The surprising discovery of fossils of an ancient human ‘hobbit’

Twenty years ago, a team of researchers discovered for the first time fossils of an ancient and enigmatic species of hominids.

This is the Homo floresiensis also known in the scientific community as the “hobbit” of Flores in reference to the famous characters of the British writer JRR Tolkien.

When first discovered, the individuals were estimated to be around 1.06 metres tall.

But now, a recent study published in the magazine Nature suggests that the species may have been much weaker than previously thought .

Human “hobbits” were discovered in 2004 in the Liang Bua cave on the Indonesian island of Flores, from which the species gets its name.

On this occasion, Australian and Indonesian archaeologists discovered bones and teeth of the species, as well as stone tools that would have been used to cut meat.

Scientists have come to the conclusion that Homo floresiensis It could measure 1.06 meters tall, its brain was so small that it was equivalent to a third of the current human brain and it had large teeth. In addition, the remains discovered were estimated to be around 50,000 years old, by which time Homo sapiens had already arrived in Australia.

The discovery also left several questions open. For many years, scientists were faced with the mystery of determining where this small species could be placed in the human family tree.

In 2016, another important discovery was made on the Homo floresiensis. It was when researchers discovered a new group of fossils in another area of ​​the island, Mother Menge in the So’a basin.

The remains consisted of six teeth and a jaw fragment, from at least three different individuals, and were estimated to be around 700,000 years old. This makes them 650,000 years older than the fossils found in Liang Bua Cave, while being slightly smaller, suggesting that their body size changed over time.

Because archaeologists had been unable to find any postcranial elements, that is, bones from the head down, on the island of Flores, it could not until now be said with certainty that the So’a hominids were smaller than had been assumed. Homo floresiensis.

The new research, led by Professor Yosuke Kaifu of the University of Tokyo, Iwan Kurniawan of the Indonesian Centre for Geological Survey and Associate Professor Gerrit van den Bergh of the University of Wollongong, has been able to identify a key element to solving this problem.

After several seasons of excavations at the Mata Menge site, they discovered three hominid fossils dating back 700,000 years. The most valuable is a fragment of the humerus, the longest bone in the arm, and it is the first postcranial element discovered in the Homo floresiensis. The other remains correspond to two teeth.

Kaifu and the rest of the team used digital microscopy to analyze the fossils, after which they discovered that the humerus belonged to an adult and not a child. Guided by the estimated length of the bone, they were able to determine that the height of its owner was just 100 cm. This is 6 cm shorter than previously estimated for Liang Bua hominids.

“This 700,000-year-old adult humerus is not only shorter than that of the Homo floresiensis“But this is the smallest arm bone known in the hominid fossil record worldwide,” said Adam Brumm, a professor at the Australian Centre for Human Evolution at Griffith University and co-author of the study.

“This rare specimen confirms our hypothesis that the ancestors of the Homo floresiensis they had an extremely small body size; “However, it is now evident from the tiny proportions of this limb bone that the earliest ancestors of the ‘hobbit’ were even smaller than we previously thought,” Brumm added.

According to the research team, the remains found so far at Mata Menge correspond to at least four “hobbits”, two of which are believed to be children. Being anatomically similar to the hominids found at Liang Bua, they could be considered a slightly older version of them.

But what about the origin of these enigmatic humans who lived on the island of Flores?

Kaifu and the other authors of the study supported the hypothesis that these “hobbits” evolved from the Homo erectus a hominid that is believed to have left Africa 1.9 million years ago. Its morphology was quite similar to that of modern humans and fossils have been found on the island of Java, Indonesia, as well as in other places in Asia and Africa.

Specifically, the researchers pointed out that Homo erectus moved 700 kilometers east of Java to Flores and that its arrival on the latter island took place a million years ago. When it settled in this area, the species is said to have shrunk considerably to the size of a “hobbit” over a period of 300,000 years.

According to Kaifu, some of the factors that could have influenced this situation were the food shortage in Flores and the fact that there were no predators in the area that posed a threat to his life.

The same hypothesis indicates that the shrinkage of these hominids also led to a shrinkage of their brain. However, according to the researchers, the discovery of the tools on the Indonesian island shows that, despite this, he retained his cognitive abilities.

“It surprises me a little bit. We thought that being intelligent and having a bigger brain was the destiny of humans. But it floresiensis This tells us that this is not necessarily the case.” Kaifu said The New York Times .