Fifty thousand years ago on the Indonesian island of Flores, a pint-sized human species nicknamed “hobbits” lived the good life—hunting miniature elephants and chilling in caves—until a brutal mega-drought turned their tropical paradise into a dust bowl. New research says the rains stopped, rivers dried up, the pygmy elephants vanished, and the three-and-a-half-foot-tall Homo floresiensis either starved, migrated, or awkwardly bumped into arriving modern humans while desperately searching for water. So basically, the real Lord of the Rings ending wasn’t epic battles—it was climate change and bad timing. Sorry, Frodo.
Scientists Investigate What Killed Off Hobbit-Like Species
