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Palaeoanthropology

Human evolution writ small

Nature volume 431, pages 1043–1044 (2004)Cite this article

We are the only living species of the genus Homo. Given the startling results of a cave excavation in Southeast Asia, it seems that we coexisted with another species until much more recently than had been thought.

The fossils described elsewhere in this issue probably left no descendants, are not very old, and were found on a remote island. Despite this, they are among the most outstanding discoveries in palaeoanthropology for half a century. The two papers concerned — by Brown et al.1 and Morwood et al.2 — appear on pages 1055 and 1087 of this issue, and respectively describe the fossils and their archaeological context. The find is startling. It is of a pygmy-sized, small-brained hominin, which lived as recently as 18,000 years ago, and which was found on the island of Flores together with stone tools, dwarf elephants and Komodo dragons. Discoveries don't get better than that.

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Figure 1: Homo floresiensis in the context of the evolution and dispersal of the genus Homo.
Figure 2: The relative brain and body size of H. floresiensis.

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Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Anthropology, Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3DZ, UK

    Marta Mirazón Lahr & Robert Foley

Authors
  1. Marta Mirazón Lahr
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  2. Robert Foley
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Mirazón Lahr, M., Foley, R. Human evolution writ small. Nature 431, 1043–1044 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/4311043a

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