Riddle of the Human Hobbits

There was a television programme on Channel 4 last night called Riddle of the Human Hobbits about the finding of a new hominid on an island in Indonesia. This probably derived from Homo Australeopithecus but had, after it had arrived on the island, shrunk until it was just 3 feet high. The scientists have given this creature the name of Hobbit

The programme was a mixture of fascinating facts, wild assumptions and huge amounts of padding - obviously they did not have enough information to fill adequately an hour-long programme. I really didn't really need all the extraneous CGI amimation of one of these people wandering around the undergrowth. Having said that the archaeological examination of a skeleton of one of the hominids was fascinating, as was the fact that it had a strong resemblance to H Australopithecus, except, of course, to its height. I also liked the modelling done to the skull to give us some idea what she would really have looked like. I had (and still do) some difficulty in seeing why the Hominids had reduced in size so much since arriving on the island, but at least there was a precedent as remains of a pigmy form of an extinct elephant (megladon?, I think they said) have been found there too. The remains of several small individuals have been found and so we know that their size was not just that they had found one individual who was abnormally small.

However, there were parts of the programme which I had real difficulty in accepting as I felt that they were making wild assumptions. They spent a substantial proporton of the programme lashing together lengths of bamboo and then trying to row the raft to the island from its nearest neighbour, to try to show how the hominids actually got to the island in the first place. I found myself thinking though that they seemed to have ignored two other possible hypotheses of how the creatures could have reached the island. These are:

1. there was an assumption in the programme that sea levels have remained constant over time. However, this is not the case. Sea levels drop substantially during periods of glaciation and as far as I can tell the hominids may have travelled to the island during the last major Glacial period. Perhaps they just walked to the island over land which was subsequently submerged; alternatively
2. there is a volcano on the island and it appears from the excavation evidence that probably the hominids died out following a major eruption on the island which laid a substantial layer of volcanic ash over everything. Perhaps there was another volcano between the island and its nearest neighbour which blew up and was covered by the sea after people had walked to what became the island.

Both these are, of course, untried hypotheses as, of course, was the suggestion that the hominids rowed/sailed to the island, especially as I am not sure if there is any other evidence H. Australopithecus made rafts or boats at this period.