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hobbits

ANTHROPOLOGY: Why Were the Real “Hobbits” So Small?

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hobbit house - pixabay

It’s not every day that scientists discover a new human species. But that’s just what happened back in 2004, when archaeologists uncovered some very well-preserved fossil remains in the Liang Bua cave on Flores Island, Indonesia. The diminutive size of this new human species, Homo floresiensis, earned it the nickname “Hobbit.” Shockingly, researchers believed it had survived until the end of the last Ice Age, some 18,000 years ago. That was much later than Neanderthals lived, later than any human species other than our own. So why did tiny humans wind up living on these islands? For us biogeographers and … Read more

SCIENCE: Hobbits Not Related to Pygmies, Study Says

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Hobbit Home - pixabay

Ever since finding the remains of the “hobbits” — a small-statured species of ancient human — on the island of Flores in Indonesia, scientists have wondered whether the modern Pygmy people who now call the island home were in any way related to them. Now, researchers have found that the answer is “no,” the modern-day Pygmies on Flores are not related to the ancient hobbits, who go by the scientific name Homo floresiensis. While the genomes of modern Pygmy people on Flores have DNA sequences from other ancient human relatives — the Denisovans and the Neanderthals — they have “no … Read more