The 13 pieces of organic material that lead to the declaration of the species Homo luzonensis were all pulled from an area of earth smaller than an attaché case located towards the mouth of Callao Cave in Peñablanca, Luzon, Philippines. Together they comprise the second small bodied, gracile and (at least at this point) localized hominid to be identified as a new species in less than two decades. While notions of direct linearity in hominid evolution have long faded from the analytical discussion of the fossils, there is something almost sporadic about two speciation events happening so closely in time but just far away enough in distance to be considered obviously independent of each other. Working with interviews with the primary investigators and excavation footage shot in 2015 and 2020, this short film aims to examine the shifting historical definitions of the idea of species within archaeology and how that idea is again being refined as new methods enable us to pull so much information from such small samples of evidence. The film closes with speculation of what body part would be the most diagnostic or otherwise useful if found next.

Mutable, is a 15 minute ‘cut down’ of a longer project. The short is intended for conference screenings and similar venues, the feature length version is intended for a general audience. The short is covered by Creative Commons licenses (CC BY-NC-SA).  The feature length is covered by a traditional copyright.