Elaine Meinel Supkis
It is so satisfying to be proven right! I said, after closely examining the Hobbit's skull and drawing her face, this is a new creature. Not a diseased human. This has now been confirmed by further examinations of this lovely hobbit's bones. I really wish they still lived on, deep in the jungles of Asia!
&hearts I was one of the few people online to reject the idea these Hobbits were sick humans.
The tiny skeletal remains of human "Hobbits" found on an Indonesian island belong to a completely new branch of our family tree, a study has found. The finds caused a sensation when they were announced to the world in 2004.But some researchers argued the bones belonged to a modern human with a combination of small stature and a brain disorder called microcephaly.
That claim is rejected by the latest study, which compares the tiny people with modern microcephalics.
The nay-sayers jumped all over those of us who rejoiced in this tremendous find. Instead of patiently waiting to see further research, they simply tried to yell us down. They did it in the usual 'sneer at everyone' approach instead of proving their case. It took me less than a day to prove them wrong. I include in this article some of that research I did.
I always look at the eyes first. When I was drawing the hobbit, her eye struck me as different in many ways. Anyone reconstructing faces from skulls could see instantly she was totally non-our species! The eye orbs were outstandingly different. All human skulls have eyes that are flat on top, giving our skulls that sinister look, an angry expression. Human eyes are not friendly eyes. They are suspicious and rimmed with the whites of the eyes which evolved in order to show all other predators or fellow primates, we are always angry and quick to homicidal rage.
The Hobbit's eyes were set in round orbs. I decided, the eyes were probably mostly iris with little whites, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that humans evolved the white of the eye thing very late, in the last 100,000 years. A population of a hominid species surviving on an island which was connected to landmasses during the Ice Ages, is quite probable.
Many other primate or monkey species have done the exact same thing! Representatives of every step in our evolutionary ladder exists (barely these days!) on every continent (except for Australia which has only modern humans) across the earth except for all our nearest relations: all hominids have been ruthlessly wiped out fairly early on.
These Hobbits were isolated enough to evade annihilation up until one of the regular and dangerous mega-volcano events that punctuate Indonesia's geological history made life impossible for the few survivors who lived through the really nasty Toba eruption 72,000 years ago. That one nearly wiped out humans! It didn't wipe out the Hobbits because they were on an island to the west so the prevailing winds drove the destruction to the east, to Africa.
&hearts Here is the article I wrote last May:
I finally had time today to sit down and examine the "hobbit" skull. I draw a lot of faces and use photos and other items to study how faces are built upon the bones below. I took one look at the Hobbit's skull and it was immediately obvious it is not any homo sapiens. So I drew on top of it, following the contours. Meet the shy dweller deep in her lush forest as she leaves her Hobbit hole.
The scientists who revealed this astonishing find are very aggravated that news stories ran all over the place yesterday "debunking" their find. I was very angry about those stories, too, for there was no hard data to back up the contentions that this wonderful creature was just "a diseased human."
First: the eye orbits are huge! As a proportion of the skull, much much larger than homo sapiens! Here is a classic microcephalic skull.
This is a multiple view of the Hobbit's skull.Click on image to enlarge
The orbits of the shy forest dwelling hobbit are huge while the microcephalic skull keeps the orbs in proportion to the face, unlike the hobbit, the face is scrunched up whereas the hobbit's face is open and clear with a long upper lip/nose and no chin whereas the human has a very sharp, obvious chin!
Here is a human skull and neandertal skull side by side.
Neither has huge eye orbs! Neither looks remotely like the hobbit. And both dwarf the hobbit's skull. The primitive tools found with the hobbit look like Archaean period tools not the later Stone Age tools, the hobbit's brains were smaller than homo sapiens or other near relatives but packed in more social/tool using skills than any of the older members of the Great Ape families.
Here is a homo erectus skull. Note how much more great apian it looks! Like a gorilla. Not like the hobbit's skull which looks more like small forest dwelling monkey skulls. Yet it is certainly very close to us, genetically. Much closer than the chimpanzee. The genetic differences were probably extremely small, less than 0.5%.
Also the teeth are not sharp. The jaw is wider at the hinge than ours probably for chewing on hard to chew plants and nuts. But a chimpanzee can rip a human apart with their sharp fangs, this gentle creature couldn't cause us much fear or harm!
Click on image to enlarge
Here is my scale of comparison. It is plainly obvious that the hobbit skull has some very strong non-homo sapiens aspects to it. The orbs are the same size as ours yet the head is much smaller plus the shape is totally different, the orbs being nearly totally round in the forest dweller and in humans, this oval shape that has a cruel edge to it's formation. Sagging downwards from the nose.
The noses are totally different. Humans have a bridge whereas the hobbit doesn't. The top of the nostrils in humans has a sharp upwards tilt while in the hobbit, this is missing entirely. The nose opening is the same size for both with the hobbit perhaps somewhat larger, again, a small human would have a small opening there.
The cheekbones stick out much sharper on the hobbit and no chin while it is the opposite in the human skull. Lastly, the tops of the heads are significantly different with probably the hobbit having more muscles attached to the top but not as many as the other Great Apes who have huge ridges there. This truly makes the hobbit well within the class of homo erectus-family groupings.
I really wish they were still running around in the forest, darting in and out of shafts of sunlight. What a tragedy they are no more!
The full skull as well as other bones of a humanoid child in Africa 3.3 millions of years ago has been found. I like to draw the faces of ancient people. I don't make them scary, I make them happy looking. I will note the pictures made from these same skulls, done by 'professionals' look very 'scary' like they were some sort of ill-gained thugs including nearly universally, showing the whites of the eyes. Impossible! This is totally wrong.
To draw ancient creatures, one has to have sympathy for them and also know animals in general. I have drawn my own animals all my life and observed them at work and play. This gives one 'insight' which is a very useful word for it means to see past the surface of things.
People who don't want something to exist can prevent themselves from seeing the obvious. This is why some scientists were unable to see what was so very obvious to me the instant I saw the photos of the Hobbit's skull! They were so anxious to not be 'fooled' they actually fooled themselves doubly! The fear of being caught up in a scandal like the 'Piltdown man' affair has crippled their ability to be open to new evidence.
The fact that these Hobbits lived in isolation which was caused by the oceans rising coupled with the vast die-off from the Toba eruption meant they were doomed to dwindle in numbers as they tried to survive in an environment hostile to humanoids. The main way most humans survive in jungles is to clear it as much as possible, using fire. We are Savannah animals.
The Pygmies of Africa lived like the Hobbits. Pygmies are humans and can breed with any humans yet genetically, they tend to be very small. For this is an evolutionary tool which conserves energy when living in jungles which have low nutrient values in the food supply.
But we shouldn't forget, many humans in other places, due to diet, were fairly small. In my own lifetime, the size of Japanese or Chinese people has grown by roughly a full 12"! Simply due to eating arrangements! We have no idea if the small size of the Hobbits was 100% genetic or was due to lack of food.
The main thing is, scientists should not attack new discoveries before they take a LOOONG pause to look at the data first. And it is OK to be excited about things. I was very excited by the Hobbit discovery. Still am! And pleased that we Hobbit lovers were right from the very git-go!
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