Question

What do we know about Homo floresiensis? How old is it, where did it live, what did it look like? And, why is this a considered, by many, to be a controversial find?

What is meant by race? If you had a friend who told you that there were three clearly defined races, and another friend insisted that there were really five races, would you agree or disagree with each of them and why? Why can’t everyone agree on the number of races existing in the world today (what problems arise when people attempt to define someone by race)?

What is a polytypic species and what does it mean when one states that humans are members of the same polytypic species?

Answer 1

1). What do we know about Homo floresiensis? How old is it, where did it live, what did it look like? And, why is this a considered, by many, to be a controversial find?

Homo floresiensis was an extinct species, which belongs to the genus “Homo.” Their skeletons were dated to 60, 000 to 100,000 years ago. These people used stone tools, which were dated to 50,000 to 190,000 years ago. Their body size is considerably smaller than the modern humans, and also their brains. Their bones are much more similar to chimpanzees than the modern humans. They were discovered in a cave in Indonesia when searching for the evidence of migration of modern humans from Asia to Australia.

Finding the Homo floresiensis has been considered a controversial finding because the scientists suggested a phylogenetic relationship between the H. floresiensis and H. erectus, but the same team found stone stools on Flores, but they belong to H. erectus dated back to 840,000 years ago.