Dwarfs!

This is crazy:

In a breathtaking discovery, scientists working on a remote Indonesian island say they have uncovered the bones of a human dwarf species marooned for eons while modern man rapidly colonized the rest of the planet.

One tiny specimen, an adult female measuring about 3 feet tall, is described as "the most extreme'' figure to be included in the extended human family. Certainly, she is the shortest.

This hobbit-sized creature appears to have lived as recently as 18,000 years ago on the island of Flores, a kind of tropical Lost World populated by giant lizards and miniature elephants.

--snip--

Flores Man was hardly formidable. His grapefruit-sized brain was about a quarter the size of the brain of our species, Homo sapiens. It is closer in size with the brains of transitional prehuman species in Africa more than 3 million years ago.

Yet evidence suggests Flores Man made stone tools, lit fires and organized group hunts for meat.

--snip--

...researchers say the perseverance of Flores Man smashes the conventional wisdom that modern humans began to systematically crowd out other upright-walking species 160,000 years ago and have dominated the planet alone for tens of thousands of years.

Short people everywhere, rejoice! How many new movies do you think this will inspire?

And isn't it odd that they discovered a female, yet they still stick to the "Man" naming scheme? It is odd that on initial discovery of a species, one of the characteristics of our own society that we immediately throw onto it is our conception of gender. I wonder if marriage was between a Flores Man and Flores Woman?