Twenty years ago, a remarkable discovery was made on the Indonesian island of Flores, where fossils of an early human relative, *Homo floresiensis*, were found. This species, popularly known as “Hobbits” after the fictional characters from *The Lord of the Rings*, is known for its small stature, but new research suggests that their ancestors were even smaller. Yousuke Kaifu, a lecturer at the University of Tokyo and the lead author of the new study, shared the news with the Associated Press: “We did not expect to find smaller individuals from such an ancient site.”
The latest findings, published in the journal *Nature Communications*, stem from the discovery of a small arm bone and teeth in 2016 at a site called Mata Menge, located approximately 72 kilometers from the original fossil discovery site. Analysis of the 88 mm long bone indicates that the ancestors of the Hobbits were about 1 meter tall and lived around 700,000 years ago. Dean Falk, an evolutionary anthropologist at Florida State University who did not participate in the research, noted, “They have convincingly shown that there were indeed very small individuals.”
Debates about the origins of *Homo floresiensis* have been intense since the species was discovered in 2003. According to researchers, similarities between the fossils from Mata Menge and *Homo erectus* fossils from the island of Java in Indonesia provide strong evidence that *Homo floresiensis* descended from this species. Kaifu stated, “This means that *Homo floresiensis* experienced a dramatic reduction in body size from the large *Homo erectus*, whose body size was similar to that of modern humans.”
*Homo erectus*, which first appeared around 1.9 million years ago, had body proportions resembling modern humans but with a smaller brain. Adam Brumm, a professor of archaeology at Griffith University, added, “The discovery supports the idea that an evolutionary process known as island dwarfism affected the genetics of a group of large *Homo erectus* that somehow migrated from the continental mass of Asia to the isolated island of Flores around one million years ago.”
This phenomenon led to a dramatic reduction in body size on Flores between 1 million and 700,000 years ago, giving rise to *Homo floresiensis*. According to Gerrit van den Bergh, a professor of paleontology at the University of Wollongong, the primary reason for this size reduction was likely that being small has several advantages over being large on an island. “Periodic food shortages are likely the main selective force behind smaller body size,” he stated.
The fossil bone found at Mata Menge was so small that researchers initially thought it might belong to a child. However, microscopic examination revealed that it actually came from an adult. In total, ten *Homo floresiensis* fossils have been unearthed from Mata Menge, including some described in 2016, which originated from at least four individuals—two adults and two children—along with stone tools.
*Homo floresiensis* went extinct shortly after *Homo sapiens* arrived in the region. Brumm concluded, “I believe our species was likely responsible for that. This isolated line of archaic hominins seems to have existed on Flores for an extremely long time and then vanished not long after *Homo sapiens* clearly established itself in the region. It hardly seems like a coincidence.”