Creatures, Myths & Legends

The 'ape men' of Flores: could homo floresiensis still be alive today ?

By T.K. Randall
February 20, 2023

Image: Homo Floresiensis Cave
Credit: Rosino / CC BY-SA 2.0 (adapted) Evidence of the mysterious 'hobbits' of Flores, an island in Indonesia, was first unearthed in a cave back in 2003 - a discovery that would go on to become a topic of much controversy and debate.

Named Homo floresiensis, these pint-sized hominids are now believed to be a previously undiscovered species of human which died out somewhere around 60,000 years ago.

Retired anthropology professor Gregory Forth of the University of Alberta, however, believes that stories of a mysterious 'ape-man' on the island could be evidence that these real-life Hobbits continued to survive on the island, against all odds, all the way up to the present day.

In a recent interview with The Debrief, Forth cites numerous cases of encounters the local people of the island have had with small humanoids that have come to be known as the lai ho'a.

Such accounts were so numerous and compelling, in fact, that he started to seek out and document them.Particularly intriguing was the fact that many of these stories dated back to before the discovery of Homo floresiensis fossils on the island.

Also, unlike many other stories of unknown hominids around the world such as Bigfoot and the Yeti which are said to be very tall, the ape-men of Flores are always described as small in stature.

"They stress that it resembles humans in so far as it stands upright, and it walks bipedally," Forth told The Debrief. "They say the face looks, well, I would say ape-like, but they say monkey-like, because they don't make a distinction between monkeys and apes."

So could the island's inhabitants be encountering a 'living fossil' - a species of human that has held on against all odds - or have they been seeing something else ?

Without physical evidence, it's impossible to know for sure.

Source: The Debrief

Tags: Homo floresiensis, Hobbit