[Child of the 7th Age]

Sitting at home with the flu, I ran across this story, which gave me both a chuckle and a pause. It is from the folk at National Geographic.

Professor Tolkien got it right! According to the most recent scientific discovery, there are Hobbits in the homo sapiens family tree. These folk were given the nickname of "Hobbit" by the scientists who made the discovery: they describe the find as "one of the most spectacular discoveries in paleoanthropology in half a century. The Hobbits are cousins of ours, officially called Homo floresiensis . The scientists tell us that our three-foot cousins had heads about the size of a grapefruit and brains one-third the size of ours. They were native to Asia.

The scientists had a number of positive things to say about the Hobbit:

"The hobbit was nobody's fool," Roberts said. "They survived alongside us [Homo sapiens] for at least 30,000 years, and we're not known for being very amiable eco-companions. And the hobbits were managing some extraordinary things—manufacturing sophisticated stone tools, hunting pygmy elephants, and crossing at least two water barriers to reach Flores from mainland Asia—with a brain only one-third the size of ours.

"Given that Homo floresiensis is the smallest human species ever discovered, they out-punch every known human intellectually, pound for pound."

So much for all you Elf fans who fail to give the Hobbits their due!

The species inhabited Flores as recently as 13,000 years ago, which means it would have lived at the same time as modern humans! So perhaps, in an age long ago, there was an ancient Aragorn who went on a quest with four Hobbit companions. We can always dream...