Back in 2003 there was a flurry of excitement about a Hobbit-sized human dubbed Homo floresiensis, whose 18,000 year old fossil was found on the Indonesian island of Flores. After causing quite a stir, the fossil seemed discredited as several examiners said it must have belonged to a microcephalic. Now Dean Falk, the head of the team that made the original report, has published a reply in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences saying that studies of the brain structure, based on a three-dimensional computer model of the brain case, indicates it is very different from Homo sapiens brains, microcephalic or not. The fossil is associated with sophisticated tools and possibly fire.
Evidence of speech is not available one way or the other.
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