Hobbit ?, H. Floresiensis ?, Ebu Gogo ? or Dwarf H. Sapiens ?
Homo floresiensis is a species of dwarf human discovered at the Liang Bua cave on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003 (Brown et al. 2004, Morwood et al. 2004, Lahr and Foley 2004). H. floresienses was only about 1 meter in height and fully bipedal, with a very small brain size of 417cc.
H. floresiensis fossils have been discovered from 38,000 to 18,000 years ago, though archaeological evidence suggests it lived at Liang Bua between at least 95,000 and 13,000 years ago. It used stone tools and fire, and hunted pygmy elephants (mostly juvenile ones), Komodo dragons, and the giant rats found on Flores. Its discoverers believe that floresiensis is a dwarf form of Homo erectus - it is not uncommon for dwarf forms of large mammals to evolve on islands.
Modern humans arrived on Flores between 55,000 and 35,000 years ago, and presumably interacted with floresiensis, though there is no evidence of this at Liang Bua. However Indonesian folklore tells of creatures called Ebu Gogo which were small, inarticulate, and walked with an odd gait. This sounds remarkably suggestive of floresiensis, but it could easily be coincidence - if floresiensis had been found in Ireland, we'd possibly be wondering if they were leprechauns.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/flores.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobbit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=omim&cmd=DetailsSearch&term=Homo+floresiensis&log$=activity
Hobbit ?, H. Floresiensis ?, Ebu Gogo ? or Dwarf H. Sapiens ?
Popular culture (top selling paper backs), modern anthropology, native culture, and modern molecular biology have all different understanding and different interpretations of the tiny bone-skull findings. However, the reality lies in DNA. No, unfortunately only mitochondrial DNA is not enough. Intact Genomic DNA is needed and it is scarce if any in these bone remaining.
We can not solve the problem by breaking the bones of the "bonsai human" remainings.
