The Discovery of the Hobbit People
Richardson
9E
1st Draft
March 2013
The Hobbit People
In The 1950’s and 60’s a priest and a part-time archaeologist, named Theodore Vernoeven discovered early sighs of human presence. He also discovered fossils thought to be around almost 750,000 years old. Theodore Vernoeven discovered bones and other remains from the Liana Bua what is known as “Cool Cave”. The bones that Theodore found were what he thought to be a child but it turned out to be a full grown adult just over three feet tall. The tiny human that Theodore and other archaeologist named her Homo Floresiensis and nicknamed her the Hobbit which lived 18,000 years ago.
The Hobbits had arms that were longer than their legs, giving them a slightly more ape-like structure. Their skulls had no bony chins, so their faces had more of an oval shape. Their forehead was sloping. The inferred brain size was tiny, putting them in the IQ range of chimpanzees. An isolated arm bone found deeper in the Liang Bua deposit, as well as the remains of several other individuals recovered more recently, indicate that Homo Floresiensis had a long history on the island, and was present there 95,000 years ago. This bantam human therefore significantly overlapped in time with Homo sapiens, who arrived in the region sometime between 55,000 and 35,000 years ago. How they interacted, however if they ever even met face to face remains a mystery.
The Flores people used fire in hearths for cooking and hunted stegodon, a primitive dwarf elephant found on the island. Although small, the stegodon still weighed about 1,000 kilograms 2,200 pounds, and would pose a significant challenge to a hunter the size of a three-year-old modern human child. Hunting must have required joint communication and planning. Almost all of the stegodon bones associated with the human artifacts is of juveniles, suggesting the tiny humans...