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Fossil Friday: Hobbits Thwart Darwinian Predictions Again

October 4, 2024, 6:44 AM
Photo credit: Rama, CC BY-SA 3.0 FR , via Wikimedia Commons.

This Fossil Friday features the skull of the famous Hobbit man Homo floresiensis, a dwarf hominin discovered in 2003 in Pleistocene layers of Liang Bua Cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. Up to now the remains of more than a dozen individuals have been recovered, of which the most complete specimen only had a brain volume of 426 ccm (Kubo et al. 2013), which is totally in the range of living apes and australopithecines.

Years of Debate

For many years there was a fierce scientific controversy about the status and proper interpretation of these hominin remains: some scientists considered them as nothing but pathological modern humans suffering from microcephaly or Down syndrome (Henneberg et al. 2014; also see Klinghoffer 2014), while the majority of scientists favored an interpretation as genuine ancient human species. A similar controversy developed about its relationship, with some experts considering Homo floresiensis as a case of insular dwarfism and a descendent of much larger Asian Homo erectus ancestors (e.g., Kaifu et al. 2015), while others (e.g., Jungers et al. 2009) rather thought that the very primitive traits of the skeleton of Homo floresiensis point to a much more ancient origin from australopithecine or habiline precursors, which were relatively small compared to Homo erectus and modern humans.

This latter view was vindicated by basically all comprehensive cladistic analyses (Argue et al. 2009, 2010, 2017, Trueman 2010, Dembo et al. 2015, 2016), who strongly refuted the view that Homo floresiensis descended from Homo erectus or even more modern humans, and also suggested that the Hobbit man directly descended from much more primitive ancestors similar to Homo habilis, which should neither exist at that remote place outside of Africa nor at that late time more than 1.75 million years after the supposed extinction of such forms (Australian National University 2017). Indeed, Grün & Stinger (2023), who directly re-dated numerous Pleistocene human remains, found that “it may be worth mentioning that the postulated “morphological clock” was out by 1.35 million years for H. floresiensis.” This is just Darwinian double speak for a total mismatch of the dated age of the fossils and the age that would be suggested by the primitive morphology based on evolutionary reasoning. Some years later, another dwarf hominin species, very similar to Hobbit man, was discovered on the Philippine island of Luzon. Guess what: its morphology also points to a habiline ancestry (I reported about this in Bechly 2019).

Additional Confusion

Now, a new study by Kaifu et al. (2024) has only added to this confusion. The authors studied new fossil material from assumed Middle Pleistocene ancestors of Homo floresiensis found at Mata Menge on Flores, about 75 kilometers east of Liang Bua Cave. The newly discovered postcranial material and two teeth complement the earlier findings of a mandible with six loose teeth and some stone tools. With an estimated age of about 700,000 years, they are significantly older than the holotype of Homo floresiensis from Liang Bua, which has been dated to only 60,000 years. They are also about 9-16 percent smaller, and one of the discovered teeth falls outside the known range of Homo habilis and “bears closer morphological similarities to early Javanese H. erectus.” Based on these results of their study, the authors conclude that “the H. floresiensis lineage most likely evolved from early Asian H. erectus and was a long-lasting lineage on Flores with markedly diminutive body size since at least ~700,000 years ago.” Apart from some morphometric data and wishy-washy similarity claims, the authors did not provide any proper cladistic analysis to overturn the previous results of cladistic studies that used hundreds of anatomical characters. Indeed, other experts remain unconvinced and commented that this study falls short of ending debate over who gave rise to the hobbit, and that “there’s still a possibility that it was a more primitive ancestor” (Baab quoted in Science by Alex 2024).

A return to the older view that Homo floresiensis is a dwarfed Homo erectus would necessarily imply that many of its primitive traits are secondary reversals. However, this is highly unlikely and implausible, which is not just my view, but also the view of Dr. Debbie Argue, the lead author of the largest cladistic study on the phylogenetic relationship of Homo floresiensis, who said: “Logically, it would be hard to understand how you could have that regression — why would the jaw of Homo erectus evolve back to the primitive condition we see in Homo floresiensis?” (Argue quoted in the press release by Australian National University 2017). Likewise, “previous studies are in agreement that the brain of H. floresiensis is too small to have been dwarfed from H. erectus” (Kubo et al. 2013).

A Much Bigger Problem

But there is a much bigger problem with the new study by Kaifu and his colleagues, who by the way were always pushing the erectus-hypothesis. What would be the logical evolutionary prediction, if Homo floresiensis really did descend from larger Homo erectus and only later became subject to the phenomenon of insular dwarfism? Of course, we should expect that the oldest and earliest fossils of this lineage are bigger than the later ones. This should be a no-brainer. But the new study documents the exact opposite. In spite of this stark contradiction, and in spite of the conflicting anatomical evidence, the authors still conclude that the Hobbit man is a dwarfed descendent of Homo erectus and use the ad hoc hypothesis of an “early evolution of small body size” as a rescue device.

Why? After all, the obscure similarities of a single tooth mentioned by the authors can hardly outweigh all the conflicting characters listed in the cladistic studies mentioned above. Paleoanthropologist Matthew Tocheri agrees that “one needs to take into account all the evidence available and not just cherry pick.” Therefore, the true motivation seems to be that this simply is what evolutionists have to assume based on the fact that only Homo erectus is known to have reached Eastern Asia while there are no known finds of Asian australopithecines or habilines. Evolutionists reliably tend to follow one foundational principle: “What must not be, cannot be!”

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