‘Hobbit’ Ancestor Bones Found
Small human-like creatures lived in Indonesia 50,000 years ago, and a recent study found evidence of their much older ancestors.
The researchers said the discovered teeth and bones are from small creatures, or similar ones, that lived before what they call “hobbit” hominin.
The name hobbit comes from the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. It is used to describe members of an imaginary race. In Tolkien’s stories, hobbits are similar to human beings, only smaller.
The remains were found in 2014 on the Indonesian island of Flores. That first fossil discovery created much talk about what these small creatures are, and how they got to Flores.
The new fossils are from a bigger species that arrived on the island about a million years ago. The Australian researchers say the creature began to shrink over time in a process called “island dwarfism.” Island dwarfism is something well known among animals. Some animals are up to six times smaller than their ancestors because of a lack of resources.
The new finding put an end to the idea that hobbits were just sick or underfed homo sapiens -- the scientific name for humans.
But there is still debate as to what the hobbits really are, and from where they came. One possibility is that hobbits are a dwarfed version of homo erectus—the first human-like creature to leave Africa.
