Flores was among the islands in Nusa Tenggara who grabbed the attention of British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace. Other than its endemic fauna, the island’s Homo floresiensis still leaves behind unresolved mysteries.
By
FRANS PATI HERIN/ARIS PRASETYO/LUKI AULIA
·4 minutes read
Flores was among the islands in Nusa Tenggara who grabbed the attention of British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace. Other than its endemic fauna, the island’s Homo floresiensis still leaves behind unresolved mysteries.
At the mouth of a giant cave on Saturday (3/8/2019), dozens of people – mostly men – were observing marble-sized pieces of soil from an excavation. Several were diligently taking notes while others were busy inside the digging site.
They were working under extreme caution and concentration. In one part of the cave, there was a wooden table with several skulls and bones. The skulls were replicas of Homo floresiensis fossils found in Liang Bua, a giant cave in Liang Bua village, North Rahong district, Manggarai regency, East Nusa Tenggara.
“The brain [of Homo floresiensis] is very small, like a chimpanzee. All humans living 3 million to 2 million years ago were like that and they are extinct today,” Matt Tocheri, a paleoanthropologist from Canada’s Lakehead University, said in an interview with Kompas Daily’s Wallacea Expedition Team at Liang Bua.
However, Matt continued, the latest findings showed that Homo floresiensis lived 60,000 to 40,000 years ago.
Other notable features of the Homo floresiensis is their height of around 100 centimeters, and bulky hands and leg bones. Their brow bone jutted out and their forehead slanted backward. Their face protruded to the front with strong jawbones and they almost had no chin.
Thomas Sutikna, an archeologist from Australia’s Wollongong University who led the excavation in Liang Bua, said the origins of Homo floresiensis and how they got to Flores remained unclear. Similarly, how they became extinct is also unclear.At the Liang Bua site, deposits of volcanic materials are found.
“There was a massive volcanic eruption 50,000 years ago. However, we do not conclude that it caused the extinction of Homo floresiensis alongside endemic fauna such as ancient elephants, storks and Komodos in Flores,” Thomas said.
Giant rats
Apart from Homo floresiensis fossils, the excavation in Liang Bua also found hundreds of thousands of rat bone fragments in the same layer of soil where the Homo floresiensis was found. Researchers assumed that the rat bones were a sign that rats might have been a major source of calorie for Homo floresiensis. The biggest rat found in the site weighed 1,200 grams.
“Through various evidence, the abundance of rats smaller in size [than the Homo floresiensis] but with adequate amount of animal protein for human consumption is why we assume rats were hunted [for food],” said Ni Luh Gde Dyah Mega Hafsari, a researcher at the National Center of Archeological Studies, who researched the presence of rats in Liang Bua in 2016.
Mega said research had found that the rat species ranged from Papamogys armandvilley (1,000-1,200 grams) to Rattus hainaldi and Rattus exulans (50 grams). It is assumed that the giant rats of Liang Bua were consumed raw or grilled.
Wallace’s records
British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who explored the Indonesian archipelago in 1854-1862, did not visit Flores but sent his assistant to the island. Other than spending a great deal of attention to the region’s endemic faunas, Wallace also dedicated much time to studying the region’s humans, which he divided into the Malay race and the Papuan race.
In his seminal work The Malay Archipelago published in 1869, Wallace wrote in detail about the physical features and behaviors of the humans he encountered in the archipelago. Wallace’s further analysis on race brought him to biogeography theory.
Research on Homo floresiensis is still unfinished. Efforts to uncover past civilizations in Liang Bua provides researchers a challenge on finding out where they came from and how they spread. What is clear is that various studies and findings show that people in the archipelago came from a diverse mix of genetics.
This awareness should pave the way for a deeper awareness, namely that debates on who are pribumi (indigenous) and who are immigrants are irrelevant.