Until about 60,000 years ago, the Indonesian island of Flores was home to a miniature hominin species called Homo floresiensis – otherwise known as the Hobbit humans . The discovery of this petite primate in 2004 sent palaeontologists into a bit of a spin, as the species breaks one of the golden rules of human evolution – namely, that our brains got bigger over time. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

Despite co-existing with large-brained hominins like Neanderthals and Homo sapiens (that’s us), H. floresiensis had an endocranial volume that was about one-third the size of ours, which means its brain was roughly on a par with that of a chimpanzee. Prior to this realization, researchers thought that our evolving i

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