Posted on Saturday 30 October 2004

There's far from a consensus amongst experts about the meaning of the discovery of Homo floresiensis, the diminutive hobbit people of Flores. The main question is whether the sophisticated stone tools found in the proximity of the tiny skeletons were made by the creatures themselves or were made by humans that may have co-existed on the island.

The problem lies in not having any evidence of modern human occupation until around 12,000 years ago, about a thousand years after the most recent bones. The other problem is that the tools seem too big and heavy to be the sort of thing used by small humans and, given their grapefruit-sized brains, whether they were intelligent enough to make them in the first place.

Modern humans are known to have inhabited neighbouring regions for around 50,000 years and were even able to sail all the way to Australia, so the chances that two species met are very high. Perhaps the tools were left by humans whose remains are buried elsewhere. An even grimmer idea is that perhaps the tools were left by humans who hunted and butchered the hobbits for food.

See: Experts split over human Hobbit remains