Another theory has been launched in the Hobbit Wars. Australian scientists published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B suggest that H. floresiensis was not a separate species of human, but H. sapiens suffering from dwarf cretinism, caused by the lack of a thyroid gland and severe iodine deficiency. “Our idea is that this was an environmentally-caused problem,” said Charles Oxnard of the University of Western Australia.   Critics respond to the claim of dwarf cretinism in The Australian.  But Jeremy Austin of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at Adelaide University has the last word. “Collection of fresh, better preserved, Hobbit remains using strict anti-contamination measures currently is the best hope for testing the status of Homo floresiensis using genetic data.”

BBC News reports that a man who had taken 10 Australian tourists hostage in China has been shot dead. The tourists had been traveling on a bus in Xian, home to the Terracotta Army.  

The New Acropolis Museum in Athens is set to open in September.  

Jonathan Jones asks Britons, “Why don’t we care about Stonehenge?” In the end, he blames the experts. “It’s the very people whose job it is to describe the unique nature of Stonehenge who make it sound as if it’s nothing more exciting than all the earthworks they dig up in bogs with a couple of wooden posts stuck in the peat,” he writes.  Archaeologist Dennis Price, however, has brought attention to a skeleton discovered at Stonehenge in 1978. He thinks the bones once belonged to a sentinel at the monument, who was killed in ritual combat. He adds that many of the burials at Stonehenge contain the remains of people who had been seriously wounded, and that weapons such as daggers and maces have also been found.    

It takes a little effort to find a souvenir in Egypt that isn’t made in China.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Wednesday, March 5, 2008. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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