Laputan Logic*

Fanciful. Preposterous. Absurd.

Ebu Gogo really living up to her name.

John Gurche's remarkably life-like facial and body reconstruction of Homo floresiensis over at National Geographic and John Hawks' take on them.

I was struck by the impression that it looked Indonesian. That is to say, something about the face structure, especially through the nose and eyes, spoke to me of populations in the region today. This impression was enhanced a bit by the coloration, and I can't say how much of it was created by deliberate choices made during the reconstruction process. Some certainly was -- for example, if Gurche had put fur and a chimp nose on like his AL 444-2 reconstruction, it would necessarily have looked more australopithecine-like. But I didn't get the impression that he used anything like Javan tissue depth standards, so I assume that much of my reaction comes from the bone structure itself. In any event, it's far from conclusive, but it did lend credibility in my mind to what Teuku Jacob has been saying about its features.

Personally, I don't think the face looks specifically Indonesian at all. There appear to be some superficial similarities with Melanesians and Australian aborigines, things like the accentuated brow-ridge and the skin colour (if the creature really was hairless, it would have almost certainly had dark skin to survive that close to the equator). One thing is certain though, she looks very human even while we remind ourselves that she was only a metre tall and had a brain the size of a grapefruit.

More facial reconstructions here, this time of Georgian skulls found at Dmanisi as well as an interactive map of the most significant hominin finds to date.