Homo or H. erectus s. l. ...[giving] strong support to the hypothesis that H. floresiensis evolved from an early Javanese H. erectus population or a related form from the ancient Sundaland with substantial body and brain size dwarfism... "

The dwarfism is considerable, since an average Homo erectus is about 5.4 ft (1.65 m) tall and has a brain with 860 cm³ and the Hobbit is only 3.6 feet (1.1 m) tall and its brain is only 426 cm³.

But such insular dwarfism is not uncommon among mammals: elephants and hippopotamus that became midgets in Cyprus and mammoths that shrunk in Crete and on Flores itself, the dwarf stegodon (a relative of elephants).

Further reading
[2] Argue D, Donlon D, Groves C, Wright R. Homo floresiensis: microcephalic, pygmoid, Australopithecus, or Homo? J Hum Evol. 2006; 51: 360–374. pmid:16919706 doi: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2006.04.013

Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2015 by Austin Whittall © 

The Flores Island Hobbit

A brand new paper published by Maciej Henneberg, Robert B. Eckhardtb, Sakdapong Chavanaves and Kenneth J. Hsü (Evolved developmental homeostasis disturbed in LB1 from Flores, Indonesia, denotes Down syndrome and not diagnostic traits of the invalid species Homo floresiensis, PNAS 2014 ; published ahead of print August 4, 2014, doi:10.1073/pnas.1407382111 ) states that the Flores Island hominin, dating back some 15,000 years, was actually a very deformed person who very likely suffered from Down syndrome.

This is a Link to the paper so that you can read it.

I am sure that this will cause some debate and plenty of counter-arguments. If it turns out to be true, it is quite surprising, and sort of disappointing (at least for me); I was positive that it was actually a dwarf!

But let's not despair, there are still the Palau island pygmies that have to be explained... were they also afflicted with Down syndrome?

Above is the skull of the Flores hobbit and a modern human one.

We will have to wait and see what the final conclusions are.

NEW NOV. 2015, Another paper now says they were ancient humans evolved from H. erectus. Read my post here

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

Bigfoot a Fake according to an Oxford study

A recent paper published by Bryan C. Sykes, Rhettman A. Mullis, Christophe Hagenmuller, Terry W. Melton, and Michel Sartori (Genetic analysis of hair samples attributed to yeti, bigfoot and other anomalous primates Proc. R. Soc. B. 2014 281 1789 20140161; doi:10.1098/rspb.2014.0161 (published 2 July 2014) 1471-2954) indicates that the Bigfoot and Yeti hair samples that were studied do not belong to unknown hominins but to other extant mammals:

In the first ever systematic genetic survey, we have used rigorous decontamination followed by mitochondrial 12S RNA sequencing to identify the species origin of 30 hair samples attributed to anomalous primates. Two Himalayan samples, one from Ladakh, India, the other from Bhutan, had their closest genetic affinity with a Palaeolithic polar bear, Ursus maritimus. Otherwise the hairs were from a range of known extant mammals.

The team was part of the Oxford-Lausanne Collateral Hominid Project, a project that began in 2012 to study these "anomalous hominids".

The scientists worked through a set of 57 hair samples which they screened and classified (some were not even hairs: the "hairs" were plant fibre or glass fibre) and the remaining group was analysed. mtDNA was extracted and sequenced in a broad manner allowing the identifiaton of the genus but not the species (i.e. canid but not wolf, coyote or dog).

The mtDNA was compared against known databases and... all were clearly identified as belonging to well known mammals: American black bears, canids, cows, horses, deer, and odd creaturs such as Malaysian tapir, serow or North American porcupines!.

A human hair was identified and, amazing find: an American racoon which came from a sample gathered in Russia (far away from the racoon's territory), a clear sign of cross-contamination or a deliberate fake.

The extinct bear

Two of the samples (#25025 and #25191) matched the sequence of a now extinct Pleistocene polar bear (Ursus maritimus). The samples are modern but the bear lived 40 kya in the Arctic islands of Svalbard, Norway. Also, they were not found in the polar regions: sample #25025 came from Ladakh, India, from an animal that was shot over 40 years ago. The other sample came from Bhutan in a high altitude bamboo forest (11,500 ft. or 3,500 m). What do these locations have in common with extinct polar bears?

Please see my post On Yetis and Polar Bears (Dec. 2013), which now, I see, is an advance report on the findings that were finally published early July 2014.

Implications and comments

It is a pity that they did not manage to confirm the existence of our well known Yeti and bigfoot, but it is also nice to know that good science can counter the poor science of some other "scientists" such as the bigfoot DNA of Melba Ketchum; by the way Ketchum is asking the public to donate money so she can keep up with her great research. Not a joke, see for yourself, I'd call it sponsoring non-science.

On the other hand I am persuaded that the bigfoot - hominin myths and those of South American Patagonian giants are not related to unknown apes but to our closer relatives such as Neanderthals and Homo erectus which probably reached America long before H. sapiens did, and shared the New World with them until relatively recently. If the Flores hominin co-existed with modern humans in an insular setting c. 13 kya and originated the local myth of "Ebu-gogo", why wouldn't our more primitive human relatives cause a similar reaction among the Paleo Indians in the Americas?

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall ©