WI Homo floresiensis survives to the present day?
- Thread starter nakum
- Start date
Round the little tykes up and sell them as pets. Much more exotic than your slave page boy so more profit per delivered specimen.
Funny thing is many adult Indonesians from the rural regions or lower income urban areas (read: slums) are oddly short. I mean, it's not unusual to see teenage and adult women here as short as five feet two inches. What if they... nah, thats not possible. Is it?
5'2" isn't particularly short; average American height for women is only 5'4". Poor nutrition could account for that difference, right? Or did you mean to type something shorter/talk about men.
More than likely. I have in-laws who are that height and they are Americans. So I don't see the point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orang_Pendek
This could be reality. If you believe in cryptids.
Apparently the stories of the locals have these creatures kidnapping children, the only humans they could reliably overpower. They would hold the children and try to get them to show them how to make fire, or other tricks we can do. The children would always be able to outsmart the Orang Pendek to get away, though. Creepy, with shades of changelings and 'King Louis'.
So if the stories are true, it is likely that most of them were already wiped out by the locals before westerners even got there.
This could be reality. If you believe in cryptids.
Apparently the stories of the locals have these creatures kidnapping children, the only humans they could reliably overpower. They would hold the children and try to get them to show them how to make fire, or other tricks we can do. The children would always be able to outsmart the Orang Pendek to get away, though. Creepy, with shades of changelings and 'King Louis'.
So if the stories are true, it is likely that most of them were already wiped out by the locals before westerners even got there.
No, I mean really short, I'm not used to using feet and inches, but when I was in America I've seen fourth Graders taller than some adult Indonesians. Another example is that I am 171 centimeters and some of these people are probably up to my chest.
But yes, it was a joke, and lack of nutrition as well as genes could be the cause of it.
Oh, I knew you were joking about H. Florensis, I was just curious how tall the people in your mind were.
Yeah, makes sense - if you're 171 cm and someone comes up to your chest, let's call that, I dunno, 130 cm? That's more like 4'2". Somewhere in the Peter Dinklage range (pictured here next to the 162cm Tina Fey: http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/1/2008/10/340x_spl53629_006-1.jpg. Add a bit to Fey's height for heels)
Have you ever read 'A Different Flesh' by Harry Turtledove?
Similar things would occurr: Species crossbreeding, Enslavement of the little people (and abolishment of African slaves), and likely use as animal test subjects. Nothing much really. It could be possible they spread a new disease to us, or vice versa, but nothing much else.
Similar things would occurr: Species crossbreeding, Enslavement of the little people (and abolishment of African slaves), and likely use as animal test subjects. Nothing much really. It could be possible they spread a new disease to us, or vice versa, but nothing much else.
I thought of the hobbits domesticating pygmy animals and develop advanced technology, but then they'd colonize other islands/SE Asia, get bigger and interbreed anyway.
I agree with this, although I wonder what the impact of crossbreading would be.
I'm really not sure can crossbreeding even happen between a homo floriensis and a homo sapiens.
These guys would be a couple of thousands at best in a remote island of Indonesia provinding no H. sapiens from around bother to colonize it, which is pretty doubtful in itself. You don't build a slave empire on that. You just can't. They would be still affected by European diseases, though, which would mean the species would be wiped out relatively early. I see a few mounted specimens (don't look bad, there are even squickier things in an OTL anthropology museum) and a polemic among scientists today about if these guys were human, true humanoids or just some kind of weird terrestrial gibbons made into bad taxidermic works with lots of artificial or wrong stuff belonging to different animals (like many great auk mounts today).
It's worth mentioning also that even today, many Congolese farmers count pygmies as apes and don't intermingle with them. And they are the same species...
And if they are a nuisance as Tasmanian aborigines became regarded then they will be hunted out of hand. And on the hunting subject any one who has read Little Fuzzy by H Beam Piper knows that there can be a good market for the right sort of pelt.......
In that climate they are unlikely to be fur-covered, but there'd probably be a niche in the Chinese (or whatever) magical-aphrodesiac market (as in, powdered human horn
).Snake Featherston
Banned
It should be noted that people ITTL won't necessarily see Homo floresiensis as a separate species of human. The species'd be treated as a small bipedal ape or even as a literal example of the wild man myths that existed in Europe at the time. Ironically the discovery of literal wildmen and their being preserved in anthropology exhibits (given they exhibited the last Tasmanian Aborigines of the contact era ) may end up re-inforcing those myths and leading to a much earlier Bigfoot craze.
) may end up re-inforcing those myths and leading to a much earlier Bigfoot craze.Snake Featherston
Banned
Pretty much. There's no guarantee that their vocal capacities would be duplicated by ours, or vice versa. They may end up sounding completely different and due to being literal wildmen would lead to all kinds of interesting views of the apes later should a view of evolution and evolution by natural selection at that show up. That might or might not re-enforce the viewpoints of whatever ideology predates *science in that world, as they could easily point to the preserved apemen as evidence that in fact humans could not have evolved from apes because living bipedal apes survived to the present day.
Valdemar II
Banned
I don't think they would die out, through they may be endangered by modern, there no way hFlorens could avoid being settle by modern man, so if they survives they will have adapted to live beside modern man, through with the social changes of 20th centuries they will likely like the orangutang be endangered unless they have been domesticated. Ironic in case of domestication it's only possible if they can't interbreed freely with modern man, either hybrids has to be rare* or sterile for them to stay distinct.
*I lean to them being able to interbreed with modern man, Chimpansees interbreed with our ancestors to around 1 million years ago, Floresiensis only split off 3 million years ago at most, while chimps did so 6 million years ago. So let say that hybrids are possible but they are rare. That would make it possible for Flores to stay distinct, while still adopting traits from modern man which would increase their chance of survival.
*I lean to them being able to interbreed with modern man, Chimpansees interbreed with our ancestors to around 1 million years ago, Floresiensis only split off 3 million years ago at most, while chimps did so 6 million years ago. So let say that hybrids are possible but they are rare. That would make it possible for Flores to stay distinct, while still adopting traits from modern man which would increase their chance of survival.
