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Claim: Flores man is still alive and living in Indonesia

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Readers will surely remember Flores man, an ancient diminutive people first discovered in Indonesia in 2003. Some, including Gregory Forth, a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta, Canada, believe they may still exist as a separate group:

Here’s the claim:

“Although often described as taller or larger-bodied, humanlike creatures like these ape-men have been reported for other parts of Flores Island, Indonesia, and other parts of the world,” Forth writes early in the book. “But adding to the intrigue of the lai ho’a is the fact that—unlike similar beings reported from other parts of Flores, which local people consider extinct—these ape-men are claimed to have survived to the present.”

Forth conveys that in addition to the belief among the Lio that at least a few lai ho’a have persisted into modern times, several accounts he deemed to be credible which involved sightings of living specimens from as far back as the 1960s up until as recently as 2019 provide compelling fodder for paleoanthropologists willing to entertain ideas that a small population of “living fossil” archaic humans might still thrive on Flores. – Micah Hanks, DeBrief, February 15, 2023

Hope springs eternal. The hope for an ape-man is likely to be disappointed.

Forth’s book is Between Ape and Human: An Anthropologist on the Trail of a Hidden Hominoid (Pegasus, 2022)

Idea advanced at BBC:

Comments
So a hundred year old man is short? Everyone knows that as people age they get shorter. My father used to be more than two inches taller than me, but when he died, he was a bit shorter than me. Now I am probably getting shorter too -- I'll have to measure myself and see. ;-)Fasteddious
February 19, 2023
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But... but... that's impossible !!! I've lost my faith in evolution! Or words to that effect...relatd
February 17, 2023
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They are fully humans. The video is an updated version of Ota Benga.Enezio E. De Almeida Filho
February 17, 2023
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