Hobbit-like Humans May Have Scavenged Komodo Dragons' Leftovers to Survive

CNN reports: Prehistoric human relatives, nicknamed "hobbits" due to their short stature, may have been scavengers, rather than skilled hunters capable of taking down big game or building cooking fires, according to new research. The study adds to growing evidence that Homo floresiensis, which had a brain only slightly bigger than that of a chimpanzee, wasn't as advanced as scientists previously believed....

The researchers believe that much like how Komodo dragons hunt water buffaloes today, they were using their venomous bite to take down Stegodons — and after the scene was clear, Homo floresiensis swept in to cleave meat from what remained... The new study reinforces a long-held suspicion that Homo floresiensis is not a dwarfed form of Homo erectus but a descendant of a more primitive Homo habilis-like or Australopithecus-like form that arrived on the island more than1 million years ago, said Dr. Chris Stringer, a research leader specializing in human origins and paleoanthropology at London's Natural History Museum.

1 million years ...

[evanh]

Why would anyone attribute them as being modern humans when our branch starts about 250 thousand years ago, not 1 million? Or did they just not know the age before?

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[jd]

The homo genus arose 2.2 million years ago. Evidence of complex communication exists as far back as 750,000-1.1 million years ago. Homo sapiens arose 300,000 years ago and are technically the "modern humans" as far as outward physiology is concerned. The brain was the size of modern humans for much of the 2.2 million years, but it is disputed how much. Since homo florensis is clearly not being likened to modern humans in the morphological sense, it would seem reasonable to conclude that they must be talking

Re:1 million years ...

[drainbramage]

Perhaps because their described behavior is so similar to that of lawyers?

Re:

[excelsior_gr]

They were thought to be dwarfed Homo erectus. Homo erectus is not a modern human.

Interesting and disappointing

[Baron_Yam]

One less 'cousin' species to daydream about...

We share the FOXP2 gene with Neanderthals and Denisovans, and it is strongly suspected this gene is what gave us our next-level language abilities. It appears to have evolved somewhere between 500k and 700k years ago.

If we split with the hobbits over a million years ago, it's very good odds they didn't have it and couldn't have been significantly more like us than any modern non-human ape species.

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[HiThere]

Saying it "gave us our next-level language abilities", but it does seem necessary for them. I really doubt that it is sufficient. (But we could insert one into a Chimpanzee or Bonobo to check.)

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[jd]

We know that boats built 1.1 million years ago (so around the time of the split) were capable of going long distances up/down rivers between settlements, and across open waters beyond visual range to islands. This places certain language requirements on the hominins of the time, although we can't be sure hobbits had full access to all of those requirements. (There's not much evidence of boat building.)

However, they must have genetically had the capability, whether or not their brains were large enough to ma

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[znrt]

it isn't actually the gene (which is half a billion years old, shared with many species and crucial for brain development and function) but a specific mutation (in two aminoacids) that allowed for increased synaptic plasticity, neuron branching and dopamine regulation. that mutation is estimated to have happened between 0.4 and 1.9 million years ago (so roughly lines up with what is said here meaning floresiensis could have had it too but so far there is no dna to sequence). the discovery of foxp2 led to th

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[HiThere]

IIUC, the human variant of that gene (FOX P2) is NOT shared with other extant species. But it also seems true that there were lots of other changes associated with it.

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[znrt]

it isn't, i probably could have articulated that better ...

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[jd]

That is all perfectly true, but we have a problem. Boats were capable of navigating reliably and robustly up/down rivers and across open sea beyond visual range. This requires much more complex communication than a gorilla or a chimpanzee is capable of, but obviously orders of magnitude less than a modern human or a Neanderthal.

It would seem reasonable to say that homo florensis was as much like us as those who first built deliberate boats for voyages requiring complex navigation.

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[evanh]

A lot of island hopping was done during ice-ages. And jumping on rafts for one-way trips isn't difficult either.

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[jd]

That is true, but the archaeology shows that this won't work for all island-hopping or all river navigation.

For example, we have clear evidence of hominins not just living on islands across the Mediterranean when no ice was present (it was free-standing water) but commuting to and from shore. We also have evidence of technologies travelling upstream along river-based communities at speeds that cannot be accounted for by simply walking.

So we need a model in which they could actively navigate against the wate

Aha!

[Black Parrot]

Undoubtedly the origin of the Hobbit-steals-dragons-treasure meme.

how is this surprising?

[argStyopa]

I understood that (we deduced) humans were generally more of a hijacker/scavenger for most of our history, only developing sophisticated cooperative hunting techniques relatively late in the process.

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[RockDoctor]

But if fewer people performing this behaviour died of starvation (or were too low in nutritional status to raise offspring to maturity - same thing really) than died of Salmonella it would still be a net benefit.

Hobbits steal from dragons.

[gurps_npc]

This is not news. It is merely the continuation of a very long story.