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that Hobbits are (in part) Tolkien's exemplars of humans who are at home being animals/animals who are at home being human.
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Hmm...interesting. I think I can go along with this as long as I see the qualifier: the words "in part". I don't think the later experiences of Sam and Frodo, or even of Merry and Pippin, fit well under this rubric if it's applied too narrowly. Surely they have gone beyond this.
I also have another question. If we accept the definition you've given above for Hobbits, then what does it say about us as humans, or even about JRRT? At one point, the author himself said something to the effect that "I am in part a hobbit". Are we saying that the animal part is an important piece of us? Perhaps, we're not just Elves, driven by the desire to subcreate or embalm, and that we ignore the Hobbit or animal part (in a positive sense) at our own peril. Perhaps, despite the narrowness and parochialism that limits the Hobbit mind, we can not be a full human without it. After all, in one footnote in the Letters, Tolkien clearly said that all the different races--Elf, Dwarf, Hobbit--were simply different pieces of the human mind. If that is so, and the Hobbit is an "animal", what does it say about us?
But are we actually so sure about this animal/Hobbit equivalency? At one point JRRT furiously denied that the Hobbits were the equivalent of "rabbits". I know there is another recent theory set down on paper that Hobbits actually resemble badgers more closely. This is discussed in
The Uncharted Realms of Tolkien , by Lewis and Currie, which is a book I'd love to read but it's only available in the UK, and, even there, it seems hard to get hold of. I believe that
Davem owns this work so he may have some knowledge of this argument.
And despite your skepticism, I still can't help thinking that JRRT's personal experiences crawling around in muddy holes in WWI bore some relation to Hobbit holes, if only in the sense of transforming a terrible experience into something far different. Of course, there's another way to look at this, which deals neither with my WWI trenches or your animal holes in the ground. Many of the faerie folk live inside hills. Indeed, this was said of the Sidhe who were said to hide inside hollow hills. Knowing the layer upon layer of meaning in JRRT's mind, I would rather think that all three of these factors had some part to play in the evolution of the Hobbit hole.
Regarding Hobbit history.... I do think there is a mysterious absence of it. Can it be explained solely by the lack of memory typically shown by the animal? I just don't think so once you bring Frodo and Bilbo into the equation. Bilbo spent most of his life gathering and translating tales of the Elvish past, going far back in time, but not one word is said about the existence of Hobbits before 1050. That can't be coincidence.
I am admittedly thinking out loud in this post and floundering for answers, but I believe there are implications here that go beyond what you've suggested.