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Skeptics Seek to Slay the 'Hobbit,' Calling Flores Skeleton a Modern Human

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Skeptics Seek to Slay the 'Hobbit,' Calling Flores Skeleton a Modern Human NEWS OF THE WEEK allowed Cao and Zhu to claim “the first writ- PALEOANTHROPOLOGY ten account of a complete proof of the Poincaré conjecture and the geometrization conjecture Skeptics Seek to Slay the ‘Hobbit,’ Calling of Thurston.” In June, Bruce Kleiner and John Lott of the Flores Skeleton a Modern Human University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, released a manuscript that had evolved publicly online Strange new hominid or just another modern The new paper is the first full-length cri- since Perelman’s visit. Its gradually increasing human? That’s still an open question for the tique in a high-profile journal, and researchers detail helped cement the community’s accept- “hobbit” bones unearthed in Liang Bua cave on both sides have long awaited the data in ance of Perelman’s work. “They were the main on the Indonesian island of Flores. Their dis- it. The authors include Teuku Jacob of Gad- people who carried the torch forward over the coverers described them 2 years ago as a new jah Mada University in Yogyakarta, who in a last 3 years,” says Michael Anderson of Stony species, Homo floresiensis, but critics have contentious incident borrowed the Flores Brook University. Finally, last month, John bones for study in November Morgan of Columbia University and Gang Tian 2004 (Science, 25 March 2005, of MIT completed a manuscript that will be p. 1848). In 2005, Jacob and published as a book. Their work, like Kleiner others, including Gadjah Mada and Lott’s, sticks closely to Perelman’s outline. colleague Etty Indriati, also Perelman’s exegetes have played a crucial studied 76 modern Rampasasa role in making his work accessible to other pygmies living only a few kilo- researchers, says James Carlson, president of meters from Liang Bua cave. CMI. “Like a program written in open-source The team uses several lines code, many eyes will be looking at it,” he says. of evidence to challenge the “Instead of having to work out the arguments hobbit’s novelty. One new argu- by themselves, mathematicians will be left with ment is that a hominid could not the much easier task of verifying that the have evolved in isolation on Flores on March 20, 2009 worked-out details are correct.” because fossils show that ele- phants reached the island twice, The wait begins and so humans probably also According to CMI’s rules, the $1 million for arrived more than once; lack of each Millennium Prize can be presented 2 years Hobbit critic. Teuku Jacob and Etty Indriati argue that the tiny isolation would have prevented after the proof is published in a refereed jour- Flores skull (different skull pictured here) is that of a diseased the evolution of a new dwarf nal. Even though Perelman’s own papers have modern human. species, they say. never been formally published, Carlson con- The team further argues that www.sciencemag.org firms that the clock is now ticking toward insisted from the start that the leading speci- the skull, part of the specimen labeled LB1, awarding the first prize. “Close to 2 years from men, a 1-meter-tall, 18,000-year-old skele- is so asymmetrical that it must have suf- now, we will form a committee to study the ton with a brain the size of a grapefruit, was fered from a developmental deformity. Mir- issue,” Carlson says. that of a diseased Homo sapiens. ror imaging the left side of LB1’s skull and Shing-Tung Yau of Harvard University This week, the skeptics laid out their putting those halves together creates a dis- thinks that Hamilton deserves a share. “For most detailed case yet in the Proceedings of tinctly different face than two right halves 20 years, he worked on this problem alone, with the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). put together in the same way. some help from me. The part he proved is The paper argues that living people have The paper also reports new data showing Downloaded from absolutely nontrivial, and it was devised pur- some of the traits claimed to be unique to that some Rampasasa pygmies lack chins posely to solve this problem,” says Yau. At H. floresiensis, and that the lone skull is and have odd premolar teeth, features iden- present, however, Yau’s seems to be a minority simply deformed. “This is not a new species,” tified as distinctive in H. floresiensis. The view. “Perelman broke through the barriers,” says co-author Robert Eckhardt of Pennsyl- original work on the Liang Bua bones says Robert Greene of the University of Cali- vania State University in State College. “This “largely looked for ‘otherness’—finding fornia, Los Angeles. “If Perelman’s papers didn’t is a developmentally abnormal individual.” reasons to believe that this population is exist, I think we would still be stuck. It’s the But the hobbit’s discoverers and others entirely different from anything that has unsticking that counts.” who have also studied the original speci- been seen before,” says Indriati. “That simply Some mathematicians who know him, mens are unimpressed. “Complete non- isn’t true.” The Rampasasa results are “rele- however, think Perelman would simply decline sense,” snaps Peter Brown of the Univer- vant and revealing,” agrees Robert D. Martin the Millennium Prize as well. “When I talked sity of New England in Armidale, Aus- of the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois, with him at Stony Brook [in 2003], I had the tralia, who did the original anatomical who has argued in print that LB1 suffered impression that he’s not interested in it at all,” analyses. The paper “cherry-picked fea- from microcephaly, a genetic disorder Anderson says. If Perelman refuses the award, tures and ignored counterevidence,” adds marked by a puny brain. Carlson says, CMI may consider other uses for Susan Larson of Stony Brook University But other experts are fiercely critical of the $1 million, such as contributing it to Russ- in New York, who has linked the hobbit the PNAS paper. “My first reaction was, ian mathematics or to the International Mathe- shoulder to an ancient human species, ‘How did this get published? Was there any matics Olympiad, which Perelman won with a H. erectus (Science, 19 May, p. 983). peer review?’ ” says brain evolution expert perfect score in 1982. –DANA MACKENZIE “Nothing they say has caused me to ques- Ralph Holloway of Columbia University. L Dana Mackenzie is a writer in Santa Cruz, California. tion my assessment.” (Eckhardt reports that there were five E. INDRIATI CREDIT: 1028 25 AUGUST 2006 VOL 313 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org Published by AAAS SCIENCESCOPE external reviewers, chosen by the team in of Australian National University in Can- accordance with PNAS guidelines.) Holloway berra. (Groves and colleagues compare the Controls Sought … adds that he thinks the brain of LB1 shows hobbit to microcephalics and modern AIDS researchers have known for years that a “possible pathologies” but not for the reasons humans, including those from Asia, and con- small percentage of people infected with HIV cited by Jacob and his co-authors. clude in a paper in press in the Journal of do not show symptoms of the disease, but Others are ready to rebut each point in the Human Evolution that it is indeed a new they have yet to understand why. Now immu- paper. The first elephant colonization was too species.) Other details, such as claimed nologist Bruce Walker of Massachusetts Gen- early to have any bearing on the hobbit debate, signs of pathology in LB1’s leg bones, con- eral Hospital in Boston has identified about says Russell Ciochon of the University of stitute “a flimsy house of cards,” says Bill 100 so-called elite controllers in the Boston Iowa in Iowa City. And the paper’s focus on Jungers of Stony Brook University, who area and says that dozens of investigators skull distortion is misplaced, adds Brown, studied the bones last year in Jakarta. want to join an international consortium he’s because it happened after death, when the Given these flatly contradictory state- organizing to uncover genetic or immunologi- specimen was buried deeply in the cave. ments, it’s likely to take some time for the field cal clues to this group’s good health. As for the treatment of chins, which to settle on a coherent view of ancient hobbits. Elite controllers—thought to number about relies on a photo of a living Rampasasa, it is “We have a ways to go before the controversy 3000 in the United States—by definition show “superficial indeed,” because one must look is resolved,” says Indriati. The battle of the no immune damage and have unusually low at a jaw without its covering of flesh to see shire is far from over. levels of the AIDS virus in their blood 1 year whether a chin is present, says Colin Groves –ELIZABETH CULOTTA after being infected, despite taking no anti-HIV drugs. Walker says a consortium could perform ARCHAEOLOGY haplotype mapping of the controllers, compar- ing their genes with those of uninfected peo- After 2 Millennia on Ice, a Nomad Resurfaces ple. One key difference encoded within the controllers’ DNA, for example, may be high lev- BERLIN—Decked in a magnificent fur man- archaeologist and art historian at the University els of so-called PD-1 receptors; these immune tle and gilded wooden headdress, a nomad— of Oregon, Eugene. “They removed the cell surface proteins, Walker’s lab reported on March 20, 2009 probably a fierce warrior—was buried more innards and filled the body with sweet- online 20 August in Nature, appear to play a than 2200 years ago in the icy highlands of smelling grasses.” High-status individuals key role in controlling HIV replication.
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