In Search Of The Hobbit

Discovery Of Bones Of What Some Say Is New Species Of Human

(CBS) 
Little animals. Little people. Ms. Hobbit lived here, eating her dragons and elephants 18,000 years ago. But people living on the island today will tell you that her descendants were still here very recently.

In the hamlets under the volcano, villagers talk in a matter-of-fact way about very little people their grandparents told them about. They wore no clothes, had long arms, and lived in caves high up on the volcano. The village chief told 60 Minutes that the volcano is called Abu Lobo, and the little people were called Abu Gogo, which, literally translated, means "grandma who eats everything."

In other words, the Abu Lobo is very big and the Abu Gogo is very small.

A few villagers invited 60 Minutes to accompany them on a walk up the volcano to see the ruins of a village where their grandparents lived. It's where the Abu Gogo, they say, dropped by from time to time.

When exactly were the Abu Gogo last seen? They didn’t know precisely. Exactly where did they live? In caves a long way away. In these parts, going back in time always involves a lot of hard walking. This is the forest primeval. The villagers brought a chicken along, not for lunch, but for a ceremony - a sacrifice - when we reached our destination.

The ancient village is a shrine now and the ceremony involved splashing a mixture of coconut milk and chicken blood around a headstone, lighting candles and invoking the spirits of their ancestors. Then, they talked to 60 Minutes about the Abu Gogo.

What do the Abu Gogo look like?

"They were very hairy and short, only about 3-feet high. The women have very long breasts, which they used to throw over their shoulders. They also had very wide mouths," says one team member. "If we think about them, they are not nice people at all. Abu Gogo means 'very greedy.' They used to eat everything."

Until now, we have never seen them.

Legend? Or memory? Hard to say. But archaeologists are by no means dismissing the stories. Right now, though, they’re dealing with other questions concerning the 18,000-year-old lady from Flores. Digging her up was not the end of her journey. It was just the beginning.

The bones were taken from Flores to Indonesia's Centre for Archaeology in Jakarta. Very few people knew about their existence until the Australian scientists published their article in Nature magazine almost a year later. But then the story took a sudden twist.

A prominent Indonesian professor came to the center, packed up the skeleton in a brown leather case and took it away. The 18,000-year-old remains of the woman from Flores became literally bones of contention.

The bones were taken by Dr. Teuku Jacob, the dean of Indonesian paleoanthropologists. He was not a member of the team. But after one look at the lady’s teeth, he was convinced the conclusions drawn by the Australians were not only premature. They were wrong.

"You are convinced that this is not a new species?" asks Simon.

"Yes," says Jacob. "And some other scientists believe that the bones are those of a very small human, a pygmy with a brain-shrinking disease."

Jacob adds: "When I saw the skull for the first time, I turn it upside down and I saw the teeth is very modern and sapiens."

He says the teeth told him this was a Homo sapien. But can he substantiate that?

"He made his claims. And when you think about it, OK, do you really think a population of meter-high humans with brains the size of a chimpanzee's, with no chins and no foreheads and wide, wide hips, unusual, and arms down to their knees, OK, running around Flores from 95,000 years ago to 12,000 years ago are modern humans?" asks Morwood. "I don’t know where these people are coming from, but it’s not my interpretation of the actual evidence."

The scientific community is leaning towards the conclusions reached by the Australians: that the Hobbit is a new, previously undiscovered species. Findings based on CAT scans of the interior of the skull commissioned by the National Geographic Society show that the Hobbit’s brain was wired in a very intricate way, meaning that despite its small size, it was packed with intelligence.

"Now we, meaning the uneducated, always assumed, I think, that once we, Homo sapiens, come on the scene, there were no other humanoid creatures around," says Simon. "And all of a sudden, it’s gotten a lot more complicated."

"A lot more complex. There’s obviously many more branches to the human tree than we suspected," says Hobbs. "It’s definitely gonna change our world view of ourselves."

"When you say ‘it’s’ going to change our world view of ourselves, you mean these precise findings?" asks Simon.

"I mean these findings and other findings which will certainly, certainly come," says Hobbs.

Other findings?

In the villages of Flores, the Hobbit, or the Abu Gogo, as they call him, comes out of the bushes during rituals, scaring the children. But could there be any real Hobbits alive today? Maybe not on the island of Flores.

But remember, there are 17,000 islands in Indonesia, and some very serious scientists don’t exclude the possibility. They believe it may be time to start looking.

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The Australian scientists have continued looking and have found the remains of two more little people at the same site on Flores. But last month a new study criticised the Australians for poor science and media hype, concluding that the Hobbit was in fact a human with a brain shrinking disease.

Read more about this on the National Geographic Channel: Explorer Web site.