Hobbits - a mystical artifact whose mysteries have not yet been solvedMany archaeological discoveries actually look more like fiction than truth. For example, the 2003 discovery of "hobbits" on the remote Indonesian island of Flores. And it's not that scientists unearthed the real version of the Shire from "Lord of the Rings," but rather they found miniature bones of an ancient hominin, which they named Homo floresiensis, short for "hobbit.
The first skeleton found belonged to a thirty-year-old woman who was about 1.06 meters tall. At first, scientists believed that she probably suffered from microcephaly, due to which she had a small head and a rather short, even dwarfish height. Later discoveries, however, made it clear that the hobbit was a distinct species rather than a mutation. To this day, the place of Homo floresiensis in the genealogical tree of modern man remains a mystery.
