The media interest in the “Hobbits,” which I still enjoy calling by their more formal name, the Flores people or Homo floresiensis, is finally touching more seriously on their possible affinity to Australopithecus afarensis (“Lucy’).

What’s interesting about this to cryptozoologists, of course, is the link to a continuous range of reports of little, upright hairy people from Indonesia, through India and the ancient Ceylon (Nittaewo), over to the homeland of “Lucy.” The reports of Sehite (West Africa) and Agogwe (East Africa) are especially intriguing for matching those of the Ebu Gogo of Flores Island.

In the 1940s, there were numerous reports of reddish-haired Sehite in the Ivory Coast, where there were no known pygmies at all.

The cryptozoologist Bernard Heuvelmans believed these small creatures may be Proto-Pygmies, proto-bushmen, or australopithecine (gracile species).

Heuvelmans commented in On the Track of Unknown Animals (in 1955 in French, and in 1958 in English): “Now there is no known ape, even among the anthropoids, which normally walks upright on its hind legs….Perhaps the agogwe are therefore really little men.”

Perhaps, indeed.