There have been a variety of human species in the evolution of us as Homo Sapiens. All of them have for one reason or another, died out and are now extinct. Scientists are able to examine the skeletal remains of any of these ancestors and apportion a particular species to them. There may be a match up to one we already know of or we might come across an entirely new species. This is what happened in this case and the results of the examination and analysis raised some interesting points of information.
The Indonesian island of Flores lies to the east of Java and Bali. It was in 2003 that palaeontologists entered a cave on the island of Flores. The cave was called Liang Bua or LB as the scientists referred to it. What they found inside caused much excitement. It was a skull and many bones forming the skeleton. But what surprised them was that analysis of the remains showed them to be from a female aged about 30 years.
However, the height of this person was only about three-and-a-half feet. She was officially given the term LB1 or Homo floresiensis and unofficially, “The Hobbit” after the book of the same name written by JRR Tolkien. The question remained; was this this short because she was an exception or had they discovered a new species of “dwarf” people?
Further investigations of the cave in 2004, uncovered eight other partial skeletons. All of these showed that it appeared that this shortage of height was perfectly normal for these hominids. Therefore, they became a new species, Homo floresiensis. In addition to the bones, the investigators discovered stone tools and animal remains in the cave. Further analysis suggests that this species could have lived as long ago as 95,000 years ago and possibly remained until only 12,000 years ago.
We are still not sure whether this species is a part of the human family or perhaps a shorter offshoot of Homo erectus; the first species to have its body in the same proportion as ourselves, Homo sapiens. Another question was did they only live on the island of Flores or inhabit other Indonesian islands? Around 2016, a team of scientists travelled to the island of Sulawesi in search of clues. They discovered a number of stone tools which were dated back to 118,000 years ago. Since our ancestors travelling from East Africa did not reach this part of the world until about 50,000 years ago, it indicates that the “Hobbit” species existed on other islands.
Finally, dwarf elephant fossils were also discovered on the island of Flores. But, we have no real idea whether this has any significance or connection to the Homo floresiensis people.
John Pullen 