One trip across the border and the travel-bug has bitten! I suppose the desire to know different people and different places has always been there – a desire I’ve explored through books and stories – and finally taking this Mozambique trip has made acting on that desire and travelling to far-off places seem more of an option.

It occurs to me that this epiphany probably shouldn’t coincide with getting National Geographic. There was a show this evening about the fossilised remains of small people found in two caves on opposite sides of the main island of the micronesian nation of Palau. It’s fascinating. I am intrigued. A national of little people who lived between 3000 and 1500 BP and then vanished from the earth. People who came from across the seas to these coral islands. People who are smaller than other humans of the time but who seem to be human. The researchers think they may have been ordinary-sized humans who rapidly evolved to be smaller (except for their teeth, which apparently take longer) and then were wiped out by something… no-one is quite sure what.

I suppose the academic reaction is that I want to study the situation. And possibly find some way to study some of the disciplines that would let me study the situation. Even without the formal access to the information, I’m sure I’ll read up on it and keep my eye out for papers like this one. I’m particularly interested in the idea of elastic and/or multi-directional human evolution. I’m fairly sure, in general, that the idea of evolution, when taken as the idea of movement along a fixed line in a fixed, particular direction, has been over-generously applied, particularly in it’s application to social or societal development. This is my big objection to stage theories of human social development. It’s fascinating to think that there might be physical evolutionary evidence of a group of people who evolved in the opposite direction (in this case smaller instead of larger) to other human groups.

Whether or not it’s true, whatever else I find out about these ‘little people’ of Palau, I now have at least one place on my list of ‘places to visit before I die’. I guess once the travel bug bites there really is no turning back.

See you in the Republic of Palau…