Ever since the bones nicknamed the Hobbits and scientifically named Homo floresiensis were found in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores anthropologists have argued about whether they were diseased dwarf humans or some kind of primitive human ancestor. Debbie Argue, an Anthropologist at Australian National University, and colleagues have carried out a study of the hobbit bones, comparing them with Australopithecines (e.g. “Lucy”) and “a range of early hominins, including H. erectus, and modern humans”.
The team looked at up to 60 different characteristics of these various species and then analysed the results using a method called cladistic analysis. Cladistics is “an approach that compares the forms of organisms to determine ancestral relationships,” and is used to draw up evolutionary trees. The results indicated that hobbits were “a new hominin species”. Debbie Argue explained: “Our cladistic analyses created two very similar evolutionary trees that establish a very early origin for H. floresiensis back around the emergence of the very first members of the Homo family. This suggests that H. floresiensis was not a sick modern human, not even a very close relative.”
Editorial Comment: Cladistics is a method of applying an apriori belief in evolution on the facts in order to draw up an evolutionary tree. Let’s do a common sense analysis of the Hobbit bones instead. This creature’s brain size, jaw bone, shoulder, wrist, limbs, body proportions were all ape-like. Therefore, it is not a sick human or a human relative. It is an extinct ape-like creature, probably something like an Australopithecine, i.e. another “southern ape”.
Creation Research has reported on the various detailed studies of the H. floresiensis bones as they have appeared in the professional literature, and these can be found by searching this Fact File. Insert “hobbit” into the search box. We have always stated that they were not human in any way. Some creation groups have promoted the diseased human theory from the start so it is time they gave it up.
Evidence News, 2 September 2009
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