60,000 to 90,000 years ago in Indonesia, there was a special human group, they were only about 1 meter tall, nicknamed "hobbits" and "dwarfs". The focus of previous discussions was whether this small paleominthacys were part of the evolutionary process of human beings. After determining that they were indeed "human," the cause of their diminution became a new concern for scientists.
To be precise, this extinct relative of humanity is called flores, and as early as 2004, archaeologists found fossilized their skeletons in a cave site on the Indonesian island of Flores. As soon as the news was announced, it immediately caused a great discussion among anthropologists, some people thought that they were abnormally developed Homo sapiens, and some people proposed that they were new members of the human family, and after 15 years of research, Flores was confirmed.
This year, anthropologists discovered a new "dwarf" in the Philippines, a human member named "homo luzonensis" who, as short as the Flores, lived between 50,000 and 67,000 years ago. It is no coincidence that they also live in an island environment and are equally small.
In 1964, biologist J. Bristol Foster famously proposed the law of islands, in which large species gradually shrink when they settle on a relatively enclosed island; for animals that are smaller in size, they evolve larger sizes.
Although controversial, it has to be said that there is no shortage of examples around the world that conform to the "law of islands". For example, the pygmy mammoth that lived in Crete 3.5 million years ago was only 1.1 meters tall, the hippopotamus that lived in Cyprus in the early Holocene was less than 1 meter long, and the rats in the Caribbean Sea were as big as cats and insects as large as humans in New Zealand.
Biologists believe that there are many reasons for this evolutionary trend, first, there is no shortage of natural enemies on the islands, and species such as elephants and hippos often rely on their large size to suppress their opponents and resist predators, and the lack of opponents causes them to gradually become smaller. Second, the islands are relatively scarce in resources, and smaller sizes are a wise survival strategy.
It is also possible that when there is no natural enemy to exert survival pressure, the organism will breed more offspring, the female will start to breed offspring earlier and earlier, and the offspring will become smaller and smaller. The combined effect of these causes will eventually lead to individual variation and changes in genetic characteristics.
With the help of computer models, scientists calculated the time it takes for Flores to become smaller, based on full consideration of biology and environmental science. This calculation is based on the premise that the ancestors of the Flores people are Homo erectus, and from the time Homo erectus arrives on the island to settle down, the amount of food available on the island, the evolution of the adult population, and the size of the body type genes inherited by their descendants are all factors of consideration.
After 10,000 calculations, the researchers found that in less than 350 generations, the process of becoming smaller was completed, and vice versa, and 350 generations is the timeline for human body shape changes. Although this is a long process for us, like many human populations, flores and Luzon peoples from the emergence to the demise of the people are only a moment in the long river of human history.
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