Liang Bua, a limestone cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. (Image credit: Liang Bua Team)
A new paper suggests that “hobbits” or Homo floresiensis (nicknamed the hobbit for its physical stature) lived longer ago than previously thought, and that they may not have encountered modern humans. Researchers used new chronological and stratigraphic information from the Liang Bua cave in Indonesia to make this claim.
Previous dates suggested floresiensis used the cave as recently as 12,000 years ago and may have survived until long after modern humans reached Australia.
The authors believe Homo floresiensis used the cave between 190,000 and 50,000 years ago although whether they survived long enough to encounter modern humans is an open question according to researchers.
Original research paper published in Nature on March 30, 2015.
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