Richard Collins: Island creatures evolved a reduced body size

‘Upright Man’, who appeared in Africa around two million years ago, was the first hominid to spread throughout the Old World.

A mysterious hominid found on the Indonesian island of Flores was nicknamed ‘the Hobbit’.

Did an ancient human and the giant Irish deer face similar problems? In 2013, the remains of a mysterious hominid were found on the Indonesian island of Flores. Just over a metre tall, with a brain the size of a chimpanzee’s, Flores Man was nicknamed ‘the Hobbit’. He became extinct around 50,000 years ago, when modern humans spread into South East Asia.

Was Flores Man on the ancestral line leading to us, or had he descended independently from Homo erectus?