About 50,000 years ago on the Indonesian island of Flores, all the large animals disappeared at once. The losses included dwarf elephants, carnivorous birds – and a species of diminutive hominin known as the “hobbit”, or Homo floresiensis .

It’s not clear why. A volcano erupted, and the climate was shifting. But there is also tentative evidence that there was a new threat on the island: modern humans.

Hobbits were first described in 2004 , after bones were found in the Liang Bua …