Human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)/Y-chromosome phylogeography shows very strongly that homo sapiens came “out of Africa”. But such explanation is generally too totalistic. Both sides tend to illogically totalise, fail to mention or see that, while homo sapiens and the hominid genus almost certainly came “out of Africa”, Homo Erectus probably came out of Asia (Kohn 2006). Some homo erectus ancestors and other hominids may also have come “out of Asia”.

Kohn writes: “homo erectus materialised almost simultaneously in Africa, east Asia and a point in between . . . and that the dates do not rule out the possibility that homo erectus evolved in Asia.”

This difference between homo erectus, homo sapiens centres of endemism is not only true, it is also very telling, has implications. As I explain in (paper 5 page 6 of) my ebook at http://www.nodrift.com/vol_5/5.1.pdf :

“SEXUAL SELECTION THUS MOST IMPORTANT FOR HOMO SAPIENS
. . . evolutionary considerations AND homo sapiens evolving in AA Africa, coming “Out of [AA] Africa”, not “Out of [IR] Asia”, page 5, imply a corollary:

Conventions are very much a product of sexual selection. Sexual selection has thus evidently been more important than natural selection in evolution of homo sapiens, in contrast to evolution of homo erectus, where natural selection may have been more important than sexual selection.”

REFERENCE: KOHN M. 2006. New Scientist. 2558, 1 July 2006, p35, p39.

“We explore the affinities of LB1 using cranial and postcranial metric and nonmetric analyses. LB1 is compared to early Homo, two microcephalic humans, a �pygmoid� excavated from another cave on Flores, H. sapiens (including African pygmies and Andaman Islanders), Australopithecus, and Paranthropus. Based on these comparisons, we conclude that it is unlikely that LB1 is a microcephalic human, and it cannot be attributed to any known species. Its attribution to a new species, Homo floresiensis, is supported.”

http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501050606-1066965,00.html

“We didn’t have knives but used rocks,” he explains. “We didn’t even know how to make fire.” Jurubu, a soft-spoken man with close-cropped gray hair, high cheekbones and deeply inset eyes, looks to the 30 or so villagers sitting in a circle around him for confirmation. They nod and grunt assent, and he proceeds to talk about the time their shy ancestors hid themselves from the outside world in Liang Bua, a high-ceilinged cavern scooped out of a limestone hill about a kilometer away. Again a chorus of agreement. … it’s hard not to notice the large number of very short people, particularly among the older folk, some of whom are the same height as a typical 10-year-old. Some six generations of intermarriage with outsiders, says Rampasasa’s headman Alfredus Ontas, have left few truly tiny individuals. But to prove their antecedents, he and other locals eagerly display photos of recently deceased relatives whom they say were of purer “short people” stock. “The brothers in this photograph were only 110 cm,” Ontas says proudly…Another elder is introduced, who, as well as measuring only 135 cm tall, has a pelt of hair covering his arms and legs. “It was because we were so hairy that our ancestors hid in Liang Bua,” says Jurubu. “They were embarrassed.”
… Viktor Jurubu is recounting the story of how Paju, a famous warrior, ran into one of the “normal” people in the woods one day while out hunting. “This beautiful lady lit a fire and cooked the wild boar Paju had killed,” Jurubu says. “She wanted to marry him and knew she could tempt him with the taste of cooked meat. He did like the taste, so he agreed to marry her and come out of Liang Bua with the rest of the tribe, founding a new village.”

And the bones in the cave? “Of course, they were our ancestors,” says Jurubu, with a touch of rheumy indignation. “They must have retreated into the cave after a hunt and got caught there when the river rose. Who else could it be?”

Neanderthal man was fully human but deformed with rickets.

Nonsense. The anatomical variations of the are not consistent with rickets. Plus, we’re not talking about 1 skeleton here. There are hundreds of Neandertal specimens/individuals found.

All evidence of Peking man mysteriously disappeared.

So? One set of fossils gone missing during a war? Plus, this has nothing to do with all the other H. erectus specimens.

All Australopithecines were just apes.

All humans are types of apes too. But Australopithecines were not “just apes” as you imply, but were rather a genus of intermediates creatures (appropriate in both their anatomy & their temporal/geographic location within the fossil record) between modern humans and the more “ape” like ancestors.

Oiltdown Man was a hoax.

So? Piltdown was a single hoax played on the scientific community (not BY the scientific community as you imply) which was subsequently discovered and rejected by the scientific community and which plays no part at all on the modern theory.

Nebraska Man was an example of an extinct pig making a monkey of an evolutionist.

Hardly. It was a short term speculation that got additional non-scientific speculation in the popular press. Again, this example has zero influence on the modern theory.

And now “Flores man,” which is really just another deformed human.

If you read the article, you’d see that there’s still a lot of debate/research about this new find.

There is no evidence for evolution.

Baseless claim. So far you have only quoted irrelevant, individual fallicies and ignored the mountains of evidence, including the hundreds of homonid specimens (never mind all the other fossil species, genetic evidence, etc.)

Sure, but that’s not quite what I asked. I was asking if there were any known examples of pygmies and normal-stature people having children, and what the fertility of those children was like. The fact that gene flow happens doesn’t answer that (except inasmuch as we can deduce it doesn’t result in total infertility). To answer my question, I guess we’d have to look at things like sperm count in the Lese/Efe admixtures, and also whether (for example) it takes longer for a Lese man and woman to have a child than a Lese man and an Efe woman.

It seems to me that there’s a non-zero prezygotic barrier to interbreeding (in the main, pygmies and normal-stature people just don’t find each other that attractive) – would be interesting to know if there are any postzygotic difficulties as well.

This seems like an argument against the idea they were human. Our brains impose huge caloric costs/demands, along with the child birth fiasco. If our brains don’t need to be this big, and it’s that easy, it seems natural selection would’ve taken that path. Also, we see nothing else like this in human evolution even though we’ve spanned every world ecological niche. In my opinion, it seems the modern panoply of human diversity should put some meaningful constraints on ideas of humans this different. Carl nailed it with the Andaman Island example; there is no evidence for this extreme evolutionary pressure, and importantly, humans have examples to test the theory.

Another intriguing question: How fertile/healthy are children from partnerships between pygmies and “normal” size people? At what point is it right to stop talking about remarkable sub-populations and start thinking of it as incipient speciation?

The Lese neighbors of Efe pygmies are intermediate in stature from gene flow – there is nothing extraordinary about such admixture.

Alan Templeton’s “Haplotype Trees and Modern Human Origins” that you did a nice piece on earlier this year presented genetic evidence pointing to humans leaving Africa about 130,000 years ago. That leaves 30,000 years to arrive in Flores, which seems time enough to me.

Peter Malin’s short article that you linked above doesn’t reference Templeton’s paper and treats S. Oppenheimer’s “Out of Eden” by simply saying there are opposing views… He seems to have failed to understand that the sea stand was about 90 m lower then, so most evidence of humans from that time is now under water. Anthropology and archeology are known to be hypothesis rich and data poor fields of research, but I thought Malin’s paper quaint in the light of the evidence that Oppenheimer brought forth in his book, evidence which in some cases I have checked the literature he cited. Briefly, I think Malin is wrong in his dating given what Templeton and Oppenheimer have shown.

Now whether your hobbitses are H. sapiens or not might also depend on the definition of ‘species’. The difference between ‘could have’ interbred and ‘did’ interbreed might be quite important that long ago, when there were so few individuals of genus Homo. In this, and other examples, I’ve stopped worrying about the species designation for individuals of genus Homo. They were all humans, just rather different. I don’t know whether or not they ‘could have’ interbred, but separated by space and social custom, they did not. So your hobbitses were humans. Isn’t that really quite enough?

Neanderthal man was fully human but deformed with rickets.
All evidence of Peking man mysteriously disappeared.
All Australopithecines were just apes.
Oiltdown Man was a hoax.
Nebraska Man was an example of an extinct pig making a monkey of an evolutionist.

And now “Flores man,” which is really just another deformed human.

There is no evidence for evolution.

Technically speaking, Homo erectus, H. habilis, Rhodesian Man, Heidelberg Man, and even the Neanderthal were human. In that their species belonged in the genus, Homo.

Which means that at one time there might have been as many as 5 species of human living on this planet at one time. Those being:

H. sapiens
H. neanderthaliensis
H. heidelbergiensis
H. erectus
H. floresiensis

I’m thinking a point by point comparison of the two skulls might give some interesting results. Along with a point by point comparison of the two skulls plus skulls from H. sapiens, H. erectus, and A. afarensis.

Of course, finding more Georgia Man remains in the area between Georgia and Flores Island would make a big difference. As would more Flores Man skulls.

Still, as much as I bemoan scientific conservatism, it is better to make sure instead of going off on unsupported supposition. (So why do I do it? Because giving small kids ideas is fun. )

This sounds much like the standard process of speciation that occurs on islands. Taking the premise of this passage as correct, that the hobbits’ ancestors were homo sapiens, at what point do we say that this population still consisted of homo sapiens, and when do we say that it had evolved to a new species? Since it is no longer extant, can’t check for fertile hybrids.

Has anybody considered the possibility that the hobbit was descended from a population of Homo erectus georgiensis? A short, small brained population at that?

And what about features similar to features found in H. erectus and australopithicines, but not found in modern humans?

may be it didn’t happen just because… it didn’t happen… chance mutation…

Another intriguing question: How fertile/healthy are children from partnerships between pygmies and “normal” size people? At what point is it right to stop talking about remarkable sub-populations and start thinking of it as incipient speciation? If an archeologist of the future came across fossils of a pygmy and a “normal” person, would they classify them as the same species or as different subspecies? How right or wrong would they be to do so?

Karl Zimmer at The Loom reports on another study of the remains from Flores Island. Gary D. Richards writing in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology Online says that the remains are those of pygmy humans. Below is Zimmer’s summary of…