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The RELICT HOMINOID INQUIRY 1:83-86 (2012) Comments & Response Forth, G. (2012) Are legendary hominoids worth looking for? Views from ethnobiology and paleoanthropology. Anthropology Today 38(2):13-16. Comments the Nage of central Flores) are alleged to have been killed in a violent clash with local people Gregory Forth has and buried in a single grave at an unknown made an interesting case time in the past (Erb 1987). The existence of for the possible present a putative grave provides an extraordinary or recent existence of an opportunity to test two hypotheses: firstly, that unknown hominin on the hominins reported by the people of Flores Flores, Indonesia, based are based upon a once-living form, as opposed on over 25 years of to the more conventional anthropological view research on that island. It that all such reports reflect beliefs in is clear from Forth’s imaginary or non-empirical beings; and research that Flores secondly, that these hominins represent H. people regard these floresiensis or something similar. While it is hominins as part of their natural landscape and disappointing that work at this site must be not as elements of their spiritual world. postponed, there are other sites associated Of further interest is the similarity between with these hominins that could be the focus of the characteristics of locally described archaeological investigation, including hominins and H. floresiensis, for example, reported graves elsewhere in Indonesia that short stature, prognathic faces, no chin, may provide further opportunities to test these relatively long arms. Certainly as a hypotheses. It is hoped that investigations will paleoanthropologist I was intrigued when I proceed in forthcoming field seasons. read the accounts of sightings and the descriptions of these purported hominins in Debbie Argue Forth's 2008 monograph. Nevertheless, such Australian National University comparisons must be considered as inferential at best. It is impossible to test whether these Gregory Forth's recent article, Are forms are H. floresiensis or something similar Legendary Hominoids Worth Looking For? solely by comparing known characters (H. (Anthropology Today 28(2): April 2012) is a floresiensis) with purported characters must-read for sociocultural anthropologists (unknown Flores hominins). But are other interested in documenting human adaptations tests available to us? As Forth states, a to the biological environment. It reminded me possible grave site of hominin creatures called of work with the Mayangna people of 'ngiung' was noted by Erb (1987) in her Nicaragua when I was trying to elicit the local doctoral thesis. In this case, a group of names for fauna. They identified a deer that ‘ngiung’ in the East Manggarai region of was nocturnal, elusive and hunted so seldom Flores (similar to the 'ebu gogo' described by that they had no physical evidence of its © RHI GREGORY FORTH 84 presence. Nevertheless, the description and suggests that the orang pendek stories are a alleged behaviors dovetailed with the local version of the ebu gogo stories, which description and behavior of a South American must have spread over the entire Sunda deer. Ultimately, even without a kill, I felt region, providing such an attractive narrative. obligated to report the probable presence of The alternative, that there is or was until the South American deer. On the other hand, recently, a similar small hominin living on the they reported certain areas of their territory greater Sunda islands I find less plausible, that were off-limits to hunting because of the because (i) the stories are far less detailed, and presence of huge serpents with one red eye (ii) island dwarfing is unlikely to have taken and terrifying fangs, Waulas. No plausible place on these larger islands. identification emerged from any other data So, for now, I would focus work on the source. In the end, I hold the Waula to be deep-sea islands of eastern Indonesia, where mythical, emergent from a social process that island dwarfing of hominins and elephant-like protected ecological "source" areas of hunted forms has been documented. It would, for species by surrounding them with danger. instance, be interesting to collect as detailed as Forth's article represents an honest attempt to possible information on the content of the account for the reported hominoid on Flores hominin stories across the region, since this island by using all available information and might provide information about the teasing out the implications. If his struggles to sociecology of Homo floresiensis. Although link archaeology to folklore have a lesson, it is oral traditions are notoriously unstable and that we should be cautious about making up given to drift, the shared elements of stories our minds too soon. on different islands may reveal the original story elements, rather than the subsequent Anthony Stocks embellishments. Idaho State University Carel van Schaik Throughout the Sunda region, people tell Anthropologisches Institut & Museum stories about hairy, short people, known as Universität Zürich orang pendek (short people). Usually, the stories are vague. The creatures are Response encountered in the forest or on the ladang (forest swidden), but never captured or All three commentators offer apposite and photographed. Extensive camera-trapping and useful remarks on the article. even special expeditions over the past decade Debbie Argue is correct to suggest that have failed to produce any evidence. It is morphological similarities between local therefore tempting to dismiss the persistent Indonesian images of extinct or extant local stories as fiction based on encounters hominoids and palaeontologically attested with orangutans or bears. non-sapiens hominins do not prove that the Recent finds on Flores, however, suggest a former reflect the latter, and that what is more plausible hypothesis. Some ethnic required to establish such a connection is an groups on Flores have very detailed stories investigations of physical remains of hominins about a creature called ebu gogo, which show prospectively retrievable from sites, identified a remarkable fit to the small hominin species by local people (in this case specifically on the unearthed from a cave about 10 years ago. island of Flores), which are reputed to contain These stories are much more detailed than such remains. As I indicate, however, anything I ever heard on Sumatra. This excavating these sites may prove problematic, ARE LEGENDARY HOMINOIDS WORTH LOOKING FOR? 85 due partly to ubiquitous disputes over land and remarks, local images or reports of unattested traditional positions of authority that have or unidentified creatures may have zoological long been endemic on Flores and can make validity or they may not. Reminiscent of access to the sites difficult. Another entities that populate local cosmologies the prospective problem concerns gaining world over, the gigantic one-eyed serpents institutional support for research projects that described by the Mayangna people of may be deemed to lack sufficient theoretical Nicaragua are obviously less easily reconciled grounding. One aim of my article, therefore, with known components of Central American was to argue that a theoretical framework for fauna than are native descriptions of what such research is in fact already available both sounds like a South American deer species. from the geologically extremely recent date of Florenese hominoid images of course parallel the Homo floresiensis discovery site (the only these descriptions of the unidentified cervine sites where skeletal materials have so far been and therefore, in the present context, are rather encountered) and from circumstantial facts more interesting, not least because, from what such as the lack of competing explanations Stocks tells us, an explanation for the mystery from indigenous images of what appear to be deer has yet to be found. In any case, the small hominoids that survived into the last creature is evidently far more likely to reflect millennium or at least far more recently than a so far undocumented species than is the one- the most recent dates from the discovery site. eyed snake, and so provides a rationale for a While there is a tendency to think of zoological search whereas the serpent does ‘discoveries’ as single events, it is also worth not. On the other hand, Stocks’s interpretation noting that scientific discovery can involve a of the serpentine cyclops as the product of ‘a long process informed by a variety of factors, social process that protected ecological not all of which derive directly from the “source” areas’ of game animals is not an hypothetico-deductive model of classical explanation of the image itself so much as an scientific methodology. Dubois’s discovery of interpretation of how the image functions (or Homo erectus on Java exemplifies such a once functioned). That is, it does not explain process. So too would the efforts of the Liang why the image takes the form that it does. Nor Bua team had they unearthed specimens of does it rule out some connection with actual Homo erectus on Flores, which is what they reptiles. It should also be pointed out that were looking for in the light of previous functions such as those ascribed to the palaeontological evidence for Stegodon apparently mythical snakes can equally be hunting by hominins going back hundreds of served by fully empirical animals, and thousands of years. What they found of course especially (though not exclusively) by was something very different – and very much representations of these which include more recent. The reluctance of natural exaggerations of morphological or behavioral scientists to accept ethnographic evidence – or traits. in fact any statements by non-scientists – as a Giant one-eyed snakes are obvious starting point for research is well known and, candidates for the sort of interpretation Stocks to a degree, is understandable. Yet Homo proposes and, given the apparent absence of floresiensis is so unexpected, and in certain any other way to account for them, it is respects even mysterious, that surely any probably correct.

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