An anthropologist believes that an ancient human species could survive on the island of Flores

In 2003, archaeologists searching for evidence of the migration of modern humans from Asia to Australia stumbled upon a small, somewhat complete skeleton of an extinct human species on the Indonesian island of Flores, which became known as Homo floresiensis. Or, as it became more known, the hobbitafter the little creatures consuming breakfast from JRR Tolkein The hobbit.

This species was initially thought to have survived until relatively recently, about 12,000 years ago, before further analysis pushed that date back to About 50,000 years old. But a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta says the evidence for the species’ continued existence may have been overlooked, and the hobbit may still be alive today, or at least in living memory.

In an opinion article about the world Promote his next book Between ape and manGregory Forth argues that paleontologists and other scientists have overlooked indigenous knowledge and accounts of “ape-mans” living in the forests of Flores.

“My goal in writing the book was to find the best explanation–that is, the most rational and the best empirical support–of Lio’s accounts of creatures,” wrote in the widget. These include reports of sightings by more than 30 eyewitnesses, all of whom I spoke directly. I conclude that the best way to explain what they have told me is that non-sapiens hominins have survived on Flores to the present or more recently. “

He writes that the local folk zoology of the Lio people inhabiting the island contains stories about humans who transformed into animals as they moved and adapted to new environments, a kind of like LamarckThe inheritance of acquired physical properties.

“As my fieldwork revealed, these putative changes reflect local observations of similarities and differences between putative ancestral species and their distinct descendants,” he says.

Lio identifies these creatures as animals, and they don’t have the complex language or technology that humans have. However, their curious resemblance to humans is noted.

For Lio, Forth writes, “The ape-man’s appearance as something non-human makes the creature anomalous and thus problematic and disturbing.”

At the moment, the earliest date we can definitively decide H. fluorescence Survival is still 50,000 years ago. But Forth urges that indigenous knowledge should be incorporated as we research hominin evolution.

He concludes, “Our initial instinct, I suppose, is to regard the ape-men of Flores as wholly fictional. But, taking seriously what people say, I have found no good reason to believe that.” “What they say about the creatures, backed up by other kinds of evidence, is completely consistent with extant hominin species, or species that have only become extinct in the past 100 years.”