"Hobbits" Had Million-Year History on Island?
Newfound stone tools suggest the evolutionary history of the "hobbits" on the Indonesian island of Flores stretches back a million years.
The hobbit mystery was sparked by the 2004 discovery of bones on Flores that belonged to a three-foot-tall (one-meter-tall), 55-pound (25-kilogram) female with a grapefruit-size brain.
The tiny, hobbit-like creature—controversially dubbed a new human species, Homo floresiensis—persisted on the remote island until about 18,000 years ago, even as "modern" humans spread around the world, experts say.
Found in million-year-old volcanic sediments, the newly discovered tools are "simple sharp-edged flakes" like those found at nearby sites on Flores—sites dated to later time periods but also associated with hobbits and their ancestors—said study co-leader Adam Brumm, an archaeologist at the University of Wollongong in Australia, via e-mail.
The finding implies that a culture of stone tool wielding ancient humans, with origins in Africa, survived