FLORES ISLAND, ISLAND oldest in the world ... REALLY?

FLORES ISLAND, ISLAND oldest in the world ... REALLY?

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Hobbits ...............

Flores, an island in eastern Indonesia is inhabited by humans such as the 'hobbit', imaginary creatures in the book 'The Lord of the Ring JRR Tolkien's essay, millions of years ago. This time earlier than originally estimated, 800 thousand years ago.

Scientific studies published on Thursday (3/18/2010) shows, the human 'hobbits' earliest inhabitants (hominins) Flores Island is reached one million years ago. It is shown from the artifacts found at a new archaeological sites, as reported by Reuters on Thursday.

In a paper published in the scientific magazine Nature, the researchers say their findings confirm that these hominins evolved into a human being like hobbits or so-called 'Flores man'. Flores Man as Hobbit has a height of about one meter and has a skull the size of an orange pamello.

Human skeletal remains of 18-thousand-year-old Flores was found about 5 years ago by the scientist, declared to be an entirely new species in the world of science. Flores human skeleton was later named Homo floriensis.

Their arrival is also believed to cause mass death for giant tortoises and Stegondon sondaari, pygmy elephants that live on the island. In their research, the scientists also said they found 45 stone tools in Wolo Sege, in the Soa basin, Flores.

Led by Adam Brumm of the Center for Archaeological Science at the University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia, the researchers used new data, methods and found that the stone tools used approximately one million years.

"It is now clear, the evidence from Wolo Sege, that the Flores hominins there are about one million years ago. This suggests that non-selective, mass death Stegondon sondaari and giant tortoise may represent local or regional extinction," they wrote in a research paper .

Flores Man thought to be descendants of Homo erectus, which has a large brain, a full-sized and spread from Africa to Asia about two million years ago.

The scientists suspect that Flores Man lived at the same time as modern humans and became extinct after a massive volcanic eruption on the island, about 12 thousand years ago.