Homo floresiensis, Homo habilis, and old tools

The debate around the little man from Flores is back (well, it was always there...). Since 2004, when the study of fossils remains from a hominin from Ling Bua cave, Isla de Flores (Indonesia), was published in Nature, the controversy and debate did not stop. A brief review of the specimens from Ling Bua cave says that this hominin was only about 1 meter in height, fully bipedal, with a small brain size of 417 cc, with human-like teeth, a receding forehead, no chin, and as old as 38,000 to 18,000 years. Who was the Flores hominin? We have (had) different options.......1) a micro-cephalic population, 2) specimens showing a condition associated with deficit of thyroid hormone (cretinism), 3) hominins that had a recessive autosomic condition associated with the growth hormone, 4) the end product of selection for small body size ("island dwarfism"), and 5) a complete different species: Homo floresiensis.
Lats December, a new study around the Flores hominins was published in the Journal of Human Evolution; this cladistic analysis suggests two scenarios: a) H. floresiensis is an early hominin that emerged after Homo rudolfensis (1.86 mya) but before H. habilis (1.66 mya, or after 1.9 mya if the earlier chronology for H. habilis is retained), and b) H. floresiensis branched after H. habilis. And now, in an advance Nature online publication, a new study from the old stone tools found at isla de Flores suggests that hominins had arrived (who?) on Flores by 1 mya. It seems that the team will return to Flores soon, looking for the early Flores hominins and potential ancestors of H. floresiensis.