OK, so "Hobbit" is a horrible nickname, but...

[prosicated]

Dude.
Humans with heads the size of grapefruits.
Living with giant rodents and pygmy elephants.
How ridiculously surreal and Lilliputian does it get?
(Also, how geektastic is that?? Heartening for my post- post-modern graduate studies -- anthropology is still getting done out there!)

Comments

[lipbylipby.livejournal.com]

The most interesting thign to me-- and something I meant to post on-- was that the native people actually had a folk memory of the naked little people living in caves. This astounds me!

[prosicated.livejournal.com]

Unsurprising given the dates, but a tad surreal in terms of thinking about "modern humans" co-existing with yet another bizarre fractal piece of the homo-xxx family.
Makes you want to wait for the archeological record of all sorts of other strange myths, right?

[cobaltnine.livejournal.com]

I LUMP THEM INTO H. sapiens sapiens in LUMPY DEFIANCE.

edit:
Yes, I know they have tiny brains. I just can't deal with a hominid species confined to this one island 'of really small things' and that they were 'hunting small elephants'. It's too much.

[prosicated.livejournal.com]

I appreciate your LUMPY DEFIANCE, even if it causes me to speak in Zim-voice for a while, and eve if it's slightly inaccurate.
Please, I'm a cultural anthropologist, I can be as soft and wishy-washy as I want...! You're the one who's supposed to have some sort of scientific grounding... *laughs*

[cobaltnine.livejournal.com]

Scientific grounding my ass. I'm taking evol. this term but I'm a *historical archaeologist.* I like my people dead but with notes that they left behind.

My lumpy defiance was mostly in response to me getting sick of seeing it all over my flist. You, is okay. Other people just post it as an interest story and have no background and it annoys me. The first bunch of articles I read gave me no real reason not to lump, but then I read the Nature article and I'm inclined to at least make them a subspecies of H. erectus, maybe, fine. Fine, make them a species. But I want to see the other island-bound freaky species (so does the author of the article,) before I jump to conclusions. And why don't we subspecies hominids? The thing is, they're not 'early man' at all and that's what [lay]people seem to be implying or excited about. This whole 'island of small things cut off from the world' annoys me too, since it's not that isolated. I mean, Rapa Nui, yes, that's isolated, but this is in a chain.

( I tried to reply from e-mail, but it didn't look like it worked. Sorry if this shows up twice.)

[xreekinghavocx.livejournal.com]

i know, right?

[prosicated.livejournal.com]

yar. Also I want an oompa loompa to do my research and carry my books.

[nagashimon.livejournal.com]

i must've stared at that artist's rendering for hours yesterday thinking, now who does that look like? before i realized that i'm just a five-o'-clock shadow away from sporting that mug.

actually, he's a cute lil' guy. kinda reminds me of my paternal uncles.