A photo from October 27, 2004, with a reproduction of the skull of the man from Flores, nicknamed the "Hobbit "due to its small size. "Amazed". Small hominids 700,000 years old were probably the ancestors of the enigmatic Flores man who lived on the Indonesian island of the same name, archaeologists have announced. Two studies published Wednesday, June 8, 2016 in the British journal Nature confirm the evolutionary originality of this little man from Flores nicknamed the "hobbit" because of his Lilliputian size. "These strange hominids were therefore already present on the island 700,000 years ago" , Yousuke Kaifu of the Ibaraki National Museum of Nature and Science in Japan told AFP. "I was amazed when I saw these new fossils" he adds.
The man of Flores, who would have lived 50,000 years ago, was unearthed in September 2003 in the cave of Liang Bua. About a meter in size and weighing 25 kg, they had an abnormally small head compared to their body, housing a brain similar in size to that of a chimpanzee. Which earned them the nickname "hobbits" like the little characters in Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings". Since this discovery, scientists have been trying to explain where this strange little being could come from, why it is so small and why it is only found on this island. For some, the man of Flores would be a descendant of small Homo habilis or small australopithecines from Africa. For others, it would be a Homo erectus which would have gradually shrunk to adapt its needs to scarce resources.
Fossils found on the island of Flores, 100 km from the Liang Bua cave
Yousuke Kaifu and his team announce, in a study published Wednesday, June 8, 2016 in the British journal Nature , the discovery in 2014 of new fossils on the island. This treasure, which was discovered at the Mata Menge site 100 kilometers east of the Liang Bua cave, where the famous "hobbits" were found, includes a jaw fragment and six teeth. And we can qualify it as a treasure because the jaw fragment comes from a mandible smaller than the smallest mandible of the man from Florès! Bones that Adam Brumm of the University of Wollongong in Australia and his colleagues date from around 700,000 years in a second study, also published Wednesday June 8 in Nature. "What we found is a huge surprise" , Adam Brumm told AFP. "And suggests that the Homo floresiensis is an extremely ancient species that acquired its small size very early, perhaps shortly after arriving on the island about a million years ago" . This discovery discredits one of the hypotheses so far put forward by certain researchers since if the little man was present 700,000 years ago, he cannot be a Homo sapiens , appeared on Earth much later.
The man of Flores is therefore not a sick sapiens, suffering from microcephaly or trisomy, as French studies had already demonstrated. "In addition, one of the teeth found at Mata Menge, a lower adult molar, exhibits features that suggest ancestry with Homo erectus" , says Adam Brumm. But this hypothesis must still be confirmed, according to the researcher, the remains found being too few. But for Yousuke Kaifu, it is indeed "additional evidence of a marked insular dwarfism" . The man of Flores could therefore well be a pure product of local evolution, which would have adapted to the environment of the island where food resources were scarce.