Humans once came in many flavours, and further evidence has been found on Flores Island. This is the same island where pygmy elephants recently lived, and Komodo dragons still do.
Perhaps it was a zoo of some sort?
The remains of a tiny and hitherto unknown species of human that lived as recently as 13,000 years ago have been discovered... The skull and bones of one adult female, and fragments from up to six other specimens, were found in the Liang Bua limestone caves on Flores Island, which lies at the eastern tip of Java.
The female skeleton, known as LB1 - or by the nickname "Ebu" - has been assigned to a new species within the genus Homo - Homo floresiensis. Examination of the remains shows members of the species stood just 1 metre tall and had a brain no bigger than a grapefruit.
A handful of stone tools from the same period were also found in the caves, along with the bones and teeth of several dwarf stegodons, an ancestor of the modern elephant. Other animal remains, including rats, bats and fish, show signs that they were cooked around the time H. floresiensis inhabited in the caves.
...What caused the demise of H. floresiensis is unknown. It is possible that they were out-competed for food and other resources by H. sapiens or that they were wiped out by a volcanic eruption about 12,000 years ago.
Or perhaps the global cataclysm of approx 10,000 BC was the thing that wiped them out? Dr Tim Flannery, in an interview with Australia's ABC says:
TIM FLANNERY: I'm rather sceptical about the volcanic eruption causing the extinctions as well, and wonder what it could have been.
