Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Homo hobbitus update Tiny chinless wonders threaten anthropology rift

In a hole in a ground there lived some hobbits -- lots of them.

A tiny hominid whose discovery in a cave on an Indonesian island unleashed one of the fiercest debates in anthropology has suddenly been joined by several other sets of dwarf-sized beings.

At least nine other wee individuals lived in the cave, where thousands of years ago they skilfully butchered meat and handled fire, according to new findings.

The initial find at Liang Bua cave, reported almost exactly a year ago, became known as the Hobbit Hominid, after the pint-sized characters of J.R.R. Tolkien's stories.


Not much of an "update" really, just a summary of the story thus far.