HOMO FLORESIENSIS, human/hominin species that existed between one hundred thousand and sixty thousand years ago. It is often referred to as the “Hobbit” species owing to their diminutive stature—they were only around three and a half feet tall. The remains of one nearly complete skeleton and several partial specimens were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, furnishing tantalizing clues to the evolutionary history of hominins in Southeast Asia.
Researchers have proposed two primary hypotheses regarding the ancestry of H. floresiensis: one posits descent from Homo habilis, a small-brained early human, the other from larger-bodied Homo erectus, the first hominin to leave Africa. According to the latter hypothesis H. erectus underwent “island dwarfism” after reaching Flores, an evolutionary process that occurs when a species becomes progressively smaller over generations owing to long-term isolation on a small island with limited resources and the absence of predators (this adaptation has been observed in other extinct species on Flores such as the pygmy elephants).
Interestingly, though the brains of H. floresiensis were small relative to their body size—about as big as a chimpanzee’s, perhaps another instance of island dwarfism—the size of their prefrontal cortex was similar to that of modern humans, meaning they would still have been relatively intelligent. This jibes with the paleoanthropological evidence that H. floresiensis hunted stegodon, an extinct type of elephant, and thus possessed sophisticated hunting capabilities.
Many questions about H. floresiensis remain unanswered: the exact relationship between these diminutive hominins and other members of the genus Homo, their behavioral adaptations, and the circumstances surrounding their eventual extinction are topics of ongoing research and speculation. Initial speculation suggested the small stature of the species could have been due to disease, but subsequent research refuted this hypothesis.