Earlier this year, Middle-Earth News reported that Hobbits Once Lived Among Us.
In 2003, scientists unearthed on the Indonesian island Flores the remains of human beings who showed similar attributes to Tolkien’s halflings. Until then these hobbits of Flores went unnoticed by us “big folk“.
The remains of these small humans raised many questions and scientists were divided over the question of whether these Hobbits, scientifically known as Homo floresiensis, were just modern humans with microcephaly, or actually a distict species of humans after all.
Recent studies strengthen the assumption that “Homo Floresiensis was the dwarf version of an earlier human species. Scientists widely assume that human evolution is typified by increases of brain and body, but “Homo floresiensis suggests this trend may go the opposite direction in special circumstances, such as when on islands” (Charles Choi NBC News).
Furthermore, Japanese researchers re-examined the size of the brain of Homo floresiensis and compared this with the brain-to-body ratio of modern humans. The findings indicate that the ancestor of Homo floresiensis was Homo erectus, contrary to previous studies:
“Our work does not prove that erectus is the ancestor of floresiensis […] But what we have shown is that it is possible (and counters the argument) by many people that floresiensis‘s brain is too small to (be consistent with the view that it is a dwarf form of erectus). Source: BBC News
The research of Dr Yousuke Kaifu, Daisuke Kubo and Reiko Kono of the National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo is published in the Royal Society’s Proceedings B Journal.
If you cannot access the journal, read more about these historic “hobbits” on BBC News, ABS Science, and NBC News.
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