Severe drought likely drove 'hobbit' humans from Indonesian island 50,000 years ago

For over a million years, a small-brained, small-bodied human species called Homo floresiensis made its home on the Indonesian island of Flores, hunting pygmy elephants and sheltering in caves — until, around 50,000 years ago, it disappeared without obvious trace. Scientists have now read the answer in the mineral memory of a cave stalagmite: a prolonged and deepening drought stripped the island of the prey the hobbits depended on, compelling a migration that may have carried them toward the coasts and into contact with our own expanding species. In the long story of life on Earth, it is a rem