Martin LeFevre: Hobbits and Human Evolution

Most people have heard of the Hobbits, and I don’t mean the creatures from Tolkein’s imagination. I mean the strange little island hominid in Java that co-existed with modern humans as recently as the Dutch colonial period.

Though there has been a great deal of controversy, no less an authority than Donald Johanson, the discoverer of the most complete early human fossil, “Lucy,” in East Africa, says that this find may change the way we see human evolution.

In his latest book, “Lucy’s Legacy,” Johanson discusses the find that has turned the world of paleo-anthropology upside down, as new discoveries in human evolution periodically do.

The “Lilliputian hominid” stood about a meter, or three and half feet tall. It was not a pygmy. Pygmies are not only a foot taller, but have brains of average human size. Nor is the Hobbit (LB1) an example, in all likelihood, of microcephaly or cretinism.

In the vast majority of human populations, the brain reaches its optimum size by puberty, and then the body catches up. Pygmy bodies simply stop growing, which is why their head looks large compared to their bodies.

With the Hobbits on Flores however, the brain is about the size of a chimpanzee’s, which is to say that its cranial capacity is comparable to very early humans, even before the first stone tools. But the Hobbits, who carry traits of a distant human ancestor, Homo erectus, nevertheless had stone tools, practiced cooperative hunting, and used fire.

The most plausible theory is that Homo floresiensis was a product both of the ancient human line of Homo erectus (which also used stone tools, first invented about two and a half million years ago, and fire, domesticated about a million years ago), and of something called the “island effect.”

The “island effect” is a well-known pattern in evolution whereby larger animals shrink to fit their environment. Stegodons for example (sisters of mammoths and elephants) became miniatures of their normal four or five-meter high selves on Flores, and the Hobbits hunted them.

The whole Hobbit thing is so strange that it raises all kinds of questions, and upends some basic assumptions about humans and nature, not to mention human nature.

In Johanson’s words, the prevailing idea in anthropology has been that “culture insulates us against the selective pressures that shape other animals.” Mammals have thick fur in response to cold, but humans build fires and make clothing.

But given that LB1 represents an authentic discovery and new branch on the human family tree, that idea is being overturned.

The implication is that even physical evolution did not stop 100,000 years ago, with the emergence of fully modern humans. (Paleo-anthropologists define modern humans not just anatomically, but in terms of our capacity for art, sophisticated language, and diverse cultures.)

The Hobbits therefore raise core questions: To what degree is evolution being driven by culture since fully modern humans first emerged about 100,000 years ago? Where is humankind headed now evolutionarily? What part does culture, and our awareness of our own evolution, play in its unfolding?

As Johanson says, “gray matter is the primary hominid adaptation.” So it is disconcerting, if not downright discombobulating, to most paleo-anthropologists to find that two completely different species of humans lived on the same small island at the same time.

One was fully modern and the other had a brain the size of a chimpanzee’s. Both “made tools, organized hunting parties, and killed and butchered large and dangerous prey.”

It may turn out that, as Johanson puts it, “the wiring of the brain—not the sheer volume of it—determines how innovative we are.”

And since the wiring of the brain is malleable—capable of change and growth in individuals through culture and learning—Hobbits are strong evidence that human evolution is neither fixed nor final, and that we can affect its course within ourselves by our own lives.

Evolutionary psychology notwithstanding, there is no such thing as ‘hardwiring’ of the brain. Traits are tendencies that are passed down from generation to generation, not blueprints for mating or anything else. That goes for self-centeredness, much less narcissism, which, in our cynical era, are consciously or sub-consciously viewed as immutable features of ‘human nature.’

Evolution is not evolutionary but revolutionary. That is, new species, even new adaptations, don’t emerge gradually, but suddenly, the result of significant changes in environment (such as humans are now producing worldwide) and pressures building up in a species over time.

The next, urgently needed transmutation in the human species must be conscious, putting humanity on the path to the full realization of our spiritual and philosophical potential. Culture is no longer the context; the global human crisis in consciousness is.

- Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years. Email: martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net. The author welcomes comments.

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