Is Songman haunted by Hobbits?
Scientists from the United States, Australia and Indonesia found a skeleton of a small human on the Indonesian island of Flores. The scientists nicknamed the skeleton ‘the Hobbit’ because of its size. Mike Morwood of University of New England said: ‘We know from the record that these little humans, these little metre-high humans, were hunting things like pygmy elephants, were making fire and were making stone tools.’ The scientists are now searching for any signs of the Hobbits around Indonesia. Towards the end of Songman there is a chapter called Ghost People, hunters that are as short as a young boy. ‘You only hear about them,’ Jago said with a shrug ‘They are Toala, the forest people. Hunt with poison darts, but nobody sees them. Some villages put rice, krises. sarongs, pots outside their doors at sunset and next morning there are pelts, meat and beadwork instead. So they are ghost people.’ Songman is fiction but I did not invent the Toala. They were on Sulawesi during the 18th cent
