Between Ape and Human: An Anthropologist on the Trail of a Hidden Hominoid

By Gregory Forth

The only firsthand investigation by a leading anthropologist into the possible survival of a primitive species of human into recent times and its coexistence with modern humans

In the 1980s, the anthropologist Gregory Forth was doing fieldwork on the remote Indonesian island of Flores when he came across people talking about half-apelike, half-humanlike creatures that once lived in a cave on the slopes of a nearby volcano. Over the years he continued to record what locals had to say about these mystery hominoids while searching for ways to explain them as imaginary symbols of the wild or other cultural representations.

Then along came the ‘Hobbit’. In 2003, archaeologists excavating in a cave in western Flores discovered several skeletons of a small-statured early human species alongside stone tools and animal remains. Named Homo floresiensis, this ancient hominin was initially believed to have lived until as recently as 12,000 years ago – so possibly overlapping with the appearance of Homo sapiens on Flores. In view of this timing and the striking resemblance of floresiensis to the mystery creatures described by the islanders, Forth began to think about the creatures as possibly reflecting a real species, either now extinct but retained in ‘cultural memory’ or even still surviving. And that’s when he started to investigate reports from the Lio region of the island where locals described ‘ape-men’ as still living. What’s more, during several research trips to Flores between 2003 and 2018, he managed to interview more than 30 people who claimed to have seen a specimen.

In Between Ape and Human, Forth provides a remarkable account of his long and detailed investigations into this mystery hominoid, exploring islanders’ views of ape-men both as natural creatures and as supernatural beings, their stories of ape-men in myth and legend, and their secondhand and eyewitness reports of encounters with ape-men, either living or dead. Setting his findings in the context of the discovery of Homo floresiensis and Lio culture and language, as well as local zoology and natural history, Forth comes to a controversial conclusion: that rather than being some kind of undiscovered ape or unfamiliar human group, ape-men most likely belong to a rare primitive human species, members of which may still survive in small pockets on the island.

Unique, important and thought-provoking, this book will appeal to anyone interested in human evolution, the survival of species (including our own) and how humans might relate to ‘not-quite-human’ animals.