Peter Brown, whose team of scientists documented the discovery of a new species of early human in 2003, delivered a Voices of Discovery lecture Monday, Feb. 20, and earlier in the day, visited with students in several classes. Details...
Brown and a team of Australian and Indonesian colleagues discovered the fossil remains of an apparently new species of human named Homo floresiensis in the Liang Bua cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. Previous archaeological work has suggested the existence of only two human species, Homo erectus and Homo sapiens, in Asia approximately 1.8 million years to 10,000 years ago.
During a question-and-answer session Monday with students in Dr. Herbert House’s Biology 101 course, Brown said the team’s discovery of Homo floresiensis has challenged long-standing beliefs about the course of human development.
“This discovery was exciting but also a bit daunting, because this creature was not supposed to exist at this time (in history),” said Brown. “So it challenges your beliefs and forces you to think about new ideas. In the last 12 months, this discovery has rewritten textbooks. You have to be willing to change, to adapt and to say you’re wrong, and that’s part of science.”
Brown’s group found remains of at least seven individuals, dating from 38,000 years old to as recently as 13,000 years old. These individuals were approximately one meter tall, with a brain size about one-third that of Homo sapiens. Brown said he was surprised to find evidence that Homo floresiensis made stone tools, hunted and cooked with fire.
“Homo floresiensis brains are exactly the same size as chimpanzees, but the tools they made are more complex than chimpanzees,” Brown said. “People always thought that you had to have a brain bigger than this to make complex tools, so that was surprising.” Brown says the difference may lie in the “internal wiring” between the brains of Homo floresiensis and chimpanzees, “but we don’t know that yet.”
He cautioned students that interpreting the results of archaeological digs and other types of research can be tricky business. “The thing you have to be careful about is over-interpreting and making more of it than what is there….The trouble with what I do is that the more you find, the more complicated the story becomes.”
Brown is a paleoanthropologist at the University of New England in Australia, where he teaches courses in human evolution, paleoanthropology and forensic anthropology.
His presentation was part of the Voices of Discovery science speaker series, sponsored by Elon College, the College of Arts and Sciences. The series invites noted scholars in science and mathematics to Elon to share their knowledge and experience with students.