Some time ago, a professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta named Gregory Forth, argued that early humans might still live in the forests of Flores Island, East Nusa Tenggara. Indonesian archaeologists deny this.
Archaeologist from the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) Pindi Setiawan denied the findings of foreign researchers who said that early humans still lived on Flores. According to Pindi, from the Homo class, only Homo sapiens or humans are still living on Flores.
"As far as I know, only Homo sapiens, from the Homo class that are still alive. Homo sapiens is Adam's human DNA. It's the same thing, there are only variations in skin color, hair shape, eye shape, it can also be a midget, tall, 6-fingered. variations," said Pindi as quoted from CNN Indonesia.com.
Pindi explained that the people in Flores have nothing to do with Homo floresiensis or what is also called the Hobbit as the foreign archaeologist said.
"As far as I know, it has nothing to do with the DNA of Homo floresiensis," he said.
Previously, a foreign researcher believed that one of the ancient human species still lived on Flores. In 2003, archaeologists searched for evidence of modern human migration from Asia to Australia and found a fairly complete skeleton of an extinct human species on the island of Flores, namely Homo floresiensis.
In an opinion piece, reported by The Scientist, Gregory Forth argued that paleontologists and other scientists had ignored Indigenous knowledge and records of "ape humans" living in the Flores forests.
He believes that the fossil discovery of a small hominin species on the island of Flores, Indonesia is homo floresiensi and comes from the late Pleitocene, this species is recognized as an ancient human that seems to coexist with modern humans.
"My goal in writing this book was to find the best explanation - that is, the most rational and most empirically supported - of Lio's stories about the creatures," Forth wrote in the article.
"This includes reports of sightings by more than 30 eyewitnesses, all of whom I spoke to firsthand. And I conclude the best way to explain what they told me is that non-sapiens hominins have survived on Flores until recently or recently, " he added.
Then Forth explains the folklore of the Lio people who inhabit the island containing stories about humans turning into animals as they move and adapt to new environments. Forth likened it to Lamarckism, the inheritance of acquired physical characteristics.
"As my fieldwork reveals, the changes told as such reflect local observations of the similarities and differences between the ancestral species and their distinct descendants," he said, as quoted by IFL Science.
For now, the closest we can determine the date H. floresiensis was still alive is 50 thousand years ago. However, Forth urged other researchers that indigenous knowledge should be included with the facts of hominin evolution.
"Our initial instinct, I think, was to think of the ape humans extant on Flores as completely imaginary. But taking what the Lio people said seriously, I don't find any good reason to think so," said Forth.
"What they say about the creature, coupled with other evidence, is entirely consistent with hominin species that are still living, or species that have only become extinct in the last 100 years."
