As we roll out our new trip ‘Islands of Hobbits & Dragons,’ that takes you to the islands of Komodo and Flores in Indonesia, we were excited to see a recent article by the Guardian on the real life hobbits that lived on Flores!

SEE ARTICLE HERE

At Liang Bua Cave in 2004, researches unearthed some 50,000 year old fossils that pointed to a race of tiny humans, known as ‘Homo floresiensis’ but quickly nicknamed ‘Hobbits.’  They made stone tools and had very small brains, only one third the size of ours.  A more recent discovery was made of even smaller jaw bones, some 50km from the Liang Bua cave site, in Mata Menga a large basin overshadowed by the volcanoes on Flores.  A team from Australia, Indonesia and Japan worked with 140 locals to excavate the fossils from the sandstone laid down by a stream 700,000 years ago.  This pre-dates any trace of Homo Sapiens and is an amazing discovery!

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Hobbit Tooth Photograph: Kinez Riza