A new war of words has broken out over the diminutive "hobbit", whose fossilised remains were found in a cave on a remote Indonesian island four years ago.
Ecstatic Australian scientists insisted at the time that they had unearthed powerful evidence of a previously-undiscovered human species who had lived on the island while mankind as we know it continued to develop in the "outside world".
But now an opposing group of Australian researchers say the tiny people on the island of Flores were not a separate branch of the human family tree after all, but were stunted Homo sapiens - early modern man - who did not grow because of iodine deficiency while in the womb.
They claim the so-called "hobbits" were in fact a backward group of humans, suffering from what the researchers describe as cretinism - caused by a nutritional deficiency.
The new claim is certain to start a fresh round of heated debate, centred around the tiny fossil of a woman, just over 3ft tall, who lived between 13,000 and 18,000 years ago in the hills in the centre of the island.
Scientists are due to start digging soon in the floor of the cave where she was found, hoping to find further evidence of a tribe of hobbits - but they may now be accused of wasting their time trying to find proof of an evolutionary fluke that never existed in the first place.
The scientists who first announced the find gave the tiny cave dwellers the name of Homo floresiensis, or Man of Flores.
Their theory was that the little people were descendants of prehistoric humans - Homo erectus - who reached Flores nearly a million years ago when it might have been possible to walk there from a larger land mass. Then, over the centuries, the seas rose, cutting them off.
Because they had to survive on what food they could find, they evolved a small stature, but the scientists said they were clever hunters because they had found evidence of toolmaking, butchering and fires.
A rival research team, however, yesterday claimed in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences that the little people were Homo sapiens whose mothers were deficient in iodine.
They lived 20 miles inland and were too far from the sea to reach iodine-giving fish, the study said.
In addition females would probably have relied on bamboo shots and root vegetables, which could have released cyanide into their bodies given the primitive cooking methods they were using.
This would have resulted in offspring being doomed to "dwarf cretinism" - missing a functioning thyroid that would have severely restricted their growth and mental and physical skills.
These cretins, explained the paper's co-author, Professor Peter Obdendorf, would have grown not much more than 3ft and their bones would have distinctive characteristics very similar to those of the Flores hobbits.
The new claims are the first to suggest that the small people resulted from diet, rather than inbreeding.
And in one fascinating observation, the researchers say there is also anecdotal evidence from the Nage people of central Flores who tell of ancestors who lived in caves, were short, roughly built, hairy, pot-bellied and stupid.
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