T. Peter Park
Wed, 22 Jun 2005 19:04:06 -0700
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 21 NO 3, JUNE 2005, pp. 13-17
Hominids, hairy hominoids and the science of humanity
by GREGORY FORTH
Gregory Forth is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the
University of Alberta. Since 1984 he has conducted ethnographic research
on the Indonesian island of Flores, and on the basis of this and
previous work on the neighbouring island of Sumba, has published several
books and numerous articles. Recent titles include Dualism and hierarchy
(Oxford University Press, 2001) and Nage birds (Routledge, 2004).
Gregory Forth is currently also McCalla Research Professor at the
University of Alberta and is preparing a book project dealing with
representations of 'wildmen' in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. His email
is [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
Anthropology - or at least one kind of anthropology - has been in the
headlines for the last several months. In late October,
palaeoanthropologists and archaeologists working on the eastern
Indonesian island of Flores announced the remarkable discovery of a new
species of the genus Homo, a new kind of human dubbed Homo floresiensis.
Found at Liang Bua, a site in the western Flores district of Manggarai,
the type specimen is a 30-year-old female who died some 18,000 years
ago, while remains of other individuals are as recent as 13,000 years
ago.1 As both dates are well within the period in which Homo sapiens has
been established in the Indonesian islands, it is extremely likely that
'Flores man' lived in close proximity to (and in all probability
interacted with) modern humans. This fact alone is quite amazing, for it
indicates that,
within geologically very recent times, two distinct species of humans
were contemporary in at least one part of the world - thus furthering
the view that human evolution is by no means unilinear, and that having
two or more species of the genus alive at the same time may be the norm.2
So we are not alone - or were not so alone - as we once thought. But the
find has more specific implications, and also a history. Building on
earlier discoveries by Theodor Verhoeven, a Dutch
missionary-archaeologist who unearthed fossil stegodons (an ancestral
elephant) and associated lithic artefacts in central Flores in the
1960s, an international research team made up largely of
Indonesians and Australians was excavating at Liang Bua in the hope of
uncovering remains of the tool-makers and elephant hunters. According to
one interpretation, fossil and lithic evidence for stegodon hunting may
date to as early as 840,000 years ago; if correct, the hunters would
have been not Homo sapiens but Homo erectus. But as Flores has been an
island for as long as anyone can determine, this left palaeontologists
with a major question - namely, how such an archaic hominid had ever got
there. That problem remains to be solved. And before the recent
discovery, direct evidence for pre-sapiens hominids of any sort was also
lacking.
What the excavators actually found at Liang Bua was truly astonishing,
for instead of a classic erectus, they recovered remains of a hominid3
that stood just over a metre tall and had a brain capacity of only
380cc, the size of a chimpanzee's. Not only is this small in absolute
terms, it is small even in relation to the diminutive body size (Mirazon
Lahr and Foley 2004). On this basis, Homo floresiensis has been
interpreted as a new species altogether, evolved from Homo erectus by
way of endemic dwarfing resulting from isolation on an island. Although
dwarfing is a process well known in other animals, it is unusual for
members of the genus Homo, whose normal mode of adaptation has always
been thought to be primarily cultural and technological. And yet another
surprise: an interpretation of the archaeological context suggests that
the tiny hominids may have fashioned sophisticated stone tools and
hunted pygmy stegodons (similarly dwarfed animals that became extinct on
Flores some 12,000 years ago, possibly around the same time as Homo
floresiensis also ceased to be). It has even been speculated that they
had language. Although the linguistic and technological attributions
have been questioned on the grounds of the creature's small brain, a
recent endocast analysis of the cranium has indicated a hominid with
highly convoluted frontal lobes, suggesting cognitive capabilities
superior to those of Homo erectus and more comparable to Homo sapiens
(Falk et al. 2005, Balter 2005).
Some implications for social and cultural anthropology
The unexpected character of Homo floresiensis was summed up rather
dramatically by one of the palaeontological investigators, Peter Brown,
when he claimed he would have been less surprised by the discovery of a
space alien (Gee 2004). As several commentators have pointed out, the
diminutive denizens of Liang Bua raise new questions concerning the
definition of humanity and the supposed singularity of our own species,
Homo sapiens. Their discovery also has radical implications for our
understanding of human evolutionary biology and the kind of physical
equipment required for the development of culture and language -
especially given the tiny yet disproportionately complex brain.
Particularly now that a counter-view of the type specimen as a
microcephalic pygmy Homo sapiens has largely been discredited, it seems
that, one way or another, the proverbial book will have to be rewritten.
Almost as extraordinary as the discovery itself has been the media
reaction, involving the immediate attention of major newspapers, news
magazines and television networks - not to mention the flurry of
commentaries appearing on the internet. But what, one may ask, does all
of this have to do with social or cultural anthropology? Actually,
rather more than might at first appear. As if finding a new species of
Homo that survived until at least 13,000 years ago were not enough, some
members of the discovery team have gone so far as to suggest that Homo
floresiensis may have lived until much more recent times, and may even
still be living on Flores. Prominent in this context has been the name
ebu gogo, a local term designating short, hairy and coarse-featured
hominoids who - in one part of Flores - are locally believed to have
survived until just 200 or so years ago. More particularly, it has been
suggested that this folk category may reflect a memory of Homo
floresiensis, maintained for hundreds if not thousands of years.
At this point, I must adopt the first person singular. I first
encountered the term _ebu gogo_ after starting ethnographic research in
the Nage region of central Flores in 1984. People in the vicinity of
Bo'a Wae (the main Nage village), and particularly people descended from
inhabitants of the old village of 'Ua (Rua), told me how, several
generations before, their ancestors had exterminated a group of these
hairy creatures inhabiting a cave called Lia Ula, located not far above
old 'Ua, on the northern slope of the volcano Ebu Lobo. Details of this
tradition and descriptions of the physical appearance and behaviour of
ebu gogo are recorded in my book, _Beneath the volcano_ (Forth 1998).
As I indicate there, a striking feature of the representation is its
apparent historicity and matter-of-fact quality; in this regard it
differs markedly from Nage representations of a variety of spiritual
beings and mythical figures, and indeed Nage themselves deny that ebu
gogo was anything like a spirit (ibid.). I therefore made the following
observation:
<<Without giving full credence to depictions of the wildmen as fully
natural beings that are now extinct, one might yet consider that the
idea of ebu gogo[...] may well have some empirical
basis in a former component of the human population of Flores that is no
longer present[...] (ibid.:105, fn. 9)>>.
In the light of the discovery of Homo floresiensis, this statement might
now be considered prophetic. Although not convinced that the Nage story
was completely factual, so intrigued was I by their representation of
ebu gogo, and especially details pertaining to the putative creatures'
physical appearance, that I have continued investigating the category
during subsequent visits to central Flores with the aim (also announced
in Forth 1998) of producing a monographic study of the Nage image and
comparable figures in other parts of Indonesia and Southeast Asia.
Coincidentally, I first heard about the discovery of Homo floresiensis
in June 2004, while I was in Holland conducting library research for
this book project.
Following the post-modernist prescription, I have thus related ebu gogo
to my own biography. Yet recently the Nage category has become far more
famous than it ever could have through ethnographic attention alone. A
few weeks before Homo floresiensis hit the headlines, an Australian
geologist, Bert Roberts, is reported to have visited an unnamed village
in central Flores together with another member of the palaeontological
team (Gee 2004).4 There they heard 'amazing tales' about ebu gogo, which
evidently included morphological and behavioural descriptions. On this
basis, Roberts 'thinks it is possible' that ebu gogo - here barely
distinguished from Homo floresiensis - could still be alive. According
to what villagers told him, the creatures stood about a metre tall, were
'long haired' and pot-bellied, had 'longish' arms and fingers, walked
'with a slightly awkward gait', spoke in murmurs, and engaged in
mimicry. They could also climb trees, and were not known to use stone
tools. The last time the central Florinese villagers had seen the
creatures is specified as 'just before Dutch colonists settled that part
of Flores in the 19th century'.5
Considering the apparent brevity of the geologist's enquiries, it is
not surprising that some of this information appears inaccurate. For
example, the longish arms and awkward gait, and even the height, do not
agree with most Nage descriptions of ebu gogo I have recorded over the
past two decades. It should also be remarked that anyone reading
Roberts' observations might think that tales of ebu gogo circulated in
the region of Liang Bua, in western Flores, where the skeletal evidence
for Homo floresiensis was discovered. The fact is that the category ebu
gogo and traditions concerning this creature belong to the Nage, a
culturally and linguistically distinct population residing well over 100
kilometres to the east (which is a long distance on a mountainous,
economically undeveloped island like Flores). There are indeed
representations of creatures similar to ebu gogo from western Flores -
that is, the ethno-linguistic and administrative region called
Manggarai - but, oddly enough, these have not been cited by members of
the palaeontological team.6 It is also curious that none of the
scientific commentators wishing to link ebu gogo with Homo floresiensis
has mentioned the main thrust of the Nage legend, and the feature that
as much as anything lends it an air of authenticity. This is the claim
that ancestors of the Nage, or more specifically the people of 'Ua,
exterminated the hairy hominoids several generations ago, after tiring
of their stealing from Nage fields and their alleged abduction of
children. Nage accomplished their extinction by trapping the ebu gogo
inside a cave and setting fire to a quantity of palm fibre they had
given them to use as clothing (Forth 1998). If anyone is interested in
local indications of how Homo floresiensis - to the extent that the
species might be identified with ebu gogo - may have got along with
local Homo sapiens, then surely this is it.
Referring to what he was told by Florinese villagers, Roberts is quoted
as stating that the 'only inconsistency with the archaeological evidence
[concerning Homo floresiensis]' is the idea that ebu gogo did not use
stone tools (Gee 2004). Be that as it may, the most prominent feature of
numerous Nage accounts I have recorded is the notion that female ebu
gogo possessed pendulous breasts, so long that they could throw them
over their shoulders.7 The dimensions of female breasts is,
unfortunately, one of many things that cannot be gauged from
palaeontological evidence. (Another is whether a specimen was covered in
hair.) At the same time, the breasts are among several features that the
Nage representation shares with legendary creatures the world over,
including the wildman of European mediaeval art and literature
(Bernheimer 1952) and such hominoidal crypto-species as the Himalaan
'yeti', the 'sasquatch' or 'bigfoot' of northwestern North America
(Napier 1972), and the wildman of China (Zhou 1982).
Spirits, hominoids and hobbits
However much ebu gogo might recall Homo floresiensis (or vice versa), it
is therefore clear that the first figure equally resembles characters
that are generally considered to belong to myth and fantasy. (Another
fantastic attribute of ebu gogo is their reputed proclivity to swallow
things whole, including rice mortars, puppy dogs and piglets.) But if
some scientific commentators have perhaps been too quick to link the
skeletal remains at Liang Bua with the Nage stories, social
anthropologists have always been too much inclined to dismiss folk
categories like ebu gogo simply as products of the imagination, or as
'spiritual beings'. Indeed, I myself may be so accused, insofar as my
earlier treatment of ebu gogo is included in a book on 'spirit
classification' (Forth 1998). This inclination to regard the seemingly
fantastic images of non-Westerners as 'spiritual' largely reflects the
Durkheimian legacy, whereby spiritual things are to be explained as
symbolic refractions of social categories and relationships rather than
as entities grounded in empirical realities external to society.
Certainly there are problems in interpreting ebu gogo as directly
reflecting local memories of Homo floresiensis. Yet whatever the
derivation of the Nage representation, ebu gogo really do seem different
from the various categories of spirits that Nage describe with equal
credulity - and to that extent, I believe the possibility advertised by
Roberts should be taken seriously. As noted, Nage themselves distinguish
ebu gogo from 'spirits' (a general category contextually designated as
nitu), and they do so explicitly with reference to the hairy creature's
lack of extraordinary powers - for example, the ability to disappear,
change shape, transform into animals and so on.
To ignore this local distinction, and simply assume that ebu gogo are
only spirits after all, would be to follow a long-standing
anthropological practice that is consistent with another, equally
controvertible view, namely, that members of small-scale, non-Western
societies are incapable of distinguishing empirical categories, the
objects of ordinary intuition, from fantastic images dictated by
religious tradition. Yet it may not be members of small-scale societies
so much as anthropologists who have been guilty of this lack of
discrimination. 'Spiritual beings' are, indeed, often grounded in
empirical things, including experience of natural species. But this does
not mean that people recognizing zoologically derived spirits cannot
distinguish between ordinary animals and their spiritual transformations.
In a sense, then, recent musings about ebu gogo as a latter-day
representation of Homo floresiensis refocus anthropological attention on
an enduring analytical category. Although 'spiritual being' has often
been employed uncritically (including as a catch-all for anything that
does not accord with the current state of Western scientific knowledge),
I do not argue that the category lacks validity. On the contrary, I
think it is more useful than has sometimes been supposed, designating a
class that is an identifiable psychological property of societies
worldwide.8 At the same time, how folk categories like ebu gogo and
scientific categories like Homo floresiensis might be connected is a
complex question to which anthropologists have paid insufficient
attention. Even if ebu gogo were empirical beings surviving until about
200 years ago as the Nage aver, this does not necessarily mean that
these were descendants of the sub-fossil. They might, for example, have
been a former, phenotypically distinct population of Homo sapiens, or a
grossly exaggerated representation of a no longer identifiable
indigenous group that preceded Nage in their present territories. And
even if there were a connection with Homo floresiensis, the apparently
fantastic features (e.g. the pendulous breasts) would still make the
local representation something different from the actual hominid. On the
other hand, if it could be shown that categories like ebu gogo
substantially reflect creatures that became extinct very much longer
ago, then this would obviously have implications for the notion of
cultural or 'folk' memory, in relation to the study of legend and myth
in general.
Ever since van Gennep (1910) estimated that oral reports survive as
accurate accounts of past events for just 150 to 200 years, or at most
two to three centuries, anthropologists and folklorists have maintained
widely different opinions regarding the validity of oral traditions as
factual historical records (Vansina 1965). This lack of consensus is
hardly surprising, as the speed with which accounts of events are
transformed in oral transmission has long been known to vary according
to a number of factors, including subject matter, the identity of
narrators, and the extent to which reports are incorporated into
established narrative genres. Nevertheless, if the extinction of ebu
gogo is grounded in actual occurrences, and especially if Nage are right
that these took place just a few hundred years ago, then one may
reasonably expect at least some features of the central characters - the
hairy hominoids themselves - to have been faithfully preserved. Clearly,
in establishing a link between ebu gogo and Homo floresiensis much
depends on the discovery of material evidence for the survival of the
new species significantly more recently than 13,000 years ago.
If anthropologists have been guilty of uncritically 'spiritualizing'
categories like ebu gogo, it is equally remarkable how recent
commentators have done something essentially similar with the newly
discovered species. In particular, it has been found appropriate -
evidently in
order to communicate effectively with a wider public - to portray Homo
floresiensis as a 'hobbit' (a choice obviously influenced by the recent
Hollywood film versions of Tolkien's novels). Curiouser still, the
designation was not a creation of the popular press, but of the
scientific discoverers themselves. Bound up with this identification,
which has inevitably resulted in a trivialization of the
anthropological discovery, has been a transformation of Flores into an
approximation of Conan Doyle's 'lost world', once the abode of pygmy
elephants and still the home of giant lizards and giant rats (references
respectively to Varanus komodoensis, or the 'Komodo dragon', and the
endemic Flores giant rat, Papagomys armandvillei), and perhaps even of
dwarf hominids.9 But
worse than this, casting Homo floresiensis as 'hobbits' potentially
obscures the essential difference between an empirical species,
designated a member of the genus Homo like ourselves, and the images of
literary fiction. Like hobbits, both Homo floresiensis and ebu gogo are
products of human imagination, but the images have different bases:
tangible, skeletal and archaeological evidence in one case, and the
testimony and traditions of local people in the other. Rather than
simply assuming that these traditions are as fantastical as Tolkien's
fiction, the challenge for social anthropologists is to discover the
correct relationship between the palaeontological and ethnographic
images and the true source of their resemblance.
Journalism, tourism and (maybe still) ethnography
Quite a different sort of relevance for social anthropology concerns the
impact of the discovery of H. floresiensis on modern inhabitants of
Flores, and on prospects for further ethnographic research into local
representations of hairy hominoids like ebu gogo. The ink was barely dry
on the Nature articles (see note 1) before a London tabloid, the Daily
Mail, had a reporter on Flores island. Published on 6 November 2004, his
story described encounters local people - apparently all from the Lio
district of east central Flores, though the reporter's geography is
rather imprecise- claimed to have had in recent years with real live
'hobbits' (Shears 2004). Without a doubt, the most startling story
concerned a local man who had reputedly obtained the corpse of a small
hairy hominoid that had just been buried by others of its kind. Wrapping
it in cloth, the man had kept the corpse for years until all he had left
was the skull, and - as is all too common with stories of this sort -
this too was eventually lost. Although not mentioned in the newspaper
piece, the Lio term for the creatures is lae ho'a.10 As I was able to
learn from information I obtained in August 2003 - in fact, from some of
the same individuals mentioned in the Daily Mail - these beings closely
resemble the Nage ebu gogo. In certain respects, moreover, they seem
more similar to Homo floresiensis than ebu gogo, being more consistently
described as small and (according to what I was told) lacking the
prominent breasts. But the main difference between the Lio and Nage
creatures, evidently, is that lae ho'a are not yet extinct - although
some stories I recorded suggest that local Homo sapiens have been no
kinder to them than were the Nage ancestors. I relate this tale not so
much to raise again the possibility of a living Homo floresiensis as to
consider how local representations of hairy hominoids may be affected by
media interest in the 'hobbit'. Among other things, the Daily Mail's man
showed villagers an illustration of the reconstructed hominid that has
appeared in numerous publications (see Fig. 1) And of course, what they
claimed to have witnessed (or, in one case, obtained) looked exactly like
this! One therefore wonders what chance there may now be of
distinguishing indigenous representations from palaeoanthropological
interpretations, especially in the Manggarai region where popular
interest in Homo floresiensis is naturally most intense. I certainly
feel fortunate to have compiled information on ebu gogo, over a period
of some two decades, before modern Florinese became familiar with Homo
floresiensis. In December, another newspaper story, this time in the
Sydney Morning Herald (6 December 2004), quoted a Nage elder resident in
Bo'a Wae - a man I have known since 1983 - to the effect that people of
his village had, just three weeks previously, captured a female ebu gogo
with 'long, pendulous breasts'. This contradicts everything I have ever
heard concerning the extinction of ebu gogo a couple of centuries ago.
It is quite possible that something was lost (or gained) when my Nage
friend's statement was translated for the Australian reporter into
English. But it is equally possible that a desire to find a 'real live
hobbit' is transforming local traditions in all too predictable ways.
One also wonders about the general impact on Flores people residing in
the vicinity of the cave at Liang Bua. Not long after the discovery was
announced, tour operators began offering packages on the internet,
advertising five-day expeditions to the site from Bali. In this there is
obviously much to attract anthropologists interested in tourism, but how
far Flores' new-found fame will actually benefit the Florinese
themselves remains to be seen. If the experience of Komodo National Park
is anything to go by, local people are unlikely to gain much in the way
of employment opportunities from tourist interest in the haunts of the
new found hominid, even as the creature becomes a regional tourist icon
to rival the 'dragons' of Komodo (an island located just off Flores'
western tip). On the other hand, also judging by Komodo 'dragon tourism'
(Hitchcock 1993), one may hopefully anticipate an improvement in local
communications and an expansion of currently scarce facilities for
visitors - in this case in Ruteng, the Manggarai capital located some 15
kilometres south of Liang Bua. If it hasn't happened already, one can
also foresee the imminent opening of a 'Hotel Hobbit'. Just as ebu gogo
was ultimately a victim of Nage expansion, Homo floresiensis is rapidly
becoming a commodity of modern capitalism.
What if Homo floresiensis really did still exist?
The question of the continuing existence of 'Flores Man' signals a
rather more profound anthropological relevance for the discovery.
Although not particularly probable, the survival of Homo floresiensis in
remoter parts of Flores is not impossible. Having been evolving on the
island, possibly for 800,000 years, and having registered its presence a
mere 13,000 years ago, there is no reason in principle why the species
could not have hung on for what in geological terms is just a little
while longer - even in spite of the almost certain contemporaneous
presence, for at least part of this period, of the little hominid's more
sapient cousin.
I won't rehearse the obvious moral and humanitarian issues that would
be raised by the discovery of living members of another species of the
human genus. These have already been broached by several commentators,
including Desmond Morris and Richard Dawkins. Dawkins has suggested
someone should start looking for the creature right away. But would it
be similarly reasonable, one wonders, to offer a bounty for the capture
of a living Homo floresiensis or, failing that, a corpse (carcase?), as
was done in the early 20th century in regard to the 'short man' (orang
pendek) of Sumatra (see Anon. 1932) - a reputed hairy hominoid roughly
the same size as
Homo floresiensis, which has recently been interpreted as a possible
undiscovered primate? Apart from such moral questions, anthropologists
would also face a major professional challenge. For all the significance
we attach to cultural difference among Homo sapiens, so far social
anthropologists have had only one biological kind of human to study. An
extant population of Homo floresiensis would change that immediately. We
might then, for the first time, have the opportunity of studying a group
that was truly 'other' - dare one also say, truly 'primitive'? By
the same token, we should also have a splendid opportunity of
discovering far more about what biology contributes to the social and
cultural life of Homo sapiens.
But one is immediately led to ask: how equipped would social or cultural
anthropologists (as distinct from, say, primatologists or biological
anthropologists) be to respond to this challenge? Some might not be
particularly interested - tending perhaps to an extreme constructionist
view
not just of cultures but of species, and then denying that there is very
much new here at all. Largely because I don't really know the answer
(nor, if it proved to be negative, why exactly it should be so), I would
leave the question open. There is, however, a less hypothetical and more
immediate question, namely, whether other anthropological disciplines
(such as palaeoanthropology) - and for that matter the media - recognize
a relevance for social or cultural anthropology in all this? Indications
so far are that they probably do not. Before my own comment appeared in
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY (Forth 2005), over three months after the
announcement of the discovery of Homo floresiensis, I encountered no
published remark by any professional social anthropologist, and
certainly none by anyone who had conducted ethnographic research in
Flores. In the weeks immediately following the publication of the Nature
articles, I was approached by several journalists, but only, it seems,
because last summer I happened to meet a member of the palaeontological
team and had mentioned my interest in the figure named ebu gogo.
But this is a continuing story, and much remains to be learned. Not all
anthropologists accept the interpretation of a new species, not least
because of the hypothesis of hominid dwarfing and development from Homo
erectus. Even in spite of the endocast analysis, which has indicated
greater intelligence than initially suggested by the diminutive brain,
major questions have still to be resolved concerning attributions of
language, collective hunting and the manufacture of tools (which are
similar to ones hitherto attributed to local Homo sapiens). Although it
seems unlikely, this could yet prove to be something of a false dawn.
And in that case, social anthropologists might find an altogether
different significance in the 'discovery' of a new kind of human on an
eastern Indonesian island, and its hypothetical linking with local
stories of hairy hominoids.
NOTES
1. Details of the discovery were first published on 28 October 2004 in
the journal Nature, in an article and three shorter pieces. See Mirazon
Lahr and Foley 2004, Brown et
al. 2004, Morwood et al. 2004, Dalton 2004.
2. With regard to finds of Homo erectus on Java, this position is argued
at some
length in a semi-popular book by Curtis et al. (2000).
3. In a newer classification, the term is 'hominin' - referring to a
member of the
'hominini', which includes the genus Homo and several others but
excludes extant apes.
'Hominid', however, is still the better known general term for the
different species of Homo.
4. This second team member was another geologist, Gert van den Bergh,
the same
man who in June 2004 informed me of the discovery of H. floresiensis. At
that time
and in subsequent emails, we also discussed my interest in ebu gogo, and
the possibility
that the representation might be grounded in some zoological reality.
5. Actually, the Dutch did not 'settle' Flores - and in the part of
central Flores evidently
referred to, they established a colonial administration only in the
early 20th century.
According to genealogical and other evidence provided by Nage, I
estimate that their
extermination of ebu gogo would have occurred sometime between 1750 and
1820.
6. These comprise hairy man-like creatures sometimes identified as
ancestors in
Manggarai clan traditions, including those named Maja, Empo-Wulu, Paju La'e
(Verheijen 1967), and Reba Ruek (Fointuna 2004). Writing on central
Manggarai, van
Bekkum (1946) refers to hairy aboriginals named Rua (apparently meaning
'wild') Apart from other references, the Manggarai category poti wolo
denotes what Verheijen describes as an 'ape-man' (1950) or 'a creature
resembling an orangutan' (1967). (There are no zoologically attested
orangutans or other apes on Flores.)
7. In fact, another inconsistency would appear to be the pot belly,
since this is
symptomatic of plant-eating, whereas the archaeological interpretation
suggests Homo
floresiensis was substantially engaged in hunting. Also, while Roberts
says ebu gogo
were 'about a metre tall', most Nage describe the creatures as between
one and 1.25 metres,
and some claim their height did not differ significantly from that of
modern Florinese
(who are, however, considerably shorter than most Europeans).
8. 'Spirit' or 'spiritual being' can be defined as a polythetic class,
the most common criteria of which include a fundamentally human psyche,
an ability to assume human or animal form,
the ability to change shape, and the power to become invisible or
separate from any
corporeal form or limitation.
9. An example of this sort of treatment is the Daily Mail article I
refer to below, the author of which also describes modern Florinese,
quite inaccurately, as themselves barely emerged from caves. Both
Richard Dawkins and Henry Gee have criticized the application of
'hobbit' to Homo floresiensis, although in the end Gee judges it
superior to other possible pseudonyms - including ebu gogo! I am
grateful to an anonymous reviewer for raising the interesting question
of whether this application of 'hobbit' by academic researchers might be
considered a denigration of human subjects and therefore a breach of
professional ethics.
10. The term possibly means something like 'false monkey'. According to
the article, the name is babo mamo, but this in fact is a Lio expression
referring collectively to 'ancestors.'.
REFERENCES
Anon. 1932. Levend of dood, een orang pendek. De Gids 96(2):257-58.
Balter, M. 2005. Small but smart? Flores hominid shows signs of advanced
brain. Science 307:1386-89.
Bernheimer, R. 1952. Wild men in the middle ages: A study in art,
sentiment, and
demonology. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Brown, P. et al. 2004. A new small-bodied hominin from the late
Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia. Nature 431(7012): 1055-1061.
Curtis, G., Swisher, C. and Lewin, R. 2000. Java man: How geologists
changed the
history of human evolution. New York: Scribner.
Dalton, R. 2004. Little lady of Flores forces rethink of human
evolution. Nature 431(7012): 1029.
Dawkins, R. 2004. The giant leap for our sense of wonder. The Sunday
Times Review, 31 October.
Falk, D. et al. 2005. The brain of LB1, Homo floresiensis.
Sciencexpress. www.sciencexpress.org/03
<http://www.sciencexpress.org/03> Arch 2005.
Fointuna, Y. 2004. Dwarfs in Flores mythology. Jakarta Post, 30
November. http://www.thejakartapost.c om/Archives/ArchivesDet2.
asp?FileID=20041130.Q02
Forth, G. 1998. Beneath the volcano: Religion, cosmology and spirit
classification among the
Nage of eastern Indonesia. (VKI 177) Leiden: KITLV Press.
-- 2005. Palaeoanthropology and local legends: Homo floresiensis in the
news.
Anthropology Today 21(1): 22. Gee, H. 2004. Our not so distant relative.
The Guardian 28 October.
Hitchcock, M. 1993. Dragon tourism in Komodo, eastern Indonesia. In:
Hitchcock, M., King, V.T. and Parnwell, M.J.G. (eds) Tourism in
South-East Asia, pp. 303-316. London and New York: Routledge.
Mirazon Lahr, M. and Foley,
R. 2004. Human evolution writ small. Nature 431(7012): 1043-1044.
Morwood, M.J. et al. 2004. Archaeology and age of a new hominin from
Flores in
eastern Indonesia. Nature 431(7012): 1087-1091.
Morris, D. 2004. Eton or the zoo? BBC News, 29 October, 09.55 GMT/10.55
BST.
Napier, J. 1972. Bigfoot: The yeti and sasquatch in myth and reality.
New York: E.P. Dutton & Co.
Shears, R. 2004. How I found the Hobbit (well, nearly!). Daily Mail, 6
November, 12-13.
van Bekkum, W. 1946. Geschiedenis van Manggarai: II Todo en Pongkor.
Cultureel Indië 8:
65-75.
van Gennep, A. 1910. La formation des légendes. Paris: E. Flammarion.
Vansina, J. 1965. Oral tradition: A study in historical methodology.
Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company.
Verheijen, J.A.J. 1950. De stem der dieren in de Manggaraise folklore.
Bijdragen tot de Taal-,
Land- en Volkenkunde 106: 55-78.
-- 1967. Kamus Manggarai, I: Manggarai-Indonesia. 's-Gravenhage:
Martinus Nijhoff. Zhou Guoxing. 1982. The state of wildman research in
China. Cryptozoology 1: 13-23.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mythfolk/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/