Far away from Middle Earth, on an Indonesian island just to the north of Australia, there lived a dwarf species of human whose origins are shrouded in mystery…
Nicknamed ‘Hobbits’ after the diminutive, human-like race from J.R.R Tolkien's fantasy world of Middle-Earth, Homo floresiensis is a similarly small, real-life species that lived from 700,000 to 50,000 years ago on the island of Flores, Indonesia.
Standing just 1.1m (3ft 7in) tall, these ancient humans wouldn’t have looked out of place at Bilbo Baggins’ ‘eleventy-first’ birthday party - and like their fictional namesakes, they may have also had big appetites.
What was Homo floresiensis?
As its nickname suggests, Homo floresiensis was small - in fact, it’s the smallest member of the Homo genus, standing roughly a foot smaller than the next smallest species, Homo habilis, which stood approximately 135cm (4ft 5in) tall.
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Homo floresiensis had a small brain too, similar in size to that of a chimpanzee’s and several extinct species of australopithecines. It also had robust leg bones, large, flat feet, and no chin - characteristics that distinguish it from modern Homo sapiens.
However, like other, more ‘advanced’ species of humans, Homo floresiensis has been found alongside stone tools, suggesting it killed, butchered, and may have even cooked its prey.
Evidence of tool making, combined with a 2025 study showing that its prefrontal cortex - the region of the brain associated with cognition - was proportionally about the same size as that of a modern human, suggests Homo floresiensis was far more intelligent than its small brain, and somewhat archaic anatomy, might imply.
Where did Homo floresiensis live?
Homo floresiensis was endemic to the island of Flores - one of Indonesia’s Lesser Sunda Islands. At 14,250 km2, Flores is roughly three quarters the size of Wales and officially the 10th largest of Indonesia’s 17,508 islands.
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Until the arrival of modern humans on Flores approximately 46,000 years ago, Homo floresiensis was the only human species known to inhabit the island. They lived alongside a variety of different animals, from komodo dragons and other types of monitor lizards to dwarf elephants and giant rats. The climate of Flores is hot and tropical, with temperatures averaging 28°C to 31°C year round. Homo floresiensis faced similarly unbearable temperatures 50,000 years ago, and would have likely sought shade in the island’s deep rainforests as a result.
Homo floresiensis was well adapted for jungle living. It retained - or perhaps secondarily evolved, depending on which hypothesis of its hotly debated origins you fall on - ape-like wrist bones similar to those of australopithecines, which would have aided climbing. Its long, slender toes would have also helped it scramble over dense jungle undergrowth.
Like other humans, Homo floresiensis also sheltered in caves. Most remains and stone tools associated with Homo floresiensis have been found in a large, limestone cave known as Liang Bua, which translates to ‘cool cave’ in the local Manggarai language.
How was Homo floresiensis discovered?
The first remains of Homo floresiensis were found in September 2003 by a joint Australian-Indonesian team of archaeologists looking for evidence of the original migration of modern humans from Asia to Australia.
Led by New Zealand archaeologist Mike Morwood, this team unearthed a nearly complete skeleton - named LB1 - from the floor of Liang Bua. Subsequent excavations in 2003 and 2004 recovered seven additional skeletons, giving researchers enough material to describe and officially name a new species of human, Homo floresiensis.
These fossils were initially dated from 38,000 to 13,000 years ago, but further analyses revealed they were much older, between 60,000 and 50,000 years old. Even older fossils have been discovered at the site of Mata Menge, which lies 74km further east on the island.
The fossils, including teeth, a partial jaw, and a humerus, date to around 700,000 years ago and suggest the species remained small for hundreds of thousands of years.
So far, more than 100 fossils of Homo floresiensis have been found, representing at least 15 individuals. Despite a wealth of remains, the origins of this small-statured species are heavily debated.
Why was Homo floresiensis so small?
There are two competing theories as to how Homo floresiensis arrived on the island of Flores and, subsequently, became so small.
The first and most well-supported theory is that Homo floresiensis descended from a population of larger-bodied Homo erectus that became isolated on Flores after it was separated from the larger island of Java by rising sea levels.
This population then gradually shrank through a process known as island dwarfism. When typically large animals become stranded on islands, selective pressures - most notably limited food resources - favour smaller body sizes.The same process likely drove the evolution of the island’s endemic dwarf elephants, while its evolutionary opposite - known as island gigantism - produced Flores’ giant rats.
On islands with fewer small-bodied competitors and, crucially, fewer (or no) predators, small animals like rats can expand their diets and start to occupy niches normally dominated by larger animals.
However, there are some researchers that suggest Homo floresiensis is too archaic to have descended from Homo erectus, which is considered a more ‘derived’ species of human.
These researchers argue its anatomy, particularly its wrists and feet, are more similar to those of earlier humans, such as Australopithecus and Homo habilis, rather than Homo erectus.
This theory has been backed up by several different cladistical analyses. These studies, which compare the anatomical features of Homo floresiensis with those of other human species to reconstruct their evolutionary family tree, support this idea and lend weight to the idea Homo floresiensis may descend from an early migration of archaic humans outside of Africa prior to 1.75 million years ago.
There is a major problem with this particular theory, though, and that’s the fact that there is no evidence of Australopithecus or Homo habilis-like archaic humans anywhere outside of Africa. It is possible that an early, as-yet-undiscovered migration out of Africa occurred, but no evidence for such a dispersal has yet been found. For now, the island dwarfism hypothesis remains the most accepted theory.
What did Homo floresiensis eat?
Don’t let their small stature fool you - these ‘hobbits’ were among the deadliest predators to stalk their jungle island home.
Alongside komodo dragons and a 1.8m-tall stork known as Leptoptilos robustus, Homo floresiensis were apex predators and hunted a variety of different animals from dwarf elephants called Stegodon florensis insularis to giant rats such as the extinct Spelaeomys and the extant Papagomys.
Some stone tools thought to have been crafted by Homo floresiensis have actually been found in association with the remains of a small Stegodon, suggesting they may have preferentially targeted juveniles.
Not everyone agrees with this interpretation, though - a 2026 study of cut and bite marks on Stegodon bones suggests Homo floresiensis may have scavenged dwarf elephant carcasses left behind by komodo dragons, rather than hunted the animals themselves.
Homo floresiensis, like other species of human, were omnivores and would have also dined out on a range of native plants, including fruits, fibrous roots, and nuts.
Why did they go extinct?
Exactly why Homo floresiensis disappeared is unknown. Just after the species was discovered in 2003, it was thought the arrival of modern humans on Flores may have had something to do with their extinction.
However, subsequent studies have since revealed Homo floresiensis disappeared a few thousand years before modern humans set foot on the island, approximately 46,000 years ago.
A 2025 study suggested that a deteriorating climate may have been a major contributing factor in Homo floresiensis’ extinction. Based on geochemical evidence gathered from Liang Bua, researchers think a prolonged drying trend - which coincides with declines in local freshwater availability and numbers of dwarf elephants - may have pushed Homo floresiensis over the ecological edge.
Although small populations may have survived elsewhere on Flores, the increasingly dry conditions, which intensified around 61,000 years ago, may have marked the beginning of the end for Homo floresiensis - a turning point from which the species never recovered.
That said, there are some cryptid enthusiasts that think Homo floresiensis may still be alive today and that encounters with them in the forests of Flores have sparked the local myth of the Ebu Gogo. These tales, while unfounded, have undoubtedly added to the mystique of one of our most enigmatic relatives.
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