Hobbits in Australia

[youcantry]

Okay. I have to ask. What are people's thoughts on hobbits in Australia?

[mingle]

Hi Chris,

Are you talking about the nerds that frequent LOTR conventions and movie premiers, or small New Zealanders? :-)

Sorry, couldn't help myself...

Mike.

[mingle]

... on a more serious note:

Are there any reports of Homo Floresiensis or similar diminutive human specimens in Australia?

Cheers,

Mike.

P.S. Are you trying to throw a bucket of cold water over the over-heating "Big Cat" thread with this one? :-)

[youcantry]

I don't think hobbits will quench the flames of the big cats... or little ones...

It's a serious question. I've heard some opinions regarding the belief they may have made it to Australia, so I guess I'm asking - a) who thinks they did make it to Australia, and b) how long ago were they here?

If anyone has a hobbit sighting, I'm all for it.

[Deleted]

The only thing I know on this topic is that the aboriginals talk about "little fellas" that are supposed to still exist in some parts of Oz. Wal would probably know a bit about this he spent a fair bit of time in the areas they are supposes to inhabit. There used to be reports from around the Murray and Mallee ares but these have disappeared in the last 50 or so years. I did hear of something in the swamps north of Kerang where some reports were published in the papers a while back. I might even have a clipping in one of my scrapbooks, but it is all pretty sketchy and I don't know of any hard evidence.

[youcantry]

I've recently been given reports of "waist-high" people in the 1940s... so I'm looking to find out just how many such reports are out there; where they might be centred; what the theories are regarding H. floresiensis and its migration south; etc.

[mingle]

Hey Chris,

Keep us updated on this, as it sounds very interesting.

I can't say I've heard of this before, but it's certainly worth further discussion.

Cheers,

Mike.

[youcantry]

edit: The following details are all wrong. I'll correct this post further down the thread....
------------------------------

The only other thing I've heard which is relevant is that in Fiji (I think) there was a census conducted in the early 1800s (I think) which included some valley with a count something like 2000 men and their families and 16 "little people men" and their families. (I forget the actual numbers and the names of little people in Fiji - but you get the idea.

From Fiji, come across to the Philippines and they have their own little people mythology. Indonesia likewise, obviously, with H. floresiensis.

Actually - I think I just misssed a talk tonight in at Sydney uni about this exact subject. Doh.

[youcantry]

Actually, it's this Thursday night:

Little Lady with Big Implications: Life, Times and Extinction of ‘The
Hobbit’ (Homo floresiensis)

The University of Sydney’s Centre for the Human Aspects of Science
and Technology, presents Professor Mike Morwood, from the University
of Wollongong, in a special presentation about his discovery and
research on ‘The Hobbit’ Homo floresiensis. The tiny human, the first
ever found belonging to a species of human completely new to science,
was discovered in 2004 on the Indonesian island of Flores and made
international news. Nicknamed ‘The Hobbit’, the near-complete
skeleton raised new questions about the nature of human evolution.
Hear Professor Morwood discuss current research on Homo floresiensis
and learn about the significance of the findings in the context of
research on other islands in the region. A fascinating lecture not to
be missed!

Thursday 8 May, 2008
6:00pm - 7:00pm
Eastern Avenue Auditorium, The University of Sydney
FREE

Bookings required:
email [e-mail]
or phone [phone]

--------------------------------

for the record, Dr Karl is giving a talk the night before (unrelated, but for the record):

Sydney Science Forum - FREE
Dr Karl’s ‘Please Explain’

Dr Karl is at it again! At ‘Please Explain,’ Dr Karl will take you on
another thoroughly entertaining exploration of the world around us.
Do diamonds really last forever? Is a yawn a silent scream for air?
Do you have to be dying to have a near-death experience? Find out at
this Sydney Science Forum! Come and hear some amazing stories from
the world of science, and at the end of the lecture, ask your own
weird and wacky questions – Dr Karl will be ready to explain! At this
event, we will also be unveiling our new Dr Karl portrait – it’s
larger than life!

Wednesday 7 May, 2008
5:30pm - 7:00pm
Eastern Avenue Auditorium, The University of Sydney
Presented by Dr Karl Kruszelnicki

Bookings required:
RSVP online www.usyd.nicheit.com.au/science/science_forum/
or email [e-mail]
or phone [phone]

Sydney Science Forum website: www.science.usyd.edu.au/school/
forum/lecture3.shtml

[Deleted]

May 3, 2008 19:56:16 GMT 10 youcantry said:

I've recently been given reports of "waist-high" people in the 1940s... so I'm looking to find out just how many such reports are out there; where they might be centred; what the theories are regarding H. floresiensis and its migration south; etc.

There were tribes of pygmies in Queensland in the 19th-early 20th century - I have a picture of one of them, somewhere. The guy's only waist high next the European in the frame. I'll see if I can find it.

[Deleted]

May 2, 2008 18:02:57 GMT 10 youcantry said:

Okay. I have to ask. What are people's thoughts on hobbits in Australia?

I'd say it's virtually certain Hobbits made it to Sahul.

Brown and Morwood now think the Hobbits derive not from East Asian H. erectus but from Homo habilis stock from Africa. If the conventional out-of-Africa theory is to be maintained, this would require not two waves, H. ergaster & H. sapiens, from Africa but three. The time frame for hominins in Asia would therefore be around 2 - 3 million years. However, although initially drawn to the "island dwarfing" explanation, Morwood and Brown now speculate that
1/ H. habilis was the first "out of Africa" but that
2/ H. erectus actually evolved somewhere in Asia and diffused back to Africa where it's known as Ergaster.
They base this idea on Ergaster's sudden appearance in the African assemblage and on the Dmanisi fossils from Georgia which Morwood reckons show signs of erectus-habiline intermediacy.
3/ Homo floresiensis is in fact a direct descendant of Homo habilis and not derived from H. erectus at all.

The African origin of our own line, H.sapiens, still holds, but if Morwood's and Brown's ideas are correct - and it's looking like they may well be - they will totally upturn current notions about exactly where in the world our ancestors evolved.

The above means that the odds of "Hobbits" arrriving in Sahul, and probably also H. erectus, are very high indeed.

True, there are no fossils .. yet. But there are images of "Hobbit-like" beings in the most ancient rock art from all over the Red Centre. Whether the images were engraved by our own kind, H. sapiens, who encountered these creatures upon arrival in Sahul or whether they were done by Habilis/Erectus is anyone's guess IMHO.

One would assume that they all died out out in Sahul, along with sapiens then present, around the close of the Ice Age. However, there are "archaic" hominin remains from New Caledonia with a C14 date of 300 years ago. Which means, given the error bars, that some Pleistocene hominins may have been walking around when Captain Cook sailed the east coast of Australia. Incredible! Let no one imagine we "know the lot".

Brown, P., T. Sutikna, et al. (2004). "A new small-bodied hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores,
Indonesia." Nature 431(7012): 1055-1061.
Here we report the discovery, from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia, of an adult hominin with stature and endocranial volume approximating 1 m and 380 cm3, respectively—equal to the smallest-known australopithecines. The combination of primitive and derived features assigns this hominin to a new species, Homo floresiensis. The most likely explanation for its existence on Flores is long-term isolation, with subsequent endemic dwarfing, of an ancestral H. erectus population. Importantly, H. floresiensis shows that the genus Homo is morphologically more varied and flexible in its adaptive responses than previously thought.


Tocheri, M. W., C. M. Orr, et al. (2007). "The Primitive Wrist of Homo floresiensis and Its Implications for Hominin Evolution." Science 317(5845): 1743-1745.
"... This evidence indicates that LB1 is not a modern human with an undiagnosed pathology or growth defect; rather, it represents a species descended from a hominin ancestor that branched off before the origin of the clade that includes modern humans, Neandertals, and their last common ancestor."

Gabunia, L., A. Vekua, et al. (2000). "Earliest Pleistocene Hominid Cranial Remains from Dmanisi, Republic of Georgia: Taxonomy, Geological Setting, and Age." Science 288(5468): 1019-1025.

Dubois M.J. Un squellette "archaique" a Mare (Nouvelle-Caledonie) 'Homme de Peu
Bulletin de la Societe d'Etudes Historiques de Nouvelle Caledonie. N:27, 1976, pp34-36.

Note: Do any Questers know the elegant French language? Will send over a scan of this one for translation, if agreeable.

[Deleted]

I think I have a copy of part of this but my French is not good enough to do a good translation but enough for me to get the gist. Often with these subjects you can find online versions with Google along with a 'translate this page' button and obtain a reasonable English rendition.

[Deleted]

Heh, as the joke goes, when it comes to French, you're a man of .... ? ;D Yeah, I also get the gist of it. It's just a brief report with the C14 figures plus a couple of photos degraded by the copy process. They look like fairdinkum "archaics" what with the low forehead and brow ridges. However, "archaic" can mean a lot of things, unfortunately. I'd really want to be able to read accurately the context of the discovery to suss out whether the figures might be valid. C14 dating is a bit of a black art and one reading is generally not sufficient as there are just so many confounding factors that can get in the way.

[youcantry]

Okay - I'm going to make it to this lecture. Professor Mike Morwood, discoverer of the hobbits, is presenting.

If anyone can get me this photo of a waist high pygmy from Qld (QFT?) a.s.a.p, I'll be sure to ask whether he thinks there is any relationship between these and H. floresiensis.

If anyone wants to fast-track me on learning about hobbits before Thursday also, then please send through the best links!

[Wally1]

You might ask him if he has knowledge of the little hairy men of the N Flinders Ranges SA.
Wally

[Deleted]

Twelve tribes of small Aborigines were reportedly living near Cairns in North East Qld sometime around the 1900s - referred to as Negritos - sporting tightly curled hair.



www.stewartsynopsis.com/Communiques/commun4.jpg

[youcantry]

How tall would H. floresienses be in that photo I wonder?

Thanks Ruby .. until this week I had no idea there were pygmy Aboriginal people in Australia.

H. floresiensis must clearly be something else ... I don't think they'd have kept it as a new species otherwise.

[youcantry]

Question - open to all. If you could ask any question at all about H. floresiensis, what would you like to know?

[youcantry]

May 3, 2008 22:38:56 GMT 10 youcantry said:

The only other thing I've heard which is relevant is that in Fiji (I think) there was a census conducted in the early 1800s (I think) which included some valley with a count something like 2000 men and their families and 16 "little people men" and their families. (I forget the actual numbers and the names of little people in Fiji - but you get the idea.

Okay - clarification, a la Wikipedia:

"Some early scholars theorized that there was a first settlement of Hawai'i, by settlers from the Marquesas Islands, and a second, from Tahiti. The Tahitian settlers oppressed the "commoners", the manahune in the Tahitian language, who fled to the mountains and were called Menahune. Proponents of this theory point to an 1820 census of Kauaʻi by Kamualiʻi, its ruling chief of that island, which listed 65 people as menehune (Schmitt 1981)."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menehune

So the island was Hawaii, not Fiji - and the number was 65 people, not 16 families.

It goes on: "Folklorist Katherine Luomala believes that the legends of the Menehune are a post-European contact mythology..."

which makes it seem strange that in 1820 a ruling chief (presumably indigenous) should list them in a census.

At least I got the time-frame right!

[youcantry]

Well I made it to the lecture, and it was an excellent presentation. I know much more now about H. floresiensis than previously, and a little more about other subjects too

[Deleted]

You must get his book - Discovery of the Hobbit. Fascinating read.

[youcantry]

I saw a copy yesterday, but do not yet have one.

see: www.wherelightmeetsdark.com/index.php?module=newswatch&NW_user_op=view&NW_id=385

Chris.

[Hobbes]

Not too sure about "Hobbits", but certainly could well believe there were races of people inhabiting Australia pre-European settlement that were short in stature. Not likely to be a different species though.
Interesting reading in a book called "Crocodile hunt" by Keith Wiley.
The aboriginals he employs in his camp are purported by the author to be smaller in physical size than the other groups of aboriginals, and that they have a history of persecution from their larger co habitators.
I wonder if there was similar tensions with the San of the Kalahari.
(could they be considered the "Hobbits" of Africa? despite being the same species of course.)
Perhaps this cultural/physical division in Australia is what led to the mystery of the "Bradshaw paintings" in Arnhem land. I have heard that local Aborigines refuse credit for painting these images, and that another group is responsible. If this group became culturally (maybe not physically) extinct, perhaps due to assimilation with the dominant society and adopted it's tendencies. Then all verbal history that there was ever a division between two very similar cultures could well be lost over time, and also almost impossible to differentiate between through archaeological or anthropological studies.
An interesting theory perhaps.
Food for thought,
Cheers,
Hobbes

[Thylacoleo Gal]

May 9, 2008 0:51:45 GMT 10 youcantry said:

Well I made it to the lecture, and it was an excellent presentation. I know much more now about H. floresiensis than previously, and a little more about other subjects too

Did u take any notes? Could u scan & send over if did?

D.

[youcantry]

I recorded 40 minutes of 1 on 1 discussion, then the 60 minute lecture The radio piece should air this Thursday coming up... with the podcast online shortly after. Someone else is doing the editing.