Howard was right...

[Sutek]

Back on topic:

have I missed something, am I being spectacularly obtuse, but wy is this such a big deal? There have been, and still are, whole tribes of pygmies living in Africa and Asia for centuries!

Why the furore over a single long-dead pygmy when there are ample living specimens available.

Nope. There's noone like this alive today. Thus "different species".

The nasal apature, brow ridge and zygomatic archers are reminiscant of Homo erectus and yet the dating puts these little guys 70-80 thousand years ago. We ahve no archaeological evidence of anything like them. The big deal is that the cranial capacity is similar in volume to our own body to brain size ratio. That, and any new species of human that is significantly phisiologically differnt to ourself and other species that we know of changes the way we will determine out own adaptability. Plus, recent local verbal history of the area relates stories of "litle men of the forest" so it's possible that these people lived through into modern day.

Average height of a Kalahari bushman male (your African pygmies, they call themselves the San) is around feet, ten inches. This is quite a bit taller than the people we're talking about too.