The wee people

Everyone has probably heard about the wee people found on the island of
Flores by now. These people, who lived as recently as 13,000 years ago,
are 1 meter tall and have the cranial capacity of a chimpanzee, around
380 cc. But they appear to have had many of the human traits that we
would call fully human. Mike Morwood, one of the discoverers, said:

"It is a new species of human who actually lived alongside us, yet were
half our size. They were the height of a three-year-old child, weighed
around 25kg and had a brain smaller than most chimpanzees. Even so, they
used fire, made sophisticated stone tools, and hunted Stegodon (a
primitive type of elephant) and giant rats. We also believe that their
ancestors may have reached the island using bamboo rafts. The clear
implication is that, despite tiny brains, these little humans were
intelligent and almost certainly had language."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/041028144857.htm
These people are the size of Australopithecus. And since I have long
suggested that Adam lived millions of years ago, which would mean that
either he was H. erectus or Australopithecine, it seems logical to make
some comments on these wee people.

 I have long said that brain size should not be the sine qua non of
intelligence. Many have disliked my views precisely because they found
it unbelievable that such small people as the Australopithecines could
really be human. But this discovery vindicates that long asserted view.
These people seem to have done all the things we would associate with
any other human society, yet they are so different, being directly
descended from H. erectus, and not from H. sapiens. What applies to
them, should apply to their larger H. erectus ancestors.
So what are the traits that make us think they are human? I am struck by
a 3 word sentence in the description of the skeletal material from one
of the two Nature articles:
"Cranial base flexed." P. Brown et al, A New Small-Bodied Hominin from
the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia," Nature, 431(2004): 1055
This is important because one of the physical traits believed to be
necessary for language is a flexed cranial base.

"Steinheim, Kabwe, and several Upper Paleolithic crania are more similar
to modern adult humans in their degree of basicranial flexion, implying
greater speech capabilities than Neandertals." L. A. Schepartz,
"Language and Modern Human Origins," Yearbook of Physical Anthropology,
36:91-126(1993), p. 105
At least some of the analysis would indicate that the encephalization
quotient would have placed this creature in the range of our genus. This
is important because in some sense the ratio of brain to body is an
indicator of how much spare processing capacity a creature has. Humans
are highly encephalized, and it appears, so were the wee people.
" If LB1 shared the lean and relatively narrow body shape typical of Old
World tropical modern humans then the smallest body weight estimate,
based on Jamaican school children data19, is probably most appropriate.
This would support the higher EQ estimate and place LB1 within the Homo
range of variation. Although neurological organization is at least as
important as EQ in determining behavioural complexity, these data are
consistent with H. floresiensis being the Pleistocene toolmaker at Liang
Bua." P. Brown et al, A New Small-Bodied Hominin from the Late
Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia," Nature, 431(2004): 1060
 
It is also stricking that we are dealing with a population, not a weird
anomaly. They have found other skeletal material which shows that this
is a population. And this population has apparently been responsible for
manufacturing complex stone tools.
Peistocene deposits in Sector VII contain relatively few stone
artefacts; only 32 were found in the same level as the hominin skeleton.
In Sector IV, however, dense concentrations of stone artefacts occur in
the same level as H. floresiensis-up to 5,500 artefacts per cubic metre.
Simple flakes predominate, struck bifacially from small radial cores and
mainly on volcanics and chert, but there is also a more formal component
found only with evidence of Stegodon, including points, perforators,
blades and microblades that were probably hafted as barbs (Fig. 5). In
all excavated Sectors, this 'big game' stone artefact technology
continues from the oldest cultural deposits, dated from about 95 to 74
kyr, until the disappearance of Stegodon about 12 kyr, immediately below
the 'white' tuffaceous silts derived from volcanic eruptions that
coincide with the extinction of this species. The juxtaposition of these
distinctive stone tools with Stegodon remains suggests that hominins at
the site in the Late Pleistocene were selectively hunting juvenile
Stegodon." M. J. Morwood, et al, "Archaeology and age of a new
hominin from Flores in eastern Indonesia," Nature,431(2004):1089
 They made tools, and press reports from the discoverers note that they
used fire. For an explanation of the mental capacities needed for fire,
see my article Morton, G. R. (1999) Planning Ahead: Requirement for
Moral Accountability, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith,
51:3:176-179
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/planningahead.htm
The authors make a statement about the cognitive abilities of this
human:

The cognitive capabilities of early hominins, however, should not be
underestimated, as indicated by the technology of the stone artefacts
associated with H. floresiensis at Liang Bua. It is also significant
that hominins were able to colonize Flores by the Early Pleistocene4,5,
whereas the required sea crossings were beyond the dispersal abilities
of most other land animals, even during glacial periods of lowered sea
level." M. J. Morwood, et al, "Archaeology and age of a new hominin
from Flores in eastern Indonesia," Nature,431(2004):1091
While this is indirectly related to some of the things I have said, it
does seem to show that small brained creatures can be quite intelligent,
something that everyone should keep in mind. Consider Daniel Lyons, who
lived in the early 1900s and had a brain size of the average H. erectus
of 2 million years ago--about 700 cc. And consider that some children
with hydroencephaly, having mostely water inside their craniums are
passing honours classes in math in England. and consider that some
babies who have a hemispheridectomy (removal of half the brain) are also
socially and physially normal with half a brain.
"'There's a young student at this university," says Lorber, 'who has an
IQ of 126, has gained a first-class honors degree in mathematics, and
is socially completely normal. And yet the boy has virtually no brain.'
The student's physician at the university noticed that the youth had a
slightly larger than normal head, and so referred him to Lorber, simply
out of interest. 'When we did a brain scan on him,' Lorber recalls, 'we
saw that instead of the normal 4.5-centimeter thickness of brain tissue
between the ventricles and the cortical surface, there was just a thin
layer of mantle measuring a millimeter or so. His cranium is filled
mainly with cerebrospinal fluid."Roger Lewin, "Is Your Brain Really
Necessary," Science, Dec. 12,1980, p. 1232.
 
Begin quote:
August 19, 1997

Removal of Half the Brain Improves Young Epileptics' Lives

By ABIGAIL ZUGER

Brain-damaged children are actually able to recover some intellectual
ground if the entire damaged half of the brain is surgically removed,
researchers are finding. The surgical procedure, hemi-spherectomy, was
first developed in the 1920s but fell out of favor for many years
because of a high complication rate. Now newer surgical techniques have
made the operation safer. Its success in children with damage confined
to half the brain astonishes even seasoned scientists and suggests that
until now, they may have greatly underestimated the brain's flexibility,
particularly in older children.
"We are awed by the apparent retention of memory and by the retention of
the child's personality and sense of humor," Dr. Eileen P.G. Vining of
Johns Hopkins University wrote in this month's issue of the journal
Pediatrics.
Dr. Vining reported on the progress of 54 children who underwent
hemispherectomy for recurrent, severe epileptic seizures. Most of the
patients stopped having incapacitating seizures after the operation and
could stop taking high doses of anti-seizure medication. Many are now in
school.
The most extraordinary success of hemispherectomy was probably seen in a
British boy named Alex who was born in 1980 with the left,
speech-controlling, side of his brain smothered in a tangle of abnormal
blood vessels, leaving him mute, half-blind, half-paralyzed and
epileptic until he was 8.
Then Alex's doctors, unable to control his epilepsy with medication,
removed the entire diseased left-brain hemisphere, warning his parents
that although the seizures would be helped by the operation, his other
problems would probably not change too much. Alex was well past the age
when a mute child had ever been reported to learn to talk.
Ten months later, Alex startled everyone by suddenly speaking, first in
words, then, a few months later, in complete sentences. At the age of 11
he was still pronouncing some words incorrectly "like a well-spoken
foreigner," but now, at 16, he is extremely fluent, said Dr. Faraneh
Vargha-Khadem, a neuropsychologist at University College in London who
has followed Alex for the last six years and reported his case in the
journal Brain in January.
Alex's case has given scientists "a new respect for the plasticity of
the still-developing brain," said Dr. Mortimer Mishkin, a
neuropsychologist at the National Institute of Mental Health in Maryland
who has also studied Alex's progress. "
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/sci-brain-damage.html
 end quote:
And this from my book Adam, Apes and Anthropology
"Smith performed a long-term study of 64 infants who had
hemispherectomies, 36 on the left side and 28 on the right. He wrote:
'At a 25-year follow-up; each had obtained a college degree and had
enjoyed a successful career as an executive, following a right
hemispherectomy in one case and a left hemispherectomy in the other.
Thus, as Smith noted, the findings demonstrate that at birth each of the
two cerebral hemispheres contains the neuroanatomical and substrate
necessary for the development of normal or even superior adult language
and verbal and nonverbal cognitive functions.'" G. R. Morton, Adam, Apes
and Anthropology, Dallas: DMD Publishing Co., 1999), p. 160
All of them had graduated from college.
What other implications are there. Well the latest evidence for these
people is from 13,000 years ago. If that holds up, it means that the
ability of a primitive people to transmit oral information extends over
that distance. Why? Because the people of Flores have legends about the
wee people.
This discovery does one thing. It should put to rest the objection to my
views that tiny people, like those who were alive 5 million years ago,
can't be intelligent.
Received on Thu Oct 28 19:55:39 2004