By Tim Binnall
An anthropologist studying the ancient human ancestor Homo floresiensis argues that the diminutive being, affectionately dubbed a 'hobbit,' may actually still exist in Indonesia. The audacious idea is reportedly explored in a forthcoming book by Gregory Forth, who has spent nearly forty years studying the island of Flores, where the remains of the mysterious archaic entity was first unearthed back in 2003. The subject of considerable research by scientists attempting to fit the remarkable find into the human lineage, Homo floresiensis is believed to have died out around 50,000 years ago. However, Forth posits that this may not be the case and that the so-called hobbits could continue to reside on Flores.
The basis for the anthropologist's bold hypothesis lies in tantalizing reports from people on Flores who claim to have encountered small, hair-covered bipedal beings in the forested areas of the island. Over the course of his decades of fieldwork, Forth says that he has collected around 30 of these cases and, ironically, had written about the apocryphal 'ape-man' prior to the discovery of Homo floresiensis, which ultimately led him to conclude that the two beings were one in the same. Perhaps the most detailed account uncovered by the anthropologist centers around an individual who claimed that he came into possession of the mysterious creature's corpse and that the remains were neither than of a human nor a monkey.
Forth's fantastic hypothesis that an undiscovered primate resides on Flores sounds somewhat akin to Bigfoot and remarkably similar to the small-statured Orang Pendek creature believed to be living somewhere in the unexplored jungles of Sumatra. Recognizing this aspect of his theory, the anthropologist stresses that there has yet to be any proof for the existence of Sasquatch in North America, yet there is no debate as to whether or not Homo floresiensis was a real human ancestor that once lived on Flores. That said, Forth's theory has so far been met with skepticism from other academics, who note that the island is both fairly small and highly populated, which would seem to preclude the possibility that the hobbits could have surreptitiously survived this day.