The origins of H. floresiensis is in Flores, Indonesia, 100,000-50,000 years ago. They were very short in stature, being around 3 feet tall and had very small brains (385-417 ccs). They also had many primitive features such as long arms and unarched feet.
The island of Flores is very isolated with minimal resources which is hypothesized to be the reason for their small size. Without enough resources available, they themselves have to be able to use only small amounts of resources to sustain themselves. A larger body would require more resources and would not be able to be maintained in that environment. Despite their small brain, they still were able to make and use stone tools. Not only that they were able to hunt larger prey. This was very interesting to me and I read more into why that was the case. An article I read, “Hobbit’s Brain Size Holds Clues About Its Ancestor1,” states that these brains were able to maintain many of their functions possibly because of “neurological reorganization1.” And it should be considered that size of a brain doesn’t always mean there is a higher level of intelligence – it depends which portions of the brain have these nerve connections and how many there are of them. Despite the size of H. floresiensis’ brain, stone tools were still evident in their daily lives.
With their environment, they were still dependent on their primitive features. Their large arms and unarched feet indicate that did not rely on bipedalism for locomotion. Large arms would be more useful for climbing and swinging on trees or whatnot for transportation as well as for possibly hunting for prey or gathering needed resources. And their unarched feet would not be able to distribute weight efficiently when walking upright and could damage their bones (not being able to shock absorb the weight/bounce of each step), so their arms would be more reliable.
From skeletal remains, paleoanthropologists are able to observe and understand the features (mentioned above) in order to understand our own evolution over time. The ability to thrive in our environment is an important determination in what bodily features are changed and/or kept. Whether it is an evolutionary change or not – it is important to observe and learn from for our own understanding of our change in evolution and culture over time. I have learned that there are always costs in features that are changed as a result of our ability to thrive in our environment – most notable example being the H. floresiensis’ brain size. Despite its small size, they were still able to make stone tools and hunt larger prey, despite being on an isolated island with little resources. Adaptation allowed them to do the best with what they had and thrive on it. Yes, compared to our brains, they are obviously not as complex (such as in language or bipedalism) but those traits would have been useless to them in their environment.
The biggest contribution these findings have made to the study of human evolution is the observation of strong relationships between environment/daily life and biological features that are preserved/derived from that.
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