Mick Hartley

The bones of Homo Floresiensis – the “hobbit” – which were appropriated by Indonesian scientist Teuku Jacob, have finally been returned. As Carl Zimmer explains, this feud is about whether the hobbit is indeed a new species, as its finders claim, or whether it is, as Jacob believes, simply an individual with a birth defect called microcephaly. But this reflects a deeper conflict: whether modern humans, as most scientists now believe, are descended from a small group of Africans some 200,000 years ago, or – the multiregional hypothesis – the exodus from Africa was much earlier, and we’ve evolved in parallel since then in different regions. Jacob is a multiregionalist.

It was thus not a complete surprise to learn last week that Teuku Jacob had arranged for two multiregionalists, Alan Thorne and Maciej Henneberg to examine the Homo floresiensis bones. Publicity may have been one motivation–a 60 Minutes crew was apparently filming the proceedings–but something very significant happened along the way. Two grams of the fossil material was extracted and sent to Germany to look for DNA.

….[F]inding Hobbit DNA is the best way to test the hypothesis that these fossils belong to another species. If the Australians are right, its DNA should be only remotely similar to the DNA of all living humans. If Jacob is right, the DNA should resemble the DNA of living Southeast Asians more than other humans.

But any results that come from the DNA Jacob and company have extracted will probably be viewed with a lot of skepticism. It is very easy for fossils to become contaminated with the DNA of living humans once they are unearthed, and it very difficult to distinguish between contamination and any ancient DNA the fossils might contain. Jacob didn’t help matters when he “borrowed” the bones; apparently they were simply stuffed into a leather bag and brought to him.