Indonesia's hobbit-sized humans find humble home

Indonesia's hobbit-sized humans find humble home

Tomi Soetjipto, Reuters

Newly unearthed remains of hobbit-sized humans, perhaps one of the most significant finds involving human evolution in recent years, are being stored in an office drawer in the Indonesian capital.

A lack of funds and strict laws on the removal of national treasures from the country mean the bones of several Homo floresiensis, who stood about one metre (three feet) tall and walked the earth about 13,000 years ago, are being kept at a modest government office in Jakarta, archaeologists said.

The small hominids, dubbed "Flores man", were first unearthed in a limestone cave on the remote island of Flores in 2003 by Australian and Indonesian scientists and the findings published to great acclaim this week in the journal Nature.

"They are now stored in a steel cabinet in the office," Thomas Sutikna, the archaeologist who first discovered the prized skull of a "Flores man", told Reuters on Friday, referring to the National Archaeology office in Jakarta.

"In 2004 we also found the lower part of a jaw, parts of legs and arms and some teeth."

The findings have stunned anthropologists, as the remains represent a new creature more closely resembling the fictional hobbits of the Lord of the Rings trilogy than modern humans.

Small tools and the remains of a pygmy elephant, or Stegodon, hunted by the hominids for food have also been unearthed.

"Flores man" is thought to be a descendant of Homo erectus, who had a large brain, was full-sized and spread out from Africa to Asia about two million years ago.

Scientists suspect "Flores man" lived at the same time as modern humans and became extinct after a massive volcanic eruption on the island around 12,000 years ago.

However, local folk tales suggest the hominids may have still been living on Flores until the Dutch arrived in the 1500s.

The hominid family, which includes humans and pre-humans, diverged from chimpanzees about seven million years ago.

The findings in Flores have been described as an "extraordinarily important" piece in the complex puzzle of human evolution.

Australian scientists from the University of New England were primarily involved in determining the age of the bones as well as reconstructing the skeletal elements, Sutikna said.

Australian scientists have said they hope to find more new species of small humans on other islands surrounding Flores, 1,500 kilometers (940 miles) east of Jakarta.

Soejono, another Indonesian archaeologist, said a lack of funds had hindered early excavations in the Liang Bua limestone cave which began in the 1970s.

Soejono, who launched the first excavation three decades ago, said his government-sponsored team had found scattered evidence of prehistoric life in the cave after being tipped off by a Dutch missionary living in the island.

"We found that the cave once housed systematic life ... We conducted our own research until the money ran out," he told Reuters.

The project was halted in 1989 and restarted with funding from the University of New England in 2001, Soejono said.