M.J. Rose

I am inspired by the recent discovery of bones from very small and apparently intelligent early hominids (Homo floresiensis), mainly because I love to picture them in life, making their tools, enjoying their families, building and hunting and possibly speaking some sort of early language – and it is somehow comforting to imagine another species of intelligent human on planet earth living at the same time as our own species…

Hobbits? We’ve got a cave full

By Deborah Smith, Science Editor (smh.com.au)

Chief Epiradus Dhoi Lewa has a strange tale to tell. Sitting in his bamboo and wooden home at the foot of an active volcano on the remote Indonesian island of Flores, he recalls how people from his village were able to capture a tiny woman with long, pendulous breasts three weeks ago.

“They said she was very little and very pretty,” he says, holding his hand at waist height. “Some people saw her very close up.”

The villagers of Boawae believe the strange woman came down from a cave on the steaming mountain where short, hairy people they call Ebu Gogo lived long ago.

“Maybe some Ebu Gogo are still there,” the 70-year-old chief told the Herald through an interpreter in Boawae last week.

The locals’ descriptions of Ebu Gogo as about a metre tall, with pot bellies and long arms match the features of a new species of human “hobbits” whose bones were recently unearthed by Australian and Indonesian researchers in a different part of Flores in a cave known as Liang Bua.

The unexpected discovery of this tiny Homo floresiensis, who existed until at least 12,000 years ago at Liang Bua, before being apparently wiped out by a volcanic eruption, was hailed as one of the most important archaeological finds in decades when it was announced in October…

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