How Homo Floresiensis Was Discovered

[@reedeppelheimer4967]

You make really high quality content and you have a talent for providing relevant context and building an engaging story. You deserve a larger audience and I hope this comment helps.

[@TheHEAP]

I really appreciate the support. Thank you!

[@Butterman2624]

@@TheHEAP When will you return? I enjoy your videos.

[@michaelholshouser6248]

I'm loving the up in audio quality lately! Keep up the good work

[@tomryan2672]

Great video, classy production. Glad to be here for the start of a great channel!

[@trevorwhitechapel2403]

Very well produced video. Fun and very interesting to watch. I find the very idea of human island dwarfism so fascinating. It just kind of makes me wonder if there are undiscovered specimens of human island gigantism possibly still out there. I am definitely subscribing.

[@modusartsgroup]

Totally !!

[@cherylmassimo7395]

Love the stories behind the stories

[@raphlvlogs271]

Flores is an island straight out of a fantasy novel

[@ljre3397]

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing this.

[@davidudbjorg]

Actually the cave and Homo Florensiensis was first discovered by the University in Jakarta, and not by Australiens. They didn´t have the financing to escaveate and hence took contact to a University in Australia who kindly did the financing and the honor. Great storytelling though!

[@TheHEAP]

That makes a lot of sense. Weird I didn’t come across that in the research for this video. Thanks for the catch!

[@davidudbjorg]

@@TheHEAP not many know about this facts… i was lucky to visit the Cave during early escavation and had an opportunity to interview the local scientists, thats why I know. You are doing great work!

[@coupertinoananda1789]

Thankyou sir I was in the same society of late father verhoeven. I went to lisng bua and mata menge I felt the chill of deep time I now work in flores as architect but I stay in Bandung west java I love to visit bandung geology museum and look at the replica of the hobbit of Flores. Thanks again

[@exyerbamate]

Eugene Dubois is a true legend holy shit. His story would make an incredibly great biopic movie!

[@Pixelkip]

Great Video!!

[@janina8559]

So far these are my favorite species and I think they are fascinating!

[@jessemiller7540]

Great video! I thought I knew this story, but you had a lot of great details and images I've never seen.

[@TheHEAP]

I thought I knew the story before writing this, figured it would be a quick 8 minute video, but then I really got into the weeds when researching it and found so much more than I expected. Mike Morwood's book is full of little anecdotes from his time in Indonesia that are rather amazing, but not relevant enough for me to include here. Highly recommend it.

[@ericlipton7640]

This is a fantastic, nuanced overview of a very complex story- very well done! Thanks for putting this out!

[@lindakay9552]

Everything Riley does is excellent! He is one of the best verbal presenters I've ever heard. The context is well laid out. The content is always compelling!

[@johnstojanowski8126]

As I stated in my books ‘Ice Age Extinctions, A New Theory’ and ‘The Gravity Theory Of Mass Extinction’ surface gravity around the globe has changed in the past. A surface gravity gradient with lower surface gravity on one east-west hemisphere along with a commensurate increase in surface gravity on the opposing hemisphere occurred during the Pleistocene. In effect, the net change in surface gravity on the planet was zero. Based on my theory Homo Floresiensis (HF) reduced in size not from insular dwarfism but increased surface gravity in the longitudinal region of Indonesia probably over a million years ago. The large feet with flat arch, wide leg bones, etc. can be explained with increased surface gravity. Pygmy populations today don’t have these characteristics. Surface gravity lowered during every glacial period and increased to near current level on every inter glacial period in specific, but varied, longitudinal regions. Apparently, HF did not increase in size during the multiple glacial periods after they reduced in size. However, during the interglacial period of about 60,000 to 50,000 years ago the increase in surface gravity in the Indonesian region was more intense than previous interglacial periods because the Australian marsupial megafauna, which reached their massive size in a prior glacial period became extinct as well as HF.

[@etyrnal]

aren't there rumors of they're having been a war between little tiny pygmy Lily put in people and some giant cranes or storks or something like that? doesn't this story appear on Greek pottery or something like that? this idea that long long ago there used to be a race of a very small people and there used to be a very very large bird like a stork or a crane that seemed to prefer these little people as food?

[@craftycriminalistwithms.z3053]

Amazing channel!

[@annw7843]

Very well presented

[@judypetree2589]

I have just discovered Primordial Dwarfs. The are perfect little people 3'4- 3'8. What would you say they might have a Homo Floresiensis gene? They are not stunted in any way, just a body that is proportional to their size.

[@messiahsgate1172]

Wow! Great video, my good sir!

[@mytwocents848]

Thank you! That is a really great story! I read about it at the time, but you give it some life. Have they ever been able to get DNA from Homo Floresiensis? By the way, what are the white numbers that pop up periodically and out of order in the corner of your screen?

[@TheHEAP]

Thank you! No dna unfortunately. Would be amazing to have that information one day. Those numbers refer to the corresponding references in the description. I try to cite everything I use.

[@mytwocents848]

@@TheHEAP Thanks! I appreciate that. Very professional.

[@ScribblerDeStebbing]

That climate would not be conducive to DNA preservation, unfortunately.

[@ahmadhamad9435]

Amazingly done!

[@TheHEAP]

Thank you!

[@torhildsvendsen9424]

Genene våre husker dette småfolket, vi ser dem når vi trenger dem...

[@raphlvlogs271]

imagine if the host was a Homo Floresiensis

[@TheHEAP]

I wouldn’t have to wonder what to do with my hands then, or anything below my forehead really.

[@CBruceNL]

Officially soothing enough to compete with Lore for bedtime listens

[@TheHEAP]

High praise. I couldn’t tell you what happened in most episodes of lore despite listening to all of them in bed.

[@CBruceNL]

@@TheHEAP yeah the floresien rhino taming culture and their war against the main land is pretty frigging cool

[@drbigmdftnu]

They were ultimately dated to 50-60k years ago? I forget the ultimate date. But I love the legends of Ebu gogo and Orang Pendek on neighboring island

[@TheHEAP]

I think the current dates are 60-100kya for the skeletons in Liang Bua themselves, but the associated stone tools go back 190kya. Those legends really make you wonder, although I'm cautiously pessimistic about them.

[@drbigmdftnu]

@@TheHEAP I certainly don't expect it be true that they're still around (but how cool would THAT be!) But even if they are the original source of the myths, it means they co-existed with sapiens for an extended time, and perhaps more recently than we know. Imagine if we found remains that date to only 5000 years ago.

[@TheHEAP]

@@drbigmdftnu Absolutely that would be super cool! I would love to see discoveries like that happen in the future. It would be so mindblowing.

[@drbigmdftnu]

@@TheHEAP keep up the great work my friend!

[@WynnofThule]

To me, Teuku Jacob comes off as...not on the right side of things here. The urge to try and prevent the imperialist horrors of the past from staining archaeological work today is noble, but Jacob wasn't just making sure the bones didn't end up in some far away first-world museum or whatnot. He hid them away from *everyone* on the team, most of them other Indonesians. And this was at the same time the Indonesian government closed access to the cave, so other new fossils that might provide the same information would be even harder to find if there were more. And when the fossils *were* returned, they came back pretty heavily damaged. To me it seems like his actions hurt the understanding of his own country's natural history much more than he might've helped it to nobody else's benefit.

[@petermac774]

It's pronounced Wool-n-Gong (wool as in what's on a sheep's back). A friend of mine ran the Mass Spec at Wollongong Uni and ran the samples that dated the find.

[@TheHEAP]

I checked in with an Indonesian friend to make sure I didn’t butcher anything, but didn’t have the foresight to check in with Australian ones. Thanks for the correction! And nice! That must have been a fun week at the lab. I know Bert Roberts had a hand in dating, but he isn’t the friend in question by chance is he?

[@petermac774]

@@TheHEAP , no, but Bert knows my friend, who was in charge of the Mass Spec for the School of Earth and Environmental at the time.

[@gonhunter3994]

Sup

[@TheHEAP]

Nm, u?

[@MrCrystalm8]

I heard some people think the hobbits are still alive, hiding somewhere deep in the Indonesian jungles

[@TheHEAP]

Some do, I don’t think it’s too likely though. Flores isn’t terribly large.

[@wladimirushakov8878]

5:25 artisticas son unos Sweetlovee.Monster muchas y un buen ejercicio. Saludos desdei la Cd. de world 🌹😉💖

[@DannyCoombs709]

I saw Homo and now I realize, wrong video

[@gonhunter3994]

Really clever joke 😒

[@t.j.payeur5331]

Politics..it sullies everything...