Homo floresiensis, nicknamed 'hobbit' because it only stood about 1 meter tall, is an extinct species of fossil human that lived on the island of Flores, Indonesia during the Pleistocene. Floresiensis is still shrouded in a fair bit of mystery. First excavated at Liang Bua Cave in 2003 CE, these humans were originally thought to have lived between c. 74,000- c. 12,000 years ago, which would have made them the last surviving humans besides our own species of Homo sapiens. Recent evidence suggests, however, that these humans were actually quite a bit more ancient: their bones now come in at between around 100,000 and 60,000 years ago, and the tools found alongside them range between c. 190,000-c. 50,000 years old. There are a lot of things we do not know about Homo floresiensis as of yet, including the species' exact ancestry, which is still riddled with holes.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original content at https://www.worldhistory.org/Homo_Floresiensis/.