Strange people
A completely new, fossil human head has been delighting an armada of researchers and laypeople for almost two and a half years now and at the same time is dividing the scientific world into two increasingly irreconcilable camps. Since then, both have been propagating their view of things with the endurance of long-distance runners. At the latest with the latest article on the subject by Dean Falk and his colleagues, a race between arguments has turned into a hard-fought boxing match.
At the center of the dispute is the so far only skull of "Homo floresiensis", a creature unearthed on the island of Flores which, according to the blue corner of the ring, represents an independent human species that existed before the astonishingly short time of 18,000 years existed alongside us humans. The red corner thinks that's a misinterpretation, to put it politely. "Homo floresiensis" is actually a homo sapiens with a degenerated small head - a microcephaly. From the cheap seats of the spectators who were unfamiliar with fossil interpretation, somehow both parties in the dispute seemed to have good arguments. If you want, you can read about them in our reports.
And if you want, you can also follow the latest round, for which the gong is ringing right now. However, the new round offers nothing surprising: The researchers in the blue pants are repeating what they have been repeating over and over again for the past two years: Homo floresiensis and its skull are different, the fossil deserves to be called a species of its own. They provide further proof of this, but again it is not completely convincing. The question is whether this evidence serves to establish the truth or just demonstrates an unbroken will to win.
Because the blue corner around the Flores-man propagators Brown, Michael Morwood and Dean Falk and the red one - which is a little more diversely composed of different seconds - are arguing by similar means, examining the same skull, comparing it with similar specimens – and always reliably come to diametrically opposed conclusions. For the Blues, Flores Man remains a distinct human species distinct from all of the degenerate cranial forms of modern humans. For the Reds, the Flores specimen is another of the approximately 400 already known form types of degenerated Homo sapiens with microcephaly from the start.
One could conclude from this that the interpretation of the results is a bit difficult and that the topic may not be finally clarified quite so quickly. Unfortunately, both corners only insist more and more stridently on the opinion expressed from the beginning and, more and more clearly, on the criticism of the critic that can be read between the lines. It remains to be feared that at the end of the fight one of the sides is actually right: Not with their scientific opinion on the subject of Flores Man, but with the fact that the red or blue opponent unscientifically, sloppily or negligently propagated opinions instead of facts in order to misinterpret their own not having to admit. Both a knockout real manslaughter evidence as well as a break in combat for more thought would be preferable to this ending.
