The hobbits of Flores
Isolated island hominins shrink to a metre tall with grapefruit-sized brains.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 571 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 50 thousand years
- Era
- Middle Pleistocene, Quaternary
The Flores population, descended from earlier arrivals, becomes progressively smaller: by 700,000 years ago at Mata Menge the teeth are already reduced, and the later Homo floresiensis at Liang Bua stands about 1.06 metres with a brain of some 420 cubic centimetres — australopith-sized — yet made stone tools and hunted dwarf elephants. Claims that it was a pathological modern human have not survived scrutiny. Insular dwarfism applied to a human is the most plausible explanation.