Stone tools increase Hobbit age, according to reports in ScienceNOW 17 March 2010 and ABC (Australia) News in Science 18 March 2010.
In 2004 the bones of a creature nicknamed the Hobbit were found in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. Even though it had a chimp sized brain and ape-like body size and proportions it was classified as Homo, i.e. a new type of human species. The reasons for this classification included a young date for the bones were dated as being (about 18,000 years) and the previous finding of stone tools on the island.
Michael Morwood of the University of Wollongong and colleagues have now found a collection of 48 stone tools at another site on the island these have been dated as being between 1.02 to 1.08 million years old. This has revived the debate as to origin of the Hobbit, as described by the ScienceNOW article: “But who made these 1-million-year-old tools? Morwood and his colleagues originally suggested that the small-brained hobbit was the descendant of a group of H. erectus that colonized Flores and then shrunk in an evolutionary process called ‘island dwarfism.’
That hypothesis is still favoured by many researchers, because H. erectus is believed to have occupied Indonesia as early as 1.8 million years ago. But more recently, Morwood’s team has argued, based on the hobbit’s very primitive anatomy, that instead of H. erectus, a smaller, pre-erectus hominid such as H. habilis or even an Australopithecine, somehow made it to Flores.”
The significance of the “primitive anatomy” of the Hobbit is summarised by the ABC article: “The presence of such a primitive creature in this part of the globe challenges the generally accepted ‘Out of Africa’ theory and suggests important human evolution may have happened in Asia.”
Editorial Comment: No-one disputes the stone tools were man-made, but no-one has proven that the creatures named Hobbits used them. The tools are a problem to evolutionists only because they believe human beings evolved from ape-like creatures which could not build boats and navigate from island to island through Asia.
The tool problem disappears if you accept that South East Asia was populated by intelligent human beings who left the Tower of Babel with the knowledge of boat building, tool making and navigation. Once again, Genesis provides a better explanation for scientific and archaeological discoveries than evolution.
Evidence News, 28 April 2010
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