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Well, the whole "leathery-feet" development isn't necessarily attributed to evolution. Anyone who constantly walks about barefoot for a good thirty years will get feet of leather.
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But surely this walking around did not affect the tiny children! We are nowhere told that younger hobbits were any different in this regard.
I think we have to accept Tolkien's statement in his Letters that they were a branch of the human race. Even today on earth, we get people over seven feet tall and pygmies who are considerably shorter.
The intriguing question is how and when did hobbits diverge? Hobbits aren't heard of till 1000-1050 of the T.A., yet they are already separated into three clear groups in different living in different regions near the Anduin River. So not only do you have a clear divergence from the main human stock in terms of height and hair distribution, but even three distinct sub-groups within the Hobbit offshoot: Harfoot, Stoor, and Fallohide. We're not just talking about three cultural sub-groups, but clear differences in skin coloring (people often forget, but the Harfoot had nut-brown skin!), facial hair, height, build, personality, etc.
Unless we want to suspend the laws of nature totally, this much divergence implies that hobbits had been in existence a good, long while. So where were there before 1000 T.A.? Why do we have at least vague references to a whole string of folk: Ents, dwarves, Easterlings, the Edain, Black Numenoreans, the Maia and Ainur,etc.in Elvish records but no hobbits?
There are no clear answers on this, but I don't think you can ignore the fact that hobbits
had to have been around a long while before 1000 T.A.
[ November 08, 2003: Message edited by: Child of the 7th Age ]