RP397 The Hobbit

 RP397 The Hobbit

It lived over 12,000 years ago and was only the size of a three-year-old human child, and yet it hunted dwarf elephants weighing 1,000 kg and lived alongside giant dog-sized rats and killer lizards. Homo floresiensis, nicknamed the “Hobbit” because of its small size, lived on the island of Flores, Indonesia, and may have been the last species of early humans to interact with modern humans, Homo sapiens.
The species is probably descended from Homo erectus, an ancestor it shared with modern humans, which arrived on Flores around one million years ago. Hundreds of thousands of years later, Homo erectus had evolved into the tiny Hobbit probably because of a phenomenon known as insular dwarfism. On small islands, survival favors those who need a lower energy intake from the limited food available. Animals therefore tend to develop smaller body sizes.
The species was discovered in 2003 by archaeologists excavating a cave. They found a female skeleton, one meter tall, buried in the sediment covering the cave floor. Originally, they mistook it for that of a child. Later, eight additional skeletons were found in the cave along with stone tools and dwarf elephant bones.
Homo floresiensis differed from modern humans not only in height. Their arms were longer, and they had large feet and teeth, though not much of a chin. Their brains, however, were far smaller than ours and smaller even than the average chimpanzee's. In spite of this, they used sophisticated tools, fire, and probably even had language, evidenced by their complex group hunting strategies.
Most evidence points to Homo floresiensis becoming extinct about 12,000 years ago after a volcanic eruption destroyed many of the island's inhabitants. Modern human remains have been found dating from around 11,000 years ago, but not before, so it is unclear whether the two species ever mingled.
However, Flores's modern-day inhabitants have legends that tell of small, hairy humanlike creatures who lived in caves and spoke a strange primitive language. These creatures were thought to be alive as recent as the nineteenth century, leading archaeologists to infer that perhaps they were the surviving descendants of Homo floresiensis, and may still be living in the poorly explored forests of Indonesia.