Young Writers Society

The Washington Post
by Guy Gugliotta

It's not the size of the brain that matters. It's the way it's arranged. That's the conclusion of researchers studying the skull of a tiny, Hobbit-like human ancestor who lived on a remote Indonesian island 18,000 years ago.

Researchers are reporting today that the grapefruit-size brain had sophisticated characteristics found only in modern humans. They said the findings offer further evidence that the tiny hunter discovered last year was a unique archaic species that coexisted with modern humans long after other primitive ancestors died out.

"It's remarkable," said Florida State University paleoneurologist Dean Falk, leader of the team that studied the skull. "I thought we were going to be looking at a chimpanzee skull, but this has advanced features that I've not seen in anything this size."

Falk's study, published in the journal Science, was conducted at the behest of the National Geographic Society and with the collaboration of the Australian-led team that found the fossil. The new research, however, failed to still skeptics who have dismissed the finding as a pygmylike modern human, or a modern human with a deformity known as microcephaly -- a small head and brain.

The tools and artifacts found with the skull "were made by [fully competent] modern humans," said paleoanthropologist James Phillips of the University of Illinois and Chicago's Field Museum in a phone interview. "This individual could not mentally have made them."