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The discovery of a dwarfed (矮个的) "human being" who lived in Flores, Indonesia, up to 18,000 years ago is changing the way we think about the human family. This "Flores Human" was three foot tall and her brain was smaller than that of the average chimp (黑猩猩), yet she and her relatives apparently lived fully human lives. They seem to have made tools, worked together to find food and cook it, and perhaps even buried their dead with ceremony.
It was a major surprise to find tools associated with the new human family member. The tools are like those formerly seen only with European fossils (化石) from our own species, Homo sapiens (智人), and the oldest of them were made 94,000 years ago. Homo sapiens is thought to have arrived in the island about 40,000 years ago, much too late to be responsible for the tools. If this tiny human made the tools, then the inside structure (结构) of its brain must have been more like our own than a chimp's, despite being just a third the size of ours.
This "'new human" was suspected to be a dwarfed branch of Homo erectus (直立人). When creatures are separated in regions with rare resources but few enemies, being big is a disadvantage, and evolution tends to shrink them, a process known as island dwarfing. Could natural selection make a human smaller while keeping -- even improving – mental ability? Quite possibly, believes Christopher Wills of the University of California.
Has the "Flores Human" even shown the ability of language? "I find it difficult to imagine that people ，could make tools, use fire, and kill large animals without fairly
advanced communication." Wills says. Did "Flores Human" possess the basic components
of human culture -- such as the burying of the dead with ceremony? Emiliano Bruner of the
Italian Institute points out that Indonesia's hot, wet environment is bad for fossilization. It is
reasonable to assume, he says, that the 18,000-year-old bones of the most complete Flores
woman were well-preserved because she was buried with special care. 【題組】68. The underlined part "this tiny human" in Paragraph 2 refers to
(A). a chimp (B). Flores Human (C). Homo sapiens (D). Homo erectus
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