« Previous entry: "Race row in New Zealand"
Next entry: "Marathon wrecking priest gets jiggy wit' it" »

10/28/2004: "Cousin hobbit"

If you haven't see this it's quite interestring. Scientists have discovered a new species of human which was approximately 3 foot tall and lived in Indonesia about 12000 years ago. The new species Homo floresiensis (no wonder they are extinct - yeah ok you heard that one before) lived on the island of Flores which in itself is interesting because they must have arrived there by boat but boat/craft building was assumed to be beyond the intelligence of our earlier cousins.
Update: Better info available at Irish Indep. (registration required: cheat)

Also interesting "is the fact that Flores' inhabitants have incredibly detailed legends about the existence of little people on the island they call Ebu Gogo".

"The islanders describe Ebu Gogo as being about one metre tall, hairy and prone to "murmuring" to each other in some form of language. They were also able to repeat what islanders said to them in a parrot-like fashion."

"There have always been myths about small people - Ireland has its Leprechauns and Australia has the Yowies. I suppose there's some feeling that this is an oral history going back to the survival of these small people into recent times," said co-discoverer Peter Brown, an associate professor of archaeology at New England.