Anthropologist thinks a human sub-species might still be alive on an Indonesian island

Earth holds countless scientific wonders yet to be uncovered. While we know there are remote places home to rare, untouched species of plants and animals, what many don’t realize is there may also be an ancient human species still living in isolation. Anthropologist Gregory Forth has speculated that Homo floresiensis, a hominin species thought to be extinct, might still roam the remote island of Flores in Indonesia, according to The Scientist.

Forth’s theory stems from a groundbreaking discovery of small hominin fossils. In 2004, a team led by Mike Morwood, an archaeologist from the University of Wollongong, Australia discovered a diminutive skull in the Liang Bua caves of Flores Island. Considering the small ape-like physique, the Homo floresiensis was labeled 'Hobbit' after the fictional characters from J.R.R. Tolkien's book series. The genesis of these hobbits and their correlation with other hominin species is still being debated. But, when Forth began conducting ethnographic fieldwork on Flores Island he heard from the locals that humanlike creatures, though seemed evasive, were witnessed in the isolated mountain territories of the island. Also, Morwood has made a comment on this folklore saying the people's description "fitted floresiensis to a T." 

Forth’s research focused on firsthand accounts from the indigenous Lio people, who live in the island’s rugged, remote mountains with little exposure to modern literacy or technology. Forth mentions "To be sure, the Lio don’t have anything akin to modern evolutionary theory, with speciation driven by mutation and natural selection" and adds "But if evolutionism is fundamentally concerned with how different species arose and how differences are maintained, then Lio people and other Flores islanders have for a long time been asking the same questions." He said that Lio people had a similar classification of animal species as modern systematics and that they distinguish humans from non-human animals not just on morphological aspects but by associating with expressions of culture, language and technology exclusively to humans.

Forth addressed the reliability of the Lio tribe’s accounts, explaining that "For the Lio, the ape-man’s appearance as something incompletely human makes the creature anomalous and hence problematic and disturbing," and adds "For academic scientists, H. floresiensis is similarly problematic, but not so much for its resemblance to H. sapiens rather, it’s because the species appears very late in the geological record, surviving to a time well after the appearance of modern humans." Though he acknowledges the fact that some features of the hobbit creatures, which Lio people call 'ape-men', might fit an undiscovered species of ape, most of their statements along with the biogeography of Indonesia support the hypothesis that H. floresiensis still exist. Forth spoke to over 30 eyewitnesses whose experiences made him infer that the species did not go extinct 12000 years ago as suggested by the original research.

While archaeologists who excavated the "hobbit" remains classified them as extinct, Forth challenges that assumption. "Our initial instinct, I suspect, is to regard the extant ape-men of Flores as completely imaginary. But, taking seriously what Lio people say, I’ve found no good reason to think so," and added "What they say about the creatures, supplemented by other sorts of evidence, is fully consistent with a surviving hominin species, or one that only went extinct within the last 100 years." The anthropologist hopes that other life scientists will integrate this indigenous knowledge while studying the evolution of hominin species in Indonesia and other parts of the world.

Editor's note: This article was originally published on November 16, 2023. It has since been updated.