Littlestone
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Edited Feb 28, 2010, 12:51
The Little People
Apr 08, 2005, 12:23
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A little off-topic I'm afraid but there's a fascinating article in the April edition of National Geographic about the 'Little People' (now named Homo floresiensis) who were recently found (their remains that is) in a cave on the island Flores in Indonesia.
It's estimated that an adult member of the Little People weighed about 55 pounds, stood only three feet tall and had a brain just one third the size of a modern human's (though that doesn't seem to have prevented them from manufacturing some very sophisticated stone tools).
It's thought the Little People existed alongside modern humans as recently as 13,000 years ago and that, "...local folktales (talk) about half-size, hairy people with flat foreheads - stories the islanders tell even today. It's breathtaking to think that modern humans may still have a folk memory of sharing the planet with another species of humans, like us but unfathomably different."
More here - http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/1027_041027_homo_floresiensis.html
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TheBear
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Re: The Little People
Apr 08, 2005, 16:59
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Absolutely fascinating! Wouldn't it be exciting if somewhere they still exist - Orang Pendek anyone?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/3734946.stm
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Littlestone
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Re: The Little People
Apr 08, 2005, 22:08
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It's just occurred to me, if an adult Homo floresiensis stood only three foot high then one of their infants would have stood less than one and a half foot - it wouldn't even have reached your knee!
Crikey, if these little creatures were as playful and as mischievous as modern children, and were present in other countries as well as Indonesia, then perhaps it was they who gave rise to the elves, leprechauns and other fairy folktales of Britain, Ireland and elsewhere.
Sorry, this off-topic thread is now going off at a shimmering silken tangent... but... just supposing...?
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Pete G
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Randy Newman sings
Apr 09, 2005, 00:26
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Short People got no reason
Short People got no reason
Short People got no reason
To live
They got little hands
Little eyes
They walk around
Tellin' great big lies
They got little noses
And tiny little teeth
They wear platform shoes
On their nasty little feet
Well, I don't want no Short People
Don't want no Short People
Don't want no Short People
`Round here
Short People are just the same
As you and I
(A Fool Such As I)
All men are brothers
Until the day they die
(It's A Wonderful World)
Short People got nobody
Short People got nobody
Short People got nobody
To love
They got little baby legs
That stand so low
You got to pick 'em up
Just to say hello
They got little cars
That go beep, beep, beep
They got little voices
Goin' peep, peep, peep
They got grubby little fingers
And dirty little minds
They're gonna get you every time
Well, I don't want no Short People
Don't want no Short People
Don't want no Short People
'Round here
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Littlestone
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Re: The Little People
Apr 26, 2005, 13:59
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Riddle of the Human Hobbits: an Equinox Special.
Channel 4. Monday, 2 May at 9:00pm.
"The story of the most important fossil discovery in over half a century: the remains of tiny prehistoric humans on the Indonesian Island of Flores. The existence of these creatures, known as Homo floresiensis, perhaps a recently as 13,000 years ago, could mean current perceptions of how humans evolved are to undergo a radical rethink."*
*Radio Times. 30 April-6 May 2005
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Littlestone
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Re: The Little People
Sep 17, 2005, 12:34
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Perhaps a sad postscript to what seemed such an exciting discovery...
"The unearthing of a skeleton of a tiny woman on an Indonesian island was hailed as the scientific sensation of the century - with archaeologists convinced they'd discovered a new member of our family tree. But new evidence suggests they made a spectacular mistake. Was she really a new species or just a modern human with a crippling deformity?"*
*<b>The Radio Times</b>, 17-23 September 2005, page 110. The review is of a <b>Horizon</b> programme (The Mystery of the Human Hobbit) to be shown on BBC2 at 9pm on Thursday, 22 September.
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wideford
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Re: The Little People
Sep 17, 2005, 16:29
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It ain't brain-size but kinkiness that has a reasonably straightforward connection with intelligence. Huge featureless brain no thought, convoluted fissures many synaptic firings. Summat like that.
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Littlestone
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Re: The Little People
Feb 24, 2010, 20:19
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wideford wrote: It ain't brain-size but kinkiness that has a reasonably straightforward connection with intelligence. Huge featureless brain no thought, convoluted fissures many synaptic firings. Summat like that.
A little story that just won't go away -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/feb/21/hobbit-rewriting-history-human-race
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handofdave
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Edited Feb 27, 2010, 01:21
Re: The Little People
Feb 27, 2010, 01:19
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Littlestone wrote: It's breathtaking to think that modern humans may still have a folk memory of sharing the planet with another species of humans, like us but unfathomably different."
Yeah, I think about that stuff.
The ogre, troll, or giant myths probably all have some grounding in the period when homo sapiens and neanderthals were coming into contact with each other (apparently not to the neanderthal's benefit).
The monster legends... many thousands of years of ancestry battling the fauna of the period, some of which is no longer around... mastedon, sabre-toothed tigers, and certain very large and aggressive species of ground-dwelling, carnivorous birds, from which I think the dragon originates.
Certainly it's possible that 'little people' myths may be connected to this race, but more likely it has to do with genetically distant mating partners being pretty hard to come by... there would have been isolated populations that carried a high rate of deformities, leading to everyone being under-or-oversized, perhaps. Micro-evolutionary pockets of humanity... cross breeding with other hominids... who knows.
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The Sea Cat
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Re: The Little People
Feb 27, 2010, 19:14
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I have been privileged enough to see them once myself by a stream in deepest rural Southern Ireland, as a child, and again as an adult, in the depths of a 300 acre forest by pure accident.
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