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Published online 16 April 2008 | Nature 452, 806-808 (2008) | doi:10.1038/452806a
News Feature
Archaeology: Bones, isles and videotape
11Old human remains found on the Pacific islands of Palau are caught in the crossfire between entertainment and science. Rex Dalton reports.
Circled by a protective coral reef, the 300-island archipelago of Palau is one of the Pacific Ocean's most biodiverse ecosystems. The first intrepid voyagers who arrived here, more than 3,000 years ago, would have found lush plants and waters teeming with fish and crustaceans.
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If bones of mixed-species australopithecine/Homo erectus/Homo sapiens populations are not actually present in Mr. Berger's cave, they are likely to be found nearby. Indonesian, Melanesian, and Polynesian oral history is full of realistic, non-mythologized reports of encountering (and often cannibalizing) small hairy people regarded as sub-human. And we know from the Kennewick Man proceedings that native oral history can be used even as scientific court evidence (at least, if it supports what you want it to). Mr. Berger's crime is that he brings up the subject of these populations at all. He's obviously trying to promote the Out of Africa party line and argue against Homo floriensis -- but he does so so awkwardly and unbelievably, with his instant-million-year island regression -- that the entire subject has to be immediately and vigorously tamped down. Just as a hill in Bosnia, in the shape of a pyramid, with human-made rock surfacing, does not exist, could not exist, and Shall Not Be Investigated Further.
It is most unlikely that the bones on Palau belong to any hominid species other than Homo sapiens -- in fact, Berger does not claim them to be other than H. sapiens. He only claims that there are certain similarities between them and those on Flores, which may illuminate the process of island dwarfism. But as for the so-called ebu gogo or orang pendek, the hairy sub-human folk spoken of by Flores folk and Indonesians, if these have a basis in reality, they are probably orang-utans!