Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries (45 page)

Some esoteric groups extant today,
such as the Order of the Solar Temple,
claim descent from the original
Templar Order, and there are many
other organizations that have attempted to revive the spirit of the original Templars. In the modern world,
with its love of conspiracy theories, secret knowledge, shadowy occult groups,
and long lost relics, the Knights
Templar represent the archetypal secret society. However, most historians
are of the belief that the real legacies
of the Templars are more mundane,
and revolve mainly around banking
and the code of chivalry. But the
Templars have such a powerful hold
on the popular imagination that there
will always be those who wonder if this
is really all that remains of the Poor
Knights of the Temple of Solomon.

Drawing by Rainer Zenz (GNU Free Documentation License).

The skull of homo floresiensis, drawn by Rainer Zenz.

A strange, prehistoric world of tiny
humans hunting dwarf elephants, giant rats, huge Komodo dragons, even
bigger lizards. This scenario may
sound similar to something out of science fiction novels, such as Arthur
Conan Doyle's Lost World, than scientific fact, but recent discoveries on a
remote Indonesian island may change
all that. The Indonesian island of
Flores, located between Sumatra and
East Timor, has become the center of
a great controversy over the last few
years.

In September 2003, a joint international research team, led by R.P.
Soejono from the Indonesia Center for
Archaeology, and Michael Morwood
from the University of New England
Armidale, were digging in a large limestone cave called Liang Bua. At a depth
of 20 feet they discovered the nearcomplete skeleton of a woman of
around 30 years of age. The skeleton,
which looked to them like a species of
hominid, was found to be only 3 feet
tall. Other scattered bones of the same species were found nearby and, to
date, bones representing nine individuals have been discovered. Using
radiocarbon and thermoluminescence
dating, the oldest remains have been
dated to about 94,000 years ago, and
the most recent to 12,000 years ago.

Also found in the cave (in association with the hominid) were the remains of fish, frogs, snakes, tortoises,
giant rats, birds, and bats, plus larger
animals such as a dwarf species of
Stegedons (an extinct pygmy elephant), Komodo dragons, and a larger
lizard. The discovery of pieces of firecracked rock and charred bone in levels containing hominid skeletal
materials suggests that the Floresians
knew how to control fire. Another significant find in the cave was a relatively sophisticated stone tool
assemblage, including small blades
which could have been mounted on
wooden shafts. Some of the stone tools
were found in direct association with
the Stegodon, which suggests that the
Floresians were hunting them.

The team published their amazing
findings in October 2004 in the science
journal Nature. The conclusions they
drew from the discoveries on Flores
were incredible, to say the least. It was
announced that a new species of tiny
humans, which they named Homo
floresiensis, had been discovered. The
researchers also thought it possible
that this species had survived on the
island of Flores into historic times.
The original skeleton became known
as the Little Lady of Flores (or LB1)
and the species nicknamed hobbits,
from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings
books. All the individuals were about
3-feet tall, with long arms, and grape

fruit-sized skulls. They were fully bipedal, but had an extremely small
brain size (about a third of that of modern humans and slightly smaller than
a chimpanzee). They made sophisticated tools, hunted miniature elephants, and were living at the same
time as modern humans who were
colonizing the area. The researchers
concluded that the Floresians were not
a pygmy form of modern humans, but
a scaled down form of Homo erectus,
the eastern relation of European Neanderthals who were wiped out by
modern humans around 30,000 years
ago. Homo erectus also disappeared
from the record just before modern
humans arrive in their territory.

One important question about the
find is how the researchers account for
the small size of Homo floresiensis. One
theory is that the island of Flores is
particularly isolated and, before modern times, was inhabited only by a
limited group of animals that had managed to reach it. These animals subsequently became subject to unusual
evolutionary forces that drove some
toward gigantism-the giant lizard or
Komodo dragon (which still survives
today), and reduced the size of othersthe pygmy elephant (Stegodon) for example. The team think that Homo
floresiensis were descendents of Homo
erectus, who may have arrived on
Flores by 840,000 years ago; isolated
on the island, they gradually evolved
their tiny physique, undergoing the
same adaptive process that reduced
the size of the elephants. The small size
may well have been evolved due to the
shortage of resources on Flores.

The completely unexpected discovery of Homo floresiensis is widely considered the most important of its
kind in recent history. This new member of the genus Homo could even
change our understanding of human
evolution. For example, we are inclined to believe that sophisticated
tool manufacture requires a large
brain. But the minute brain possessed
by the Lady of Flores challenges this,
and suggests that researchers need to
question previously held assumptions
regarding the intelligence and capabilities of our tiny-brained ancestors.
One of the original discoverers, Dr.
Michael Morwood, even believes that
the Floresians may have had a primitive language which they used to communicate during elephant and giant
lizard hunts. But others disagree, and
point to the fact that chimps and even
wolves can hunt cooperatively without
the use of language.

The Flores discovery also challenges the conventional wisdom that
humans have roamed the Earth alone
since Neanderthals died out about
30,000 years ago. The Floresians managed to survive long into the modern
period and, unlike the majority of the
other archaic human populations,
were able to coexist with modern humans. This means that two different
human species, Homo sapiens and
Homo floresiensis, were living parallel lives on Earth at the same time.
However, although modern human remains have been found on Flores, the
earliest is only 11,000 years old, so the
two species need not have been around
at the same time on the island.

Reactions within the scientific community and beyond were almost as
extreme as the discovery. Chris
Stringer, head of human origins at

London's Natural History Museum,
said "many researchers (myself included) doubted these claims," and
added that nothing could have prepared him for the surprise of the tiny
Floresians. He also speculated that the
long arms possibly suggested that
Homo floresiensis spent a lot of time
in the trees. "We don't know this. But
if there were Komodo dragons about
you might want to be up in the trees
with your babies where it's safe."

There were, and still are, many
who disagree strongly with the conclusions drawn from the finds in the Liang
Bua cave. Indonesia's foremost
paleoanthropologist, Teuku Jacob, has
claimed that LB1 was not a member of
a new species at all, but belonged to
the Austrolomelanesid race of modern
humans, and was thus merely 1,300 to
1,800 years old. Jakob and several
other prominent researchers believe
that that the bones are really those of
a modern human (Homo sapiens), most
likely a pygmy with the brain defect
known as microcephaly. It has even
been suggested that the bones belong
to ancestors of the modern day pygmy
inhabitants of the Flores village of
Rampasasa, close to the Liang Bua
cave site. Microcephaly is a pathological condition characterised by an unusually small head and brain, and
frequently associated with mental difficulties. In support of this theory,
anatomist Maciej Henneberg has
claimed that the LB1 skull is almost
identical to that of a microcephalic
example from Crete. However, Peter
Brown, the main contributor to the
original Nature article, and an associate professor at the University of New
England in New South Wales, rejects this explanation. He reasons that very
few humans with this condition actually reach adulthood, and that microcephalic skulls display a range of
distinctive features, none of which are
found in LB 1. Brown also states that
as there are now bones from Liang Bua
representing nine individuals, all sharing the same tiny features, it is much
more difficult to propose that a whole
population suffered from microcephaly.

In early 2005, an independent team
of international experts led by Dr.
Dean Falk from Florida State University examined the skull of LB1. They
published their results in the journal
Science in March 2005. The team compared a three-dimensional image
of the brain of LB I with those from
a number of different species: a
chimpanzee, a modern human (including a modern pygmy), a microcephalic, and Homo erectus. There were
further comparisons with primitive
human-like creatures Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus
aethiopicus, and also with modern gorillas. Their conclusion was that the
LB1 brain was completely unlike that
of a pygmy or a microcephalic, and
most like that of Homo erectus, and
that it is "indeed a new species of human being." But these results didn't
silence the critics, who claimed that
Dr. Falk and her team didn't use a
skull with the correct example of microcephaly. And so the controversy
continues.

There is a strong possibility that the
question of the true origins and identity of the Floresians might be cleared
up by using DNA analysis. The comparatively recent age of the skeletal
material and the fact that it is not fos

silized suggest that this could indeed
be done. However, as high temperatures degrade DNA, the tropical climate of Indonesia significantly
diminishes the chance of success with
this method. Perhaps additional finds
of more complete skeletal materials
from Liang Bua may allow DNA testing, though only time will tell if it can
be ever be successfully extracted from
LB1. Nevertheless, the fascinating
possibility remains. If DNA could ever
be extracted from Homo floresiensis,
it could provide an entirely new perception of the evolution of the human
lineage.

As far as the fate of the tiny island
people is concerned, an eruption in the
vicinity of the Liang Bua cave from one
of the island's numerous volcanoes
(about 12,000 years ago) appears to have
wiped out the local Homo floresiensis
population as well as much of Flores's
unique wildlife. However, some of the
Homo floresiensis population may
have survived much later in other
parts of the island. Interestingly, the
modern inhabitants of Flores have detailed legends about the existence of
little hairy people on the island,
known as Ebu Gogo, roughly translated
as grandmother who eats anything.
Some of the features of these Ebu Gogo
include a height of about 3 feet and
longish arms and fingers, which are
also characteristic of Homo floresiensis.
The Ebu Gogo were also able to murmur to each other in some kind of primitive language, and could repeat what
villagers said to them in a parrot-like
fashion.

Apparently the Ebu Gogo were last
sighted just before Dutch colonists
settled in Flores in the 19th century. There is also an interesting link between the Floresians and the island
of Sumatra, where there have been
reports of another 3-foot tall humanoid, known as the Orang Pendek.
Zoologists have been cataloguing
sightings of a mysterious ape in the
Kerinci Seblat park area of western
Sumatra for more than 150 years, and
both footprints and hairs have been
recovered that may belong to the creature. Researchers working on the
Floresian finds have postulated that
the Orang Pendek could be surviving
examples of Homo floresiensis still living on Sumatra. Henry Gee, senior
editor at Nature magazine, agrees, and
goes even further, saying that the discovery of Homo floresiensis surviving
until such recent times (geologically
speaking) "makes it more likely that
stories of other mythical, human-like
creatures such as Yetis are founded on
grains of truth .... Now, cryptozoology,
the study of such fabulous creatures,
can come in from the cold."