- Flores, Indonesia is the home of the scientific study of small humans.
- Theories of retired professor Gregory Forth continue to proliferate the hope of finding a living homo floresiensis.
- Forth’s 2022 book spells out his multi-decade search for evidence of a continually living human-like species.
The scientific community believe a small species of human known as homo floresiensis once lived on the island of Flores, Indonesia, around 50,000 years ago. But one professor thinks the apelike humanoids could still live there, evolution be damned.
Think of this as the hunt for Bigfoot, only with a much smaller target.
Forth has studied the homo floresiensis for roughly four decades—first when at the University of Oxford and then at the University of Alberta. He wrote a book in 2022, Between Ape and Human: An Anthropologist on the Trail of a Hidden Hominoid, and The Debrief recently ran an interview with Forth on the quest.
Forth still believes in the modern interpretation of what the locals call the lai ho’a.
“What really interested me in the lai ho’a is that it was small, like the figures in Nage country,” Forth tells The Debrief, “but it was reckoned still to be alive. And indeed, there were a few people around, it seemed, who claimed to have seen one or more.”
These creatures have a human-like upright gait, come hairier than humans but not as hairy as an ape, and have a distinct ape-like face, according to the Lio people’s accounts to Forth.
The professor’s hopes of a living homo floresiensis were emboldened at the finding of fossils roughly 20 years ago. “When the reports started coming out, I was quite amazed,” he tells The Debrief, “because what people were describing—what paleoanthropologists were describing, and indeed reconstructing—sounded very much like what the Lio people had been describing to me the previous summer.”
Forth’s book purports that these ape-man creatures lived at least into modern times, and he believes credible sightings mean there’s a chance a small population still exists. The search for a modern-day lai ho’a presses on.
Tim Newcomb is a journalist based in the Pacific Northwest. He covers stadiums, sneakers, gear, infrastructure, and more for a variety of publications, including Popular Mechanics. His favorite interviews have included sit-downs with Roger Federer in Switzerland, Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles, and Tinker Hatfield in Portland.
