Tolkien鈥檚 hobbits walked an awful long way, but the real 鈥渉obbit鈥�, , would not have got far.
Its flat, clown-like feet probably limited its speed to what we would consider a stroll, and kept its travels short, says , an anthropologist at the State University of New York in Stony Brook.
鈥淚t鈥檚 never going to win the 100-yard dash, and it鈥檚 never going to win the marathon,鈥� he says.
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He presented his conclusion at last week鈥檚 of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Columbus, Ohio.
By analysing the nearly complete left foot of an 18,000-year-old hobbit skeleton dubbed LB1, found on the Indonesian island of Flores , Jungers鈥� team estimated the length of the hobbit鈥檚 feet, which were unusually large for its metre-high frame. 鈥淪ort of like a young girl wearing her mum鈥檚 shoes,鈥� Junger says.
Funny walks
And because of their long feet, H. floresiensis probably had to bend its knee further back than modern humans do, resulting in a sort of high-stepped gait. 鈥淵ou would watch these hobbits walk and say they鈥檙e walking a little funny,鈥� Jungers says.
The foot had other peculiar features as well. For one, its big toe was quite short compared with the others, similar to earlier hominids such as . However, the shape of the toes, even the short big toe, is like modern human ones, Jungers says. 鈥淚t has a human morphology and an ape-like proportion,鈥� he says.
Jungers and other researchers who claim the hobbit was a distinct species from Homo sapiens point to the foot as further evidence supporting their theory. It has been suggested that the hobbit suffered from a severe block to growth known as or a disease called microcephaly that leads to miniaturised heads.
鈥淚t puts another nail in the coffin of the disease hypothesis,鈥� says , an anthropologist at the University of California, Davis who saw the presentation.
But the feet don鈥檛 solve the bigger mystery of where H. floresiensis originated, McHenry says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 so strange,鈥� he muses.
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