Were Hobbits Human? Stony Brook's William Jungers Digs Up Some Answers

By Susan Risoli

Stony Brook Anatomical Sciences professor and physical anthropologist William Jungers works with “hobbits.” Although their small bodies and oversized feet invite comparison to J.R.R. Tolkien’s heroes of Middle Earth, these hobbits are actually prehistoric fossils, discovered in 2003 on the Indonesian island of Flores. For the first time anywhere, a cast of a complete Homo floresiensis (the hobbit’s scientific name) skeleton will be on public display, as part of Stony Brook’s April 21 Human Evolution Symposium. We asked Dr. Jungers, a Distinguished Teaching Professor and chair of the Anatomical Sciences Department, how Homo floresiensis is challenging assumptions about what it means to be “human.”

Q: Some scientists argue that Homo floresiensis is a previously unknown species of human. Some say these “hobbits” were modern humans like us—same species—but had a physical malady that made them smaller than we are. And others claim that the hobbits weren’t human at all, but are a long-lost ancestor we never knew until now. Why is the hobbit so controversial? And what’s your opinion?

A: Homo floresiensis is almost shockingly primitive. Yet it’s so recent—17,000 years ago. That’s yesterday in geological time. Physical anthropologists here at Stony Brook who’ve studied the hobbit don’t think there’s any credible evidence to suggest they’re human. This is not a case of a genetic mutation leading to primordial dwarfing. These are not pathologically small people. But a vocal minority can’t accept this, because it jars their view of human evolution so completely.

Q: What is a “modern human?”

A: Archaelogists look for complex behaviors: making carvings, artwork, ornamentation. Physical anthropologists look for long hind limbs, relatively large brains, and dexterous hands for making tools. By the way, we used to think that sophisticated hands and big brains were required to make tools. Yet these tiny hobbits, with their small brains and primitive wrists, were making tools for butchering and who knows what else. It’s surprising, to put it mildly!

Q: Where did these hobbits come from?

A: We don’t know if its ancestors came from Africa or Asia. We could be looking at something that got out of Africa earlier than we thought. We could be missing a huge chunk of the fossil record in Asia, and that’s a problem. Future excavations will provide the answers.

Q: Why did the hobbits disappear?

A: The Indonesian island called Flores, east of Bali, was home to pygmy elephants, giant rats, giant storks, and hobbits. All went extinct around the same time, roughly 12,000 to 14,000 years ago. There was a major volcanic eruption there. Modern people appeared on the scene soon thereafter. These are the most plausible reasons for the hobbits’ disappearance. We just don’t know the details. There have been lots of experiments in human evolution. Maybe humans are not so special. We’re just the experiment that lasted, so far!

Q: What happens next in the study of Homo floresiensis?

A: We’re going to excavate on Indonesian deposits in Flores that go back almost a million years ago. We hope to find the ancestor of the hobbits. There’s been a lot of misinformation in the popular press about these creatures. We want to set the record straight. We’re going to continue looking at what the fossils tell us—what these guys ate, how they walked, and what allowed them to survive so long in isolation. But one of the special things about our physical anthropology group is that we don’t just study fossils. We also study the biomechanics of the skeletons of living primates, like humans and apes. The living are the key to the past.

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