92 Australian GeographicThis could mean that
H. f loresiensis is the human
species to have most recently
coexisted with our own.
humans such as Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis, as well as
Homo sapiens. H. fl oresiensis was discovered on 7 September 2003,
deep within an excavation against the eastern wall of a huge cave
known as Liang Bua. A gaping limestone formation, Liang Bua
has been an archaeological excavation site since the 1950s. The
team who discovered her was searching for evidence about the
migration of our own species (early H. sapiens) to Australia, via
Indonesia, many tens of thousands of years ago.
Starting in 2001, Professor Raden Panji Soejono of the
Indonesian National Centre for Archaeological Research, and
legendary Australian archaeologist Professor Mike Morwood
(see page 95), led a series of Indonesian-Australian excava-
tions in Liang Bua, employing a new technique enabling them
to excavate safely to depths of more than 10m. The focus of
these excavations was a search for fossil evidence of the fi rst early
humans to arrive on Flores. Although stone tools clearly show
hominin occupation from about 1 million years ago, the bones
of early toolmakers of our own species were proving elusive.
No-one was expecting to fi nd a new hominin species of only
1m (3.5 feet) tall, but this is exactly what happened. Embed-
ded within a matrix of silty clay 6m down, and displaying
disproportionately large feet for such a small frame, ‘Hobbit’
was announced to the world in 2004 as Liang Bua 1 (LB1), and
she has held international scientifi c attention ever since.
Although her bones were demineralised and soft (often
described as having the consistency of wet blotting paper), LB1’s
skull and skeleton were very well preserved. One estimate later
dated her to 18,000 years old, which indicates her species over-
lapped with our own in time. But they may or may not have lived
with them on Flores itself, as modern humans did not arrive
until an estimated 11,000 years ago.
If this dating holds true, it could mean that H. fl oresiensis is
the human species to have most recently coexisted with our
own on the planet – Neanderthals, for example, were extinct
by perhaps 30,000 years ago.
Puzzlingly, LB1 exhibits a mixture of skeletal features both
primitive and modern, complicating our understanding of how
she fi ts into the hominin family tree. This mix of features is also
present in the other 10 H. fl oresiensis fossils, although these later
fi nds – which are up to 38,000 years old – are not as complete.
Many international scientists are trying to solve the puzzle
of where H. fl oresiensis fi ts within human evolution. According to
some researchers, the species is a dwarf version of Homo erectus.Fossils of H. erectus have been excavated from the much larger
Indonesian island of Java (the famous ‘Java man’, for example),
and the evidence shows they lived there between 1.5 million
and 150,000 years ago.
According to this hypothesis, a small population of H. erectus
became stranded on Flores. Big tsunamis occur in the Indonesian
region every 100 years or so, and it is possible a tsunami washed
a small group out to sea and carried them to the island’s shores
(during the 2004 Banda Aceh tsunami, for example, some people
were fl ushed many kilometres off shore and were found alive,
days later, clinging to rafts formed from plant debris).
Finding themselves completely isolated on the small island of
Flores, this group of H. erectus could have then become subject to VELIZAR SIMEONOVSKI /H. floresiensis; Varanus komodoensisAUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC
SOCIETY SUPPORTED
Flores SeaSavu SeaLia
ng^ Bua^ CaveRotiSelayarJampea
KalaotoaSawuKomodo FloresLes
ser(^) S
unda
(^) Isl
ands
Ti
mo
Su r
mb
a
INDONESIA
EAST
EAST TIMOR
TIMOR
Raba
Ruteng
Waingapu
Ende
Maumere
Dili
Kupang
120°E
120°E
125°E
10°S 10°S
0 100 200 km
meremmerer EAST
Diliilili
EQUATORPacific
Indian Ocean
Ocean
Southern
Ocean
INDONESIA
AUSTRALIA
Flores
History of habitation. About 800km north-east of Australia, Flores has
yielded fossil remains and artefacts proving the presence of early human
relatives, such as Homo fl oresiensis, discovered here in 2003.
FLORES
ag0914_HobbitP92 - 92 2014-08-12T15:57:58+10:00