The Hobbit Enigma

Friday December 25 at 8 am ET, Saturday December 26 at 7 pm ET & Monday December 28 at 6 pm ET on CBC News Network

'If there was a case where fact is stranger than fiction, this is it.'
Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist

It was hailed as one of the most exceptional fossil discoveries in decades, so unexpected that it threatened to overturn accepted notions of human origins and posed questions that reach far beyond science itself. Not surprisingly it sent shock waves around the world that are still reverberating.

Lian Bua Cave, the site where the Hobbit was found.
Credit: Annamaria Talas

The Hobbit Enigma takes us from the moment of discovery of the hobbit-like creature on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, through the bitter scientific arguments that followed, to the current investigations which reveal the real implications of the discovery: The meter-tall fossil raised so many questions because she looked so primitive, but was only 12,000 years old. How could the hobbits have survived for so long and until so recently? Who were their ancestors? Could it be that early humans have originated in Asia rather than Africa?

Trumpet and an Orangutan Skeleton
Credit: Annamaria Talas

Some of the sceptics have argued that the Hobbit was simply a sick pygmy - a modern human with a rare disease like microcephaly. However, four years after the initial discovery there is now compelling scientific evidence to support naming the Hobbit as a new species: Homo floresiensis.

With unparalleled access to the fieldwork of Michael Morwood and Peter Brown, and ongoing interdisciplinary research, The Hobbit Enigma is the most comprehensive television account of an emerging view of human evolution. Just like any other animal, the genus Homo was shaped by the environment in previously unexpected ways.

Two lower jaws (mandibles) found at the dig site in Flores, Liang Bua. The Hobbits teeth give important clues to its origins.
Credit: Djuna

Hominid evolution, it seems was not simply a linear march towards a bigger and bigger brain as was previously thought. The existence of Homo floresiensis challenges paleoanthropology's long-standing theory: that the genus Homo originated in Africa, and that an early type of Homo erectus equipped with a big brain and an advanced toolkit was the first human relative to leave Africa 1.8 million years ago.

The Flores find forces us to consider that the first human may not be African at all, but may have originated in Asia where its tiny ancestors survived for countless generations on an isolated island.

Written, directed and produced by Simon Nasht and Annamaria Talas for ABC Television in association with The Nature of Things.