In 2003, the fossilized skeleton of a new member of the human evolutionary family was unearthed on a remote island in Southeast Asia. This small skeleton surprised the discovery team of international scientists, causing them to fiercely disagree over the significance of creature’s tiny brain, primitive features, and implications for human evolution. The skeleton raised many challenging questions about the human past—including an alarming possibility that the tiny creature had suffered extinction by the hands of humans. The debate was not limited to the skeleton’s intellectual substance, however, but also became intertwined with the culturally and politically loaded problem of who would analyze the bones.
This paper examines the entangled intellectual and physical struggle over the bones of Homo floresiensis from 2004–2010, the years the conflict received international attention and became labeled a fossil “tug of war.” I explore how the question of ‘what does it mean to be human?’ became conflated with the question of ‘who decides?’ I argue that examining the skeleton’s discovery location, Indonesia, in a post-colonial context is crucial to understanding the conflict. This paper contributes to scholarship that explores the circulation of knowledge in the form of objects. I argue that hominid fossils provide a unique dimension to the discussion, as their delicate status often prohibits them from circulating. The bones are therefore tied to particular geographic, cultural contexts that shape the debates and ultimately the knowledge generated regarding our origins and ourselves.
