Anthropologist Says Our “Hobbit” Ancestor May Have Survived On Flores Island

It is rare for a scientist with all the guarantees of academic seriousness to issue a hypothesis as daring as that put forward by anthropologist Gregory Forth. This former professor at the University of Alberta has devoted much of his professional life to studying the peoples of eastern and southern Indonesia, particularly the island of Flores. However, it is on this territory of 360 kilometers long, covered with forests and volcanoes, that an extraordinary discovery was made in 2003 by a team of archaeologists led by Mike Morwood: the exhumation in the Liang Bua cave, on the western coast of Flores, 50,000 year old remains of a tiny hominid, a miniature version of homo erectus, not exceeding one meter. Baptized Man of Flores (Homo floresiensis), he was decked out with the nickname of Hobbit, so much his stature recalls that of the people of the “Lord of the Rings”.

Difficult to imagine that such a being could cross the millennia. And yet: in his new book “Between Ape and Human: An Anthropologist on the Trail of a Hidden Hominoid”, Gregory Forth does not hesitate to affirm that this theory is not an empty dream, reports The Sun . In support of his thesis, the anthropologist lists around thirty reliable testimonies reporting encounters with a tiny creature of human appearance but covered with hair. Two individuals even claim to have been in possession of the remains of this being that they would have buried and which could constitute irrefutable proof… If it were found!

Gregory Forth also immersed himself in local legends evoking the Ebu gogo people, a term from the Nage ethnic group which means “grandparents”. The Ebu gogo are described as very small human beings, living in the heart of the forest and having their own language which resembles a “whisper”.
A bundle of clues that is still far from constituting proof. But the quest for our Hobbit ancestor has only just begun.