Fossils Suggest Smaller ‘Hobbits’ Roamed An Indonesian Island 700,000 Years Ago

Twenty years ago, on an Indonesian island, scientists discovered fossils of an early human species that stood about 3 1/2 feet (1.07 meters) tall, earning them the nickname “hobbits.”

The original hobbit fossils—named by the discoverers after characters in “The Lord of the Rings”—date back to between 60,000 and 100,000 years ago. I Photo: Yousuke Kaifu

Now, a new study suggests that the ancestors of the hobbits were even slightly shorter, as reported by Adithi Ramakrishnan for the Associated Press (AP).

“We did not expect that we would find smaller individuals from such an old site,” study co-author Yousuke Kaifu of the University of Tokyo said in an email. The original hobbit fossils—named by the discoverers after characters in “The Lord of the Rings”—date back to between 60,000 and 100,000 years ago.

The new fossils were excavated at a site called Mata Menge, about 45 miles from the cave where the first hobbit remains were uncovered. In 2016, researchers suspected that the earlier relatives could be shorter than the hobbits after studying a jawbone and teeth collected from the new site.

Further analysis of a tiny arm bone fragment and teeth suggests that the ancestors were a mere 2.4 inches (6 centimeters) shorter and existed 700,000 years ago.

“They’ve convincingly shown that these were very small individuals,” said Dean Falk, an evolutionary anthropologist at Florida State University. The findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.

Researchers have debated how the hobbits—named Homo floresiensis after the remote Indonesian island of Flores—evolved to be so small and where they fall in the human evolutionary story.

They are thought to be among the last early human species to go extinct. Scientists are still unsure whether the hobbits shrank from an earlier, taller human species called Homo erectus that lived in the area or from an even more primitive human predecessor.