169-610: Homo floresiensis ( / f l ɔːr ˈ ɛ z iː ˌ ɛ n . s ɪ s / ) , also known as " Flores Man " or " Hobbit " (after the fictional species ), is an extinct species of small archaic humans that inhabited the island of Flores , Indonesia, until the arrival of modern humans about 50,000 years ago. The remains of an individual who would have stood about 1.1 m (3 ft 7 in) in height were discovered in 2003 at Liang Bua cave. As of 2015, partial skeletons of fifteen individuals have been recovered, including one complete skull, referred to as "LB1". Homo floresiensis
338-448: A CT scan of the LB1 skull and a virtual endocast , and concluded that the brainpan was neither that of a pygmy nor an individual with a malformed skull and brain. In response, American neurologist Jochen Weber and colleagues compared the computer model skull with microcephalic human skulls, and found that the skull size of LB1 falls in the middle of the size range of the human samples, and
507-531: A Warwickshire village of about the period of the Diamond Jubilee [of Queen Victoria, in 1897] ". Shippey described hobbit culture, complete with tobacco and potatoes, as a "creative anachronism" on Tolkien's part. In his view, anachronism is the "essential function" of hobbits, enabling Tolkien to "bridge the gap" by mediating between readers' lives in the modern world and the dangerous ancient world of Middle-earth. Fimi comments that this applies both to
676-471: A jigsaw puzzle . Rocks normally form relatively horizontal layers, with each layer younger than the one underneath it. If a fossil is found between two layers whose ages are known, the fossil's age must lie between the two known ages. Because rock sequences are not continuous, but may be broken up by faults or periods of erosion , it is very difficult to match up rock beds that are not directly next to one another. However, fossils of species that survived for
845-461: A leap year , to ensure that the calendar remained in time with the seasons. Hobbits traditionally live in "hobbit-holes", or smials , underground homes found in hillsides, downs, and banks, though others lived in houses. It has been suggested that the soil or ground of the Shire consists of loess and that this facilitates the construction of hobbit-holes. Loess is a yellow soil, which would explain
1014-479: A background of forest and distant mountains. He dies with the work incomplete, undone by his imperfectly generous heart: "it made him uncomfortable more often than it made him do anything". After discipline in Purgatory , however, Niggle finds himself in the very landscape depicted by his painting which he is now able to finish with the assistance of a neighbour who obstructed him during life. The picture complete, Niggle
1183-532: A blank piece of paper: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit". The term "hobbit", however, has real antecedents in modern English. One is a fact that Tolkien admitted: the title of Sinclair Lewis 's 1922 novel Babbitt , about a "complacent American businessman" who goes through a journey of some kind of self-discovery, facing "near-disgrace"; the Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey observes that there are some parallels here with Bilbo's own journey. According to
1352-722: A century after the Harfoots did, and settled in the pre-existing Harfoot villages of the Bree-land. Never very numerous, the Fallohides intermixed with and were largely absorbed by the Harfoots during this time, though several prominent families such as the Tooks and the Masters of Buckland had a substantial Fallohide descent, unlike many of the people that they led. After about four centuries, a large expedition of hobbits migrated westward from Bree-land led by
1521-544: A collision that formed the Moon about 40 million years later, may have cooled quickly enough to have oceans and an atmosphere about 4,440 million years ago . There is evidence on the Moon of a Late Heavy Bombardment by asteroids from 4,000 to 3,800 million years ago . If, as seems likely, such a bombardment struck Earth at the same time, the first atmosphere and oceans may have been stripped away. Paleontology traces
1690-602: A common ancestor. Ideally the "family tree" has only two branches leading from each node ("junction"), but sometimes there is too little information to achieve this, and paleontologists have to make do with junctions that have several branches. The cladistic technique is sometimes fallible, as some features, such as wings or camera eyes , evolved more than once, convergently – this must be taken into account in analyses. Evolutionary developmental biology , commonly abbreviated to "Evo Devo", also helps paleontologists to produce "family trees", and understand fossils. For example,
1859-451: A constant rate. These " molecular clocks ", however, are fallible, and provide only a very approximate timing: for example, they are not sufficiently precise and reliable for estimating when the groups that feature in the Cambrian explosion first evolved, and estimates produced by different techniques may vary by a factor of two. Earth formed about 4,570 million years ago and, after
SECTION 10
#17330856093692028-403: A data source that is not limited to animals with easily fossilised hard parts, and they reflect organisms' behaviours. Also many traces date from significantly earlier than the body fossils of animals that are thought to have been capable of making them. Whilst exact assignment of trace fossils to their makers is generally impossible, traces may for example provide the earliest physical evidence of
2197-630: A field); have a very simple sense of humour (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much. In their earliest folk tales , hobbits appear to have lived in Rhovanion , in the Valley of Anduin , between Mirkwood and the Misty Mountains . According to The Lord of the Rings , they had lost the genealogical details of how they are related to
2366-567: A fortunate accident during other research. For example, the 1980 discovery by Luis and Walter Alvarez of iridium , a mainly extraterrestrial metal, in the Cretaceous – Paleogene boundary layer made asteroid impact the most favored explanation for the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event – although debate continues about the contribution of volcanism. A complementary approach to developing scientific knowledge, experimental science ,
2535-510: A half centuries before the founding of the Shire in Third Age 1601). Tolkien coined the term "Harfoot" as analogous to "hairfoot". The Fallohides were the least numerous, and the second group to enter Eriador. They were generally fair-haired, and taller and slimmer than other Hobbits. While the other two types of hobbit were on average about three and a half feet tall, Fallohides were closer on average to four feet. They were more adventurous than
2704-617: A humerus were later described from Mata Menge, with the remains subsequently being directly assigned to H. floresiensis . These remains are about the same size or somewhat smaller than the remains from Liang Bua, suggesting the size of the species remained stable for hundreds of thousands of years up until its extinction. Two hypotheses have been proposed as to the origin of H. floresiensis. The first proposes that H. floresiensis descended from an early migration of very primitive small Australopithecus / Homo habilis -grade archaic humans outside of Africa prior to 1.75 million years ago. This
2873-552: A letter from Tolkien to W. H. Auden , one "probably ... unconscious" inspiration was Edward Wyke Smith 's 1927 children's book The Marvellous Land of Snergs . Tolkien described the Snergs as "a race of people only slightly taller than the average table but broad in the shoulders and [who] have the strength of ten men." Another possible origin emerged in 1977 when the Oxford English Dictionary announced that it had found
3042-477: A list of ghostly beings in The Denham Tracts (1895), though these bear no similarity to Tolkien's Hobbits. Scholars have noted Tolkien's denial of a relationship with the word " rabbit ", pointing to several lines of evidence to the contrary. Hobbits are modern, unlike the heroic ancient-style cultures of Gondor and Rohan , with familiar things like umbrellas, matches, and clocks. As such they mediate between
3211-814: A minor group until the first jawed fish appeared in the Late Ordovician . The spread of animals and plants from water to land required organisms to solve several problems, including protection against drying out and supporting themselves against gravity . The earliest evidence of land plants and land invertebrates date back to about 476 million years ago and 490 million years ago respectively. Those invertebrates, as indicated by their trace and body fossils, were shown to be arthropods known as euthycarcinoids . The lineage that produced land vertebrates evolved later but very rapidly between 370 million years ago and 360 million years ago ; recent discoveries have overturned earlier ideas about
3380-435: A nearly complete skull, which belonged to a 30-year-old woman, and has been nicknamed "Little Lady of Flores" or "Flo". An arm bone provisionally assigned to H. floresiensis , specimen LB3, is about 74,000 years old. The specimens are not fossilized and have been described as having "the consistency of wet blotting paper ". Once exposed, the bones had to be left to dry before they could be dug up. The discoverers proposed that
3549-467: A nearly complete, small-statured skeleton, LB1, in the Liang Bua cave, and subsequent excavations in 2003 and 2004 recovered seven additional skeletons, initially dated from 38,000 to 13,000 years ago. In 2004, a separate species Homo floresiensis was named and described by Peter Brown et al., with LB1 as the holotype . A tooth, LB2, was referred to the species. LB1 is a fairly complete skeleton, including
SECTION 20
#17330856093693718-436: A number of additional, less obvious features that might distinguish LB1 from modern H. sapiens , including the form of the teeth, the absence of a chin, and a lesser torsion in the lower end of the humerus (upper arm bone). Each of these putative distinguishing features has been heavily scrutinized by the scientific community, with different research groups reaching differing conclusions as to whether these features support
3887-549: A party of Dwarves seeks to recover an ancient treasure from the hoard of a dragon. They are again central to The Lord of the Rings , an altogether darker tale, where Bilbo's younger cousin Frodo sets out from the Shire to destroy the Ring that Bilbo had brought home. The Tolkien critic Paul H. Kocher notes that Tolkien's literary techniques require readers to view hobbits as like humans, especially when placed under moral pressure to survive
4056-555: A rapid increase in knowledge about the history of life on Earth and to progress in the definition of the geologic time scale , largely based on fossil evidence. Although she was rarely recognised by the scientific community, Mary Anning was a significant contributor to the field of palaeontology during this period; she uncovered multiple novel Mesozoic reptile fossils and deducted that what were then known as bezoar stones are in fact fossilised faeces . In 1822 Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville , editor of Journal de Physique , coined
4225-535: A relatively short time can be used to link up isolated rocks: this technique is called biostratigraphy . For instance, the conodont Eoplacognathus pseudoplanus has a short range in the Middle Ordovician period. If rocks of unknown age are found to have traces of E. pseudoplanus , they must have a mid-Ordovician age. Such index fossils must be distinctive, be globally distributed and have a short time range to be useful. However, misleading results are produced if
4394-460: A similar stature to the Rampasasa pygmies who inhabit the island, and that size can vary substantially in pygmy populations. A 2018 study refuted the possibility of Rampasasa pygmies descending from H. floresiensis , concluding that "multiple independent instances of hominin insular dwarfism occurred on Flores". Aside from smaller body size, the specimens seem to otherwise resemble H. erectus ,
4563-576: A small town called Hobbiton, which in The Lord of the Rings is identified as being part of a larger rural region called the Shire , the homeland of the hobbits in the northwest of Middle-earth. Some also live in a region east of the Shire, Bree-land , where they co-exist with Men . The origins of the name and idea of "Hobbits" have been debated; literary antecedents include Sinclair Lewis 's 1922 novel Babbitt , and Edward Wyke Smith's 1927 The Marvellous Land of Snergs . The word "hobbit" also appears in
4732-465: A species known to have been living in Southeast Asia at times coincident with earlier finds purported to be of H. floresiensis . In addition to a small body size, H. floresiensis had a remarkably small brain size . LB1's brain is estimated to have had a volume of 380 cm (23 cu in), placing it at the range of chimpanzees or the extinct australopithecines. LB1's brain size
4901-604: A steady increase in brain size after about 3 million years ago . There is a long-running debate about whether modern humans are descendants of a single small population in Africa , which then migrated all over the world less than 200,000 years ago and replaced previous hominine species, or arose worldwide at the same time as a result of interbreeding . Life on earth has suffered occasional mass extinctions at least since 542 million years ago . Despite their disastrous effects, mass extinctions have sometimes accelerated
5070-438: A variety of features, both primitive and derived, identify these individuals as belonging to a new species. Based on previous date estimates, the discoverers also proposed that H. floresiensis lived contemporaneously with modern humans on Flores. Before publication, the discoverers were considering placing LB1 into her own genus, Sundanthropus floresianus ( lit. ' Sunda human from Flores ' ), but reviewers of
5239-401: A war that threatens to devastate their land. Frodo becomes in some ways the symbolic representation of the conscience of hobbits, a point made explicitly in the story " Leaf by Niggle " which Tolkien wrote at the same time as the first nine chapters of The Lord of the Rings . Niggle is a painter struggling against the summons of death to complete his one great canvas, a picture of a tree with
Homo floresiensis - Misplaced Pages Continue
5408-472: Is a separate species. A 2007 study postulated that the skeletons were those of humans who suffered from Laron syndrome , which was first reported in 1966, and is most common in inbreeding populations, which may have been the scenario on the small island. It causes a short stature and small skull, and many conditions seen in Laron syndrome patients are also exhibited in H. floresiensis . The estimated height of LB1
5577-566: Is at the lower end of the average for afflicted human women, but the endocranial volume is much smaller than anything exhibited in Laron syndrome patients. DNA analysis would be required to support this theory. In 2008 Australian researcher Peter Obendorf — who studies congenital iodine deficiency syndrome — and colleagues suggested that LB1 and LB6 suffered from myxoedematous (ME) congenital iodine deficiency syndrome resulting from congenital hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid ), and that they were part of an affected population of H. sapiens on
5746-467: Is based on various aspects of H. floresiensis sketetal anatomy, such as its feet bones being considered as more similar to those of very archaic humans such as Australopithecus and Homo habilis than to Homo erectus . This position has been supported by several cladistical analyses. Other authors have argued that H. floresiensis instead likely represents the descendants of a population of Javanese Homo erectus that became isolated on Flores, with
5915-584: Is composed only of eukaryotic cells, and the earliest evidence for it is the Francevillian Group Fossils from 2,100 million years ago , although specialisation of cells for different functions first appears between 1,430 million years ago (a possible fungus) and 1,200 million years ago (a probable red alga ). Sexual reproduction may be a prerequisite for specialisation of cells, as an asexual multicellular organism might be at risk of being taken over by rogue cells that retain
6084-507: Is free to journey to the distant mountains which represent the highest stage of his spiritual development. Thus, upon recovery from the wound inflicted by the Witch-King of Angmar on Weathertop , Gandalf speculates that the hobbit Frodo "may become like a glass filled with a clear light for eyes to see that can". Similarly, as Frodo nears Mount Doom he casts aside weapons and refuses to fight others with physical force: "For him struggles for
6253-477: Is hard to decide at what level to place a new higher-level grouping, e.g. genus or family or order ; this is important since the Linnaean rules for naming groups are tied to their levels, and hence if a group is moved to a different level it must be renamed. Paleontologists generally use approaches based on cladistics , a technique for working out the evolutionary "family tree" of a set of organisms. It works by
6422-455: Is less than half that of its presumed immediate ancestor, H. erectus (980 cm (60 cu in)). The brain-to-body mass ratio of LB1 lies between that of H. erectus and the great apes. Such a reduction is likely due to insular dwarfism, and a 2009 study found that the reduction in brain size of extinct pygmy hippopotamuses in Madagascar compared with their living relatives
6591-593: Is not inconsistent with microcephaly. A 2006 study stated that LB1 probably descended from a pygmy population of modern humans, but herself shows signs of microcephaly, and other specimens from the cave show small stature but not microcephaly. In 2005, the original discoverers of H. floresiensis , after unearthing more specimens, countered that the skeptics had mistakenly attributed the height of H. floresiensis to microcephaly . Falk stated that Martin's assertions were unsubstantiated. In 2006, Australian palaeoanthropologist Debbie Argue and colleagues also concluded that
6760-615: Is not larger than usual. Also, in 2009, anthropologists Colin Groves and Catharine FitzGerald compared the Flores bones with those of ten people who had had cretinism, and found no overlap. Obendorf and colleagues rejected Groves and FitzGerald's argument the following year. A 2012 study similar to Groves and FitzGeralds' also found no evidence of congenital iodine deficiency syndrome. In 2014, physical anthropologist Maciej Henneberg and colleagues claimed that LB1 suffered from Down syndrome , and that
6929-443: Is often said to work by conducting experiments to disprove hypotheses about the workings and causes of natural phenomena. This approach cannot prove a hypothesis, since some later experiment may disprove it, but the accumulation of failures to disprove is often compelling evidence in favor. However, when confronted with totally unexpected phenomena, such as the first evidence for invisible radiation , experimental scientists often use
Homo floresiensis - Misplaced Pages Continue
7098-594: Is one that contained an extinct "crocodile-like" marine reptile, which eventually came to be known as the mosasaurid Mosasaurus of the Cretaceous period. The first half of the 19th century saw geological and paleontological activity become increasingly well organised with the growth of geologic societies and museums and an increasing number of professional geologists and fossil specialists. Interest increased for reasons that were not purely scientific, as geology and paleontology helped industrialists to find and exploit natural resources such as coal. This contributed to
7267-401: Is our only means of giving rocks greater than about 50 million years old an absolute age, and can be accurate to within 0.5% or better. Although radiometric dating requires very careful laboratory work, its basic principle is simple: the rates at which various radioactive elements decay are known, and so the ratio of the radioactive element to the element into which it decays shows how long ago
7436-445: Is proportionally greater than the reduction in body size, and similar to the reduction in brain size of H. floresiensis compared with H. erectus . Smaller size does not appear to have affected mental faculties, as Brodmann area 10 on the prefrontal cortex , which is associated with cognition, is about the same size as that of modern humans. H. floresiensis is also associated with evidence for advanced behaviours, such as
7605-412: Is the hair on their heads) and have leathery soles, so Hobbits hardly ever wear shoes. Hobbits are not quite as stocky as the similarly sized dwarves , but still tend to be stout, with slightly pointed ears. Tolkien clarified their appearance in a 1938 letter to his American publisher: I picture a fairly human figure, not a kind of 'fairy' rabbit as some of my British reviewers seem to fancy: fattish in
7774-451: Is the scientific study of life that existed prior to the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossils to classify organisms and study their interactions with each other and their environments (their paleoecology ). Paleontological observations have been documented as far back as the 5th century BC. The science became established in
7943-398: Is thought to have arrived on Flores around 1.27–1 million years ago. There is debate as to whether H. floresiensis represents a descendant of Javanese Homo erectus that reduced its body size as a result of insular dwarfism , or whether it represents an otherwise undetected migration of small, Australopithecus or Homo habilis -grade archaic humans outside of Africa. This hominin
8112-503: Is thought to have been propelled by coevolution with pollinating insects. Social insects appeared around the same time and, although they account for only small parts of the insect "family tree", now form over 50% of the total mass of all insects. Humans evolved from a lineage of upright-walking apes whose earliest fossils date from over 6 million years ago . Although early members of this lineage had chimp -sized brains, about 25% as big as modern humans', there are signs of
8281-486: Is with rabbit , one that Tolkien "emphatically rejected", although the word appears in The Hobbit in connection with other characters' opinions of Bilbo in several places. Bilbo compares himself to a rabbit when he is with the eagle that carries him; the eagle , too, tells Bilbo not to be "frightened like a rabbit". The giant bear-man Beorn teases Bilbo and jokes that "little bunny is getting nice and fat again", while
8450-481: The BBC , expressed the opinion that the restriction was to protect Jacob, who was considered "Indonesia's king of palaeoanthropology", from being proved wrong. Scientists were allowed to return to the cave in 2007, shortly after Jacob's death. Because of the deep neighbouring Lombok Strait , Flores remained an isolated island during episodes of low sea level. Therefore, the ancestors of H. floresiensis could only have reached
8619-651: The Big People . Still, Tolkien clearly states in "Concerning Hobbits" that hobbits are not technically a distinct race from Men, the way that Elves or Dwarves are, but branched off from other humans in the distant past of the Elder Days. Many eons later, but still early in the Third Age, the ancient hobbits lived in the valley of the Anduin River , close by the Éothéod , the ancestors of the Rohirrim. This led to some contact between
SECTION 50
#17330856093698788-452: The Homo erectus -origin hypothesis suggest makes the descent of H. floresiensis from these more primitive hominins unlikely. In 2006, two teams attempted to extract DNA from a tooth discovered in 2003, but both teams were unsuccessful. It has been suggested that this happened because the dentine was targeted; new research suggests that the cementum has higher concentrations of DNA. Moreover,
8957-725: The Indonesian island of Flores in 2004. The fossils, of a species named Homo floresiensis after the island on which the remains were found, were informally dubbed "Hobbits" by their discoverers in a series of articles published in the scientific journal Nature . The excavated skeletons reveal a hominid that (like a Hobbit) grew no larger than a three-year-old modern child and had proportionately larger feet than modern humans. Paleontologist Paleontology ( / ˌ p eɪ l i ɒ n ˈ t ɒ l ə dʒ i , ˌ p æ l i -, - ən -/ PAY -lee-on- TOL -ə-jee, PAL -ee-, -ən- ), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology ,
9126-567: The Middle Ages the Persian naturalist Ibn Sina , known as Avicenna in Europe, discussed fossils and proposed a theory of petrifying fluids on which Albert of Saxony elaborated in the 14th century. The Chinese naturalist Shen Kuo (1031–1095) proposed a theory of climate change based on the presence of petrified bamboo in regions that in his time were too dry for bamboo. In early modern Europe ,
9295-528: The Neogene - Quaternary . In deeper-level deposits in western Europe are early-aged mammals such as the palaeothere perissodactyl Palaeotherium and the anoplotheriid artiodactyl Anoplotherium , both of which were described earliest after the former two genera, which today are known to date to the Paleogene period. Cuvier figured out that even older than the two levels of deposits with extinct large mammals
9464-637: The Permian–Triassic extinction event . Amphibians Extinct Synapsids Mammals Extinct reptiles Lizards and snakes Extinct Archosaurs Crocodilians Extinct Dinosaurs Birds Naming groups of organisms in a way that is clear and widely agreed is important, as some disputes in paleontology have been based just on misunderstandings over names. Linnaean taxonomy is commonly used for classifying living organisms, but runs into difficulties when dealing with newly discovered organisms that are significantly different from known ones. For example: it
9633-513: The Permian–Triassic extinction event . A relatively recent discipline, molecular phylogenetics , compares the DNA and RNA of modern organisms to re-construct the "family trees" of their evolutionary ancestors. It has also been used to estimate the dates of important evolutionary developments, although this approach is controversial because of doubts about the reliability of the " molecular clock ". Techniques from engineering have been used to analyse how
9802-462: The australopithecines , such as Lucy , from three million years ago, not previously thought to have expanded beyond Africa. Thus, LB1 and LB8 may be the shortest and smallest members of the extended human group discovered thus far. Their short stature was likely due to insular dwarfism , where size decreases as a response to fewer resources in an island ecosystem. In 2006, Indonesian palaeoanthropologist Teuku Jacob and colleagues said that LB1 has
9971-454: The embryological development of some modern brachiopods suggests that brachiopods may be descendants of the halkieriids , which became extinct in the Cambrian period. Paleontology seeks to map out how living things have changed through time. A substantial hurdle to this aim is the difficulty of working out how old fossils are. Beds that preserve fossils typically lack the radioactive elements needed for radiometric dating . This technique
10140-521: The " jigsaw puzzles " of biostratigraphy (arrangement of rock layers from youngest to oldest). Classifying ancient organisms is also difficult, as many do not fit well into the Linnaean taxonomy classifying living organisms, and paleontologists more often use cladistics to draw up evolutionary "family trees". The final quarter of the 20th century saw the development of molecular phylogenetics , which investigates how closely organisms are related by measuring
10309-618: The 16th century, so Tolkien invented a calque made of English words. Donald O'Brien, writing in Mythlore , notes, too, that Aragorn 's description of Frodo 's priceless mithril mail -shirt, "here's a pretty hobbit-skin to wrap an elven -princeling in", is a "curious echo" of the English nursery rhyme " To find a pretty rabbit-skin to wrap the baby bunting in ." Tolkien has King Théoden of Rohan say "the Halflings, that some among us call
SECTION 60
#173308560936910478-463: The 18th century as a result of Georges Cuvier 's work on comparative anatomy , and developed rapidly in the 19th century. The term has been used since 1822 formed from Greek παλαιός ( 'palaios' , "old, ancient"), ὄν ( 'on' , ( gen. 'ontos' ), "being, creature"), and λόγος ( 'logos' , "speech, thought, study"). Paleontology lies on the border between biology and geology , but it differs from archaeology in that it excludes
10647-601: The 19th century caricaturist John Leech 's "wildly unflattering" depictions of the Irish in Punch magazine . The comic horror rock band Rosemary's Billygoat recorded a song and video called "Hobbit Feet", about a man who takes a girl home from a bar only to discover she has horrifying "hobbit feet". According to lead singer Mike Odd, the band received over 100 pieces of hate mail from angry Tolkien fans. The skeletal remains of several diminutive paleolithic hominids were discovered on
10816-664: The Angle formed by the rivers Mitheithel and Bruinen , the divisions between the hobbit-kinds began to blur. Shippey explains that the name "Angle" has a special resonance, as the name "England" comes from the Angle (Anglia) between the Flensburg Fjord and the River Schlei , in the north of Germany next to Denmark, the origin of the Angles among the Anglo-Saxons who founded England. Further,
10985-548: The Early Cambrian , along with several "weird wonders" that bear little obvious resemblance to any modern animals. There is a long-running debate about whether this Cambrian explosion was truly a very rapid period of evolutionary experimentation; alternative views are that modern-looking animals began evolving earlier but fossils of their precursors have not yet been found, or that the "weird wonders" are evolutionary "aunts" and "cousins" of modern groups. Vertebrates remained
11154-459: The Earth's organic and inorganic past". William Whewell (1794–1866) classified paleontology as one of the historical sciences, along with archaeology , geology, astronomy , cosmology , philology and history itself: paleontology aims to describe phenomena of the past and to reconstruct their causes. Hence it has three main elements: description of past phenomena; developing a general theory about
11323-621: The Fallohide brothers Marcho and Blancho, who settled and founded the Shire in TA 1601. Bilbo and three of the four principal hobbit characters in The Lord of the Rings ( Frodo , Pippin , and Merry ) had Fallohide blood through their common ancestor, the Old Took. The one physical description given for Frodo matches this, as Gandalf identifies him as "taller than some, and fairer than most". Tolkien created
11492-657: The Fallohides did, but instead of settling in Bree-land they headed farther south to Dunland by Third Age 1300, finally migrating to the newly founded Shire in Third Age 1630, the last of the three groups to arrive. The Stoors mostly settled along the banks of the River Brandywine in the east of the Shire, thus many hobbits of Buckland and the Marish were of Stoor descent. Due to the time the Stoors spent living in Dunland before migrating to
11661-621: The Gladden River met the Anduin, and were broader and heavier in build; and the Fallohides preferred to live in the woods under the Misty Mountains. They were described as fairer of skin and hair, as well as taller and slimmer than the rest of the hobbits. In the Third Age , hobbits undertook the arduous task of crossing the Misty Mountains - a migration period they refer to as the "Wandering Days",
11830-525: The Hobbits depicting a "peace-loving" community of H. floresiensis "enslaved by the Java Men, a race of flesh-eating dragon-riders." The film was intended to piggyback on the success of Peter Jackson 's film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey . The film was blocked from release due to a legal dispute about using the word "hobbit." The Asylum argued that the film did not violate the Tolkien copyright because
11999-457: The Holbytlan". Tolkien set out a fictional etymology for the word "Hobbit" in an appendix to The Lord of the Rings , that it was derived from holbytla (plural holbytlan ), meaning "hole-builder". This was Tolkien's own new construction from Old English hol , "a hole or hollow", and bytlan , "to build". Tolkien describes hobbits as between two and four feet (0.6–1.2 m) tall, with
12168-510: The LB1 endocast to a set of 100 normocephalic and 17 microcephalic endocasts showed that there is a wide variation in microcephalic brain shape ratios and that in these ratios the group as such is not clearly distinct from normocephalics. The LB1 brain shape nevertheless aligns slightly better with the microcephalic sample, with the shape at the extreme edge of the normocephalic group. A 2016 pathological analysis of LB1's skull revealed no pathologies nor evidence of microcephaly, and concluded that LB1
12337-667: The Marish, who founded the Oldbuck family. However, the Oldbuck family later crossed the Brandywine River to create the separate land of Buckland and the family name changed to the familiar "Brandybuck". Their patriarch then became Master of Buckland. With the departure of the Oldbucks/Brandybucks, a new family was selected to have its chieftains be Thain: the Took family (Pippin Took was son of
12506-603: The Old English word stor or stoor , meaning "strong". In his writings, Tolkien depicted hobbits as fond of an unadventurous, bucolic and simple life of farming, eating, and socializing, although capable of defending their homes courageously if the need arises. They would enjoy six meals a day, if they could get them. They claimed to have invented the art of smoking pipe-weed . They were extremely "clannish" and had strong "predilections for genealogy "; accordingly, Tolkien included several Hobbit family trees in The Lord of
12675-490: The Old Took are described as living to the age of 130 or beyond, though Bilbo's long lifespan owes much to his possession of the One Ring . Hobbits are considered to "come of age" on their 33rd birthday, so a 50-year-old hobbit would be regarded as entering middle-age. Tolkien devised a fictional history with three types of hobbits, with different physical characteristics and temperaments: Harfoots , Fallohides , and Stoors . By
12844-564: The Rings and The Hobbit made extensive use of prosthetics . Wētā Workshop spent a year creating hobbit feet to look like large, furry feet, yet act as shoes for the actors. In total, 1,800 pairs were worn by the four lead hobbit actors during production. In addition, actors went in for face casts to create pointed ears and false noses. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power , a series screened from 2022, has attracted "fierce debate" about its handling of race, and racism aimed at
13013-520: The Rings . Most hobbits married and had large families, although Bilbo and Frodo were exceptions to this general rule. The hobbits of the Shire developed the custom of giving away gifts on their birthdays, instead of receiving them, although this custom was not universally followed among other hobbit cultures or communities. The term mathom is used for old and useless objects, but which hobbits are unwilling to throw away. Mathoms are invariably given as presents many times over, sometimes returning to
13182-532: The Shire, their names have a slight Celtic influence. A small group of Stoors did not go as far south as Dunland but settled in the wetlands of the Angle in southern Rhudaur, between Dunland and Bree. When the evil power of Angmar rose in the north many of these Stoors joined their kin in Dunland, but some fled back east over the mountains and settled in the marshes of the Gladden Fields: Déagol and Sméagol/Gollum both belonged to this group. Tolkien used
13351-534: The Thain and would later become Thain himself). The Thain was in charge of Shire Moot and Muster and the Hobbitry-in-Arms, but as the hobbits of the Shire generally led entirely peaceful, uneventful lives the office of Thain came to be seen as something of a formality. Hobbits first appear in The Hobbit as the rural people of the Shire; the book tells of the unexpected adventure that happened to one of them, Bilbo, as
13520-412: The ability to reproduce. The earliest known animals are cnidarians from about 580 million years ago , but these are so modern-looking that they must be descendants of earlier animals. Early fossils of animals are rare because they had not developed mineralised , easily fossilized hard parts until about 548 million years ago . The earliest modern-looking bilaterian animals appear in
13689-431: The actors playing the Harfoots. The fantasy author Neil Gaiman , defending the casting, commented that "Tolkien described the Harfoots as "browner of skin" than the other Hobbits. So I think anyone grumbling is either racist or hasn't read their Tolkien." Commentators have observed that the hobbit-like Harfoots speak in Irish accents, behave as friendly peasants, and are accompanied by Celtic music ; and that they resemble
13858-515: The appearance of moderately complex animals (comparable to earthworms ). Geochemical observations may help to deduce the global level of biological activity at a certain period, or the affinity of certain fossils. For example, geochemical features of rocks may reveal when life first arose on Earth, and may provide evidence of the presence of eukaryotic cells, the type from which all multicellular organisms are built. Analyses of carbon isotope ratios may help to explain major transitions such as
14027-492: The arrival of Homo sapiens , Flores exhibited a depauperate ecosystem with relatively few terrestrial vertebrate species, including the extinct dwarf proboscidean (elephant relative) Stegodon florensis ; and a variety of rats ( Murinae ) including small-sized forms like Rattus hainaldi , the Polynesian rat , Paulamys , and Komodomys , the medium-sized Hooijeromys , and giant Papagomys and extinct Spelaeomys ,
14196-484: The article recommended that, despite her size, she should be placed in the genus Homo . In 2009, additional finds were reported, increasing the minimum number of individuals represented by bones to fourteen. In 2015, teeth were referred to a fifteenth individual, LB15. Stone implements of a size considered appropriate to these small humans are also widely present in the cave. The implements are at horizons initially dated to 95,000 to 13,000 years ago. Modern humans reached
14365-625: The atmosphere increased their effectiveness as nurseries of evolution. While eukaryotes , cells with complex internal structures, may have been present earlier, their evolution speeded up when they acquired the ability to transform oxygen from a poison to a powerful source of metabolic energy. This innovation may have come from primitive eukaryotes capturing oxygen-powered bacteria as endosymbionts and transforming them into organelles called mitochondria . The earliest evidence of complex eukaryotes with organelles (such as mitochondria) dates from 1,850 million years ago . Multicellular life
14534-572: The average adult height of even the smallest modern humans, such as the Mbenga and Mbuti at 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in), Twa , Semang at 1.37 m (4 ft 6 in) for adult women of the Malay Peninsula , or the Andamanese at also 1.37 m (4 ft 6 in) for adult women. LB1's body mass is estimated to have been 25 kg (55 lb). LB1 and LB8 are also somewhat smaller than
14703-412: The average height being three feet six inches (1.1 m). They dress in bright colours, favouring yellow and green. They are usually shy, but are nevertheless capable of great courage and amazing feats under the proper circumstances. They are adept at throwing stones. For the most part, they cannot grow beards, but a few Stoor hobbits can. Their feet are covered with curly hair (usually brown, as
14872-415: The bodies of ancient organisms might have worked, for example the running speed and bite strength of Tyrannosaurus , or the flight mechanics of Microraptor . It is relatively commonplace to study the internal details of fossils using X-ray microtomography . Paleontology, biology, archaeology, and paleoneurobiology combine to study endocranial casts (endocasts) of species related to humans to clarify
15041-454: The bridges and roads in repair. During the final fight against Angmar at the Battle of Fornost, the hobbits maintain that they sent a company of archers to help but this is nowhere else recorded. After the battle, the kingdom of Arnor was destroyed, and in the absence of the king, the hobbits elected a Thain of the Shire from among their own chieftains. The first Thain of the Shire was Bucca of
15210-401: The causes of various types of change; and applying those theories to specific facts. When trying to explain the past, paleontologists and other historical scientists often construct a set of one or more hypotheses about the causes and then look for a " smoking gun ", a piece of evidence that strongly accords with one hypothesis over any others. Sometimes researchers discover a "smoking gun" by
15379-408: The cave stratigraphy is close to the time that modern humans reached the area, which may suggest the effects of modern humans directly on H. floresiensis or more broadly on the ecosystems of Flores caused or contributed to their extinction. DNA analysis of pygmy modern humans from Flores has found no evidence of any DNA from H. floresiensis . During the late Early Pleistocene-Late Pleistocene before
15548-763: The characteristics and evolution of humans as a species. When dealing with evidence about humans, archaeologists and paleontologists may work together – for example paleontologists might identify animal or plant fossils around an archaeological site , to discover the people who lived there, and what they ate; or they might analyze the climate at the time of habitation. In addition, paleontology often borrows techniques from other sciences, including biology, osteology , ecology, chemistry , physics and mathematics. For example, geochemical signatures from rocks may help to discover when life first arose on Earth, and analyses of carbon isotope ratios may help to identify climate changes and even to explain major transitions such as
15717-520: The chronological order in which rocks were formed, is useful to both paleontologists and geologists. Biogeography studies the spatial distribution of organisms, and is also linked to geology, which explains how Earth's geography has changed over time. Although paleontology became established around 1800, earlier thinkers had noticed aspects of the fossil record. The ancient Greek philosopher Xenophanes (570–480 BCE) concluded from fossil sea shells that some areas of land were once under water. During
15886-517: The colour of the Brandywine River, and the nature of the bricks made at Stock, the main Shire brickyard. Hobbit architecture favours round doors and windows. Tolkien likened his own tastes to those of hobbits in a 1958 letter: I am in fact a Hobbit in all but size. I like gardens, trees, and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like, and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of
16055-507: The condition of the returned remains: "[including] long, deep cuts marking the lower edge of the Hobbit's jaw on both sides, said to be caused by a knife used to cut away the rubber mould ... the chin of a second Hobbit jaw was snapped off and glued back together. Whoever was responsible misaligned the pieces and put them at an incorrect angle ... The pelvis was smashed, destroying details that reveal body shape, gait and evolutionary history.", causing
16224-445: The date when lineages first appeared. For instance, if fossils of B or C date to X million years ago and the calculated "family tree" says A was an ancestor of B and C, then A must have evolved more than X million years ago. It is also possible to estimate how long ago two living clades diverged – i.e. approximately how long ago their last common ancestor must have lived – by assuming that DNA mutations accumulate at
16393-586: The development of mammalian traits such as endothermy and hair. After the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago killed off all the dinosaurs except the birds, mammals increased rapidly in size and diversity, and some took to the air and the sea. Fossil evidence indicates that flowering plants appeared and rapidly diversified in the Early Cretaceous between 130 million years ago and 90 million years ago . Their rapid rise to dominance of terrestrial ecosystems
16562-551: The development of the body plans of most animal phyla . The discovery of fossils of the Ediacaran biota and developments in paleobiology extended knowledge about the history of life back far before the Cambrian. Increasing awareness of Gregor Mendel 's pioneering work in genetics led first to the development of population genetics and then in the mid-20th century to the modern evolutionary synthesis , which explains evolution as
16731-477: The different levels of deposits represented different time periods in the early 19th century. The surface-level deposits in the Americas contained later mammals like the megatheriid ground sloth Megatherium and the mammutid proboscidean Mammut (later known informally as a "mastodon"), which were some of the earliest-named fossil mammal genera with official taxonomic authorities. They today are known to date to
16900-511: The discoverers suggested naming the species H. hobbitus . In October 2012, a New Zealand scientist due to give a public lecture on Homo floresiensis was told by the Tolkien Estate that he was not allowed to use the word "hobbit" in promoting the lecture. In 2012, the American film studio The Asylum , which produces low-budget " mockbuster " films, planned to release a movie entitled Age of
17069-431: The discovery team leader Morwood to remark, "It's sickening; Jacob was greedy and acted totally irresponsibly." Jacob, however, denied any wrongdoing. He stated that the damages occurred during transport from Yogyakarta back to Jakarta despite the claimed physical evidence that the jawbone had been broken while making a mould of the bones. In 2005, Indonesian officials forbade access to the cave. Some news media, such as
17238-444: The dwarf Thorin shakes Bilbo "like a rabbit". Shippey writes that the rabbit is not a native English species, but was deliberately introduced in the 13th century, and has become accepted as a local wild animal. Shippey compares this "situation of anachronism -cum-familiarity" with the lifestyle of the Hobbit, giving the example of smoking "pipeweed". He argues that Tolkien did not want to write " tobacco ", as it did not arrive until
17407-520: The earliest remembered time in their history. Reasons for this trek are unknown, but they possibly had to do with Sauron 's growing power in nearby Greenwood, which later became known as Mirkwood as a result of the shadow that fell upon it during his search of the forest for the One Ring. Hobbits took different routes in their journey westward, but as they began to settle together in Bree-land , Dunland , and
17576-409: The end of the 20th century have been particularly important as they have provided new information about the earliest evolution of animals, early fish, dinosaurs and the evolution of birds. The last few decades of the 20th century saw a renewed interest in mass extinctions and their role in the evolution of life on Earth. There was also a renewed interest in the Cambrian explosion that apparently saw
17745-412: The end of the Third Age most hobbits outside The Shire could be found in their village of Staddle on the southeastern slopes of Bree-hill. However, some also lived with Men in the village of Bree itself and in nearby Archet and Combe. Originally the hobbits of the Shire swore nominal allegiance to the last Kings of Arnor, being required only to acknowledge their lordship, speed their messengers, and keep
17914-410: The evolution of the human brain. Paleontology even contributes to astrobiology , the investigation of possible life on other planets , by developing models of how life may have arisen and by providing techniques for detecting evidence of life. As knowledge has increased, paleontology has developed specialised subdivisions. Vertebrate paleontology concentrates on fossils from the earliest fish to
18083-466: The evolutionary history of life back to over 3,000 million years ago , possibly as far as 3,800 million years ago . The oldest clear evidence of life on Earth dates to 3,000 million years ago , although there have been reports, often disputed, of fossil bacteria from 3,400 million years ago and of geochemical evidence for the presence of life 3,800 million years ago . Some scientists have proposed that life on Earth
18252-555: The exceptional events that cause quick burial make it difficult to study the normal environments of the animals. The sparseness of the fossil record means that organisms are expected to exist long before and after they are found in the fossil record – this is known as the Signor–Lipps effect . Trace fossils consist mainly of tracks and burrows, but also include coprolites (fossil feces ) and marks left by feeding. Trace fossils are particularly significant because they represent
18421-407: The existence of some features found in LB1, such as the lack of a chin, but Jacob and other research teams argue that these features do not distinguish LB1 from local modern humans. Lyras et al. have asserted, based on 3D- morphometrics , that the skull of LB1 differs significantly from all H. sapiens skulls, including those of small-bodied individuals and microcephalics, and is more similar to
18590-472: The extinct elephant-relative Stegodon . It has therefore been proposed that H. floresiensis hunted juvenile Stegodon . Similar artefacts are found at the Soa Basin 50 km (31 mi) south, associated with Stegodon and Komodo dragon remains, and are attributed to a likely ancestral population of H. erectus . Other authors have doubted the extent of hunting of Stegodon by H. floresiensis , noting
18759-587: The film was about H. floresiensis , "uniformly referred to as 'Hobbits' in the scientific community." The film was later retitled Clash of the Empires . Hobbit Hobbits are a fictional race of people in the novels of J. R. R. Tolkien . About half average human height, Tolkien presented hobbits as a variety of humanity, or close relatives thereof. Occasionally known as halflings in Tolkien's writings, they live barefooted, and traditionally dwell in homely underground houses which have windows, built into
18928-419: The finds are indeed a new species. In 2007, Falk found that H. floresiensis brains were similar in shape to modern humans, and the frontal and temporal lobes were well-developed, which would not have been the case were they microcephalic. In 2008, Greek palaeontologist George Lyras and colleagues said that LB1 falls outside the range of variation for human microcephalic skulls. However, a 2013 comparison of
19097-504: The focus of paleontology shifted to understanding evolutionary paths, including human evolution , and evolutionary theory. The last half of the 19th century saw a tremendous expansion in paleontological activity, especially in North America. The trend continued in the 20th century with additional regions of the Earth being opened to systematic fossil collection. Fossils found in China near
19266-449: The following: At the end of the 18th century Georges Cuvier 's work established comparative anatomy as a scientific discipline and, by proving that some fossil animals resembled no living ones, demonstrated that animals could become extinct , leading to the emergence of paleontology. The expanding knowledge of the fossil record also played an increasing role in the development of geology, particularly stratigraphy . Cuvier proved that
19435-580: The fossil record: different environments are more favorable to the preservation of different types of organism or parts of organisms. Further, only the parts of organisms that were already mineralised are usually preserved, such as the shells of molluscs. Since most animal species are soft-bodied, they decay before they can become fossilised. As a result, although there are 30-plus phyla of living animals, two-thirds have never been found as fossils. Occasionally, unusual environments may preserve soft tissues. These lagerstätten allow paleontologists to examine
19604-582: The hall of Bilbo's home, Bag End , shows both a clock and a barometer (mentioned in an early draft), and he had another clock on his mantelpiece . To arrange a party, hobbits rely on a daily postal service . The effect, the scholars agree, is to bring the reader comfortably into the ancient heroic world. Dungeons & Dragons began using the name halfling as an alternative to hobbit for legal reasons. Fantasy authors including Terry Brooks , Jack Vance , and Clifford D. Simak use races of halflings. Peter Jackson 's films of The Lord of
19773-489: The heat generated by the high speed of the drill bit may have denatured the DNA. The small brain size of H. floresiensis at 417 cc prompted hypotheses that the specimens were simply H. sapiens with a birth defect, rather than the result of neurological reorganisation. These claims have subsequently been widely rejected. Prior to Jacob's removal of the fossils, American neuroanthropologist Dean Falk and her colleagues performed
19942-675: The history and driving forces behind their evolution. Land plants were so successful that their detritus caused an ecological crisis in the Late Devonian , until the evolution of fungi that could digest dead wood. During the Permian period, synapsids , including the ancestors of mammals , may have dominated land environments, but this ended with the Permian–Triassic extinction event 251 million years ago , which came very close to wiping out all complex life. The extinctions were apparently fairly sudden, at least among vertebrates. During
20111-521: The history of Earth's climate and the mechanisms that have changed it – which have sometimes included evolutionary developments, for example the rapid expansion of land plants in the Devonian period removed more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, reducing the greenhouse effect and thus helping to cause an ice age in the Carboniferous period. Biostratigraphy , the use of fossils to work out
20280-459: The human race, or a "variety" or separate "branch" of humanity. In Tolkien's fictional world, hobbits and other races are aware of the similarities between humans and hobbits (hence the colloquial terms for each other of " Big People " and "Little People"); nevertheless, hobbits consider themselves a separate people. The race's average life expectancy is 100 years, but some of Tolkien's main Hobbit characters live much longer: Bilbo Baggins and
20449-542: The immediate ancestors of modern mammals . Invertebrate paleontology deals with fossils such as molluscs , arthropods , annelid worms and echinoderms . Paleobotany studies fossil plants , algae , and fungi. Palynology , the study of pollen and spores produced by land plants and protists , straddles paleontology and botany , as it deals with both living and fossil organisms. Micropaleontology deals with microscopic fossil organisms of all kinds. Instead of focusing on individual organisms, paleoecology examines
20618-434: The index fossils turn out to have longer fossil ranges than first thought. Stratigraphy and biostratigraphy can in general provide only relative dating ( A was before B ), which is often sufficient for studying evolution. However, this is difficult for some time periods, because of the problems involved in matching up rocks of the same age across different continents . Family-tree relationships may also help to narrow down
20787-538: The interactions between different ancient organisms, such as their food chains , and the two-way interactions with their environments. For example, the development of oxygenic photosynthesis by bacteria caused the oxygenation of the atmosphere and hugely increased the productivity and diversity of ecosystems . Together, these led to the evolution of complex eukaryotic cells, from which all multicellular organisms are built. Paleoclimatology , although sometimes treated as part of paleoecology, focuses more on
20956-463: The internal anatomy of animals that in other sediments are represented only by shells, spines, claws, etc. – if they are preserved at all. However, even lagerstätten present an incomplete picture of life at the time. The majority of organisms living at the time are probably not represented because lagerstätten are restricted to a narrow range of environments, e.g. where soft-bodied organisms can be preserved very quickly by events such as mudslides; and
21125-456: The investigation of evolutionary "family trees" by techniques derived from biochemistry , began to make an impact, particularly when it was proposed that the human lineage had diverged from apes much more recently than was generally thought at the time. Although this early study compared proteins from apes and humans, most molecular phylogenetics research is now based on comparisons of RNA and DNA . Fossils of organisms' bodies are usually
21294-512: The island by oceanic dispersal , most likely by rafting . The oldest stone tools on Flores are around 1 million years old. Stone artifacts are absent from sites over 1.27 million years old, suggesting that the ancestors of H . floresiensis arrived after this time. In 2016, fossil teeth and a partial jaw from hominins assumed to be ancestral to H. floresiensis were discovered at Mata Menge , about 74 km (46 mi) from Liang Bua. They date to about 700,000 years ago. Other remains including
21463-627: The island. Congenital iodine deficiency syndrome, caused by iodine deficiency , is expressed by small bodies and reduced brain size (but ME causes less motor and mental disablement than other forms of congenital iodine deficiency syndrome), and is a form of dwarfism still found in the local Indonesian population. They said that various features of H. floresiensis are diagnostic characteristics, such as enlarged pituitary fossa , unusually straight and untwisted humeral heads, relatively thick limbs, double rooted premolar, and primitive wrist morphology. However, Falk's scans of LB1's pituitary fossa show that it
21632-522: The latter two genera being about the size of rabbits, with body masses of 600–2,500 grams (1.3–5.5 lb). Also present were the Komodo dragon and another smaller monitor lizard ( Varanus hooijeri ), with birds including a giant stork ( Leptoptilos robustus ) and a vulture ( Trigonoceps ). Homo floresiensis was swiftly nicknamed "the hobbit " by the discoverers, after the fictional race popularized in J. R. R. Tolkien 's book The Hobbit , and some of
21801-409: The logic that, if groups B and C have more similarities to each other than either has to group A, then B and C are more closely related to each other than either is to A. Characters that are compared may be anatomical , such as the presence of a notochord , or molecular , by comparing sequences of DNA or proteins . The result of a successful analysis is a hierarchy of clades – groups that share
21970-651: The migrations of the three types of hobbit mirror those of England's founders. In the year 1601 of the Third Age (year 1 in the Shire Reckoning), two Fallohide brothers named Marcho and Blanco gained permission from the King of Arnor at Fornost to cross the River Brandywine and settle on the other side. The new land that they founded on the west bank of the Brandywine was called The Shire. Many hobbits followed them, and by
22139-481: The modern world known to readers and the heroic ancient world of Middle-earth. Halflings appear as a race in Dungeons & Dragons , and the works of other fantasy authors including Terry Brooks , Jack Vance , and Clifford D. Simak . Tolkien claimed that he started The Hobbit suddenly, without premeditation, in the midst of grading a set of student essay exams in 1930 or 1931, writing its famous opening line on
22308-409: The most informative type of evidence. The most common types are wood, bones, and shells. Fossilisation is a rare event, and most fossils are destroyed by erosion or metamorphism before they can be observed. Hence the fossil record is very incomplete, increasingly so further back in time. Despite this, it is often adequate to illustrate the broader patterns of life's history. There are also biases in
22477-425: The most typical of the race as described in The Hobbit . They lived in holes , or smials , and had closer relations with Dwarves than other hobbits did. Harfoots tended to live in gentle rolling hill country, and were mostly agrarian. They were the first group to cross the Misty Mountains, settling in the lands around Bree starting in Third Age 1050 (about 2,000 years before the time of Bilbo and Frodo, and five and
22646-448: The name from the archaic meanings of English words "fallow" and "hide", meaning "pale skin". The Stoors were the second most numerous group of hobbits and the last to enter Eriador. They were quite different from the other two groups: they were stockier than other hobbits, though slightly shorter, and they were also the only group whose males were able to grow beards. They had an affinity for water, dwelt mostly beside rivers , and were
22815-501: The only hobbits to use boats and swim, activities which other hobbits considered dangerous and frightening. Their hands and feet were also sturdier than those of other hobbits, who generally didn't wear shoes for cushioning their steps, though because the Stoors tended to live near muddy riverbanks they often wore boots to keep their feet dry, making them the only hobbits to use footwear of any kind. Tolkien says they were "less shy of Men ". The Stoors migrated into Eriador two centuries after
22984-422: The original designation of a new species, or whether they identify LB1 as a severely pathological H. sapiens . A 2015 study of the dental morphology of forty teeth of H. floresiensis compared to 450 teeth of living and extinct human species, states that they had "primitive canine-premolar and advanced molar morphologies," which is unique among hominins. The discovery of additional partial skeletons has verified
23153-442: The original owner, or are stored in a museum ( mathom-house ). The hobbits had a distinct calendar : every year started on a Saturday and ended on a Friday, with each of the twelve months consisting of thirty days. Some special days did not belong to any month— Yule 1 and 2 (New Year's Eve & New Years Day) and three Lithedays in mid-summer. Every fourth year there was an extra Litheday, most likely as an adaptation, similar to
23322-508: The other breeds and preferred living in woodlands, where they became skilled huntsmen, known for their accuracy with ranged weapons. They had closer relations with Elves , who also tended to live in forests. Due to their contact with the Elves, Fallohides were the first hobbits to learn literacy, and therefore were the only ones who preserved even vague knowledge of their past before crossing the Misty Mountains. The Fallohides crossed into Eriador about
23491-414: The outcome of events such as mutations and horizontal gene transfer , which provide genetic variation , with genetic drift and natural selection driving changes in this variation over time. Within the next few years the role and operation of DNA in genetic inheritance were discovered, leading to what is now known as the "Central Dogma" of molecular biology . In the 1960s molecular phylogenetics ,
23660-452: The principal types of evidence about ancient life, and geochemical evidence has helped to decipher the evolution of life before there were organisms large enough to leave body fossils. Estimating the dates of these remains is essential but difficult: sometimes adjacent rock layers allow radiometric dating , which provides absolute dates that are accurate to within 0.5%, but more often paleontologists have to rely on relative dating by solving
23829-432: The radioactive element was incorporated into the rock. Radioactive elements are common only in rocks with a volcanic origin, and so the only fossil-bearing rocks that can be dated radiometrically are a few volcanic ash layers. Consequently, paleontologists must usually rely on stratigraphy to date fossils. Stratigraphy is the science of deciphering the "layer-cake" that is the sedimentary record, and has been compared to
23998-456: The rarity of cut marks on remains of Stegodon found at Liang Bua, suggesting that they would have faced intense competition for carcasses with other predators, like the Komodo dragon, the giant stork Leptoptilos robustus , and vultures, and that it was possible that their main prey was instead the giant rats like Papagomys endemic to the island, which are found abundantly at Liang Bua. While it
24167-629: The region by around 50,000 years ago, by which time H. floresiensis is thought to have gone extinct. Comparisons of the stone artifacts with those made by modern humans in East Timor indicate many technological similarities. The fossils are property of the Indonesian state. In early December 2004, Indonesian paleoanthropologist Teuku Jacob , formerly chief paleontologist of the Indonesian Gadjah Mada University , removed most of
24336-401: The remains from their repository, Jakarta 's National Research Centre of Archaeology, with the permission of one of the institute's directors, Raden Panji Soejono , and kept them for three months. Professor Jacob did not believe the specimens represented a different species, contending that the LB1 find was from a 25–30 year-old omnivorous subspecies of H. sapiens , probably a pygmy, and that
24505-550: The remains of other individuals at the Flores site were merely normal modern humans. However, there are a number of characteristics shared by both LB1 and LB6 as well as other known early humans and absent in H. sapiens , such as the lack of a chin. In 2016, a comparative study concluded that LB1 did not exhibit a sufficient number of Down syndrome characteristics to support a diagnosis. The most important and obvious identifying features of Homo floresiensis are its small body and small cranial capacity. Brown and Morwood also identified
24674-618: The rest of the body. As a result, when walking, they would have had to bend the knees further back than modern humans do. This caused a high-stepping gait and slow walking speed. The toes were thin, long, and halluces were almost indistinguishable from the other metatarsals. The cave yielded over ten thousand stone artefacts, mainly lithic flakes , surprising considering H. floresiensis ' s small brain. This has led some researchers to theorize that H. floresiensis inherited their tool-making skills from H. erectus . Points, perforators, blades , and microblades were associated with remains of
24843-430: The result of evolutionary reversals/convergence. It has been noted that there is no evidence archaic humans in the adjacent (and likely source) region of Java earlier than 1.3-1.5 or 1.8 million years ago, with the earliest human presence on Java being represented by Homo erectus , with there also being no evidence of Australopithecus or Homo habilis -grade archaic humans anywhere outside of Africa, which supporters of
25012-457: The right must hereafter be waged only on the moral plane". Tolkien scholars including Shippey and Dimitra Fimi have stated that the hobbits are misfits in Middle-earth's heroic cultures like Gondor and Rohan . Those have a basis in ancient societies such as ancient Rome and the Anglo-Saxons . In contrast, Tolkien placed the Shire in a society he had personally experienced, "more or less
25181-701: The same approach as historical scientists: construct a set of hypotheses about the causes and then look for a "smoking gun". Paleontology lies between biology and geology since it focuses on the record of past life, but its main source of evidence is fossils in rocks. For historical reasons, paleontology is part of the geology department at many universities: in the 19th and early 20th centuries, geology departments found fossil evidence important for dating rocks, while biology departments showed little interest. Paleontology also has some overlap with archaeology , which primarily works with objects made by humans and with human remains, while paleontologists are interested in
25350-573: The shoulders slightly forward into an almost shrugging position. The shrugging position would have compensated for the lower range of motion in the arm, allowing for similar maneuverability in the elbows as in modern humans. The wrist bones are similar to those of apes and Australopithecus . They were significantly smaller and more flexible than the carpals of modern humans, lacking contemporary features which evolved at least 800,000 years ago. The leg bones were more robust than those of modern humans. The feet were unusually flat and large in relation with
25519-629: The sides of hills, though others live in houses. Their feet have naturally tough leathery soles (so they do not need shoes) and are covered on top with curly hair. Hobbits first appeared in the 1937 children's novel The Hobbit , whose titular Hobbit is the protagonist Bilbo Baggins , who is thrown into an unexpected adventure involving a dragon . In its sequel, The Lord of the Rings , the hobbits Frodo Baggins , Sam Gamgee , Pippin Took , and Merry Brandybuck are primary characters who all play key roles in fighting to save their world (" Middle-earth ") from evil. In The Hobbit , hobbits live together in
25688-478: The similarity of the DNA in their genomes . Molecular phylogenetics has also been used to estimate the dates when species diverged, but there is controversy about the reliability of the molecular clock on which such estimates depend. The simplest definition of "paleontology" is "the study of ancient life". The field seeks information about several aspects of past organisms: "their identity and origin, their environment and evolution, and what they can tell us about
25857-444: The skeletal remains were from archaeological horizons ranging from 50,000 to 190,000 years ago. Other earlier remains from Mata Menge date to around 700,000 years ago. The first specimens were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores on 2 September 2003 by a joint Australian-Indonesian team of archaeologists looking for evidence of the original human migration of modern humans from Asia to Australia . They instead recovered
26026-468: The skull of Homo erectus . Ian Tattersall argues that the species is wrongly classified as Homo floresiensis as it is far too archaic to assign to the genus Homo . LB1's height is estimated to have been 1.06 m (3 ft 6 in). The height of a second skeleton, LB8, has been estimated at 1.09 m (3 ft 7 in) based on tibial length. These estimates are outside the range of normal modern human height and considerably shorter than
26195-465: The slow recovery from this catastrophe a previously obscure group, archosaurs , became the most abundant and diverse terrestrial vertebrates. One archosaur group, the dinosaurs, were the dominant land vertebrates for the rest of the Mesozoic , and birds evolved from one group of dinosaurs. During this time mammals' ancestors survived only as small, mainly nocturnal insectivores , which may have accelerated
26364-447: The small body size being the result of insular dwarfism , a well known evolutionary trend found among various island animals. These authors alternatively suggest that H. floresiensis has several cranial and dental similarities to H. erectus , particularly to early Javanese Homo erectus. These authors also dispute some of the similarities to Australopithecus and Homo habilis -grade archaic humans, and suggest that others may have been
26533-613: The small skull was due to microcephaly , which produces a small brain and skull. Professor Richard Roberts of the University of Wollongong in Australia and other anthropologists expressed the fear that important scientific evidence would be sequestered by a small group of scientists who neither allowed access by other scientists nor published their own research. Jacob returned the remains on 23 February 2005 with portions severely damaged and missing two leg bones. Press reports thus described
26702-406: The source that it supposed Tolkien to have used: James Hardy wrote in his 1895 The Denham Tracts, Volume 2 : "The whole earth was overrun with ghosts, boggles ... hobbits, hobgoblins." Shippey writes that the list was of ghostly creatures without bodies, nothing like Tolkien's solid flesh-and-blood hobbits. Tolkien scholars consider it unlikely that Tolkien saw the list. An additional connection
26871-437: The stomach, shortish in the leg. A round, jovial face; ears only slightly pointed and 'elvish'; hair short and curling (brown). The feet from the ankles down, covered with brown hairy fur. Clothing: green velvet breeches; red or yellow waistcoat; brown or green jacket; gold (or brass) buttons; [and specifically for Bilbo, in The Hobbit ] a dark green hood and cloak (belonging to a dwarf). Tolkien presented hobbits as relatives of
27040-631: The study of anatomically modern humans . It now uses techniques drawn from a wide range of sciences, including biochemistry , mathematics , and engineering. Use of all these techniques has enabled paleontologists to discover much of the evolutionary history of life , almost back to when Earth became capable of supporting life, nearly 4 billion years ago. As knowledge has increased, paleontology has developed specialised sub-divisions, some of which focus on different types of fossil organisms while others study ecology and environmental history, such as ancient climates . Body fossils and trace fossils are
27209-454: The style of language used by hobbits, and to their material culture of "umbrellas, camping kettles, matches, clocks, pocket handkerchiefs and fireworks", all of which are plainly modern, as are the fish and chips that Sam Gamgee thinks of on his journey to Mordor . Most striking, in her view, however, is Tolkien's description of the enormous dragon firework at Bilbo's party which rushed overhead "like an express train". Tolkien's drawing of
27378-617: The systematic study of fossils emerged as an integral part of the changes in natural philosophy that occurred during the Age of Reason . In the Italian Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci made various significant contributions to the field as well as depicted numerous fossils. Leonardo's contributions are central to the history of paleontology because he established a line of continuity between the two main branches of paleontology – ichnology and body fossil paleontology. He identified
27547-404: The time of Bilbo and Frodo, these kinds had intermixed for centuries, though unevenly, so that some families and regions skewed more towards descent from one of the three groups. The Harfoots were by far the most numerous group of hobbits and were the first to enter the land of Eriador , which contains the Shire and Bree. They were the smallest in stature, "browner of skin" in complexion, and
27716-514: The two, and as a result many old words and names in "Hobbitish" are derivatives of words in Rohirric (which Tolkien "translated" into his text by presenting it as Old English). The Harfoots lived on the lowest slopes of the Misty Mountains in Hobbit-holes dug into the hillsides. They were not only smaller and shorter, but also beard- and bootless. The Stoors lived on the marshy Gladden Fields where
27885-445: The use of fire, butchering, and stone tool manufacturing. The angle of humeral torsion was lesser than in modern humans. The humeral head of modern humans is twisted between 145 and 165 degrees to the plane of the elbow joint, whereas it is 120 degrees in H. floresiensis . This may have provided an advantage when arm-swinging, and, in tandem with the unusual morphology of the shoulder girdle and short clavicle , would have displaced
28054-406: The word "palaeontology" to refer to the study of ancient living organisms through fossils. As knowledge of life's history continued to improve, it became increasingly obvious that there had been some kind of successive order to the development of life. This encouraged early evolutionary theories on the transmutation of species . After Charles Darwin published Origin of Species in 1859, much of
28223-454: Was "seeded" from elsewhere , but most research concentrates on various explanations of how life could have arisen independently on Earth. For about 2,000 million years microbial mats , multi-layered colonies of different bacteria, were the dominant life on Earth. The evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis enabled them to play the major role in the oxygenation of the atmosphere from about 2,400 million years ago . This change in
28392-419: Was at first considered remarkable for its survival until relatively recent times, initially thought to be only 12,000 years ago. However, more extensive stratigraphic and chronological work has pushed the dating of the most recent evidence of its existence back to 50,000 years ago. The Homo floresiensis skeletal material at Liang Bua is now dated from 60,000 to 100,000 years ago; stone tools recovered alongside
28561-418: Was initially suggested that H. floresiensis was capable of using fire, the supporting evidence for this claim was later found to be unreliable. The youngest H. floresiensis bone remains in the cave date to 60,000 years ago, and the youngest stone tools to 50,000 years ago. The previous estimate of 12,000 BP was due to an undetected unconformity in the cave stratigraphy. The timing of their disappearance from
#368631