August
25
/ 2023
While Frodo in Tolkien’s Middle Earth ventured very far to destroy a magic ring and Gollum was a good swimmer, real-life ‘hobbit’ ancestors may have also traversed far to get to their island! After almost 20 years since the Homo floresiensis (nicknamed "hobbits") discovery was announced to the world, scientists are still asking many questions, including if they were human, a different hominid species, and equally importantly, how they managed to get there? In an interview with the author, anthropologist Dean Falk of Florida State University suggested that the ancestors of the tiny beings accidentally floated to the Indonesian island of Flores in sleeping nests they had built in trees out of leaves and other plant matter. These nests ended
