Not so long ago, a tiny people lived
Once upon a time, but not so long ago, in a tropical island midway between Asia and Australia, there lived a race of little people, whose adults stood just more than one meter tall. Despite their stature, they were mighty hunters. They made stone tools with which they speared giant rats, clubbed sleeping dragons and hunted the packs of pygmy elephants that roamed their lost world.
Strangest of all, this is no fable. Skeletons of these miniature people have been excavated from a limestone cave on Flores, an island 600 kilometers, or 370 miles, east of Bali, by a team of Australian and Indonesian archaeologists. Reporting their find in Wednesday’s issue of Nature, they assign the people to a new human species, Homo floresiensis.
Not so long ago, a tiny people lived