"Flores Island, 18,000 BC"

Oil, 24" x 12", 2005

In October of 2004, scientists announced the discovery of a new species that shocked the world.  A new human-like species, a dwarfed relative who lived just 18,000 years ago in the company of pygmy elephants and giant lizards, had been discovered on Flores Island in Indonesia.

Skeletal remains show that the hominids (Homo Floresiensis), nicknamed ‘hobbits’ by some of their discoverers, were only one meter tall, had a brain one-third the size of that of modern humans, and lived on an isolated island long after Homo Sapiens had migrated through the South Pacific region.  Homo sapiens and the Hobbits lived on the same island for at least 20,000 years and surely would have made contact with each other.

These Hobbits hunted pony-sized elephants and rats as big as dogs and battled Komodo dragons with saliva laced tongues with deadly bacteria.  The island was a part of the Malay Archipelago, a string of mysterious tropical islands, home to orangutans, giant turtles, and rare birds and apparently…hobbits.

The locals on Flores Island talk of a small hairy human-like animal; they call Ebu Gogo.  The legends relating to the Ebu Gogo are somewhat detailed and may represent a folk memory of a previous inhabitant.  It is held by the people of Flores that the Ebu Gogo were alive when the Dutch arrived 300 years ago and some say that they survived as recently as 100 years ago but are now no longer seen.  So that leads us to the question…do hobbits still exist?  With hundreds of similar islands in the Malay Archipelago it seems that it is quite possible that we are not alone on this earth.

Original:  $500.00

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