Indonesian "Hobbit", what makes them so short?

Friends who have watched the movie "The Lord of the Rings" all know that there are two important characters in the movie? Frodo and Sam, they are short hobbits. They took the magical Supreme Ring and embarked on an arduous journey to Mount Doom, with the purpose of destroying it and preventing it from being used by the evil devil Sauron.

Hobbits are even shorter than dwarves. They are peaceful and uncontested by nature, and they all have hairy feet. Of course, we know that the stories of the Lord of the Rings are not true, and the elves are not real, but ancient humans like the Hobbits once really existed on the earth.

Homo floresiensis, known as the Hobbit, lived on the Indonesian island of Flores between 20,000 and 100,000 years ago. It was an ancient human discovered in 2003. Compared with modern humans, it was very short, with an adult height of only about 1 meter, and it was said that they also had hairy feet.

The scientists who discovered their remains originally named them Homo floresiensis, after the island where they were found. However, just that year, the last part of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy "The Return of the King" was released, and the discoverer immediately nicknamed this new group "Hobbits"

These Humans' ancient relatives, despite their small stature (and correspondingly small brain sizes), show evidence of possessing many characteristics that set us apart from other animals. Scientists have evidence that they had mastered the use of fire, and that they had learned to use stone tools.

This group of hominids split from Australopithecus about 1.6 million to 1.9 million years ago, according to a 2019 study that reviewed the fossil record of bones and other artifacts found so far. came out. At about the same time, another branch, Homo habilis

, also began to separate from the australopithecines. But some anthropologists believe they may have evolved later from Homo erectus.

One fact that remains unclear is how Homo floresiensis arrived on the Indonesian island of Flores. These people left Africa, the birthplace of humanity, but even during the last ice age, Flores likely remained separated from the mainland by water. Some scientists speculate that the Hobbits may have used some form of water travel, such as rough bamboo rafts, to cross to the island.

As for why Homo floresiensis is so short, some scientists have proposed an interesting theory? Foster's Rule, which is an important rule in evolutionary biology. This rule states that when a species is isolated on an island, their individual sizes will gradually shrink or grow over millions of years, depending on the relative levels of resources available on the island.

For many large animals, the relatively few resources on the island have resulted in smaller animals. Take the pygmy mammoths as an example. Because they have lived on an isolated island with poor resources for a long time, they are only more than one meter tall in the end, while ordinary mammoths can generally grow to 3 meters tall. In addition, scientists have also discovered the miniaturization of hippos, pythons, sloths and deer, all caused by the shrinkage of the island, a phenomenon also known as island dwarfism.

On the other hand, some animals can also grow in size, especially if they were previously small. Scientists have documented the gradual increase in size of animals such as birds, mice, otters and rabbits. When they enter an island with few predators and abundant resources, there is no longer an evolutionary advantage to staying small, and the creatures become larger.

The elephant bird living on the island of Madagascar is a good example. This extinct bird was once thought to be the largest bird in history. They were one meter taller than today's ostriches and weighed half a ton, but no one thought they were related to the kiwi, which was only 18 inches tall. **The same ancestor. It is precisely because they came to the island of Madagascar, which is rich in resources and has no natural predators, that they gradually became so huge.

Homo floresiensis, the species popularly known as the Hobbit, is real and represents a fascinating branch of the human evolutionary tree. Scientists believe that they have become so short because they have lived on an isolated island with poor resources for a long time. Under the influence of Foster's Law, they have become so short. These hobbits are not directly related to our modern humans. Human beings and their common ancestors may go back 1.6 million years ago, but they did exist on the earth. As for the reason for their sudden disappearance, it is still unclear. No one knows.

Comparison between Flores and modern humans

It is worth mentioning that J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of the original novel "Lord of the Rings", had never heard of Flores Leithian, but we're sure he'd be happy to know that his hobbit creation wasn't entirely a figment of his imagination.