The brain of the Hobbit — more accurately identified as Homo Floresiensis — was compared to those of 10 normal humans and nine people suffering microcephaly, a virus which stunts the development of the brain.
The complete skeleton and skull unearthed in a cave on Flores measures 3.6 feet, igniting a raging controversy among anthropologists, who until then had believed the extinction of the Neanderthal 30,000 years ago left Homo sapiens as the only surviving human species.
Archaeologists had found sophisticated tools and evidence of a fire near the remains of the 3-foot-tall adult female with a brain roughly one-third the size of a contemporary human.
"People refused to believe that someone with that small a brain could make the tools. How could it be a sophisticated new species?" Falk said.
"It's the $64,000 question: Where did it come from?" she said. "Who did it descend from, who are its relatives, and what does it say about human evolution?" said Falk. "That's the real excitement about this discovery."
