Forget what J.R.R. Tolkien taught you about hobbits for a moment. In real life, Homo floresiensis, affectionately dubbed “the hobbit,” is a diminutive hominin species defined by skeletons discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2004. Since then, its status and identity have been the subject of much speculation, mystery, and controversy. That's partly because the hobbits were thought to have lived startlingly recently—just 12,000 years ago.
The idea of another hominin species living as recently as 12 kya (12 thousand years ago) had been both exciting and incredibly confusing. “We know that modern humans had got to Australia ... probably by 50 kya,” Richard Roberts, one of the researchers involved in the work, told Ars. Modern humans had passed through Southeast Asia on their way there, which means that they must have existed alongside any species living in their path at the time. Flores is not too far off that path.
In fact, many originally argued that the Flores skeletons were those of modern humans. Rather than a new species, some researchers suggested a variety of ailments that could create skeletons with a similar set of features to those of the hobbits. This would have cleared up another mystery—where modern humans go, related species go extinct. “We could never work out how you could have hobbits surviving so long after modern humans had [arrived],” says Roberts.
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