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- LITTLE PEOPLE IN THE FAMILY TREE DEPARTMENT -

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When Indonesian and Australian archaeologists started to excavate a limestone cave on the Indonesian island of Flores, they weren't prepared for what they found, the skeleton of an entirely new species of human, Homo floresiensis, that lived as recently as 18,000 years ago.

"When we first unearthed the skeleton, I was simultaneously gobsmacked, puzzled and amused," says geochronologist Professor Bert Roberts, of the University of Wollongong. "We had been looking for the remains of the earliest modern humans in Indonesia, so when we found the skeleton of a completely new species of human, with so many primitive traits and that survived until so recently, it really opened up a whole can of prehistoric worms. The discovery of Homo floresiensis was sweet serendipity."

Peter Brown, an anthropologist from the University of New England in Armidale, NSW, says: "I would have been less surprised if someone had uncovered an alien." The discovery at Liang Bua cave, described in Nature this week, could alter our outlook on our own place in nature.

The discovery raises obvious questions about the diversity of the human family, such as whether undiscovered human-like species might survive today. Are we really the sole human custodians of our planet? Could the existence of Homo floresiensis rehabilitate persistent rumours of undiscovered human-like species elsewhere, notably the orang pendek of Malay folklore? Could cryptozoology come in from the cold?

Unlike parts of Indonesia closer to the Asian mainland, far-flung Flores has been an island for at least a million years. As is the case with islands elsewhere, the fauna of Flores evolved in its own way, producing creatures larger or smaller than their mainland relatives: a looking-glass lost world of tiny elephants, giant rats, Komodo dragons and even larger, extinct lizards.

This isolation had its effects on the human inhabitants. One of the most surprising things about the skeleton is its size: in life, no more than a metre tall, about the same size as one of the giant rats. Living in a hole in the ground and chased by lizards of mythical proportions, the creature has, perhaps inevitably, been nicknamed "hobbit" by some of the researchers - a reference to the tiny, hole-dwelling heroes of The Lord of the Rings.

For Brown, it was the smallness of the skull that showed that Homo floresiensis was truly different. When he measured the skull volume and found it a chimp-sized 380cc, he says his jaw "dropped to my knees. Small stature is easy to accommodate, but small brain size is a bigger problem - it still is." And yet these tiny-brained creatures were skilled enough to make finely crafted stone tools.

The clue to the origin of Homo floresiensis comes from earlier work suggestive of the presence on Flores of earlier, full-sized prehumans. Michael Morwood, of the University of New England, was co-director of the excavation, working closely with R.P Soejono and his team from the Indonesian Centre for Archaeology in Jakarta. In the mid-1990s, Morwood and his colleagues unearthed stone tools on the island dating back 800,000 years. The implication was that the toolmakers, presumably Homo erectus, were capable of navigating the open sea. It is possible that once marooned on Flores, a population of Homo erectus set its own evolutionary course, morphing into Homo floresiensis.

When a small population of animals is cut off from a parent population for an extended period, it follows its own evolutionary course. Size change is a typical response. Small size is an advantage on isolated islands, where resources are scarce, so this might have been what predisposed the inhabitants of Flores towards smallness.

It is hard to comprehend the significance of the survival of such a strange species of human until what is, in geological terms, a very recent date. To put this in context, by 18,000 years ago, modern Homo sapiens had been in Indonesia for at least 20,000 years.

Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum in London, says: "One of the first things I thought of, on learning about the Flores skeleton, was a possible parallel with the orang pendek (found in Sumatra)." Bert Roberts offers hints of new discoveries just below the research horizon: "When I was back in Flores just three weeks ago, Gert van den Bergh (from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research at Texel, and the team's expert on the fossil elephants) and I headed off to a village in central Flores where we heard the most amazing tales of little hairy people whom they called ebu gogo: ebu meaning "grandmother" and gogo "he who eats anything".

???The ebu gogo were short - about a metre tall - long-haired, potbellied, with ears that stuck out, walking with a slightly awkward gait, and had longish arms and fingers. They murmured at each other and could repeat words parrot-fashion. They could climb slender trees but were never seen holding stone tools, whereas we have lots of sophisticated artefacts associated with Homo floresiensis. That's the only inconsistency with the archaeological evidence. Gert had heard of these stories 10 years ago and he thought them no better than leprechaun stories - until we unearthed the hobbit." Could the ebu gogo still be alive? Roberts thinks it is possible.

"The villagers said that the last hobbit was seen just before Dutch colonists settled that part of Flores in the 19th century," he said, adding that searches of the remaining rainforest on Flores, and the caves specifically associated with the ebu gogo stories, could turn up samples of hair or other material, if not living, breathing specimens.

The possibility of finding ebu gogo alive should not be dismissed as fantasy, because mammals unknown to science do still turn up - and South-East Asia is a particular hotspot for such finds. An antelope, Pseudoryx nghetinhensis, from the Lao-Vietnamese border, was described as recently as 1993. An ox-like creature, the kouprey, was discovered in Cambodia in the 1940s.

Morwood and Roberts have targets already in their sights. Many Indonesian islands contain peculiar faunas and have deep, barely explored limestone caves. ???Sumba and Sulawesi are high on our hitlist,??? says Roberts. Morwood starts work on Sulawesi next year.

A larger theme raised by the discovery concerns the uniqueness of our human heritage, something which, in hindsight, has been in question for decades. Back in the 1960s, the great anthropologist Louis Leakey speculated that the human lineage had been distinct from that of the apes for 20 million years or so. In the 1970s, extinct ape-like primates such as Ramapithecus, living around 10-20 million years ago, were presumed to lie on the human lineage. But this consensus swept into reverse with the discovery that Ramapithecus was more akin to orang-utans ??” and molecular evidence showing that the DNA of humans and chimpanzees were so similar that a separation of more than 3-5 million years was ruled out.

But opinions have, slowly, been changing back. The force has come from the discoveries of extinct members of the human lineage of ever greater antiquity. Ardipithecus ramidus, discovered in Ethiopia in the mid-1990s by Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues, put back the humanchimp divergence to at least 4.4 million years ago. If this put the molecular evidence under strain, it was snapped by the discovery in Chad by Michel Brunet of the University of Poitiers, France, and colleagues of "Toumai" - Sahelanthropus tchadensis, a member of the human lineage that could be as old as 7 million years. Leakey has been partially vindicated, with the effect that our own complacency at our distinctiveness with respect to the animal world has been reinforced.

By the same token, evidence for the diversity of human species through time has been downplayed, first by the cultural inertia of stories of an upwards progression towards the human state; second, by the curious chance that Homo sapiens happens to be the only species of human around today - a situation probably unprecedented in 7 million years.

The evidence for the coexistence of humans and Neanderthals in Europe for at least 10,000 years until Neanderthals disappeared around 30,000 years ago, and the fact that anthropologists have known for years of the multiple lineages of prehumans living in Africa between 4-2 million years - has done little to dent the robust idea that humans are so distinct from the rest of the animal world that they rule the earth by virtue of inherent perfection, or divine fiat.

The Flores finds could change all that with a single stroke.

For one thing, they underscore the fact of human diversity until very recent times. "Maybe little folk from Flores will hammer the point home more effectively because they are so different in anatomy but so close in time," says Tim White. "How will the creationists cope?"

For another, the evidence challenges the human-centric idea that humans characteristically modify their surroundings to suit themselves, rather than allowing natural selection to adapt them to their environment. If the Flores skeleton is evidence of the kind of evolutionary size change more associated with animals such as rats and elephants, this, says Brown "is a clear indicator" of human-like creatures "behaving like all other mammals in terms of their interactions with the environment".

"Darwin and Wallace would be pleased," adds White. "What better demonstration that humans play by the same evolutionary rules as other mammals?"

Of perhaps more current concern to anthropologists is the degree to which Homo floresiensis, with its small stature and - especially - tiny brain, will force a redefinition of humanity, at least in terms of anatomy. "I think the discovery challenges the very notion of what it is to be human," says Stringer.

"Here is a creature with a brain the size of a chimpanzee's, but apparently a tool-maker and hunter, and perhaps descended from the world's first mariners. Its very existence shows how little we know about human evolution. I could never have imagined a creature like this, living as recently as this."

Russell Ciochon, a paleoanthropologist from the University of Iowa, says: "I suspect that creationists will act very negatively toward this discovery. It shows that humans were not alone. There may be other dwarfed species lurking in the caves of other isolated islands. Each new discovery will subtract some essence from the uniqueness of humans. I wonder if this discovery might even be discussed in our current political campaign? It is no secret that Bush is anti-evolution. If he is smart, he will not touch this one."

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- MYTHS BECOME REALITY DEPARTMENT -

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When I was back in Flores earlier this month we heard the most amazing tales of little, hairy people, whom they called Ebu Gogo - Ebu meaning grandmother and Gogo meaning 'he who eats anything'. The tales contained the most fabulous details - so detailed that you'd imagine there had to be a grain of truth in them.
 
One of the village elders told us that the Ebu Gogo ate everything raw, including vegetables, fruits, meat and, if they got the chance, even human meat.
 
When food was served to them they also ate the plates, made of pumpkin - the original guests from hell (or heaven, if you don't like washing up and don't mind replacing your dinner set every week).
 
The villagers say that the Ebu Gogo raided their crops, which they tolerated, but decided to chase them away when the Ebu Gogo stole - and ate - one of their babies.
 
They ran away with the baby to their cave which was at the foot of the local volcano, some tens of metres up a cliff face. The villagers offered them bales of dry grass as fodder, which they gratefully accepted.
 
A few days later, the villagers went back with a burning bale of grass which they tossed into the cave. Out ran the Ebu Gogo, singed but not fried, and were last seen heading west, in the direction of Liang Bua, where we found the Hobbit, as it happens.
 
When my colleague Gert van den Bergh first heard these stories a decade ago, which several of the villages around the volcano recount with only very minor changes in detail, he thought them no better than leprechaun tales until we unearthed the Hobbit. (I much prefer Ebu as the name of our find but my colleague Mike Morwood was insistent on Hobbit.)
 
The anatomical details in the legends are equally fascinating. They are described as about a metre tall, with long hair, pot bellies, ears that slightly stick out, a slightly awkward gait, and longish arms and fingers - both confirmed by our further finds this year.
 
They [the Ebu Gogo] murmured at each other and could repeat words [spoken by villagers] verbatim. For example, to 'here's some food', they would reply 'here's some food'. They could climb slender-girthed trees but, here's the rub, were never seen holding stone tools or anything similar, whereas we have lots of sophisticated artefacts in the H. floresiensis levels at Liang Bua. That's the only inconsistency with the Liang Bua evidence.
 
The women Ebu Gogo had extremely pendulous breasts, so long that they would throw them over their shoulders, which must have been quite a sight in full flight.
 
We did ask the villagers if they ever interbred with the Ebu Gogo. They vigorously denied this, but said that the women of Labuan Baju (a village at the far western end of Flores, better known as LBJ) had rather long breasts, so they must have done.
 
Poor LBJ must be the butt of jokes in Flores, rather like the Irish and Tasmanians.
 
A local eruption at Liang Bua (in western Flores) may have wiped out local hobbits around 12,000 years ago, but they could well have persisted much later in other parts of the island. The villagers said that the last hobbit was seen just before the village moved location, farther from the volcano, not long before the Dutch colonists settled in that part of central Flores, in the 19th century.
 
Do the Ebu Gogo still exist? It would be a hoot to search the last pockets of rainforest on the island. Not many such pockets exist, but who knows. At the very least, searching again for that lava cave, or others like it, should be done, because remains of hair only a few hundred years old, would surely survive, snagged on the cave walls or incorporated in deposits, and would be ideal for ancient DNA analyses.
 
Interestingly, we did find lumps of dirt with black hair in them this year in the Hobbit levels, but don't know yet if they're human or something else. We're getting DNA testing done, which we hope will be instructive.
 
- Richard "Bert" Roberts is a University of Wollongong professor and one of the team investigating the Hobbits.

- MYSTERIOUS LAKE BEASTS DEPARTMENT -

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A video showing a long, writhing shape in Okanagan Lake is being investigated as a possible Ogopogo sighting

John Casorso and his family rented a houseboat to spend some quiet time on the lake, but ended up with intriguing video footage of something mysterious in the water

On Aug. 9, at 7:30 a.m., he said the houseboat started rocking back and forth fiercely. The rocking woke up the family, who ventured to the top deck to see what was happening. When Casorso reached the deck, he said he was shocked to see something swimming away from the boat. "The only reason we noticed it is because it passed underneath the houseboat," said Casorso. "We could really feel the power and size of what it was." Casorso acted quickly, retrieving his video camera to get footage of the creature. He has a total of approximately 15 minutes of video footage that clearly shows a calm lake, no boat movement and a long, dark hump rising above the water

Casorso said what he saw looked to be about 15 metres long, and there may have been more than one

"It seemed like, on one occasion, there was at least one parallel to the larger one and at least one behind it," he said. "It couldn't have been a wave because it wasn't dissipating. It remained in the same area for over 10 minutes." Asked why he decided to wait so long to let the public know about his sighting, Casorso said he took the advice of local Ogopogo expert Arlene Gaal

"I showed her, and she said we should take it slow," said Casorso. "I also didn't want to rush into it too quickly because over the years lots of people have gotten pictures or footage and the response is not always favourable." Gaal, a chronicler of Ogopogo sightings and an author on the subject, said she believes Casorso has an interesting video and has caught on tape what many people believe to be Ogopogo

"I feel that John has some really good footage that adds to solving the puzzle and mystery of Ogopogo," said Gaal. According to Gaal, there have been nine reported sightings this year, and she suspects there have been more that were not reported due to the ridicule factor surrounding such a story

Casorso also followed Gall's advice to copyright the video

He showed it to a few friends first, to get their opinion, and said he enjoyed seeing their reactions. "One thing I like about the video is that it's poor quality at first, but then it gets very clear and people always say, `Wow, what is that?' when they realize there is more there than just wave," Casorso said

Janet Courtney was one of the people to see the video, and she says it's convincing

"I believe anything is possible," said Courtney. "But after seeing the video, I'm convinced that there is something there, for sure." Daily Courier news editor Jon Manchester said he's usually skeptical about Ogopogo sightings, but was perplexed after viewing Casorso's video. "I don't know how to describe it . . . I know I saw something, I don't know what, and it was more than a log floating in the water. It's by far the most convincing Ogopogo evidence I've ever seen." Casorso has lived in the Okanagan all his life and always thought there was some merit to the Ogopogo legend

"I would always carry on with my kids that we would see Ogopogo," said Casorso. "We were pretty excited when something actually happened because you never expect to actually see it."

- BACK TO THE FUTURE DEPARTMENT -

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