Hobbits walked out of Africa

THE identity of the tiny human-like creature discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2004 has become clearer -- and more astonishing -- thanks to a new analysis by Australian and Indonesian scientists.
According to a team led by Australian National University doctoral student Debbie Argue, not only is Homo floresiensis, nicknamed the hobbit, not a deformed modern human, as a handful of critics claim, but the small-brained, long-armed biped was the first human-like creature to walk out of Africa.
And it did so nearly two million years ago, roughly 100,000 years before a species most scientists believed was the first migrant. That was a somewhat more modern hominin -- a member of a group including humans and their ancestors -- that was discovered in Dmanisi, Republic of Georgia, variously identified as H.georgicus, H. ergaster or H. erectus.
"We're looking at a very archaic being indeed, one that appears to have gone its own evolutionary way long before our species emerged," Ms Argue said.
She noted that a population of hobbits lived on Flores from roughly 76,000 to about 13,000 years ago, seemingly unbothered by the emergence and expansion of modern humans.







Hobbits walked out of Africa | The Australian

From what I've learned in school, and it's been focused on a few times, no one really knows what the hell this thing was. A few years ago everyone was positive that it was just a regular (for it's time) humanoid who was part of a group affected by enviro-evolutionary pressures.

That's impossible, the earth is only 6000+ years old. :D