This one really IS a controversy. On the Indonesian island Flores, inside a cave, bones from a number of humans from some 12,000 to 95,000 years ago have been found. "Human" here is a broad term including neanderthals down to modern homo sapiens sapiens. These particular bones are significantly smaller than those of other homo sapiens of the same time, and most archaeologists/biologists believe they're of a new species and call them homo floriensis, familiarly known as Hobbits. A number of scientists remain unconvinced; they point out that these could've been an isolated group of dwarf homo sapiens. Only time will tell which hypothesis will win out and become the accepted theory.
UPDATE: See this article for more details on the controversy.
Hi. Man this is odd. Heh fixed up my MSN page with random Anthropoogy links, and got a link to your blog. My Intro to Physical Anthropology teachr gave the class a list of topics to do a final report or research paper on. I chose Intelligent Design...if you could help me with some information please let me know. One of the boys in class chose this though, and somewhere in the sty I call a bedroom is an article that appeared in Time Magazine about this...think that you could help me find it here online? I don't remember what time of the year it was when it came out oor how to obtain another issue...but I really would like to assist my classmate in his research...I was also going to give my proff. the magazine with the article in it. WEll yes, again please do e-mail me or drop me a line with any information that you can obtain on either the "Hobbit" or the "Intelligent Design" topics. I thank you.
ReplyDelete~Dessira
My E-Mail is TurtleSensei@HotMail.com
Hi Dessira,
ReplyDeleteHeh, that's funny that an MSN search sent you to my blog. My blog is all my personal opinion, and while it's what *I* believe, for a research paper for a class it's better to have sources that are more well known, such as books, magazines, or newspapers. I could tell you my opinion for hours, but if I'm the only source in your bibliography your teacher/professor probably won't be happy.
If you are looking for a specific Time Magazine article, I would go to their homepage and use their search bar at the top to look for the article. You may not be able to get it for free online though, so a better idea would be to go to your school or local library and ask the periodicals librarian to help you. She or he should be able to help you find the article in their collection and you can read it there and take notes or photocopy it to read later. They can also help you find articles in any newspaper or magazine (intelligent design and the "Hobbit" may be too recent things to have books about them).
Information from the internet to start you off can be found using the Google search engine. I often use Wikipedia for this; it's an online encyclopedia. For example they have a long article on Intelligent Design. If you want to know more about the "Hobbit" creature, try Googling for its full name, "homo floriensis". Wikipedia's article on homo floriensis is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floriensis.
Good luck with your paper!