Perhaps we will never know if there actually existed wild people who were called the Nittaevo tribe. The mysterious dwarfs were exterminated by their more advanced relatives and disappeared, leaving only legends about themselves.
The legends about thief dwarfs
In 1887, the English traveler Hugo Neville heard about this tribe from a Sinhalese hunter. The hunter learned about Nittaevo from his friend, who was one of the last representatives of the Vedda tribe, who lived in the southeast of Ceylon (since 1972, the island of Sri Lanka). Tom, in turn, was told about the wild folk by an elderly relative named Coraleia.
The Nittaevo people lived in a remote mountainous area of the Leanama region. They were very short, upright creatures without tails, their height ranged from 90 to 120 cm. According to some reports, their whole body was covered with thick hair, according to others, thick hair was only on the legs, which is most likely unlikely. These creatures had stocky and powerful arms with short hands, the fingers of which ended in sharp long claws. They did not speak Nittaevo, but somehow they communicated with each other using some chirping sounds.
These dwarf creatures lived in small groups in caves or on platforms, a kind of "nest" built from branches and covered with a canopy of leaves. Nittayevo ate mainly meat. They caught squirrels, crocodiles, snakes, lizards, birds. They immediately tore apart the victim's belly with sharp claws and feasted on its entrails. People from the Veda tribe despised these creatures for their way of life, and since Nittaevo regularly stole meat from people, hung out for drying, the end of peaceful coexistence soon came to an end.
Nittaevo had only sharp claws, while people had spears, bows and arrows. The dwarfs were exterminated. Only due to their dexterity and cunning, they still managed to survive for some time and at night even attacked sleeping people, ripping their bellies with their claws. However, this did not last long, at the end of the 18th century the Veddas drove the last Nittaevo into the cave, covered the entrance with branches and set it on fire. None of the dwarfs survived.
You might think that Neville could have been told some kind of fairy tale, but this information was confirmed at the beginning of the 20th century. Frederick Lewis visited the Leanama area and also heard about these unusual creatures, and he was told that the last fight with Nittaevo took place five generations ago. Basically, the information about Nittaevo coincided with the information received by Neville in due time.
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"HOBBITS" FROM THE ISLAND OF FLORES
One could treat the legends about the Nittaevo tribe with considerable skepticism, but the findings of the last decade clearly hint that this should not be done. In 2004, on the island of Flores in Indonesia, the remains of dwarfs about 1 m in height and 25 kg in weight were discovered, which were immediately nicknamed "hobbits".
It was possible to establish that these mysterious dwarfs lived on the island about 20,000 years ago, they have a very small brain (380 cm3), but this did not prevent them from making rather perfect stone tools. Some researchers believed that the "hobbits" were the shredded descendants of the archantropians (homo erectus), others assumed that they were descended from the australopithecines, but skeptics saw in them simply homo sapiens patients with microcephaly.
At the moment, the remains of nine "hobbits" have been found. Using radiocarbon and thermoluminescent dating methods, it was possible to establish that the oldest of them are about 94,000 years old, and the latest - 12,000 years old. It turns out that the "hobbits" existed on the island in parallel with modern man. However, they were not ugly or sick, but were representatives of a kind of people unknown to science. Scientists succeeded in proving this, and the "hobbits" received the name Homo floresiensis.
NEW FINDINGS
So, the Floresian man is officially recognized and he was a dwarf of about the same height as people from the Nittaevo tribe. Is this accidental? I think no. This region was once inhabited by a dwarf species of people. It is necessary to search in the area of Leanama for the remains of the Nitaevo people; if such a search is undertaken, no doubt sooner or later it will end in success. Recently, a sensational find was made in ten caves on islets in the western part of the Pacific Ocean (the state of Palau) - the bones of dozens of small people buried 1-3 thousand years ago. Their height is about the same as that of the dwarfs from the Flores Island, but scientists have still classified them as homo sapiens due to their relatively large brain. However, at the same time, the authors of the find still noted that the skeletons have primitive features.
One gets the impression that scientists are simply afraid to make revolutionary conclusions, the authors of the find interpreted it as a case of island dwarfism … People settled on a small island and crushed it, and this allegedly indicates a high evolutionary plasticity of man … And this despite the fact that age burials were discovered near the caves 940-1080 years old, where the remains of people of normal height were.
Tools of the Floresian man.
For some reason, it does not occur to anyone to say that the monkey is a case of gorilla dwarfism … Look at the variety of monkeys in size: from tiny to very large, like a gorilla and an orangutan. Most likely, a person once had a similar experience, it is not for nothing that gnomes, dwarfs and giants are mentioned in myths and legends of almost all peoples of the world.
Author: Andrey Sidorenko