The fellowship that we call humanity contains some unlikely characters, not least of all a diminutive extinct species known as Homo floresiensis. Residing on the Indonesian island of Flores until around 50,000 years ago, this stocky, big-footed hominin wouldn’t have looked out of place at Bag End, and is therefore widely referred to as “the Hobbit”.

What We Know About The Hobbits

A wizard – as the saying goes – is never late, yet the Hobbits of Flores show up puzzlingly late in the fossil record. Despite resembling older species of hominids that lived millions of years ago, H. floresiensis seems to have existed at the same time as our own species, and may even have still been around when the first Homo sapiens arrived on the island.

The tiny old things were eventually discovered in the Liang Bua cave in 2003, with a nearly complete female skeleton known simply as LB1 being the first specimen. Since then, we’ve found the remains of more than a dozen members of this species, enabling us to deduce that they probably stood around 106 centimeters tall (3 feet 6 inches) and had tiny brains, large teeth, and short legs supported by bulky feet.

More recent analyses of an upper arm bone from the nearby site of Mata Menge suggest that H. floresiensis may have been even smaller than originally thought.

How Did They Live?

Despite their miniature brains, the ancient “Hobbits” do appear to have made stone tools. Utensils produced by the Tolkien-esque creatures have been dated to between 190,000 and 50,000 years ago, though it’s unclear exactly what these were used for.

Breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, and luncheon were appropriately hearty and appear to have included an extinct species of elephant called Stegodon, among other delights. On the flip side, the hominins themselves may have had to avoid becoming dinner for larger predators. For instance, we know that they shared their habitat with Komodo dragons, although researchers aren’t sure if the venomous lizards posed a threat to the hobbits.

Where Did They Come From?

It’s still unclear exactly which species of hominin the “Hobbits” descended from or how they managed to reach Flores. Given that the island has never been connected by land to mainland Asia and is separated from Java by a significant and treacherous stretch of ocean, the wee fellas have clearly strayed pretty far from Middle Earth.

Initially, it was suggested that H. floresiensis may have been related to Homo erectus, which was present in Java until shortly before the “Hobbit humans” appeared. Assuming this upright human ancestor somehow managed to get to Flores, it’s highly possible that they slowly morphed into H. floresiensis due to a process called island dwarfism, whereby extended isolation within a limited range causes a species to shrink.

What’s really weird, though, is that many of H. floresiensis’ morphological traits align with even older hominids, including Homo habilis and Australopithecus – which predates the Homo lineage and includes Lucy as its most famous specimen. Given that neither of these species ever left Africa, though, scientists are at a complete loss to explain this family resemblance.

In the past year, things have come full circle, as analyses of H. floresiensis teeth from Mata Menge have revealed that the teeny humans probably were related to Homo erectus after all. And just to throw an extra bit of spice into the mix, some researchers have begun to pay attention to local legends on Flores which say the Hobbits are still alive and well.