A latest study has found that mystery hobbits that used to live on an Indonesian island nearly 15,000 years back aren’t linked to modern humans.

According to scientists, these tiny people were probably an entirely different species. This has added more color and spice to anthropologists’ years-long debate.

Here is how hobbits were discovered. In 2003, experts unearthed the so-called hobbits on the island of Flores in Indonesia, and later named the species Homo floresiensis.

Since their discovery, experts have been arguing over whether the species belonged to an unknown form of early humans or are kinds of present day human beings distorted by some disease.

The weight of an adult hobbit is around 25 kilos and is nearly three feet tall. It is quite interesting that Flores Island used to house an extinct race of tiny elephants known as Stegodon.

There have a number of theories of what the hobbits actually are. At times the scientific discussions reached to a point of harshness.

According to some, the hobbits belonged to a larger group of Homo erectus and turned small with the passage of time. The theory was support by a process known as ‘insular dwarfing’, which reduced the size of animals because of less food supply after moving throughout land bridges at the times of low sea level period. When oceans started rising again, these animals isolated them on the island.

While some say that the hobbits were actually humans who received their small size due to a genetic condition. An example of such genetic disorder linked to the hobbits is dwarf cretinism, which is caused by lack of iodine. Another is microcephaly, which shrinks not just the brain, but also its bony envelope.

A latest study verdict’s said they weren’t humans. The study by two French scientists said that the hobbits weren’t really Homo sapiens or modern humans.