I was watching Charlie Rose last night. His guest was Paul Nurse, Nobel Prize winner 2001 in medicine. I think the discussion on the find in Indonesia of the remains of short creatures nicknamed "hobbits" caught my attention. Mr. Nurse said the creatures were 3 feet tall. I had heard about this find a few weeks ago. I wondered if this discovery ties in with the legends of the leprechauns of Ireland and the Menehune of Hawaii.
I checked the book TALES OF THE MENEHUNE, which was originally written in 1960. This is a collection of Hawaiian folklore. According to that book, the Hawaiians described the Menehune as being two to three feet in height. This about the same height as the creatures in Indonesia. What an interesting "coincidence!" This book was written in 1960, about 40 years before the find in Indonesia.
I also looked at the book the OXFORD DICTIONARY OF WORLD MYTHOLOGY. The short entry on the Menehune describes them as a "mythical" pygmy people, who later moved to New Zealand. The Hawaiians got them mixed up with the indigenous people of New Zeland, called the Maoris. But this happened at a later time. The entry also states that the Pacific Ocean region has stories of little people and that little people allegedly built a temple in Java, which is part of Modern day Indonesia. I don't recall if the little people who allegedly built the temple in Java were called Menehune.
I would differ in my interpretation of the find. Paul Nurse thinks these creatures are hominid creatures or creatures between ape and human. I would say that they were fully human only shorter than the modern "average" human. Nurse says the remains
are only 12,000 years old and humans inhabited that region for 50,000 years; so these little people and "normal" people lived at the same time in Indonesia. I personally question how the long the humans and hobbits live there, but that is another matter. I don't doubt that these people did live "side by side." The legends of the Menhune in Hawaii state that they hid in the highlands and came to the lowlands only at night. They tended to avoid contact with the Hawaiians. On occaison, the Hawaiians would make deals with the Menehune. Someone would prepare a feast for the Menehune and they in turn would engage in a building project such as a wall. My impression is that these Menehune were quite capable of communicating with the Hawaiians and were not "primitive" lesser evolved creatures. The Menehune appear to have been quite clever and industrious. Certain walls in Hawaii are pointed to as examples of Menehune's handiwork. Nurse mentioned the legends of dwarves. I wonder if he is aware of the Menehune?
This same dictionary also has an entry under "gogmagog." This refers to some chalk carvings in Britain, I think Cambridge. The entry also says there are stories about giants in British folklore. The Bible also mentions giants such as Goliath.
Here is my theory: perhaps the range of humanity in terms of height was greater in the past than it is today. Perhaps "Natural Selection" weeded out the "unfit" extremes and left the middle to survive. Perhaps bigger does not always mean better and the Jolly green giants were actually more vulnerable than their shorter advesaries. Blythe was probably the first to propose the idea of natural selection. He viewed natural selection as a "conservative" or weeding out force. Darwin viewed it as a "progressive" force which generated greater diversity. I tend to go with Blythe.
Update:
In response to my comments, I received an email fromAustralia expressing agreement. That person referenced an article for me. The article pointed out that intepretation of the find in Indonesia is by no means universal. The Indonesian scientists interpret the remains as fully human and NOT hominid. The Indonesians believe the remains to be only 1,800 years old not 12,000. The Indonesian scientists are NOT in agreement with the Australians. The Indonesians claim that they were the original discoverers and regard the Australians as late comers or intruders. Some speculate that there is a "turf war" between the Australians and the Indonesians. I think that one point in favor of the Indonesian's interpretation is that NOT all the bones are fossilized and there is recognizeable DNA in the bones. DNA has a "shelf life" of 10,000 years. This indicates the remains are NOT very old.
# posted by GuyTak @ 5:05 PM
