Show Date: May 24, 2006 
Pam Eastlick for THE DEEP on line

THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond. Join us each week on Newstalk K57 on Wednesday night from 7 to 8 p.m. for exciting live science expeditions or listen live on our web site www.thedeepradioshow.com

Two years ago, it was announced that scientists had found the fossils of a humanoid species that grew no larger than a three-year-old modern child. The tiny humans, who had skulls about the size of grapefruits, lived with pygmy elephants and Komodo dragons on a remote island in Indonesia 18,000 years ago. The island is named Flores and although everyone started calling them ‘hobbits,’ they are really called the Flores people.

Flores Island is a tropical island, just like Guam. It’s a little closer to the equator than we are at 9 degrees south and it’s much larger than Guam, 224 miles long and 37 miles wide. It’s very mountainous with peaks reaching 7,000 feet, and is covered with dense jungle.

There were a couple of things that raised my scientific antennae about the initial story. One was that the popular press kept talking about the ‘fossils’ on Flores Island. There is a scientific maxim that states that organisms simply don’t fossilize well in the tropics. There are several things that must happen if you want to become a fossil. You must be buried quickly in an environment that keeps air away from the body. Fossilization can occur when the remains are buried in a mudslide, covered in a thick layer of leaves along the edge of a pond or lake, trapped in the ooze at the bottom of lakes or oceans, or sucked into a tar pit. Now, all these things can happen in the tropics, but there’s one other important factor. In order to form fossils, the bone must be gradually replaced with minerals and in areas with heavy rainfall, this never happens. The minerals are constantly washed away. So I did a little further digging. The skeletons on Flores are not fossils; they’re bones.

The tiny size of these people didn’t bother me. Animals tend toward small sizes when they are isolated on islands. But there’s new scientific debate raging about the one skull that was found on Flores. Some scientists are now saying that the skull belonged to a person with microcephaly. Microcephaly is a medical condition in which the circumference of the head is smaller than normal because the brain has not developed properly or has stopped growing. The scientists who examined the skull said that it was too small even for the skeleton with which it was associated.

But this ignores the fact that the bones of nine individuals were found beneath the floor of a cave on Flores and none of them were much over three feet tall. Were there pygmy people on Flores? And that raises my other question. Are they still there? The source where I got the size figures for Flores Island states, “Most of the interior of the island is unexplored.” The native Indonesians have legends about tiny people. The Chamorus, who apparently originated in Indonesia, tell stories about the duendes. I maintain that if you have an intelligent group of people who do not use fire, they could hide for a long time on an island that’s 225 miles long and 35 miles wide.

Join us this week as we talk about scientific controversy and tiny people. We’ll also talk about the possibility that the Endeavour, the ship that Captain Cook commanded on his first voyage across the Pacific Ocean may be resting on the seabed off Rhode Island. It’ll be a great show, don’t miss it!

The Deep is broadcast on Newstalk K57 every Wednesday night at 7:00 p.m. You can also listen live from our web site www.thedeepradioshow.com. Join Jim Sullivan, Pam Eastlick, and Peter Melyan on the deepest radio show on Earth.