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Comment by robinsoh | Hacker News Reader

I find this claim hard to believe because of the location. Flores is not a huge wilderness. I've been there. I saw huge open fields of coconut, and rice plantations and population density is high. It is not some thick impenetrable jungle. The whole island (13,540 km2) is smaller than Connecticut (14,357 km2) and the population density in Flores is likely higher.

It is narrow and bounded by the sea on both sides. There's been ample researchers, workers, tourists going all over the island. I imagine that had it been present, any cryptid there would have been documented scientifically by now.

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> and the population density in Flores is likely higher.

Not that it matters too much, but according to Wikipedia, the population density for Flores is half of CT.

Thanks for the correction.

a) Flores

The population was 2,039,373 in the 2020 Census 13,540 km²

2039363/13540= 150 humans per square km

b) CT 3.565 million (2019) 14,357 km²

3565000/14357=248 humans per square km

Agreed. I too have been there before.

The whole thing is a scam to sell books and make money.

And there you have it. A vague, intrigue-producing story and a book. The book probably contains some folklore stories and an inconclusive conclusion that has lots of questions like, "What else may we find?".

When I visited Flores, the most surprising thing about it was that on a 130 km island the inhabitants spoke 5 languages and 80 distinct dialects. Most of the island is remote and has little connection to the modern world, and the various tribal groups are largely isolated from one another even.

> When I visited Flores, the most surprising thing about it was that on a 130 km island the inhabitants spoke 5 languages and 80 distinct dialects.

My understanding is basically there was the original indigenous people (who are closely related to the indigenous peoples of that whole island chain stretching from Indian islands in the West, Andamanese, and going all the way east to Papuans, and Australian aboriginals). The subsequent groups came due to economic-religious expansionary activity from East Asian peoples who had taken Java and Sumatera, and also Portuguese activity. This process is also happening in Papua, quite violently as one half of the island is pretty much an open pit mine occupied by East Asian Indonesian soldiers fighting off indigenous Papuan tribes. Doesn't get much coverage here though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMeYD-wFC1o I think recently the level of violence has flared up because Indonesia is sending more East Asian settlers into the area.

What was the population density 50 or 100 years ago? Could it be possible that they went extinct more recently than 50,000 years ago (the age of the most recent bones)?

> What was the population density 50 or 100 years ago?

I was responding to the author, Gregory Forth, who is literally claiming a cryptid is present there today but using a question to disguise his claim, presumably for profit motives. "Do members of Homo floresiensis still inhabit the Indonesian island where their fossils helped identify a new human species fewer than 20 years ago?"

The peaks South of Ruteng are covered with thick impenetrable jungle, one of the few patches of untouched primary rainforest left in Asia.

The author says he spoke with at least 30 natives there who may have seen them. A very small population of secretive homininins would fit that bill.

Likely not a breeding size population though.

And chances are none of them were younger than 80, having lived at a time when there likely was far more wilderness. A lot of species have gone extinct within the last century, and the author seems to be very careful to include "survived into the recent past" in the hypothesis. A population practicing burial, but not in places that happen to facilitate bone conservation could, in theory, be more invisible to science than some of their ancestors who happened to leave their remains in a preservation hotspot like that cave.

But yeah, stories about almost but not quite humans seem to exist everywhere, perhaps fueled by occasional sightings of misfits who got thrown out by their communities and lived on as wandering hermits.

If they went extinct in the last century, I'd expect some skeletons to still be around.

Considering "almost extinct" could mean a single family for multiple generations, that wouldn't be a lot of individuals. Depending on what burial rites they practice, or how their bones get chewed up by wild-life, they'd mostly vanish in the jungle (or even farmland). Even when they are found, they might not get recognized as such immediately or at all.

You could probably find thirty people who say they have seen leprechauns, which are also hominids.

Most people would not consider this to be serious evidence.

Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. Extant Hominids are somewhat more likely than real leprechauns...

The existence of those eyewitness accounts is not positive evidence, but rather constitutes a lack of negative evidence. If tens of thousands of people going through those forests all said "nothing there", then that would be negative evidence.

> The author says he spoke with at least 30 natives there who may have seen them. A very small population of secretive homininins would fit that bill.

Lets do a thought experiment. If I went to CT and talked to 100 dudes in various bars, do you think I could get 30 of them to say they had seen bigfoot in their area?

Authors and journalists citing stuff like "30 natives" makes me uncomfortable.

In August 1895 Connecticut, a journalist with an imagination and a predilection for hoaxes named Lou Stone invented a story about a "wild man" who appeared to Town Selectman Riley Smith. The story spread like fire, appearing in newspapers all over the country and further igniting the imagination of the locals, who reported their own sightings of the Wild Man. Residents attempted to explain the Wild Man, claiming it was actually not an unknown beast, but perhaps a gorilla, or an escaped mental patient. In many sightings, villagers swore to have seen details. Mrs. Culver describes a "savage face, almost brute in expression." Eventually, the reporter admitted the truth: he just wanted to sell papers. And indeed he sold papers, and tourism, and put Winsted, Connecticut on the map.

Yeah I commented elsewhere, if 30 eyewitnesses to mythical little folk (from an island with pop: 2 million) is good enough evidence of their existence, keep the author away from Tasmania, where he could probably find 1000 people that have seen an extinct Thylacine.

The difference here is not the conclusive weight of the positive evidence, but rather the lack of conclusive negative evidence.

To me the possibility there still may be extant H. floresiensis around is very miniscule, but not entirely zero. Especially the possibility that they survived a bit longer than previously thought is not completely unlikely.

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