New study shows: 700,000 years ago, there lived “hobbits” that were about 1 meter tall | Life & Knowledge
20 years ago, researchers on an Indonesian island discovered fossils of an early human species that was only about 1.07 meters tall – they quickly earned the nickname “Hobbits.”
Now a new study suggests that the ancestors of the hobbits were even smaller!
“We did not expect to find smaller individuals at such an old site,” says study author Yousuke Kaifu of the University of Tokyo.
The original hobbit fossils are between 60,000 and 100,000 years old. The new fossils were unearthed at a site called Mata Menge, about 72 kilometers from the cave where the first hobbit remains were discovered.
Even at the time of the discovery, researchers suspected that the earlier relatives might be smaller than the original hobbits after examining jawbones and teeth collected at the new site.
Bone finds indicate that the little people were only 1 meter tall
Further analyses of a tiny arm bone fragment and teeth indicate that the ancestors were on average only one meter tall – and lived 700,000 years ago.
“The scientists have convincingly shown that these were very small individuals,” says Dean Falk, an evolutionary anthropologist at Florida State University who was not involved in the research.
The results were published in the journal Nature Communications. Researchers are debating how the hobbits – called “Homo floresiensis” after the remote Indonesian island of Flores – were able to become so small and where they fit in human evolutionary history.
They are believed to be one of the last early human species to become extinct. Scientists do not yet know whether hobbits descended from an earlier, larger human species called Homo erectus that lived in the area, or from an even more primitive human predecessor.
More research and fossils are needed to determine the hobbits' place in human evolution, said Matt Tocheri, an anthropologist at Canada's Lakehead University.
“This question remains unanswered and will be the focus of research for some time to come,” Tocheri, who was not involved in the study, said in an email.