Pod Geeks

I know you've heard about this - assuming you weren't totally immersed in Kerry-Bush and/or the Red Sox - but it's too cool to skip mentioning. This version is from the BBC for October 27:

Scientists have discovered a new and tiny species of human that lived in Indonesia at the same time our own ancestors were colonising the world.

The one-metre- (3ft) tall species - dubbed "the Hobbit" - lived on Flores Island until at least 12,000 years ago. ...

The 18,000-year-old specimen, known as Liang Bua 1 or LB1[, Liang Bua being the limestone cave on Flores where the find was made], has been assigned to a new species called Homo floresiensis. It had long arms and a skull the size of a large grapefruit. ...

LB1 shared its island with a golden retriever-sized rat, giant tortoises and huge lizards - including Komodo dragons - and a pony-sized dwarf elephant called Stegodon which the "hobbits" probably hunted.

In addition to the sheer surprise of the find itself, it raised other fascinating issues. For example, it's thought the Hobbits likely evolved from Homo erectus, which may have gotten to Flores about one million years ago from Java, where H.erectus remains have been found. But they had to arrive by boat, and building boats for travel over open water had been thought to have been beyond H.erectus.

What's more,

[t]he sophistication of stone tools found with the Hobbit has surprised some scientists given the human's small brain size of 380cc (around the same size as a chimpanzee).

"The whole idea that you need a particular brain size to do anything intelligent is completely blown away by this find," Dr [Henry] Gee[, senior editor at Nature magazine,] commented.

Professor Chris Stringer, head of human origins at London's Natural History Museum, said the find "rewrites our knowledge of human evolution." And because the bones are not fossilized, they might yield DNA which would reveal even more.

What's really cool is that the island's inhabitants

have incredibly detailed legends about the existence of little people on the island they call Ebu Gogo.

The islanders describe Ebu Gogo as being about one metre tall, hairy and prone to "murmuring" to each other in some form of language. They were also able to repeat what islanders said to them in a parrot-like fashion.

And the last such legend dates to just 100 years ago - leading Dr. Gee to speculate that

species like H.floresiensis might still exist, somewhere in the unexplored tropical forest of Indonesia.

And wouldn't that be so wonderfully amazing.