{"id":1176816,"date":"2026-08-30T06:45:25","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T06:45:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1176816\/"},"modified":"2026-08-30T06:45:25","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T06:45:25","slug":"hobbits-walked-more-like-humans-than-previously-thought-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1176816\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Hobbits’ walked more like humans than previously thought, study finds"},"content":{"rendered":"

The pelvis of Homo floresiensis was more human-like than earlier studies suggested, according to a new study of the species\u2019 hip bones. The finding adds detail about how these small human relatives walked and deepens the debate over their origins.<\/p>\n

\"'Hobbits'<\/a>The skull of a Homo floresiensis woman at the Natural History Museum in London (left) and a facial approximation of Homo floresiensis (right). Credit: Em\u0151ke D\u00e9nes<\/a> and Cicero Moraes<\/a>, CC BY-SA 4.0<\/a><\/p>\n

Homo floresiensis<\/a>, often called the \u201chobbit,\u201d<\/a> lived on the Indonesian island of Flores. Researchers first described the species in 2003 from remains found at Liang Bua cave. Adults stood about 3.5 feet, or 1 meter, tall.<\/p>\n

The study focuses on LB 1, an adult female whose remains date to between 100,000 and 60,000 years ago. Her skeleton has a mix of traits linked with modern humans and much older human relatives. Those traits have made the species\u2019 place in human evolution<\/a> hard to pin down.<\/p>\n

For the study, researchers examined micro-CT scans of the LB 1 pelvis. They compared its shape with pelvises from living humans and African apes, along with 26 fossil hominin pelvises.<\/p>\n

\"'Hobbits'<\/a>The LB1 fossil of Homo floresiensis at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels. Credit: Ghedoghedo<\/a>, CC BY-SA 4.0<\/p>\n

The team measured features linked with walking, including the angle of the ilium and the length of the lower ilium. They also created a new way to measure iliac flare, which describes how far the upper hip bones spread outward from the body.<\/p>\n

Iliac flare has drawn close attention in studies of Homo floresiensis<\/a>. A wide flare is more common in australopiths, including Australopithecus afarensis, the species known from the fossil Lucy. Such a shape is linked with less efficient upright walking than the pattern seen in modern humans.<\/p>\n

Earlier studies had reached mixed results because researchers used different ways to measure iliac flare. The new measure gave the team a more consistent basis for comparing LB 1 with other early humans, apes and australopiths.<\/p>\n

The results placed nearly every measured feature of LB 1 within the range seen in Homo sapiens. Only the length of the ischium fell outside the modern human range. Looking at the pelvis as a whole, LB 1 showed closer links to Pleistocene Homo groups than to australopiths or African apes.<\/p>\n

The pelvis also shared features with Homo erectus and other early members of Homo. This suggests Homo floresiensis had a form of upright walking closer to other human species than earlier work had proposed.<\/p>\n

\"New<\/a>Reconstruction of the head of a Homo floresiensis individual, as on display at the Smithsonian\u2019s Natural Museum of Natural History. Credit: Karen Neoh, via flickr; CC BY 2.0<\/p>\n

The hobbits still didn\u2019t walk exactly like people today. Their pelvic shape suggests a slower form of bipedal movement. They weren\u2019t built for fast travel or long-distance walking, and some tree use is still possible.<\/p>\n

The result fits with the unusual mix seen across the rest of the skeleton. Some hand bones look more like those of australopiths, while the shoulders and upper arms show more human-like traits. The new pelvic evidence adds another human-like feature to this unusual body plan.<\/p>\n

The biggest question about Homo floresiensis is still its origin.<\/p>\n

Two main ideas remain. One holds Homo floresiensis descended from Homo erectus groups reaching Flores, followed by a period of island dwarfism. The other proposes descent from a small-bodied population of an earlier Pleistocene Homo species.<\/p>\n

The new pelvic study doesn\u2019t choose between these ideas. The work shows how much early human skeletons varied, making the hobbit\u2019s ancestry hard to trace from bones alone.<\/p>\n

Future work on ancient DNA or proteins could provide new evidence about the species\u2019 past. For now, the human-like pelvis offers a clearer picture of how these small humans moved, while their evolutionary history stays open.<\/p>\n

Publication:<\/strong> Lewton, K.L., Hammond, A.S., Alamsyah, N., Noerwidi, S., Sutikna, T., Skinner, M.M., Tocheri, M.W. (2026). Comparative morphometric analysis of the pelvis of LB 1 (Homo floresiensis).\u00a0American Journal of Biological Anthropology. doi:10.1002\/ajpa.70339<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The pelvis of Homo floresiensis was more human-like than earlier studies suggested, according to a new study of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1176817,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8],"tags":[263314,318908,12213,198871,70,16,15],"class_list":["post-1176816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-bioarchaeology","tag-homo-floresiensis","tag-human-evolution","tag-osteoarchaeology","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117183117367090578","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1176816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1176817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1176816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1176816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1176816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}