'Hobbits' walked more like humans than previously thought

On the Indonesian island of Flores, an ancient people once walked — small in stature, long in mystery. A new biomechanical study of Homo floresiensis now suggests that these so-called 'hobbits,' who lived between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago, moved through their world in a manner far closer to our own than science had long assumed. The finding invites us to reconsider how readily we mistake difference in form for difference in kind, and to recognize in these distant relatives a shared human way of meeting the earth beneath their feet.