Hobbits Walk Was Distinctive
Posted by: Loren Coleman on April 16th, 2008
Tolkien’s hobbits walked an awful long way, but the real “hobbit”, Homo floresiensis, would not have got far.
Its flat, clown-like feet probably limited its speed to what we would consider a stroll, and kept its travels short, says Bill Jungers, an anthropologist at the State University of New York in Stony Brook.
“It’s never going to win the 100-yard dash, and it’s never going to win the marathon,” he says.
He presented his conclusion at last week’s meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Columbus, Ohio.
By analysing the nearly complete left foot of an 18,000-year-old hobbit skeleton dubbed LB1, found on the Indonesian island of Flores , Jungers’ team estimated the length of the hobbit’s feet, which were unusually large for its metre-high frame. “Sort of like a young girl wearing her mum’s shoes,” Junger says.
And because of their long feet, H. floresiensis probably had to bend its knee further back than modern humans do, resulting in a sort of high-stepped gait. “You would watch these hobbits walk and say they’re walking a little funny,” Jungers says.
The foot had other peculiar features as well. For one, its big toe was quite short compared with the others, similar to earlier hominids such as Australopithecus. However, the shape of the toes, even the short big toe, is like modern human ones, Jungers says. “It has a human morphology and an ape-like proportion,” he says.
Jungers and other researchers who claim the hobbit was a distinct species from Homo sapiens point to the foot as further evidence supporting their theory. It has been suggested that the hobbit suffered from a severe block to growth known as cretinism or a disease called microcephaly that leads to miniaturised heads.
“It puts another nail in the coffin of the disease hypothesis,” says Henry McHenry, an anthropologist at the University of California, Davis who saw the presentation.
But the feet don’t solve the bigger mystery of where H. floresiensis originated, McHenry says. “It’s so strange,” he muses.
Source: “Flores ‘hobbit’ walked more like a clown than Frodo,” by Ewen Callaway, April 16, 2008, New Scientist.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
The Flores Islanders’ legends/accounts of the “Ebu Gogo,” which may be the same creature as Homo floresiensis, include the detail that they walked with a somewhat awkward gait.
Most people I know who are “dwarfish” or a “midget” walk a little funny. Usually the legs (or something right around there) is out of proportion. May be the reason they aren’t here right now (that we know of).
One could conclude that such an hominid would compensate its lack of mobility with a keen talent for concealment and camouflage.
Umm, the Australopithicines had completely ape-like feet. Perhaps the author was confusing them with whomever made the Laetoli footprints.
Is cretinism or microcephaly different than parathyroid dwarfism?
Other very short pygmy remains have been found in other Indonesian islands, and basically there is nothing about the Floresian hobbits to definitely suggest a different species, rather than traits present in modern humans. I think what we have here is the quest for prizes, and ideological battles.