The Hobbit Enigma How the Hobbit rewrites the story of human evolution ‘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 scientific 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. THE HOBBIT ENIGMA takes us from the moment of discovery of Hobbit‐like hominins 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: How could the hobbits have survived for so long and until so recently? Who were their ancestors? Could hominids have originated in Asia rather than Africa? Four years after the initial discovery there is compelling evidence that Homo floresiensis didn’t evolve from Homo erectus, as previously thought. Detailed studies of the skeleton by an international team of experts revealed they were much more ancient. Their origin harks back to the earliest pre‐humans found in Africa which became extinct more than 2.5 million years ago, the Australopithecines. The Hobbit is a puzzling mixture of very ancient and modern features. She had Australopithecus stature, brain size and body proportions, and teeth and face structure of a Homo. With unparalleled access to ongoing interdisciplinary research and new fieldwork 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, and hominid evolution was not simply a linear march towards a bigger and bigger brain. Through the existence of Homo floresiensis we challenge paleoanthropology's most basic principles: that the genus Homo originated in Africa, and that an early type of Homo erectus equipped with a big brain and advanced toolkit was the first human realtive 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 ancestor s survived for countess generation on an isolatedisland, This remnant species from Now, four years after the original find, Morwood and his Indonesian colleagues have been back to Flores to continue their research.. Sceptics who say this discovery was merely a deformed human insist that only the discovery of a new Hobbit skull will resolve that matter once and for all As the original discovery team returns to the limestone caves of Liang Bua, they are confident not only of finding more bones but discovering more details about the Hobbit’s way of life It’s not just the controversy Professor Morwood seeks to solve – THE HOBBIT ENIGMA has implications that could overthrow the entire way we have thought about our human origins.