What is an Ebu Gogo?
For the last couple of months I have been talking excitedly to everybody on twitter and on my email list about a new novel I am writing called Ebu Gogo. Now that the writing phase is complete and I have moved on to editing, I thought I would take a moment to tell everybody about my book and to explain what an ebu gogo is.
One of my favorite quotes about my writing comes from a review by Tara Grimravn of my now out of print short story collection Going Native and other stories. Grimravn writes about me: “He's something akin to a chaos magician, who uses whatever is necessary to get the job done and cast his spell, easily switching between belief systems and moral principles as needed to tell the story he wants to tell.”
This is a very astute observation and something about my work that I think goes over a lot of people’s heads. I don’t necessarily write stories from the perspective of my own beliefs, rather I pick a belief system that I want to explore in my work and then run with it to see where it leads me. This is why I am able to follow up my last book, Expedition to Eden, which is set in the biblical Garden of Eden, with Ebu Gogo, a novel that has human evolution and genetic anthropology at its core.
Ebu Gogo is a jungle adventure novel about cryptozoologists in an Indonesian rainforest searching for a species in the genus of Homo that is rumored to exist there. During the course of their adventures, they solve a number of mysteries regarding the origins of Homo sapiens and about our extinct relatives.
In 2004 archeologists on the Indonesian island of Flores dug up a fossil of a three and a half foot tall adult in the genus of Homo. The archeologists continued to dig in the area and found many more fossils, all adult, and all between three and four feet in height. They realized that they had discovered a new extinct species in the genus of Homo that was, as hard as it is to believe, a dwarf species. They named this new species Homo floresiensis after the island where it was discovered.
Scientists have hypothesized that hundreds of thousands years ago, long before human beings existed, some Homo erectus traveled across the sea from Asia and wound up on what is now called the island of Flores in what is now called Indonesia.
Through an evolutionary process called island dwarfism, these Homo erectus gradually reduced in size until eventually they became an entirely new species. Island dwarfism is when a species arrives on an island and, due to environmental factors such as a limited food supply, evolves to become very small. The phenomenon of island dwarfism has been observed on islands all over the world.
It’s pretty weird that archeologists discovered an extinct species of dwarfs, but what is even weirder is that natives on the island of Flores tell stories of little people who live there, who they call the Ebu Gogo.
Ebu gogo, in the language spoken by the natives of Flores, means “people who will eat anything.” In the stories the natives tell, the ebu gogo used to sneak into native villages from the jungle and steal their crops. So, the natives devised a plan to exterminate them.
According to native folklore, the ebu gogo did not wear clothes, so sometime in the mid-19thcentury the natives gave the ebu gogo clothes as a gift that were made of a flammable material. The ebu gogo were very excited to receive clothes and eagerly put them on and went back to their cave.
Then, the natives went to the cave where the ebu gogo lived and set them all on fire. But, the natives say that the ebu gogo didn’t completely die out, but that some escaped and went deeper into the jungle where they still live to this day in deep underground caves.
This is real science and actual folklore, and it has caused some to speculate that the Homo floresiensis did not die out, but that the species survives to this day and is the same species that the natives of Flores call the ebu gogo. This is the basis for my upcoming jungle adventure novel Ebu Gogo.
Scientists have reconstructed what the ebu gogo looked like, and you can see an NSFW model of a female HERE and an SFW bust HERE.
In my novel, I have modeled the ebu gogo off of the two scientific models above. For me, the distinguishing facial features are the lack of a chin, the sloping forehead, and the broad nose.
I have also added a number of features to their appearance that come from native folklore. For example, in native folklore the ebu gogo are covered in fur. In my novel, I have made their fur orange like an orangutan’s. Also, in native folklore the females have enormous breasts that hang below their waists and swing back and forth like pendulums when they walk. Their breasts hang so low that when the females run, they have to throw their breasts over their shoulders so that they don’t get in the way.
I have also invented a number of details of my own about the ebu gogo. In my book, it is the females who are the warriors, while the males are too immature and stupid to do much of anything. Also, in my book the females carry wooden stone tipped spears, which they throw overhand like javelins.
Of course the real distinguishing feature of the ebu gogo, and the reason for their fame, is their short stature, and I have made my ebu gogo very, very short.
So that is what an ebu gogo is. As of this writing I have finished the manuscript, hired an amazing cover artist with a very NSFW gallery on DeviantArt, and am currently in the editing phase. If you would like to get news from me, including being notified when Ebu Gogo is released, please join my newsletter HERE.
