Re: Flores Man real or is she an elaborate scientific hoax?

Dear Bill,

3 nice specific questions! I'll try to give a 3-part answer.

An elaborate scientific hoax? I suppose the honest answer is "how would we know?" There's no reason to suspect so - the discoverers of Flores Man are noted anthropologists and their publication is in the eminent journal Nature, so was subjected to the toughest of peer review. I suppose even today the shadow of Piltdown Man looms large, so maybe in 10, 50, 100 years...but I don't think so.

The brain size is interesting - not only is it small in absolute terms (similar to a chimpanzee), but it is small relative to the body size (about 1 metre height). It's very hard to say how these individuals would relate to modern humans in terms of intelligence. For one thing, "intelligence" itself is somewhat difficult to quantitate. For another, it's not clear whether the artefacts such as stone tools found in the area were made by or even used by this species. It's doubtful they were as mentally sophisticated as modern humans, but they may have been as resourceful as modern chimps. There's no reason to suspect from the skeletons that they were deformed or retarded. What they seem to be is a dwarf version of Homo erectus, so comparisons re: intelligence with Homo sapiens are not really valid. Isolation is known to produce dwarf forms of other species, so the logic goes "why not hominids".

Paleontology is a comparative, empirical science, based largely on anatomical comparison. On that evidence, these are most definitely genus Homo. Check out the photos in some of the links below - the skull in profile and the teeth are very similar to human skulls.

It is a controversial field though - this one will run and run! Useful links for further research:
http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/homo_floresiensis/
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/flores.html
http://www.corante.com/loom/archives/026745.html
http://www.nature.com/news/specials/flores/index.html