The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum - Origins of Hobbits

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Origins of Hobbits - are they Eruhini?

The question is really straightfoward. Where do hobbits come from?
It is known that Eru planned on creating (and created) elves and humans.
He allowed Dwarves to exist for Aule's sake.
But where do hobbits come from? Were they also "planned"? Are they some "lost tribe" of another race that got very short? How did they become what they are? Could it perhaps be the trace of their roots and origins?

I haven't read the Unfinished Tales, Tolkien's letters, or any other source that could give me an answer. So can you smart people share your knowledge?;)

I apologize if such a thread already exists.

This has indeed been discussed before here, but there isn't a lot of concrete information to go on.

The Prologue to FOTR has the best information on the origins of Hobbits, though it isn't very specific.

Quote:

It is plain indeed that in spite of later estrangement Hobbits are relatives of ours: far nearer to us than Elves, or even than Dwarves.

That says to me that Hobbits somehow branched off from Men early on (maybe from an evolutionary process involving hole-dwelling and their general way of life?), becoming a race of their own.

It goes on to say that Hobbits began in the Elder Days, but since those histories were written mostly by Elves (who were either unaware of Hobbits or thought them beneath notice), how Hobbits "developed" as a separate group of Children of Ilúvatar was by the Third Age totally unknown for certain.

I would include them as Children, of course. They take a major role in the events of the Third Age, as we all know, and thus, I think, must have been "designed" by Eru with that ultimate purpose in mind.

From Letter 131:

Quote:

The Hobbits are, of course, really meant to be a branch of the specifically human race (not Elves or Dwarves) -- hence the two kinds can dwell together (as at Bree), and are called just the Big Folk and Little Folk. They are entirely without non-human powers, but are represented as being more in touch with 'nature' (the soil and other living things, plants and animals), and abnormally, for humans, free from ambition or greed of wealth. They are made small (little more than half human stature, but dwindling as the years pass) partly to exhibit the pettiness of man, plain unimaginative parochial man -- though not with either the smallness or the savageness of Swift, and mainly to show up, in creatures of very small physical power, the amazing and unexpected heroism of ordinary men 'at a pinch.'

In that same letter, Tolkien also says:

Quote:

Their origin is unknown (even to themselves) for they escaped the notice of the great, or the civilised peoples with records, and kept none themselves, save vague oral traditions, until they had migrated from the borders of Mirkwood, fleeing from the Shadow, and wandered westward, coming into contact with the last remnants of the Kingdom of Arnor.

That the Hobbits were granted the Shire as a fiefdom of the North Kingdom seems to indicate that both the Men and the Hobbits recognized that they were somehow part of the same human race. As such, they would both be Children of Eru, even though Hobbits did not come to the notice of the other races early on -- which was possibly part of Eru's design for them.

For myself, I take Hobbits to be a diminutive branch of humanity without evolving into Hobbits. In other words, I think they were short and hairy-footed from the beginning. They seem to have been 'gentle' from early on, at least, as Tolkien notes:

Quote:

'In their unrecorded past they must have been a primitive, indeed 'savage' people*...'

*In the original sense of 'savage'; they were by nature of gentle disposition, neither cruel or vindictive.' JRRT, Of Dwarves And Men

In any case, if they were always basically 'Hobbits', they did change somewhat in size over time, and diverged in ways, considering the Harfoots and Stoors for example. As a branch of humanity, the Hobbits in The Lord of the Rings (at least) see themselves as distinct from Men, or the Big Folk, but they are mortal and leave the Circles of the World when they die (based on letter 325 for example).

Could hobbits, perhaps, be some humans who did not cross Ered Luin in the Sil? They could have been short from the start - there are white and dark humans, so why hot short ones?

There are pygmy peoples in our own world still.