The long search for the earliest inhabitants of Flores

Fifty years ago, a priest started searching for the 'hobbits' of the Indonesian island. Now a research team has finally found them

Archaeological research on Flores began in 1950 by Father Theodor Verhoeven, a Dutch Jesuit priest who had been stationed on the island since 1948 as a missionary at the local Catholic seminary. Having been trained as a classicist and with a keen interest in archaeology, he used his spare time to explore the many caves on the island. In 1956, his attention was drawn to the So'a Basin, a hot and dry area in the central part of the island, by the discovery of a fossilized tusk from the ancient elephant Stegodon near the abandoned village of Ola Bula. Intrigued, Verhoeven undertook excavations at the nearby sites, Mata Menge, Bo'a Leza and Lembah Menge, where he unearthed more Stegodon remains with stone artifacts in close association.

Now, finding stone tools next to a fossil elephant is not unusual. Scientists had been finding stone tools next to the bones of extinct megafauna all across Europe, Africa and North America. But Flores was different. Located in eastern Indonesia, it is part of Wallacea, the group of islands in between the Australian and Asian continental shelves. Whereas other Indonesian islands, such as Java and Borneo, sit comfortably on the Sunda continental shelf, most Wallacean islands arose from the ocean floor and are surrounded by deep sea straits. During glacial periods, when sea levels dropped, the Sunda shelf would become exposed, and dry land would connect Sumatra, Java and Borneo to mainland Asia. Yet anything beyond the eastern edge of the continental shelf remained surrounded by water at all times.