Article: Evolution's Small Wonder: A three-foot-tall "hobbit" who lived in Indonesia up to 12,000 years ago is changing the way we think about the human family.(The Year In Science: 2004)

Byline: Tabitha M. Powledge

She was only three feet tall, and her brain was smaller than your average chimp's. Yet she and her relatives apparently lived fully human lives. They seem to have made sophisticated tools, cooperated to find food and cook it, and perhaps even buried their dead with ceremony. The startling discovery of bones from hobbit-size humans who lived on the Indonesian island of Flores as recently as 12,000 years ago--a time when our own species had already populated the Americas--has scientists revising their ideas about the skills of other humans in our growing family tree and about the importance of brain size.

Peter Brown of the ...

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