I may tell you moreover that when people bring home pygmies which they allege to come from India, 'tis all a lie and a cheat. For those little men, as they call them, are manufactured on this Island, and I will tell you how.

You see there is on the Island a kind of monkey which is very small, and has a face just like a man's. They take these, and pluck out all the hair except the hair of the beard and on the breast, and then they dry them and stuff them and daub them with saffron and other things until they look like men. But you see it is all a cheat; for nowhere in India nor anywhere else in the world were there ever men seen so small as these pretended pygmies.

— Marco Polo, Travels Volume 2
Chapter IX. Concerning the Island of Java the Less (Sumatra)

No end in sight for the controversy that has surrounded Homo Floresiensis since its discovery last year. John Hawks tries to make sense of the latest data only just now published in Nature.

The upshot: Ebu Gogo is both archaic and pathological!

Here are some earlier Flores-related posts:

Little People 30 October 2004
Hobbits and their tools 30 October 2004
Ebu Gogo 12 November 2004
Ebu Gogo held in Captivity 9 December 2004
Cousin Florence and the Grandfather who Steals Everything 10 December 2004
Ebu Gogo in Clay 11 December 2004
Ebu Gogo really just a pinhead 21 February 2005
Ebu Gogo returned 26 February 2005
The Brain of Ebu Gogo 6 March 2005
Emnity 12 March 2005
Human diversity and all that 11 April 2005