Hobbit-Like Human Ancestors Thought to Be Extinct Might Still Be Hiding Away in Indonesia, Claims Anthropologist

Hobbit-Like Human Ancestors Thought to Be Extinct Might Still Be Hiding Away in Indonesia, Claims Anthropologist

Considering the kind of attention that the Lord of the Rings garnered in the early 2000s, it was only natural that the fun-sized H. floresiensis be nicknamed after a beloved character in the franchise — the Hobbit.


Back in 2004, late anthropologist Mire Morwood discovered fossils of a tiny species of hominin on the Indonesian island of Flores, taking the world of anthropology by surprise.

This Homo floresiensis, which dates back to the late Pleistocene period (which began about 2,580,000 years ago and ended 11,700 years ago), was apparently a contemporary of early modern humans in this part of Southeast Asia. Nonetheless, the diminutive hominin bore a resemblance to the australopithecines and even chimps to some extent.

Considering the kind of attention that the Lord of the Rings garnered in the early 2000s, it was only natural that the fun-sized H. floresiensis be nicknamed after a beloved character in the franchise — the Hobbit.

The Hobbit, as per most accounts, was 3 feet and 6 inches tall, had large feet, and possessed a brain one-third the size of a regular human's, but still managed to make tools. The general consensus seemed to be that these creatures went extinct some 12,000 years ago.

However, anthropologist and ethnobiologist Gregory Forth recently claimed that the Hobbits probably never went extinct in the first place, suggesting that these species likely inhabit Indonesia to this day!

When Forth first started ethnographic fieldwork on Flores twenty years ago, he heard stories about human-like creatures, some of which were said to be alive but only rarely seen. According to the late Mike Morwood of the University of Wollongong in Australia, who led the H. floresiensis discovery team, descriptions of these hominoids "fitted floresiensis to a T."

Years of hearing accounts of 'an animal that is remarkably like a human but is not human' that once lived in a cave on the slopes of a nearby volcano from different members of Indonesia's Lio tribe allowed Forth to put two and two together, and make the wild claim that these Hobbits never went extinct, or hadn't at least until very recently.

In his book, Between Ape and Human, Forth strives to find the best explanation — that is, the most rational and empirically best supported — of Lio's accounts of the creatures, he wrote for The Scientist.

"We simply don't know when this species became extinct or indeed dare I say — I did dare say — we don't even know if it is extinct," Forth told Live Science. "So there is some possibility that it is still alive."

He also touches upon the indictment of anthropology as a whole, which many critics have rightly condemned for its imperialist history of racist harm.

"Palaeontologists and other life scientists would do well to incorporate such Indigenous knowledge into continuing investigations of hominin evolution in Indonesia and elsewhere," Forth wrote in The Scientist.

Gregory Forth's statement has experts sceptical, to be sure, but many would agree with his assessment of the field of anthropology.


Hobbit-Like Human Ancestors Thought to Be Extinct Might Still Be Hiding Away in Indonesia, Claims Anthropologist