Hobbits Among Us

I can't get enough of this story. Little people (3-feet tall) lived alongside human beings until at least 13,000 years ago, and may have died out only 500 years ago! They hunted pygmy elephants and giant rats, used fire and tools, and "almost certainly had language."

The island the small humans lived on, Flores, was a "lost world" inhabited by creatures as strange as they were - giant rats and giant lizards, komodo dragons, and primitive dwarf elephants that were extinct elsewhere.

How did these little people evolve, and how did they thrive for so long on an isolated island?

Professor Morwood said the little people were thought to have evolved from larger archaic humans, Homo erectus, who managed to sail across to Flores from Java about 800,000 years ago.

They evolved into dwarfs, like the elephants on the island, because small creatures had a better chance of survival on a remote island where there was little food and no major predators.

Well, that's the Darwinian explanation anyway. I'm sure creationists will find a way to spin this as evidence of divine design.