Homo floresiensis, the species of extinct “little people” discovered recently on the island of Flores in Indonesia (see
Human Biology 5th ed., pp. 520-521) apparently made and used stone tools, according to a recent
report in Science. What makes this feat so impressive is that
H. floresiensis has a very small brain by hominid standards. The discovery of
H. floresiensis is causing anthropologists to re-think their long-standing hypothesis that the intelligence needed for making tools came only after, and as a consequence of, a large brain.
Modern humans who inhabited the area thousands of years later also made the same kinds of stone tools. Did modern humans interact with and learn from
H. floresiensis, or did they develop the same tool-making techniques independently? No one knows for sure yet.
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