Tribespeople on a remote Indonesian island believe that a tiny hobbit-like human still roams their land, and two tourists say that they spotted it on their travels
The tribespeople of Flores are mostly subsistence farmers and live near the coast(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Tourists have spotted a hobbit-like creature on a tiny Indonesian island, sparking further interest in the “ape men” that may still live there.
For years, local people on the remote island of Flores have said they have seen the tiny “ape man” in the flesh. Anthropologist Professor Gregory Forth spent decades researching the creature and speaking to the local “Lio” people. He said: “I first came across talk about things that sounded physically primitive humans when I first began research on Flores 40 years ago in 1984.”
What makes this sighting even more remarkable is that the island is where researchers found remains of an ancient species of tiny humans, just 3ft 7in tall, called ‘Homo floresiensis,’ believed to have gone extinct 50,000 years ago.
The beautiful remote Indonesian island is home to the Komodo dragon and the worlds largest rats(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Forth conducted eight visits to the Lio region between 2005 and 2018, interviewing locals about the ‘ape man’. He noted that, unlike other island folk tales about spirits, the Lio people’s accounts of the tiny ape man were more grounded, with descriptions that seemed realistic and trustworthy.
Professor Forth told the Daily Mail: “The descriptions all had a fixed form: it varied, as you would expect from different observers, but at the same time, all the different accounts lent plausibility to this idea there might be some kind of natural species.”
Homo floresiensis were vegetarian, making it even more likely that the island could support a similar ape man species.
The Professor said: “Two young men from the UK, as a matter of fact, had been to Flores, mostly on a snorkelling holiday. And they, they climbed a mountain which I’m familiar with, and they claim they saw something that sounded very much like, very much like the ape men.”
The scenic island was found to be home to an ancient species of tiny humans, just 3ft 7in tall(Image: Getty Images)
He said the tourists had not read his research before going but reached out to him after they found his book.
In 2016, further research found teeth and bits of bones from 700,000 years ago, from a smaller humanoid which could be ancestral to Homo floresiensis.
Professor Forth retired in 2018 following a stroke on a plane and has stopped his research, but still hears interesting reports from people in the area.
The remote island of Flores is the 10th largest island in Indonesia and is home to Komodo dragons as well as the Flores giant rat, the world’s largest.
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