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News update
Hobbit hominids lived the island life
PARIS: A tantalising piece of evidence has been added to the puzzle over the so-called “hobbit” hominids found in a cave in a remote Indonesian island, whose discovery has ignited one of the fiercest rows in anthropology.
Explorers of the human odyssey have been squabbling bitterly since the fossilised skeletons of tiny hominids, dubbed after the diminutive hobbits in J.R.R. Tolkien’s tale, were found on the island of Flores in 2003.
Measuring just a metre tall and with a skull the size of a grapefruit, the diminutive folk lived around 20,000 and 80,000 years ago and appear to have been skilful toolmakers, hunters and butchers.
They have been honoured with the monicker Homo floresiensis by their discoverers, who contend the cave-dwellers were a separate species of human that descended from Homo erectus, which is also presumed to be the ancestor of modern man.
That claim has huge implications and has been widely contested.
If true, it would mean that H. sapiens, who has been around for around 150,000-200,000 years, would have shared the planet with rival humans far more recently than thought.
And it implies that H. sapiens and H. floresiensis lived side by side on Flores for a while — and, who knows, may even have interbred, which could have left “hobbit” genes in our DNA heritage.
In a study that appears on Wednesday in the British journal Biology Letters, evolutionary zoologists at Imperial College London believe the hobbits may well have achieved their tininess naturally, through evolutionary pressure. —AFP
Beijing bans smelly taxi drivers
BEIJING: Beijing taxi drivers face a lifestyle makeover before the Olympics that will mean the end of spitting, smoking, weird hairstyles and dangly earrings -- and the beginning of regular baths.
Under the new regulations, which came into effect on Wednesday, drivers whose cabs are smelly will be suspended for two days while they undergo “rectification and reform” guidance, the Beijing News said.
Cabbies who spit or smoke, and female taxi drivers who sport big earrings or radical hairstyles, will also be banned under rules aimed at improving the city’s image ahead of next year’s Olympics.
Beijing’s taxi drivers, who typically earn around 1,500 yuan ($200) a month, often sleep, eat and smoke in their vehicles.
“Many drivers pay no attention to appearances,” Yao Kuo, the head of the transportation management office, was quoted as saying.
“Their mouths stink of garlic and their bodies smell, making the whole cab foul. It creates a bad impression for the taxi industry. As a service industry, taxis have to think about appearances,” Yao said. “A smelly cab, though a trivial thing, may impair the country’s international image when Beijing hosts the Olympic Games next year, as it's not polite to the guests,” he said. —AFP
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