From Newsgroup: talk.origins

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/03/science/homo-floresiensis-scavenged-food

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aeb7219

The usual overhype of findings about Homo floresiensis. Some
researchers looked at the fossil bones of a carcass scavenged by H. floresiensis and note that the small elephant like animal (the size of a buffalo) was likely killed by a komodo dragon and scavenged by the
hobbits. They find stone tools and the meatiest parts of the carcass
show signs of being eaten by the dragons and stone cut marks are found
on the parts of the carcass that was not eaten by the big lizards. They
find no evidence that the hobbits were using fire to prepare the meat
they got from the carcass, and the news article (possibly based on
information the got from the researchers) jumps to the conclusion the
hobbits were small degenerate scavengers instead of hunters. They claim
the small stature and brain size indicates that they may not be Homo.
This is pretty stupid since they have the parabolic jaw of all species
of Homo.

For some reason they can't seem to understand that H. floresiensis was
short (about 3 feet high) because they lived on a small island. All you
need to understand is that the elephants on the island had also become pygmies. In order to survive on an island a species has to maintain a
large enough population so that inbreeding depression does not lead to
their extinction, or, at least, delays extinction for a while. There is
no real reason why H. floresiensis did not come to the island as H.
erectus, and then evolved into pygmies in order to maintain a large
enough population to survive. Not understanding this is just stupid
when you consider the fact that the modern humans that made it to this
same island also became pygmies although not as small as hobbits they
were less than 5 feet tall. The reason is that smaller humans could
maintain a larger population than full sized humans and they were the
tribes that survived on the island. Hobbits may have been on the island
for hundreds of thousands of years. Modern humans didn't get there
until around 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, and they managed to evolve into
short statured individuals after they got there. As far as I know all
the taller modern humans on the island are more recent immigrants to the island.

It may be that H. florensiensis may have evolved from Denisovans. They
likely need to try the tooth protein sequencing to tell the difference
between Denisovans and H. erectus.

Ron Okimoto

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