Island of the Little People

Friday, October 29th, 2004

By now you’ve probably heard of the tiny homo floriensis fossils found in Indonesia — just three feet tall, found with stone tools, and just 13,000 to 18,000 years old. Island of the Little People paints an amusing (moving) picture:

Archaeologists believe floresiensis, whose cohabitation on the island with Komodo dragons and pygmy stegodons must have resembled a Ray Harryhausen movie, were wiped out by a volcanic eruption.

They’ve been dubbed “hobbits”:

The floresiensis skeletons were half-jokingly dubbed “hobbits” by some of the archaeologists who found them, a bon mot that has seized the imagination of headline writers across the mediasphere. “Lilliputians” would have been more appropriate. After all, according to the well-traveled mariner Lemuel Gulliver, the island of Lilliput was also located in Indonesia.

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