Hobbit Fued

www.google.com/hostednews/ March 6th … this is another version of a story posted last week but has some interesting detail not in the initial news report. Indonesian archaeologists on the island of Flores are scouring the cave complex for clues about the ancestors of the fossilised skeleton of the Hobbit. On one side are those who claim the Hobbit is a throwback to much earlier times and critics who say they are modern humans with a genetic disorder that caused the body and brain to shrink – or become dwarf. There is plenty of evidence on Flores of dwarfism – such as elephants the size of cows, and there is also evidence of small animals that grow larger because of a general lack of predators – such as rats the size of cats. The hobbit skeleton (the complete example) was only a metre high (around 3 feet) but Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London and the author of Homo Brittanicus says the critics are now a minority – the common view is that it is a new species. It is now being suggested Africa was not the only cradle of early humanity and that not just the Hobbit, but Homo Erectus, may have evolved in SE Asia.