The ancestor of the man of Flores, aged 700 000 years was discovered – L’Express

This could be the end of some old controversies over ten years around the origins of the man of Flores. Two studies published Wednesday in the British journal Nature think that there were “hominids” before the enigmatic man nicknamed the “hobbit” due to its small size. They “were already present on the island there are 700 000 years,” said Yousuke Kaifu of the National Museum of Nature and Science Ibaraki in Japan. “I was amazed when I saw these new fossils” he adds.

Since September 2003l’existence We knew of the man of Flores, who lived 50,000 years ago. She had been updated in the Liang Bua cave on the eponymous island in Indonesia. With a size of about 1 m to 25 kg, these men were equipped with an abnormally small head with respect to their body, housing a brain of a similar size to that of a chimpanzee. Which earned them the nickname of “hobbits” as the small figures of the “Lord of the Rings” by Tolkien.

A descendant of Australopithecus

Act Two: since this discovery, scientists attempt to explain where could come this strange little creature, why is so small and why it is found only on this island. For some, the man of Flores would be a descendant of Homo habilis small or small Australopithecus came from Africa. For others, it would be a Homo erectus would have gradually shrunk to fit its needs for scarce resources. New twist: Yousuke Kaifu and his team announced in a study published Wednesday in the British journal Nature, the discovery in 2014 of new fossils on the island.

This treasure, which was discovered on the site of Mata Menge 100 kilometers east of the Liang Bua cave, where the famous “hobbits” were found, including a jaw fragment and six teeth. And we can qualify the treasure because the jaw fragment from a smaller mandible than the smaller mandible man of Flores. Bones Adam Brumm of the University of Wollongong in Australia and colleagues, date to about 700,000 years in a second study, also published Wednesday in Nature.

“A descent with Homo erectus?”

“What we found is a huge surprise,” said Adam Brumm. “And suggests that H. floresiensis is a very ancient species which acquired its smaller size early, perhaps shortly after his arrival on the island there are about a million years.” This finding discredits one of the hypotheses so far advanced by some researchers as if the little man was present there are 700 000 years, it can not be Homo sapiens appeared on Earth much later. End of controversy: the man of Flores is not a sick sapiens suffering from microcephaly or trisomy.

“In addition, one of the teeth found at Mata Menge, a lower molar adult, has characteristics that evoke ancestry with Homo erectus,” said Adam Brumm. A tooth that so rather tip the balance toward the theory of a dwarf Homo erectus, an ancestor of modern man. But this hypothesis has yet to be confirmed, according to the researcher, the remains found were too few.

But for Yousuke Kaifu, it is indeed “more evidence of a marked island dwarfism”. Man of Flores could well be a product of local development, which would be adapted to the island environment where food was scarce.