We're only humans

Ella's new series examines how our many related species all died out...

- NICOLA METHVEN

ON her quest to tell the story of how species of humans fought for survival over 300,000 years, evolution expert Ella Al-Shamahi gets hands-on with real-life “Hobbit” remains.

Ella's new series examines how we – Homo sapiens – went from being one of many human species to the planet's dominant life form, while Homo floresiensis and others fizzled out.

The short folk, named after JRR Tolkein’s mythical Lord of the Rings creatures, were just one of the rival types who didn’t live to tell their tale.

Standing at 3ft tall, the odds may have been against them as they eked out an existence surrounded by giant rats, storks and lizards on a tropical island.

Ella says: “We really wanted to portray the idea of this fantastical Lord of the Rings-like world, except it was real.

“Most of us have heard of the Neanderthals but a lot of people won't be familiar with the species we visit in episode two, which we call the Hobbit.

“It literally came up to my hip and lived on an island with giant extinct marabou storks. I want the audience to be so amazed by them that they think, ‘Gosh, what a shame that they're not with us any more’.

“They lived on this one island called Flores, in Indonesia, and we have no evidence for them anywhere else.

“There's this theory called island dwarfism, and that means that large species on an island get small, and small species on an island get large.

“So it just happened that these miniature humans were also on this island with giant rats, Komodo dragons – which we already know are giant – and the marabou storks, which were taller than me. And also miniature elephant-like mammals as well.”