Humans: a Short History

It is the most exciting anthropological discovery for a century. Until just 12,000 years ago, there was a species of little people walking around who would have only come up to our waist. Finally they were wiped out, possibly following encounters with the much larger Homo sapiens who, it's feared, may have patronised them to death. Things got off to a bad start after that first meeting and never improved.

"Halt! I am the chief of this island. What is your business here?"

"Hello little fellah, is your mummy or daddy around?"

"I don't have a mummy or daddy, I'm 37 years old."

"Of course you are, dear, now run and play while we do a bit of hunting."

Indeed, it's thought that the slightly flatter skull of Homo floresiensis may be a result of being patted on the head so often.

The tiny human remains were unearthed alongside charred bones, basic little tools and 2in lifts that they slotted into their shoes. The creature was immediately nicknamed "the hobbit", which was a little optimistic. There will never be as much interest in a rewriting of evolutionary history as there is in a mythical dwarf endlessly over-interpreted by teenage boys and 70s heavy metal stars.

The discoveries were made in the remote Indonesian island of Flores, where this sub-species of humans probably evolved. When a population is cut off from the mainland, there is an evolutionary tendency to shrink; witness all the little old ladies on the Isle of Wight. At the press conference where the tiny skull was put on show, the scientists excitedly described life on an island where homanids the size of two-year-olds hunted pygmy elephants, giant lizards and rats "the size of golden retrievers". At which point the journalists at the press conference went: "Yeah, right, nice try, this island wasn't called San Serriffe by any chance, was it?"

But yesterday an artist's impression of this naked man was reproduced in newspapers across the world, except in some primmer states of the American Bible Belt, where they put him in swimming trunks. He is posing with a giant rat that he's just killed, and looks pretty pleased with himself - tragically unaware that lots of other much bigger people are about to arrive and start laughing at him.

One of the fascinating things about this discovery is that stories of a race of tiny people living in the forests still survive in local folklore. It may well be that this oral history is based on truth and that the race was still there around the time the first white men arrived, when the islanders probably committed suicide rather than face the indignity of Australian dwarf-throwing contests.

It also raises the possibility that some of our own popular myths might be based on fact. Perhaps there really were seven dwarfs who lived in a remote cottage deep in the woods. Travellers to a site east of Paris have reported seeing some of these figures, posing with children and waving at the camera. Maybe the myth of leprechauns is based on other tiny people who lived on the fringes of western Europe, making little ceramic figures of each other to flog to Americans arriving at Shannon airport. Perhaps there really was a David "Diddy" Hamilton who presented Top of the Pops.

Twelve thousand years ago is incredibly recent in terms of the development of humankind. In other parts of the world, our ancestors were already learning to become farmers by planting grain, domesticating animals and filling out complicated subsidy forms. Other contemporary humans were attempting rudimentary pottery and organising plate-painting sessions for children's birthday parties.

Meanwhile, these three-feet-high homanids were probably more attracted to occupations usually associated with short men; aerobics teachers, driving instructors, that sort of thing. We know from evidence found in the Liang Bua caves of Indonesia that Flores man was able to start a fire and cook meat, which puts him ahead of most modern males struggling with the new barbecue.

But it has been a long-held belief that we Homo sapiens owe our intelligence to the size of our brains. That is why we are much smarter than a gorilla for example (though you might not want to say so to his face). But with a brain only the size of a grapefruit, Homo floresiensis was able to make tools, hunt and probably employ some sort of language. So it isn't just the size of the brain, it's what you do with it that counts. Men have been saying that about other parts of their body for centuries. But now it's official; having a tiny brain doesn't necessarily make you some sort of chimp. Somebody should tell the president.