December 17, 2004

Scholars Fight Over Ancient Bones

By DAVID COHEN

Eighteen thousand years after it slumped over dead in a Southeast Asian cave, what is believed to be a tiny human has become the center of a bitter tug of war between the scholars responsible for its discovery and a counterpart from a leading Indonesian university.

The hominid's skeleton -- along with fragmentary remains of four other individuals -- was unearthed during two excavations of a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores, creating a blaze of worldwide publicity this