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The Ebu Gogo are a group of human-like creatures that appear in the folklore of Flores, Indonesia. [1] In the Nage language of central Flores, ebu means "grandparent" and gogo means "one who eats anything". A colloquial English equivalent might be something like "old glutton".
The Nage people of Flores describe the Ebu Gogo as having been able walkers and fast runners around 1.5 m (5 feet) tall. They reportedly had wide and flat noses, broad faces with large mouths and hairy bodies. The females also had "long, pendulous breasts". [2] They were said to have murmured in what was assumed to be their own language and could reportedly repeat what was said to them in a parrot-like fashion. [3]
The legends relating to the Ebu Gogo were traditionally attributed to monkeys, according to the journal Nature . [4]
An article in New Scientist gives the following account of folklore on Flores surrounding the Ebu Gogo: in the 18th century, villagers gave the Ebu Gogo a gift of palm fiber to make clothes, and once the Ebu Gogo took the fiber into their cave, the villagers threw in a firebrand to set it alight, killing all of the occupants (one pair may have fled into the forest). [5] [6]
There are also legends about the Ebu Gogo kidnapping human children, hoping to learn how to cook them. The children always easily outwit the Ebu Gogo in the tales. [7]
The Ebu Gogo folklore has gained public attention with the discovery of Homo floresiensis , an extinct hominid species that inhabited Flores until c. 50,000 years ago. The ethnologist Gregory Forth (2008) has suggested that tales about Ebu Gogo and similar figures in the folklore of Indonesia such as the Orang Pendek are based on the memory of actual encounters between modern humans and Homo floresiensis . [7] This proposal has little mainstream support, especially after the dating of the extinction of Homo floresiensis which initially was assumed to have occurred at c. 12,000 BP was revised to 50,000 BP. [8]
Human evolution is the evolutionary process within the history of primates that led to the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species of the hominid family, which includes all the great apes. This process involved the gradual development of traits such as human bipedalism, dexterity and complex language, as well as interbreeding with other hominins, indicating that human evolution was not linear but weblike. The study of human evolution involves several scientific disciplines, including physical and evolutionary anthropology, paleontology, and genetics.
Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, a group of islands in the eastern half of Indonesia. Including the Komodo Islands off its west coast, the land area is 15,530.58 km2, and the population was 1,878,875 in the 2020 Census ; the official estimate as at mid 2021 was 1,897,550. The largest towns are Maumere and Ende. The name Flores is the Portuguese and Spanish word for "Flowers".
Homininae, also called "African hominids" or "African apes", is a subfamily of Hominidae. It includes two tribes, with their extant as well as extinct species: 1) the tribe Hominini ―and 2) the tribe Gorillini (gorillas). Alternatively, the genus Pan is sometimes considered to belong to its own third tribe, Panini. Homininae comprises all hominids that arose after orangutans split from the line of great apes. The Homininae cladogram has three main branches, which lead to gorillas, and to humans and chimpanzees via the tribe Hominini and subtribes Hominina and Panina. There are two living species of Panina and two living species of gorillas, but only one extant human species. Traces of extinct Homo species, including Homo floresiensis have been found with dates as recent as 40,000 years ago. Organisms in this subfamily are described as hominine or hominines.
In Indonesian folklore, the Orang Pendek is the most common name given to a creature said to inhabit remote, mountainous forests on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo. The creature has allegedly been seen and documented for at least 100 years by forest tribes, local villagers, Dutch colonists, and Western scientists and travelers. Consensus among witnesses is that the entity is a ground-dwelling, bipedal primate covered in short fur, standing between 80 and 150 cm tall.
Folk memory, also known as folklore or myths, refers to past events that have been passed orally from generation to generation. The events described by the memories may date back hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of years and often have a local significance. They may explain physical features in the local environment, provide reasons for cultural traditions or give etymologies for the names of local places.
The yeren is a cryptid apeman reported to inhabit remote, mountainous regions of China, most famously in the Shennongjia Forestry District in the Hubei Province. Sightings of "hairy men" have remained constant since the Warring States Period circa 340 BCE through the Tang dynasty, before solidifying into the modern legend of the yeren. Generally, they are described as savage, strong, and fast-moving, living in mountain caves and descending only to raid villages for food or for people to wed or rape.
Little people have been part of the folklore of many cultures in human history, including Ireland, Greece, the Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands, New Zealand, Flores Island, Indonesia, and Native Americans.
Homo floresiensis( also known as "Flores Man"; nicknamed "Hobbit") is an extinct species of small archaic human that inhabited the island of Flores, Indonesia, until the arrival of modern humans about 50,000 years ago.
In Malaysian, Bruneian and Indonesian folklore, Bunian people or Orang bunian are supernatural beings said to be invisible to most humans, except those with "spiritual sight". While the term is often translated as "elves", it literally translates to "hidden people" or "whistling people". Orang bunian are described as beautiful, dressed in ancient Southeast Asian style, and nearly identical to humans in appearance. Some mythological accounts describe the lack of a philtrum. Modern depictions of Orang bunian deviate from the traditional folklore by including elf-like features, pointed ears, high fantasy-influenced attire, or modern Minangkabau long coat clothing.
The term Proto-Malay, which translates to Melayu Asli or Melayu Purba or Melayu Tua, refers to Austronesian speakers, possibly from mainland Asia, who moved to the Malay peninsula and Malay archipelago in a long series of migrations between 2500 and 1500 BC, and in one model the first of two migrations of early Malay speakers, before that of the Deutero-Malays. The Proto-Malays are the ancestors of the Malays in the modern Malaysia and Indonesia.
The Nage are an indigenous people living on the eastern Indonesian island of Flores and Timor. They descended from the indigenous population of Flores They are largely assimilated by the neighboring people. They speak Nage, one of the major languages in the Austronesian languages group.
The Bukit Timah Monkey Man, commonly abbreviated as BTM or BTMM, is a legendary creature said to inhabit Singapore, chiefly in the forested Bukit Timah region. The creature is often cited as a forest-dwelling hominid or primate, and is also accounted for as being immortal; however, its exact identity remains unknown, and its existence disputed. Documentation of the BTM is sparse and scattered; the creature is largely considered a product of local folklore.
Homo erectus is an extinct species of archaic human from the Pleistocene, with its earliest occurrence about 2 million years ago. Its specimens are among the first recognizable members of the genus Homo.
The Hominidae, whose members are known as the great apes or hominids, are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: Pongo ; Gorilla ; Pan ; and Homo, of which only modern humans remain.
Nittaewo were said to be a small tribe of small bigfoot or Yeti-like hominid Cryptid native to Sri Lanka. No archeological evidence has been found to prove the existence of these humanoids, but they are ubiquitous in Veddha mythology and Sri Lankan folklore.
The evolution of nervous systems dates back to the first development of nervous systems in animals. Neurons developed as specialized electrical signaling cells in multicellular animals, adapting the mechanism of action potentials present in motile single-celled and colonial eukaryotes. Primitive systems, like those found in protists, use chemical signalling for movement and sensitivity; data suggests these were precursors to modern neural cell types and their synapses. When some animals started living a mobile lifestyle and eating larger food particles externally, they developed ciliated epithelia, contractile muscles and coordinating & sensitive neurons for it in their outer layer.
The region of Southeast Asia is considered a possible place for the evidence of archaic human remains that could be found due to the pathway between Australia and mainland Southeast Asia, where the migration of multiple early humans has occurred out of Africa. One of many pieces of evidence is of the early human found in central Java of Indonesia in the late 1800s by Eugene Dubois, and later in 1937 at Sangiran site by G.H.R. van Koenigswald. These skull and fossil materials are Homo erectus, named Pithecanthropus erectus by Dubois and Meganthropus palaeojavanicus by van Koenigswald. They were dated to c. 1.88 and 1.66 Ma, as suggested by Swisher et al. by analysis of volcanic rocks.
Rampasasa pygmies is a name given to a group of families described as pygmoid or Negrito, native to Waemulu village in Kecamatan Wae Rii, Manggarai Regency, Flores, Indonesia, following the discovery of Homo floresiensis in the nearby Liang Bua cave in 2003.
Gregory Forth, also known as Gregory L. Forth, is a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta. He earned his PhD from University of Oxford in 1980. Beginning in 1986, Forth was a professor at the University of Alberta for over thirty years. Forth is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
