Let There be Hobbits

Over the last several years there has been a controversy brewing over the discovery of fossils that point towards a race of hobbits...

In Flores, Indonesia, during 2003 scientists found a partial skull that appeared to be that of a newly discovered race of humans that they dubbed "hobbits". H. floresiensis stood about 3 feet tall and had the brain capacity of a chimp. It was decided that it was a subspecies of homo sapien similar to cro magnum man.

But more recently several legitimate scientists are questioning these findings. They feel that the more likely explanation and the evidence points to either a group of humans similar to pygmys or suffered from a disease known as microcephaly.

Because of the tremendous fascination the public has regarding our ancestry, a fossil hunter who finds a “human” fossil that seems to be unique receives much fame and fortune. The person who finds the second such fossil doesn’t even get a cigar. Thus, there is great incentive to be the first to find something new. Since the discoverer of such fossils “owns them” until he has thoroughly studied them and published his findings, all a paleoanthropologist has to do when he publishes is to build his case. No committee or board of scientists evaluates his fossils or his claims before the discovering scientist publishes. Only after he publishes does the scientific community decide if his case has any merit. If the scientific community later decides that he really hasn’t found anything new, the discoverer still has most of his fame and fortune. Hence, there is a tremendous advantage in making extravagant claims for newly discovered fossils, whereas the downside penalty is negligible. This has been the history of human fossil hunting, and it appears to be what is going on with the hobbits. However, after sober reflection by evolutionists, the claims for these fossils are becoming less sensational.

Please remember what I said over a month ago when I talked on Presuppositions. We all go into this type of research with them. The scientists who discovered these bones wanted to have the glory of a new find and not just another set of bones. They also were working with the assumption that evolution is true and therefore there must be evidence out there to support it.

When scientists reach the news with new discoveries to support evolution lets remember that there may be more than one way to tell the story.

Links
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"Hobbits" were real!
Scientists scuttle claims