SEAArch - The Southeast Asian Archaeology Newsblog

c. 23 April 2007 (Research|Penn State) Research|Penn State, an online magazine by the Pennsylvana State University has an interesting feature-length article on Dr Bob Eckhart, who leads the charge in debunking the Hobbit myth. While SEAArch has covered plenty in the news about homo floresiensis, this article presents an in-depth look at the arguments against the Hobbit theory and is worth a read for anyone following the story.

Small skull, huge controversy

In October 2004, while working in his lab, Bob Eckhardt heard a report on National Public Radio: A team of archaeologists had unearthed bones of a three-foot-tall humanlike creature on the island of Flores in Indonesia. Based on the shape and size of the skull and other skeletal remains, the archaeologists, led by Michael J. Morwood of the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, claimed they had discovered a new species of human.

The diminutive biped had a cranium no larger than a chimpanzee’s, yet its bones had been found along with abundant stone tools. Radiocarbon dating of charcoal in the same stratum, along with luminescence dating of surrounding sediments, implied that the skeleton was only 18,000 years old. Considering other earlier archaeological finds on Flores, Morwood and his colleagues concluded that a new human species had evolved from a preceding population of Homo erectus that had been isolated for over 840,000 years on Flores, in the archipelago between Asia and Australia.

Eckhardt, a professor of developmental genetics and evolutionary morphology in Penn State’s department of kinesiology, added it up. Three feet tall. A tiny brain. Complex stone tools. Evolved in complete isolation in 40,000 generations. He says: “It just didn’t ring true.”

Eckhardt read the scientific papers, published in the British journal Nature, setting forth the findings and conclusions of Morwood’s group. “A lot of things didn’t make sense,” he says. “For instance, the overall height seemed to be off. I took the long-bone measurements from the paper and plugged them into standard regression formulas.” Where Morwood and colleagues estimated an overall height of 1.06 meters for their specimen, Eckhardt came up with figures ranging from 1.15 to 1.33 meters, with an average of 1.25 meters—more than seven inches taller than Morwood’s estimate. Eckhardt also wondered about the proximity of the small cranium to sophisticated stone tools, including points, perforators, blades, and microblades. Over a century of research by anthropologists has established a rough correlation between an increasing brain size and advances in stone-tool technology. The kinds of tools described in the Nature article matched those made elsewhere by Homo sapiens. Says Eckhardt, “It seemed very unlikely that a human with a chimp-sized brain would have invented such tools independently and in total isolation.”

Related Books:
- Little People And a Lost World: An Anthropological Mystery by L. Goldenberg

24 April 2007 (Jakarta Post) - The fossil of a prehistoric crocodile has been found in Sangiran, already famous for being the site of the discovery of Java Man.

Prehistoric crocodile fossil found in Sangiran

The fossil of a prehistoric crocodile has been found at the Sangiran site in Sragen, Central Java, by a local resident.

“The first bit (of the fossil) that I found was the teeth of its upper jaw,” Mulyono, 31, told reporters at the Sangiran Fossil Laboratory on Monday.

Mulyono explained that the finding was quite by chance, as he was digging an irrigation gutter in his rice field. “Suddenly, I found the fossil,” Mulyono said. The discovery was made Friday and the excavation was carried out the next day.

On Monday, a number of employees from the Sangiran laboratory were still busy cleaning the fossil, which has a diameter of 49 centimeters and a length of 95 centimeters.

Gunawan, one of the employees, said the fossil was believed to have come from the Middle Pleistocene era, about 1.6 million years ago. “This is still a preliminary estimation, taking into consideration the location of the discovery at a hilly area in Pucung village in Kalijambe district, which has been classified in the Kabuh formation or the Middle Pleistocene era,” he said.

So far there has been no formal statement on how scientists will calculate the age of the fossil. “This is still being studied by archeological experts from the Sangiran Museum,” Gunawan said.

Related Books:
- Ancient History (The Indonesian Heritage Series) by Indonesian Heritage
- Prehistoric Indonesia: A reader

22 April 2007 (New Straits Times) - Today’s NST features a special spotlight on the stone age culture - past and ethnographic present. The first story is about the prehistory ceramics industrial site at Bukit Tengkorak (Tengkorak Hill).

SpotLight: Stone Age Potters

Tampi villagers today don’t think twice about using clay from the foot of Bukit Tengkorak and nearby areas in southeastern Sabah for their pottery, digging wells for fresh water, burning wood for fuel and eating a wide range of fish, shellfish and molluscs.

But most of them are unaware that from about 3,000 until 2,000 years ago, people at the summit of the 600-foot hill did the same–when the Semporna peninsula was a late Stone Age population hub and craft centre.

Experts from Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), the Sabah Museum Department and the Department of Natural Heritage have found millions of sherds which show that the site about five kilometres from Semporna town was one of the largest, if not the largest, pottery making sites in Island Southeast Asia (SEA) and the Pacific during the Neolithic era (the last part of the Stone Age, beginning 8,000 BC).

Their findings have overturned some theories about how prehistoric people lived and traded in the region.

Until the excavations here, archaeologists believed that long-distance sea trade and migration of people in insular SEA and the Pacific moved east from Melanesia (near Papua New Guinea) to Polynesia, leaving behind what is known as the “Lapita culture” of pottery, stone tools and ornaments.

“Our research at Bukit Tengkorak shows that 3,000 years ago, people were not only moving east towards New Britain in Melanesia but also westwards towards Sabah,” explains Dr Stephen Chia of USM’s Centre for Archaeological Research Malaysia, who based his PhD thesis on the site.

“This is one of the longest trading routes in the world during the Neolithic period,” says the archeochemist who found obsidian (a volcanic glass used to make tools) at the site and traced it chemically to Talasea in New Britain, 3500 kilometres away. His fieldwork in Southeast Asia also found stone tools and pottery similar to Bukit Tengkorak in the Zamboanga Peninsula, the Sulu Archipelago and Sulawesi.

The second story covers the Bajau people who live in the vicinity of Bukit Tengkorak on the Semporna peninsula of Sabah - the clay stoves produced by the Bajau are remarkably similar to the 3,000-year-old stoves unearthed nearby, implying an unbroken ceramics manufacturing tradition.

Bajaus carrying on a long tradition

The finished handiwork of this Bajau woman in Sabah’s southeastern Semporna peninsula looks exactly like the 3,000-year-old stove unearthed at nearby Bukit Tengkorak.

“Pottery has been made like this for hundreds of years,” says Rogayah. “Each house has a stove to grill fish or satay and cook rice.”

“The way of life of the Bajaus today and the food they eat are similar to what we found on site,” says Dr Stephen Chia of Universiti Sains Malaysia’s Centre for Archaeological Research Malaysia.

“We think that the nomadic Bajau Laut may have landed here to trade, mend their nets, dry fish and bury their dead, but it was the settled coastal Bajaus who made the pottery.”
However, he cautions: “The people of Bukit Tengkorak could also be a totally different group of maritime people who shifted here and then moved on.”

Related Books:
- Southeast Asia: From Prehistory to History by P. S. Bellwood and I. Glover (Eds)
- Man’s conquest of the Pacific: The prehistory of Southeast Asia and Oceania by P. Bellwood

18 April 2007 (Daily Telegraph and Biology Letters) - Thanks to Liz Price for flagging me to this piece of news, a new study published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters demonstrates that primates conform to the theory of “Island Dwarfism”. Island Dwarfism describes the phenomenon that in areas where resources are limited (eg, islands), small animals become larger and large animals become smaller in a bid to be more efficient in gathering food. The study can be found in this week’s Biology Letters, which a subscription-based. The abstract is published here:

Primates follow the ‘island rule’: implications for interpreting Homo floresiensis
Lindell Bromham and Marcel Cardillo

When the diminutive skeleton of Homo floresiensis was found on the Indonesian island of Flores, it was interpreted as an island dwarf, conforming to the ‘island rule’ that large animals evolve smaller size on islands, but small animals tend to get larger. However, previous studies of the island rule have not included primates, so the extent to which insular primate populations undergo size change was unknown. We use a comparative database of 39 independently derived island endemic primate species and subspecies to demonstrate that primates do conform to the island rule: small-bodied primates tend to get larger on islands, and large-bodied primates get smaller. Furthermore, larger species undergo a proportionally greater reduction in size on islands.

The Daily Telegraph, which I assume has access to the article, expounds on the connection with Homo Floresiensis further and makes careful mention that the article does not imply the genus of our beloved hobbit, whether it was Homo sapiens or Homo erectus.

Hobbit hominids lived the island life

…

Lindell Bromham and Marcel Cardillo trawled through published journals and online databases to see how primates performed when subjected to the “island rule”.

True enough, small primate species (ones weighing less than 5kg) all pumped up compared to their mainland relatives - but all the larger primates became smaller, in a range of between 52 and 80 per cent.

That fits in well with H. floresiensis, who was around 55 per cent of the mass of a modern Indonesian and probably 52 percent of an H. erectus.

So the evidence backs the idea that the hobbits were an insular dwarf race - humans who became smaller, possibly after the island separated from the mainland and left them marooned with diminished food resources.

The authors refuse, though, to wade into the debate as to whether the hobbits were H. erectus or H. sapiens.

Also unclear is why the hominids had a relatively undersized brain compared to their diminutive body. A modern human child of the same size has a much larger brain, as do pygmies.

So the hobbits may well be products of their own environment, but the question as to what species they are remain unanswered for another day…

Related Books:
- Little People And a Lost World: An Anthropological Mystery by L. Goldenberg

15 Apr 2007 (Viet Nam News) - It’s quite interesting to hear about ‘amateur archaeologists’ nowadays, particularly from this part of the world. This man collected some 7,500 stone artefacts over a span of 17 years. I find it quite interesting that the archaeology authorities commend him for his collection efforts rather than the loss of valuable context. Still, the alternative may be worse if the artefacts become ground to make drugs for folk use.

Amateur archaeologist illuminates past

It was almost 17 years ago when Van Dinh Thanh, while panning for gold on the banks of the Po Co River in Sa Thay Commune, reached down and picked up what he thought was a golden nugget. On closer inspection he discovered that the object was a worked piece of stone. Later he was to learn that it was a prehistoric stone hammer. The discovery fired his passion for ancient artefacts and was the start of the young gold prospector’s new life as an amateur archaeologist.

…

Thanh’s collection now numbers 7,000 artefacts and is the largest in the province. The artefacts date from the 500 BC to 5500 BC and include stone axes, drills, hoes, jewellery and Bon Rang Trau, an agricultural tool shaped like a buffalo’s teeth. The collection is divided into three categories: the Neolithic era (New Stone Age), Mesolithic era (Middle Stone Age) and Palaeolithic era (Old Stone Age). Experts say his collection is invaluable to understanding the anthropology of the region.

“I highly appreciate what Thanh has done,” says Professor Nguyen Khac Su from the Viet Nam Institute of Archaeology, who was a member of the group that visited Thanh’s house in 1991. “The standard of education among those living in the gold fields of Lung Leng is very low. They assume that these tools are ‘hammers of god’ and often grind them down to make drugs for their children. Other people throw them away because they are scared of the prehistoric remains.”

Related Books:
- The Bronze Age of Southeast Asia (Cambridge World Archaeology) by C. Higham
- Stone adzes of Southeast Asia;: An illustrated typology (Canterbury Museum bulletin) by R. Duff

13 April 2007 (Tempo) - A Philippine senatorial candidate has called for the investigation of prehistoric caves at Cagayan de Oro in the Philippines.

Preserve historical sites – Loren

Genuine Opposition (GO) senatorial candidate Loren Legarda called yesterday for the preservation of the prehistoric Huluga open site and caves in Barangay Indahag here as they form part of the country’s heritage.

…

In Senate Resolution 656, Loren urged the Senate committees on education, arts and culture and the environment and natural resources to conduct the investigation.

“(The) Huluga open site and caves in Cagayan de Oro City are among the remaining treasures of our heritage. We hope that every Filipino would consider it his duty to preserve our cultural and historical sites,” Loren said.

Related Books:
- A Selected Bibliography of Philippine Prehistory by D. W. Tantoko

2 April 2007 (Vietn Nam Net Bridge) - A German archaeological team has been working on the O Chua site in Southern Vietnam, which was a salt-production centre, and also yielded pottery similar to that found in salt-production sites in Europe.

Archeology helps introduce Vietnamese culture in Europe

German Archeologist Andreas Reinecke said introducing Vietnam’s culture in Europe was the purpose of archeology projects he and his Vietnamese colleagues had been conducting for the past decade.

One of these projects is the investigation of O Chua Mound in Vinh Hung District in the southern province of Long An. The site has been excavated by the Archaeological Institute of non-European cultures (the German Archaeological Institute), Hanoi University of Social Sciences and Humanities and Long An Province Museum.