Sutikna traces man's ancestry through Liang Bua find

Sutikna traces man's ancestry through Liang Bua find

Kurniawan Hari, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

If Thomas Sutikna had departed the archeological site at Liang
Bua, West Flores, East Nusa Tenggara, earlier than scheduled, he
may have regretted it for the rest of his life.

For Thomas, an archeologist who had been working on Flores
Island with an exploration team since 2001, the remaining two
weeks of the project was more than enough to pack his bags and
prepare to leave.

Fortunately, Thomas was the field coordinator of the team,
which meant he had to stay and continue the excavation with
others of the team until the final day.

"When we discovered (Flores Man), we were just about to wrap
up the dig," Thomas said during a recent teleconference with
journalists facilitated by National Geographic Channel Asia.

By that time, he said, Australian researchers and Indonesian
archeologist Soejono -- the head researchers -- had left for home
the day the fossils were uncovered in September 2004.

It was fellow archeologist Wahyu Saptomo who first uncovered
the fossil, which was so fragile that the discovery team had to
allow them to harden for days before handling them.

Given the smallness of its structure, at first the
archeologists assumed the fossil was the fossilized bones of a
child. To Thomas' surprise, a quick study of its dental structure
revealed that the tiny bones was that of an adult.

"We knew it was an important discovery, but we had no idea it
would provoke discourse and open new chapters of knowledge in
archeology," he said.

The fossils were discovered at a depth of 5.9 meters, and were
the bones of an adult of a hitherto unknown species of humans
that had lived alongside Homo sapiens.

The average height of a full-grown adult of the species is
approximately one meter tall and lived about 18,000 years ago.

Because of its small stature, the archeologists nicknamed it
"the Hobbit" after the man-like creatures in the Lord of the
Rings.

Some archeologists predicted the Flores Man, Homo
floresiensis, was a species of Homo erectus -- which lived on
Java 1.6 million years ago -- that had evolved into dwarfs in
adaptation with their surroundings.

This notion has some proof with the finding of dwarf
elephants, the Stegodon -- an elephant the size of a pony.

Thomas added that the Homo floresiensis and Stegodon fossil
findings in a single cave at Liang Bua seemed to indicate the
possibility that the Flores Man had brought the Stegodon home
from a hunt.

The finding has raised some debate among archeologists. For
example, what is surprising is how the species reached Flores,
which is separated from mainland Java by open water. Building a
craft for traveling over water is thought to be beyond the
intellectual capacity of the older Homo erectus.

The excavation carried out by Thomas and his team was a
continuation of similar research conducted by Theodor Verhoeven
in the 1960s and Soejono from 1978 to 1989 at the same Liang Bua
site. Verhoeven was a pastor and part-time archeologist, and once
found an artifact in the area, where a seminary compound had
stood.

Archeologists favored Liang Bua, one of several limestone
caves on Flores, because the geologic layers extended over a long
period of time.

The research team from Australia's University of New England
consists of Mike Morwood, associate professor of archeology at
the University of New England, Peter Brown, Soejono, Thomas and
Wahyu, along with 35 assistants recruited from the local
community.

Thomas said his team would resume excavation in June and hoped
to uncover more findings.

The discovery of Homo floresiensis and modern humans' ancestral
lineage is featured in the first issue of National Geographic
Indonesia.