''Homo floresiensis'' also known as "Flores Man"; nicknamed "Hobbit"
) is an
extinct
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...
species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...
of small
archaic human
A number of varieties of ''Homo'' are grouped into the broad category of archaic humans in the period that precedes and is contemporary to the emergence of the earliest early modern humans (''Homo sapiens'') around 300 ka. Omo-Kibish I (Omo I) f ...
that inhabited the island of
Flores
Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, a group of islands in the eastern half of Indonesia. Including the Komodo Islands off its west coast (but excluding the Solor Archipelago to the east of Flores), the land area is 15,530.58 km2, and th ...
, Indonesia, until the arrival of
modern humans
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, an ...
about 50,000 years ago.
The remains of an individual who would have stood about in height were discovered in 2003 at
Liang Bua
Liang Bua is a limestone cave on the island of Flores, Indonesia, slightly north of the town of Ruteng in Manggarai Regency, East Nusa Tenggara. The cave demonstrated archaeological and paleontological potential in the 1950s and 1960s as describe ...
on the island of Flores in
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
. Partial skeletons of at least nine individuals have been recovered, including one complete skull, referred to as "LB1".
These remains have been the subject of intense research to determine whether they were diseased modern humans or a separate species; a 2017 study concludes by
phylogenetic
In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...
analysis that ''H. floresiensis'' is an early species of ''
Homo
''Homo'' () is the genus that emerged in the (otherwise extinct) genus ''Australopithecus'' that encompasses the extant species ''Homo sapiens'' ( modern humans), plus several extinct species classified as either ancestral to or closely relate ...
'', a
sister species
In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree.
Definition
The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram:
Taxon A and t ...
of ''
Homo habilis
''Homo habilis'' ("handy man") is an extinct species of archaic human from the Early Pleistocene of East and South Africa about 2.31 million years ago to 1.65 million years ago (mya). Upon species description in 1964, ''H. habilis'' was highly ...
''.
This
hominin
The Hominini form a taxonomic tribe of the subfamily Homininae ("hominines"). Hominini includes the extant genera ''Homo'' (humans) and '' Pan'' (chimpanzees and bonobos) and in standard usage excludes the genus ''Gorilla'' (gorillas).
The t ...
was at first considered remarkable for its survival until relatively recent times, initially thought to be only 12,000 years ago.
However, more extensive stratigraphic and chronological work has pushed the dating of the most recent evidence of its existence back to 50,000 years ago.
The ''Homo floresiensis'' skeletal material is now dated from 60,000 to 100,000 years ago;
stone tool
A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric (particularly Stone Ag ...
s recovered alongside the skeletal remains were from
archaeological horizons ranging from 50,000 to 190,000 years ago.
Specimens
Discovery
The first specimens were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores on 2 September 2003 by a joint Australian-Indonesian team of
archaeologists
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...
looking for evidence of the original
human migration
Human migration is the movement of people from one place to another with intentions of settling, permanently or temporarily, at a new location (geographic region). The movement often occurs over long distances and from one country to another (ex ...
of modern humans from
Asia to Australia.
They instead recovered a nearly complete, small-statured skeleton, LB1, in the Liang Bua cave, and subsequent excavations in 2003 and 2004 recovered seven additional skeletons, initially dated from 38,000 to 13,000 years ago.
In 2004, a separate species ''Homo floresiensis'' was named and described by Peter Brown et al., with LB1 as the
holotype
A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...
. A tooth, LB2, was referred to the species.
LB1 is a fairly complete skeleton, including a nearly complete skull, which belonged to a 30-year-old female, and has been nicknamed "Little Lady of Flores" or "Flo".
An arm bone provisionally assigned to ''H. floresiensis'', specimen LB3, is about 74,000 years old. The specimens are not
fossil
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...
ized and have been described as having "the consistency of wet
blotting paper
Blotting paper, called bibulous paper, is a highly absorbent type of paper or other material. It is used to absorb an excess of liquid substances (such as ink or oil) from the surface of writing paper or objects. Blotting paper referred to as b ...
". Once exposed, the bones had to be left to dry before they could be dug up.
[Morwood and van Oosterzee 2007]
![Em - Homo floresiensis woman - 3](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Em_-_Homo_floresiensis_woman_-_3.jpg)
In 2009, additional finds were reported, increasing the minimum number of individuals represented by bones to fourteen. In 2015, teeth were referred to a fifteenth individual, LB15.
Stone implements of a size considered appropriate to these small humans are also widely present in the cave. The implements are at horizons initially dated to 95,000 to 13,000 years ago.
Modern humans reached the region by around 50,000 years ago, by which time ''H. floresiensis'' is thought to have gone extinct.
Comparisons of the stone artifacts with those made by modern humans in
East Timor
East Timor (), also known as Timor-Leste (), officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is an island country in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the exclave of Oecusse on the island's north-weste ...
indicate many technological similarities.
Scandal over specimen damage
The fossils are property of the Indonesian state. In early December 2004, Indonesian paleoanthropologist
Teuku Jacob
Teuku Jacob (6 December 1929 – 17 October 2007) was an Indonesian paleoanthropologist. As a student of Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald in the 1950s, Jacob claimed to have discovered and studied numerous specimens of '' Homo erectus''. He ...
removed most of the remains from their repository,
Jakarta
Jakarta (; , bew, Jakarte), officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta ( id, Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta) is the capital and largest city of Indonesia. Lying on the northwest coast of Java, the world's most populous island, Jakarta ...
's National Research Centre of Archaeology, without the permission of one of the institute's directors,
Raden Panji Soejono
Professor Raden Panji Soejono (born 1926) is an Indonesian archaeologist. He retired as director of the National Research Centre for Archaeology (ARKENAS) in 1987. Early in his career, in 1956, he served as Curator of Prehistory at the National Mu ...
, and kept them for three months.
Professor Richard Roberts of the
University of Wollongong
The University of Wollongong (abbreviated as UOW) is an Australian public research university located in the coastal city of Wollongong, New South Wales, approximately 80 kilometres south of Sydney. As of 2017, the university had an enrolment of ...
in Australia and other anthropologists expressed the fear that important scientific evidence would be sequestered by a small group of scientists who neither allowed access by other scientists nor published their own research.
Jacob returned the remains on 23 February 2005 with portions severely damaged
and missing two leg bones.
Press reports thus described the condition of the returned remains: "
ncludinglong, deep cuts marking the lower edge of the Hobbit's jaw on both sides, said to be caused by a knife used to cut away the rubber mould ... the chin of a second Hobbit jaw was snapped off and glued back together. Whoever was responsible misaligned the pieces and put them at an incorrect angle ... The pelvis was smashed, destroying details that reveal body shape, gait and evolutionary history."
, causing the discovery team leader Morwood to remark, "It's sickening; Jacob was greedy and acted totally irresponsibly."
Jacob, however, denied any wrongdoing. He stated that the damages occurred during transport from
Yogyakarta
Yogyakarta (; jv, ꦔꦪꦺꦴꦒꦾꦏꦂꦠ ; pey, Jogjakarta) is the capital city of Special Region of Yogyakarta in Indonesia, in the south-central part of the island of Java. As the only Indonesian royal city still ruled by a monarchy, ...
back to Jakarta
despite the claimed physical evidence that the jawbone had been broken while making a mould of the bones.
In 2005, Indonesian officials forbade access to the cave. Some news media, such as the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
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...
, expressed the opinion that the restriction was to protect Jacob, who was considered "Indonesia's king of palaeoanthropology", from being proven wrong. Scientists were allowed to return to the cave in 2007, shortly after Jacob's death.
The discoverers proposed that a variety of features, both primitive and derived, identify these individuals as belonging to a new species, ''Homo floresiensis''.
Based on previous date estimates, the discoverers also proposed that ''H. floresiensis'' lived contemporaneously with modern humans on Flores. Before publication, the discoverers were considering placing LB1 into her own genus, ''Sundanthropus floresianus'' (), but
of the article recommended that, despite her size, she should be placed in the genus ''Homo''.
'' than to modern humans.
Another 2007 study of the bones and joints of the arm, shoulder, and lower limbs also concluded that ''H. floresiensis'' was more similar to early humans and other apes than modern humans.
Archipelago, and noted several parallels to ''H. floresiensis''; they suggested supposedly diagnostic traits of ''H. floresiensis'' were instead a result of
of an ''H. erectus'' population.
concluded ''H. floresiensis'' branched off very early from the modern human line, either shortly before or shortly after the evolution of ''
'' 1.96–1.66million years ago. In 2009, American anthropologist
and colleagues found that the foot of ''H. floresiensis'' has several primitive characteristics, and that they could be the descendants of a species much earlier than ''H. erectus''. A 2015
'', raising the possibility that the ancestors of ''H. floresiensis'' left Africa before the appearance of ''
'', and were possibly even the first hominins to do so. However, ''H. floresiensis'' has several dental similarities to ''H. erectus'', which could mean ''H. erectus'' was the ancestor species.