Archaeologists searching for evidence of modern human migration from Asia to Australia discovered a small, relatively complete skeleton of an extinct human species known as Homo floresiensis on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003. After the little, breakfast-guzzling critters from J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit, it became known as the Hobbit.
The species was assumed to have persisted until recently, around 12,000 years ago, when subsequent research pushed the dating back to around 50,000 years. However, one retired anthropology professor at the University of Alberta believes that proof of the Hobbit’s continuous existence was overlooked, and that the creature may still be alive now, or at least within living memory.
Gregory Forth claims that palaeontologists and other scientists have neglected Indigenous knowledge and accounts of a “ape-man” living in the Flores jungles in an opinion piece for The Scientist advertising his new book Between Ape and Human.
In the piece, Forth writes, “My goal in producing the book was to uncover the best explanation — that is, the most rational and empirically supported — of Lio interpretations of the creatures.” “These include sightings reported by over 30 eyewitnesses, all of whom I interacted with directly. And I’ve come to the conclusion that the best explanation for what they told me is that a non-sapiens hominid has persisted on Flores until now or very recently.”
He claims that local Lio folk zoology has tales of humans evolving into animals as they move and adapt to new habitats, which he compares to a form of Lamarckism, or the inheritance of learned physical features.
“Such hypothesized alterations reflect local observations of parallels and contrasts between a putative parent species and its distinct progeny,” he writes, citing his fieldwork.
The Lio classify these entities as animals since they lack human-like language and technology. Their uncanny resemblance to humans is observed, though.
“The ape-appearance man’s as something incompletely human renders the monster aberrant, troublesome, and distressing for the Lio,” Forth noted.
For the time being, the closest we can get to H. floresiensis being alive is 50,000 years ago. However, Forth believes that Indigenous knowledge should be taken into account while studying hominid evolution.
“Our first reaction, I believe, is to dismiss the extant Flores ape-men as utterly fictional. But, if you take what Lio people say seriously, there’s no reason to believe that “He comes to a conclusion. “What they say about the creatures, backed up by various kinds of evidence, is entirely consistent with a living hominin species or one that died out within the previous 100 years.”
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