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Stone tools reveal cognitive limitations of 'little people'

August 26, 2005

pointy.jpgThe recently-discovered human species Homo floresiensis, that lived beside modern humans on the island of Flores until 12,000 years ago, had cognitive abilities no more advanced than those of our earliest ancestors living in Africa 2 million years ago.

This is the conclusion of a researcher at The University of New England who has developed a model for correlating cognitive abilities with techniques of stone tool making.

The researcher, Mark Moore, was developing his revolutionary new way of looking at stone tools at the same time that UNE archaeologist Professor Mike Morwood was digging up stone artifacts in Liang Bua cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. "We decided that I would apply my model to these artifacts," he explained. "It was a bit of great good luck for me that Mike and his international team went on to discover Homo floresiensis at the site, adding an undreamt-of new dimension to my work."

There was no shortage of material for Mr Moore's study; the archaeologists were excavating about 5,000 stone artifacts in every cubic metre at the Liang Bua site. (Some of the artifacts are pictured here.) His work is adding to the understanding of Homo floresiensis, the metre-high human species with a brain smaller than a chimpanzee's, whose discovery has rewritten the story of human evolution.

Mr Moore's analysis of stone-tool technology is the subject of his recently-submitted PhD thesis. He has developed his understanding of the techniques through years of practising them for himself. He knows from experience that the most advanced techniques involve a complex sequence of knapping blows requiring a similarly advanced level of cognition. "Our African ancestors began developing these more complex techniques as early as 500,000 years ago," he said. "But Homo floresiensis was still using earlier, simpler techniques just 12,000 years ago. This observation is in keeping with the emerging view that floresiensis descended from an extremely early hominin migration out of Africa, perhaps one involving a different hominin from Homo erectus. It appears that floresiensis carried her technology with her out of Africa and changed it little during the subsequent millennia of her evolutionary history."

Scientists believe that the extremely small size of floresiensis, unique among human species, is a result of hundreds of thousands of years of isolation on a small, resource-poor island with few predators. The Liang Bua site has revealed that this evolutionary "shrinking", which included shrinking brain size, did not result in the loss of stone tool technology. The stone tools themselves, however, indicate that the cognitive ability of floresiensis did not develop (as did that of several contemporary human species elsewhere in the world) during her millennia of isolation on Flores.

Mr Moore will present his findings at a UNE seminar on Monday 29 August, organised by the University's Language and Cognition Research Centre. The seminar will be at 12 noon in Room 120, Education Building.

Professor Morwood, who featured in a National Geographic documentary about the discovery of Homo floresiensis broadcast by ABC Television last night, is at present excavating the earliest human site yet discovered on Flores. The site, at Mata Menge, contains stone artifacts dating back 840,000 years.


Media contact: Mark Moore, School of Human and Environmental Studies, UNE (02) 6773 5075 or Jim Scanlan, Public Relations, UNE (02) 6773 3049.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at August 26, 2005 04:20 PM