Hobbit was a bigfoot Options

[vilnoori]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4070136a20956.html

Morwood's new book mentions that Homo floresiensis had disproportionally large feet. A little bigfoot! Also interesting is the mention of a 5 yr. old's remains beside the one they first found. They've found others, by the way, and are currently excavating more in a cave below the one they found.

What are the chances that some H. floresiensis survived on other S. E. Asian islands, and are still undiscovered?









Edit to fix link - Mod

[BobZenor]

That is pretty interesting about the oversized feet of a probable erectus descendant.

There are reports of a tiny human like creatures on Sumatra called Orang Pendek. For some odd reason many people think it is a relative of oranutans and not a relative of floresiensis. I guess they think they know that erectus was not hairy.

[vilnoori]

Opinion is split on whether H. floresiensis is descended from erectus or from habilis, I favor the latter. The only reason habilis is passed over by some is because they haven't found any outside of Africa. But how well has anyone looked? Basically the only difference between habilines and erectines was that erectines were bigger. Proportionally the brain was just as small. Floresiensis' tool kit and presence on an island indicates they were capable of quite intelligent reasoning. There's no reason why habilines weren't capable of just as much--they were as small, their brain to body ratio is comparable, and they too had stone tools associated with dig sites. So why bother with the increase in size--floresiensis is just a slightly modified habiline!

Just an opinion, but I think people were formed from habiline-like creatures, and sasquatch from something like H. ergaster. I mean, take a look at this: did you ever see such a bigfoot-like face?

http://brianaala.tripod.com/Narboy.html

Heck, just get rid of that wonky afro, and the drawn on eyebrows that really don't look right anyway, put a thinner lip on, make him hairy from the top of the eye ridge down his back and there ya go! Who says bigfoot bones haven't been found yet? If someone finds some, I'd fully expect them to look just like that!

This post has been edited by vilnoori: May 25 2007, 11:24 AM

[BobZenor]

At some point habilis is just an older erectus. Some will quibble about where the split is but it is still arbitrary for the erectus, if any, that are actually are descended from habilis. Some of the earliest erectus like those found in Geogia are very primitive and are said to be very much like habilis. We may be in agreement that a split likely occurred at habilis for some of the "erectus" to separate them from our ancestor. I have heard scientists say that floresiensis cannot be erectus because it has too small a brain. The idea that a brain cannot get smaller simply makes no logical sense so it isn't very persuasive to me.

Those early erectus likely gave rise to a huge widespread group of Asian erectus. The descendents of that first group may include the most probable ancestor of Bigfoot, some of the Java erectus, maybe other Asian erectus, floresiensis, and possibly Orang Pendek. It seems likely to me that we descended down another branch that went something like rudolfensis, ergastor, heidlebergensis, modern humans. The biggest unknown is where some of the primitive Asian erectus split off from whatever was the lineage that led to modern humans. All the old erectus look very similar but they are often distinct and it is not obvious who were their ancestors. About all we can do is wait for more fossils to hopefully be found and in my case not take any opinions from paleontologists too seriously about probable ancestors.

[vilnoori]

I know I'm a bit of a maverick but I think we came off habilis and not through erectus at all. I think that line went to the neanderthals (heidelbergensis) and dead-ended there. I don't think sasquatch are neanderthals, either. I think they are ergaster or even some far earlier robust offshoot. Habilines are so gracile. Heck, one of those skulls looks almost modern, only it is tiny! And two million years old, they say? Wow!

And I agree they'll have to be finding many more fossils in the future. And bones. Remember H. floresiensis remains weren't fossilized, they were really old bones. Extremely fragile, too.

[dogu4]

Just a point of precision in definition, Vilnoori.
The word fossil is derived from old indo-european sources and comes to us from the latin word for "digging up". Fossilization is a process where something, whether it's a bone, skin texture, shell, tool, and by extension practically anything which can be considered a "thing", is preserved by being sequestered from the aging effects of exposure and time.
Perhaps a better word to use is "mineralization" which indeed, many things buried under the ground eventually become, but not all, and maybe not even most. I encountered what I was told by geologists was some 3 million year old fossil wood in the antarctic, completely non-mineralized due to it's preservation in the cold dry air of its surroundings.
And you're right about those h. floriensis fossils. Can you image the stir it will make should we ever discover an ancient hominid is a glacier, like the Alp's Ootsi or the Yukon's Alsek Tatshenshini KDT man. We finally live in an age technologically advanced enough to recognize the significance of finds such as these. There's no doubt the fossils are out there.

[vilnoori]

OK! Hey, I said I'm a biologist, not an archeologist, no matter how interested I am in it! I do tend to think of fossils as mineralized biological matter vs. just really old stuff. I mean, what's the cut off point? 5K y. o., 10, 12, 15, 1 million? I think they dated the floresiensis remains to 12 thousand (that's not very old, really)!

Wow, you were in Antarctica. I am totally fascinated by that continent. Just think of all that cool stuff left to discover stuck under that huge glacier.

If we do discover an ancient (or otherwise) hominid in a glacier, I wonder if it will be hairy. So do you think sasquatch is just H. ergaster or H. erectus, just 200 K years or so in the future?

[dogu4]

Vilnoori. I'm not a scientist of any kind, though I try to keep up, particularly as it applies to natural history, and find that as the study of biology and geology become more and more techinical, the definitions do too. I hesitate to call it merely jargon, but different disciplines study the fossil evidence and its record from slightly different perspectives and for reasons that are germane to their areas of research. I kinda doubt it's a matter of a cut-off date but rather a question of relevancy to the kind of study they're pursuing.
Biology-Online has a pretty good set of definitions, diferentiating among a number of disciplines; such as in geology in contrast to paleontology.

http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Fossil

And please understand that I mention it not because I take issue with what your wrote but just in the interest in precise language when possible. You know how discussion can go all non-linear and become protracted over what amounts to the nuances of words rather than their intended or conventional meanings.

This topic on h.floriensis and whether its erectus or something else, and how brain and skeletal size relates to its origins, is very interesting. I see efforts to place it someplace on the family tree, which we typically visualise as a trunk with a few branches, which not coincidentally reflects the relatively few fossils we have. I think if we could somehow recreate a model of the ecosystems back then, over the last 4 or 5 million years, perhaps we could understand the proliferation of different populations and species of ancestral hominids, only a few of which presumably are known. Of course this takes us to a term which is even more difficult to pin-down as far as its definition: species.

I kinda favor abandoning the tree trunk and branches model of the evolutionary journey and instead prefer the concept of radiating populations in which are carried a wide variety of traits some of which linger only to disappear or re-emerge, depending on the way climate changes or natural catastrophe or how it confronts competition. So instead of a tree it looks more like a bush with the ability of branches to occasionally re-fuse into a single line. Humans look like they've developed a barrier against fusing with non-h.sapiens when our reproductive strategies incorporated the uniquely human cognitive abilities that consititue language and culture. In other words, it's unlikely that an erectus, no matter how strong or successfull as a hunter it might be will be able to regularly copulate with h. sapiens since h. sapiens are socially structured, no matter where we find 'em or whether they're stone age or cyber-age, in such a way that a prospective mate needs to bond socially before being granted priveledges. Giving species names as we do with fossil primates is a slightly different process than what we do with living populations, for obvious and necessary reasons.

For what it's worth, I think h.floriensis was a diminutive erectus. But if it were a nano-neanderthal, who'd be the wiser at this stage of the research. It's really not that important except as fodder for discussion.

Hair cover. I don't buy the notion that hair and humans had to do only with retaining heat because we see that hair cover in so many mamal species, especially in primates, does so much more as far a communicating the owners fitness and status and sex, as well as protect the skin (or hide) from exposure to damage.

I've been researching on the internet some of the reports from Eurasia where relic populations of everything from miniature homids to neanderthals and erectus and the way they are described as hairy is interesting...sometimes it's sparse, sometimes it's described as a pelt..and even here in North America, their seems to be a range. How indicative of primates.

Really, if sasquatch can exist using primate intelligence and superior instinct for cryptic behavior, why not more than one population, or species...who knows if they don't reproduce. We suspect wolves and coyotes do. We know that horses and asses will. And humans? Who hasn't heard stories?

Antarctica is an "interesting" place to live and work, You're a biologist. If there's any particular aspect of field study which is relevant, find a researcher and let 'em know you're interested. It is impressive to see the scale of "big science" at that level. Cheers

[yowiie]

At some point habilis is just an older erectus. Some will quibble about where the split is but it is still arbitrary for the erectus, if any, that are actually are descended from habilis. Some of the earliest erectus like those found in Geogia are very primitive and are said to be very much like habilis. We may be in agreement that a split likely occurred at habilis for some of the "erectus" to separate them from our ancestor. I have heard scientists say that floresiensis cannot be erectus because it has too small a brain. The idea that a brain cannot get smaller simply makes no logical sense so it isn't very persuasive to me.

Those early erectus likely gave rise to a huge widespread group of Asian erectus. The descendents of that first group may include the most probable ancestor of Bigfoot, some of the Java erectus, maybe other Asian erectus, floresiensis, and possibly Orang Pendek. It seems likely to me that we descended down another branch that went something like rudolfensis, ergastor, heidlebergensis, modern humans. The biggest unknown is where some of the primitive Asian erectus split off from whatever was the lineage that led to modern humans. All the old erectus look very similar but they are often distinct and it is not obvious who were their ancestors. About all we can do is wait for more fossils to hopefully be found and in my case not take any opinions from paleontologists too seriously about probable ancestors.

Why couldn't the hobbit be Orang pendek, I live in australia which is only a stones throw away from where the Hobbit was found, I believe that we have two species of (Bigfoot) here in Oz. We get the smaller versions around arang pendeks size of 4ft- 5ft and then we get the big fellow like you do in USA

[BobZenor]

Why couldn't the hobbit be Orang pendek, I live in australia which is only a stones throw away from where the Hobbit was found, I believe that we have two species of (Bigfoot) here in Oz. We get the smaller versions around arang pendeks size of 4ft- 5ft and then we get the big fellow like you do in USA

I think it probably was the same animal. The evidence for orang pendek is not nearly as solid a floresiensis. I don't agree with the idea that Hobbits even likely evolved on an island. They are not separated by that much water and it would have been less when during ice ages. There are little people reported on New Guinea and other places as well. Adaptive radiation is a perfectly natural and expected thing to happen when erectus reached Asia and new different sized species are a perfectly reasonable expectation from the perspective of basic biology.

The natives on Flores even told stories of little hairy people that would even eat the dried pumpkin plates that offerings were given on. They lived in caves high up on a volcano. Floresiensis may have been descended from an erectus, but the evidence for it not being hairy is zero. The evidence for technology is not at all convincing since modern humans shared the islands. I simply don't believe that modern humans would tolerate a spear carrying competitor. I think it was a hairy upright bipedal "ape" just like orang pendek.

[vilnoori]

Bob, chimps use tools, hunt in a coordinated way with each other, use complicated hand signs and calls to communicate, even pass on cultural knowledge of food sources and how to obtain them (crack the nut open with a stone, etc.). Hairiness or tool use is not only what distinguishes Homo from Pan, it is language and language doesn't leave much evidence behind (well, I suppose rock paintings). Take away humanity's language and culture, and we are not that different from a big, smart, upright chimp (maybe a bonobo, eh).

Only archaic Homo sapiens developed enough culture to begin to paint on walls--that is, to symbolize an idea or concept in an art form. The ability is closely linked to language, since language is the ability to symbolize a concept in a sound. Everything before that was culturally closer to a great ape than to us.

If as has been reported, sasquatch communicates in a language, then move over. We're not alone. Maybe as yowiie says, H. floresiensis were just little bigfoot.

And yes, I know, technically humans are great apes too, but let's just distinguish them for the moment for the sake of the discussion.

[Crypto_jack]

The Hobbit may be like Bigfoot in more ways then one

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/fro...7788470714.html

[BobZenor]

Bob, chimps use tools, hunt in a coordinated way with each other, use complicated hand signs and calls to communicate, even pass on cultural knowledge of food sources and how to obtain them (crack the nut open with a stone, etc.). Hairiness or tool use is not only what distinguishes Homo from Pan, it is language and language doesn't leave much evidence behind (well, I suppose rock paintings). Take away humanity's language and culture, and we are not that different from a big, smart, upright chimp (maybe a bonobo, eh).

I totally agree with that except we don't have reliable evidence to assign technology to all ancient members of the genus homo. The problem is that if there are multiple species inhabiting an environment, you cannot assign a hand ax, fore example, to any particular hominid "species". I seem to give ancient men far more credit than most anthropologists and think that things like language probably started at least a couple of million years ago. Where I seem to lose most people is when I say that it is likely that other species formed early in the evolution of Homo. About 2 million years ago is a very likely time for separation from our lineage when erectus started expanding dramatically into Asia. It is not even certain that all these first inhabitants were the same and necessary directly ancestral to modern humans. The Asian erectus certainly separated at some point from modern humans. The biggest unanswered question is when. It doesn't take much of a leap of logic to assume that some may have split before 2 million years ago. We have at least two likely candidates for the ancestor of erectus after all, habilis and rudofensis. The reason I use hairiness is because I believe that to be the biggest prejudice we have when creating illustrations of them. Even if it were "hairless", it would most likely rapidly get longer hair if it moved into a colder climate. That would be particularly true if they were in a less technological lineage.

Only archaic Homo sapiens developed enough culture to begin to paint on walls--that is, to symbolize an idea or concept in an art form. The ability is closely linked to language, since language is the ability to symbolize a concept in a sound. Everything before that was culturally closer to a great ape than to us.

Once again I pretty much agree completely. It is an open question if a human ancestor of two million years ago spoke and how smart they were. I doubt that Bigfoot is closer than about 2 million years but it is really just a guess. Something much closer could possibly lose technology if pressured by a more successful hominid or some other reason.

If as has been reported, sasquatch communicates in a language, then move over. We're not alone. Maybe as yowiie says, H. floresiensis were just little bigfoot.

And yes, I know, technically humans are great apes too, but let's just distinguish them for the moment for the sake of the discussion.

I obviously don't know if the Sierra sounds is real so it remains an unanswered question. If it is, it almost certainly sounds to me like a primitive language. People don't really know anything about them yet assume that they are as "dumb as apes". Most people probably think it sounds more scientific and reasonable but I am not so sure. There also seems to be a bit of seeing what you are comfortable seeing in many who reject it outright.

article linked by Crypto_Jack...Despite having a small brain, the hobbit species could cook, hunt large prey and build rafts. Stone artefacts and animal remains were found with their skeletons....

These sorts of assumptions were made, knowing that modern humans were most likely on the Island at the same time. I only use it as an example of how paleontologist tend to assign the highest level of technology to their fossils. If you examine the evidence logically, the Hobbit may have just stolen a leg bone of the elephant from humans and floated over on a tree in a storm or swam. It is not that far of a swim.

[vilnoori]

Well the timeline I seem to remember for things to develop is:

great apes 6 million years ago (mya)

australopithecines (Lucy et al) 4 mya

habilines 2 mya

erectus 500 thousand years ago (kya)

archaic homo sapiens and neanderthals 100 kya

modern humans, carvings and rock art 60 kya

civilizations begin 10 kya

As you can see, habilines have been around a very very long time. Plenty of time to get around the world, including up to Georgia, Russia and over to Asia and the islands. Erectus has had much less time to do so, but they managed it. Modern humans of course are speedy Gonzales.

Habilines and H. floresiensis had tools and fire in their dig levels. For habilines, who else was there to deposit tools all that long ago? Assuming things didn't get screwed up when they were digging it all up.

[BobZenor]

The way you look at it is the classical way that most people look at it. I think there were several branches of closely related animals where the ones you mentioned were likely only the most successful of a group of similar animals. I see many other branches that eventually went extinct. My opinion is not set in stone but just to give you an idea of where I am coming from, I suspect that a new branch or species forms about every 500,000 years on average on every surviving lineage. When one group enters a new environment it may form many more lineages and perhaps species. If you examine every lineage as a group of races and see species splitting off at about the frequency I am supposing, it make quite a large number of species. They don't all just progress together, you get holdouts and groups that go in totally different directions. I blame many paleontologists for wanting to assume their pet fossil hominids are all human ancestors as the reason that most don't share my opinion. Who knows, maybe Wolpoff (sp) is right and we are all one single lineage but my estimate of 500,000 years seems very conservative and it may be more like 150,000 years.

This post has been edited by BobZenor: Jun 1 2007, 10:06 PM

[vilnoori]

Bob, I'm sure you're quite right. There had to have been many more different species forming, and the same is true for all the other life forms in the past.

The fossil record gives us only a tantalizing glimpse of what may have been. It's rather like trying to figure out what a puzzle looks like when you only have 5% (or less) of the pieces!

But you can hold the above dates pretty firm, as far as they go, and instead consider it a sort of snapshot of what creatures were living when. The dating technique is pretty accurate--Potassium Argon dating of volcanic rocks in the same levels as the remains.

And we can see a sort of progression occurring:
1. an adaptation to terrestrial living vs. trees (a transition from small to larger, all fours to bipedal) as we see with Australopithecines,
2. increasing tool use (the designation Homo is only given when tools are present in the same living level as the remains) and the use of fire to tenderize meat and roots coinciding with more gracile, less robust skull bones and teeth as we see with habilines,
3. increasing intelligence and social cohesion to outsmart predators and increase hunting and gathering opportunities,
4. increasing age and especially childhood to transmit knowledge, cement social ties and protect more vulnerable (less robust) young
5. greater dependence on fire and shelter building capabilities, less need for brute strength, hair or fur for warmth, sheer size
6. development of language, culture, government etc. etc.

I would say Ergaster/Erectus fits somewhere inbetween #2 and #3, there is some evidence they had a more social structure (mass graves) and they certainly must have been able to hunt to survive the harsher European/Asian climates, I think Sasquatch is very much like H. ergaster.

Homo sapiens neanderthal, and Archaic Homo sapiens fit somewhere in #5, and Homo sapiens sapiens at #5 and #6. As far as I know there are no living cultures today which have not developed language and an oral history plus a rudimentary tribal government.

As I heard it, Flores Islanders said that the little people intermarried with them. The story goes that a woman was cooking something over a fire and a male little person was drawn to the wonderful aroma, having never experienced cooked food before. He so liked it that he stayed with her and they had a family, and the smaller stature of the islanders today is attributed to his ancestry. So if this is true, the hobbits did NOT have fire. I don't think there was evidence of fire in the cave, but there were stone tools.

There are several Native Indian accounts of sasquatch individuals not only having language which was taught to them by Indians, but also interbreeding with tribal members in days gone by. There are two accounts of Native girls being abducted and coming back pregnant (one in Chelan, Wa and one at the north end of Harrison Lake, BC). There is also the Russian story of the Yeti woman who was captured and who lived with villagers, having several children by Russian men (the babies were raised by others in the village) who lived their lives out as Russian villagers and who died. There's a picture of the skull of one of them on the Russian Bigfoot web site linked I think from Bobbie Short's page. It sure looks like an erectus skull to me!

This post has been edited by vilnoori: Jun 2 2007, 01:27 AM

[Huntster]

......Basically the only difference between habilines and erectines was that erectines were bigger....

This is precisely why I find current anthropology so irrelevant.

Size can vary greatly even among a curremt population, and these people are trying to develop precise theories/lines among populations seperated by millions of years.

....Just an opinion, but I think people were formed from habiline-like creatures, and sasquatch from something like H. ergaster. I mean, take a look at this: did you ever see such a bigfoot-like face?.....

I wouldn't know. I've never seen a bigfoot's face.

[Isbjörn]

My opinion is not set in stone but just to give you an idea of where I am coming from, I suspect that a new branch or species forms about every 500,000 years on average on every surviving lineage.

From this argument, bigfoots could have evolved from the Homo Sapiens Sapiens line. Theoretically (far fetched) one could think of some sort of genetic disturbance sparsely occurring in a population of Humans. The affected individuals would probably be expelled from society, creating a subculture of bigfoot.

Why am I putting forward this pretty stupid idea? Well, there does not seem to be much anatomical differences between BF and Humans. Most differences (hairiness, muscular bulk, hight) are more or less outer limits of the normal variation in humans. Most could be explained by alterations in hormone levels.