Talk:Homo floresiensis

Australopithecine relative hypothesis

No mention is made here of the hypothesis that Floresinensis could be a descendant of australopiths, though mention is made of its resemblance. With a brain smaller than a chimp's and a skeleton striking similar to Lucy (A. afarensis), I find it difficult to believe this was even in the genus Homo. Because of the "publish or perish" environment of academia, researchers are unwilling to share fossils until they've milked them for all they are worth, a situation which has resulted in status quo theories persisting long after genuine objections and counter-evidence has been found. The theory that no one but Erectus could have crossed out of Africa is long overdue for a serious re-examination, especially given the relative lack of research in Asia as compared to Africa. Conservative anthropologists arbitrarily assign a border between Africa and the Near East that was "uncrossable" by Habilines or Australopithicines, when in reality no such "border" existed: environments do not cease to be just because you've crossed into a new continent; in fact "savannastan" stretched from Africa to China. And yes, the Australopithecines were not as well suited to walking long distances as Homo, but that does not mean they could not travel the same territory. There was no barrier to them doing so, just the fact that they would have made their way east more slowly due to their different gait. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.90.55.99 (talk) 21:54, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

But http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NOT#FORUM, and you have cited no sources whatsoever to improve the article. HammerFilmFan (talk) 18:29, 17 July 2011 (UTC) HammerFilmFan

Work needed

Hello everyone! This article currently appears near the top of the cleanup listing for featured articles, with several cleanup tags. Cleanup work needs to be completed on this article, or a featured article review may be in order. Please contact me on my talk page if you have any questions. Thank you! Dana boomer (talk) 16:07, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Semang not "of Africa"

In section "Small Bodies", I find the wrong statement: "(...) such as the Pygmies (< 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in)),[22] Twa, Semang (1.37 m (4 ft 6 in) for adult women) of Africa (...).". --> The Semang are 'of Asia', not of Africa, meaning they dwell in Asia since prehistoric times. Or maybe it's just the way the sentence is constructed and I'm overdue for bed...

Alexander Illi 196.201.51.20 (talk) 22:37, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Recent Single Origin Hypothesis vs Multiregional Hypothesis

I edited the previously POV spin placed in this article. Both the Single-Recent Origin Hypothesis proponents and Multiregional Hypothesis proponents may have to merge their hypotheses into a larger viewpoint that includes both. While homo floresiensis, if correct, disproves that all humans were "homo sapiens" just a few thousand years ago, recent DNA testing of humans showing traces of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA in the human genome disproves the "no intermixing" hypothesis of the Single-Recent-Origin crowd. This can only mean that homo sapiens today do not have a "single recent origin" but instead have a multiple-origin DNA provide that incorporates DNA from several migrations out of Africa. Alas, no research has yet been done on hobbit DNA to show that it is or is not present in modern human DNA. Thus, this is really a mute point and a tangent. The only point relevant to this article is that the idea of the "hobbit" as a separate species of humans being supported by Chris Stringer points to growing scientific acceptance within the scientific mainstream. To go further than that is to miss the point.Ryoung122 18:14, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

While it is true that the simultaneous existence of as many as five human species only 40,000–50,000 years ago (H. sapiens sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans, Flores Man and the frequently overlooked Homo erectus soloensis) is a very remarkable recent insight, and interbreeding seems possible, even likely considering that modern humans had already colonised Australia at the time, the genetic evidence is equivocal and its interpretation contested. It is simply uncertain whether the shared part of the genome (which is large enough to be remarkable, but not large enough to dispel doubts) is truly the result of interbreeding (see Archaic Homo sapiens admixture with modern humans) or has a different explanation. I agree, however, that a weak form of the multiregional hypothesis being integrated into the Out-of-Africa paradigm seems increasingly attractive; however, my distinct impression is that it's far too early for such a synthesis as the evidence for admixture is still under discussion. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:08, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

I've cut out this whole section. The lede section is supposed to summarise the content of the article, not go off into totally irrelevant tangents about SOH v MRH. The additional materiial was in response to the inclusion of the opinion of Chris Stringer, who argues that presents "difficulties" to supporters multiregionalism, "who believe that recent humans were all one species". Frankly, this argument seems utter nonsense to me. Multiregionalism is not threatened by the existence of an isolated non-H.Sapiens population on an obscure island. I know no evidence that the anti-Species faction is made up of Multiregionalists. OK, so my opinion is not notable, but Stringer's might be. If so, it should go in the body of the article somewhere, not in the lede, since it is totally unsupported by the rest of the content. But we do not have to include every stray quotation. We can use editorial judgement about what seems to be relevant and important. Stringer's remark seems to be an isolated one. If there is evidence that the MRH v SOH debate is relevant, perhaps it should be put back in, but I think for now, it should be left out. Paul B (talk) 21:54, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

To-do

I'm planning on working on this article to restore it to GA, or preferably FA status. Please add to this section anything you think needs to be worked on. There's a lot of literature to read, so I'll be here for a while. Sasata (talk) 21:02, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Copied from User:Dana boomer's notes at the FAR:

• Four citation needed tags stretching back to 2009.
• A few other areas needing references. For example, in the Endemic cretinism hypothesis section, the sentence "The oral stories about strange human-like creatures may also be a record of cretinism." - says who? If this is from the study discussed earlier in the paragraph, it needs to be made more obvious. A few other areas like this - essentially, if an opinion is being given, it needs to have a reference.
• Citation formatting needs work - there are bare URLs, references missing publishers, authors, access dates, etc. Formatting needs to be consistent for news/journal refs (some are in split format, others aren't). The way that page numbers are given should also be standardized - some are given in the text (as Ref:page numbers), others are given within the reference.
• What makes Ref #35 (Patagonianmonsters) a reliable reference?
• Ref #36 (Greenstone) is dead linking for me.
• Endemic cretinism theory, "(only an abstract is available for the paper,[59] see also [60])" - discussion of abstracts should in the references, not the text. Or is there a reason that there only being an abstract is important to the discussion of H. floresiensis?
• Why are a bunch of the entries in the References section missing authors? For example, the July 2008 Smithsonian ref, the September 2008 Spiegel ref, and the July 2004 Nature ref all have easily found authors, but none of them are listed here. These are just examples of missing ones, I didn't check all of them.
• Check ENGVAR - I see lots of -ise's and -ize's, skeptic/sceptic, analyze/analyse, etc.
• An IP has brought up on the talk page that the Small bodies section says "Semang...of Africa,", which they claim is incorrect and that the tribe is actually from Asia. If our article on the Semang is correct, then the IP is correct, since the article says they are from the Malay Peninsula, which is firmly in Asia.
• Small bodies section, "Contradictory evidence has emerged." OK... what is the evidence? Is it important? Do scientists consider it credible?
• Laron syndrome hypothesis, "the morphological features of H. floresiensis are essentially indistinguishable from those of Laron syndrome." Which features? Critics argue that the cranial vault is different, so, other than height, what features were being compared by Richards?
• See also - what is important about Denisova hominin and the Nage tribe that leads to them being included in the See also section but makes them not notable for inclusion in the article text?
• External links are extensive. Could these be trimmed? Links that are already used as references need not be repeated in the external links, and all links should be high value for the reader.