Originally published at: Anthropologist suggest that the "hobbits" of Indonesia may still be alive | Boing Boing
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Hmm… Rudi Guliani?
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That’s ridiculous. If anything he’s some kind of barrow-wight or slavering orc.
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Wormtongue except the only reason the king ever listens to him is the king is incredibly stupid.
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Would they pass the “mirror test”. Would it be possible to communicate with them, on a rudimentary level?
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We can find plenty of people willing to swear they’ve seen Bigfoot in a small area of the US, and the Indonesian islands stretch a hellacious quantity of miles (look at it, some time), so…utterly possible to believe that someone saw SOMETHING.
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Given the age of the most recent remains, it seems very unlikely. They appear to have gone extinct about the same time our species got to the islands.
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God help 'em if they’re still around, and anyone finds them. Meetings like this generally do not go well.
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Given how near-universal stories are of “little people,” I suspect the local lore about “hobbits” isn’t even connected to the historical existence of homo floresiensis, much less does it reflect their continued habitation of the area. Which is too bad, it would be very cool if they were still around.
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They moved after the ice age.
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If living examples of these “hobbits” were discovered, their lives would surely improve. /s
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In London in the early '90s I used to share an office with a hobbit. He was short of stature with wild curly hair and a broad English cider-drinking accent. Also sharing the office was a tall gay man, a tall Black man and another Irish guy,.
And also inhabiting the office was a literal jack-boot wearing Daily Mail reading caravan-towing English misanthrope who couldn’t stifle his dislike of the Gays, the Blacks, the Irish or the Hobbits with often hilarious results.
It had all the makings of a '70s British sitcom that wouldn’t have dated well.
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Would be cool, but:
". . . tales of humanlike creatures, some still reputedly alive although very rarely seen. "
Hmm. Where have I heard this story before?
No kidding. Their culture would get destroyed and possibly they would get infected by deseases we would carry to them.
A century ago they would have been rounded up and put in european Zoos. We did that with more “exotic” members of our own species, so that is a given.
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If they found recent remains though, maybe they would have just assumed it was human bones or some other sort of ape and not really given it a second thought? They don’t really call in the experts on these guys unless the bones are super old.
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I mean, if an anthropologist had discovered them in the last 100 years, they might just have decided to keep their mouth shut about it, because they know damn well nothing good would come of their “discovery”.
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Well, they found these bones associated with toolmaking and use of fire. I doubt they forgot those skills if they existed.
