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New light on Lilliput and human evolution
By Carl Muller
The discovery of a new species of humans who lived at least 12,000 years ago, has cast new light on the history of mankind. This tiny, hairy species of human once lived on the island of Flores, 370 miles east Bali.

Nicknamed the Hobbit, now Homo floresiensis, it first came to the attention of scientists when an 18,000-year-old female skeleton was unearthed in a limestone cave in Liang Bua, Flores Island, last year. Named LB1, she was only a metre tall, weighed almost four stone and had a brain smaller than most chimpanzees and a quarter the size of modern man. Her teeth were worn down and her skull fully knitted together, suggesting that she was around 30 years old.

Now, six more tiny skeletons, from 950,000 years old to 12,000 years old have been discovered nearby. It does prove that LB1 was not a freak one-off find. Also, she was not part of a pygmy race, but belonged to a separate species of human - the first to be discovered in more than a century.

What is particularly intriguing to me is that this discovery of Homo floresiensis can also be tied up with the familiar story of "Gulliver's Travels" in the South Seas and now, we can pinpoint more precisely the location of Swift's "Lilliput".We are all aware that Swift was no fantasist. His tale of Gulliver's adventures in Lilliput is corroborated, perhaps based on "The Journal of Antonio Pigafetta" who was secretary to the explorer and adventurer Magellan. Pigafetta's journal is the first European record we have of a journey though the eastern islands of the Indonesian archipelago in 1521.

In a study following the discovery of LB1, professor Reimer Salverda of University College, London, has stated: "Pigafetta goes on to recount what their Moluccan pilot tells him of the islands they sail past but cannot visit. Thus we learn of the pygmies on an island called Aruchete, where the men and women are no taller than a cubit and have ears so large that of one they make their bed and with the other they cover themselves."

Were these Gulliver's Lilliputians? The question now is how did these Hobbits evolve? Analysis of LB1 suggests that they were descended from Homo erectus - the first member of the human family to walk upright on two legs. Homo erectus first emerged in Africa about 1.8 million years ago, then spread to Asia and Europe, eventually superseded by the brainier Homo sapiens. It is thought that the Hobbit evolved from a group of Homo erectus that migrated to Flores island about 840,000 years ago and lived there in isolation. But to gather there, they must have had an unexpected degree of social organisation. Flores island had no land mass connecting it with other parts of South-East Asia. Did these Hobbits sail to the island in crude boats?

Dwarfing
There is yet another thing. In the animal kingdom, dwarfing is a common phenomenon. When animals are limited to an island where resources are limited and there are few predators, they tend to shrink because it is more efficient to be small. However, this phenomenon has never been recorded before in human species. But now that it HAS been recorded, it could have happened elsewhere. The prospect is now that more species of miniature human species could have developed around the world - and how true, then, are the old stories of "the little people", the "seven dwarfs", goblins and elves, fairies and trolls? Today, scientists are scouring other remote islands in the Indonesian archipelago for similar hominid species.

Another thing is, as Gulliver found, his Lilliputians were quite clever despite their small brains. They had a distinct social order, built sturdy homes, had their leaders and defence forces. Near the Liang Bua skeletons, scientists found stone implements, axe-like tools and several small and delicate artifacts. Charred animal remains suggest that the Hobbits used fire to roast their food and remains tell that they hunted fish, frogs, tortoises and birds. Remnants of the hunts also tell of how they even hunted the pygmy elephant, the size of a pony; and giant rats as large as big dogs. They must have also been hunted in turn by the island's giant Komodo dragons, and their long arm bones suggest they kept out of danger by taking to the trees for safety.

Also, the locals of the Indonesian islands now tell of the "Ebu Gogo" (a term that means 'grandmother who eats everything) - a race of cave-dwelling little people about a metre tall, with long hair, pot bellies, ears that stuck out and with long arms and fingers. So like the creatures described by Pigafetta and used by Swift to describe his Lilliputians.

Bottomless pits
Now scientists are listening keenly to the tales of the locals who say that these creatures had voracious appetites and ate everything - vegetables, meat and at times even human flesh. In studying the local lore, scientists are told that these little people communicated in murmurs. Also, they co-existed with the villagers, and were even able to repeat verbatim sentences spoken to them. The females were memorable for their extremely pendulous breasts which they slung over their shoulders. (Didn't Marco Polo learn from ancient seafarers that there were on some strange islands, little women with two eyes on the backs of their shoulders? Were these eyes or the dark nipples of over slung breasts?). Today, all this is being taken seriously because Homo sapiens was also present in the region at least 45,000 years ago; so the two species must have co-existed for thousands of years. The evidence so far is that the Hobbits died out around 12,000 years ago - perhaps in the same volcanic eruption that also wiped out the pygmy elepgants.

The local legends persist, telling that the Hobbits survived on Flores Island until very recently. It is claimed that the villagers the Ebu Gogo raids on their crops until, one day, one of the village babies was stolen and eaten. The angry villagers then surrounded the caves where the little people lived at the foot of the volcano, threw bales of burning grass into them and smoked them out. The Ebu Gogo fled west where it is now believed, they interbred with the people of Labuan Baju - a village west of Flores where the women, to this day, have very pendulous breasts.

Records also show that the last sighting of a Hobbit on Flores island was shortly before Dutch colonists settled there in the 19th century.One has only to read "Gulliver's Travels'' to see how true to form his Lilliputians are. Long before the discovery of LB1, these little people came alive and entered European culture through Pigafetta's Journal.

Scientific data
Could different species of humans interbreed? Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon came into contact about 40,000 years ago, co-existed for tens of thousands of years. In 1997, a 26,000-year-old partial skeleton of a child discovered in Portugal, showed hybrid Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon features. However, fragmentary DNA evidence showed that modern man carries no Neanderthal genes. Even if they interbred, their chromosomes may have been so different that their children were born sterile.

Now the Flores skeletons are yielding DNA that should help answer a lot of questions. Their discovery has also raised profound philosophical and scientific questions. What DOES it mean to be human? We have always thought that we were unique. Do we now have to adjust to the fact that we shared this planet with another species of human 12,000 years ago?

Writing in "Nature" magazine recently, Henry Gee, a fossil expert, said it was not impossible that living Hobbits or other human species may still be found in remote patches of rain forest. And he asked: "If such a species were found, would we class it as man or beast? What human right would it be entitled to?"

Today, even in skeletal form, the Hobbits have confounded many of our presumptions about humanity. Even our understanding of intelligence has been defied by the skills these little people mastered with their tiny brains. It seems that they outdid Homo sapiens intellectually as well. And they have lived on in literature too, thanks to Gulliver's immortal visit to their faraway kingdom!

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