A different kind of human
In September 2003, inside this limestone cave, a joint Indonesian-Australian team uncovered the skeleton of a hominin that would rewrite human prehistory. The specimen, LB1, was a nearly complete female who stood just over a meter tall (about 3 feet 7 inches) and possessed a brain volume of only about 400 cubic centimeters—comparable to a chimpanzee. Initially thought to be a child, her permanent teeth revealed she was a fully grown adult. This was Homo floresiensis, a previously unknown human species almost immediately nicknamed the "Hobbit."
The discovery was a major discovery. For decades, the story of human evolution seemed to show a trend towards taller bodies and larger brains. Homo floresiensis defied this. The species lived on Flores from at least 190,000 until about 50,000 years ago. Their existence meant that a small-brained, archaic-looking human shared the planet with early modern humans. Scientific debate began immediately. Some researchers argued LB1 was a modern human with a pathological condition like microcephaly or Down's syndrome, but most now recognize H. floresiensis as a distinct species. The leading theory is that they are the product of insular dwarfism, an evolutionary process where species shrink on islands with limited resources—a phenomenon also seen in the extinct pygmy elephant, Stegodon, that they hunted.