The History of Hobbits

[Marielle]

... are we going to fit this into the narrative at any point? I know the Wandering Days are near the beginning of the Third Age, but that implies that the Hobbits are, at least, already a people during the Second Age.

Are we going to show/comment/indicate anything about their development from Men into their own sort of thing, maybe alongside the Drughu? Or are we going to leave them aside until we get to the Story of the Ring in the later Third Age?

This is not a season 3 question, in all likelihood, nor a 4, 5, or 6. But eventually...?

 

[amysrevenge]

It's a really interesting question, mostly because you have to go sooooo very deep into Tolkien lore to get even a hint of where hobbits might come from beyond a very vague "related to Men" handwave. Like, you cross the bar of reading the RotK appendices, which has already weeded out a huge percentage of the audience. Then you get past the Silmarillion which weeds out another huge percentage. Then you have to go beyond that into the History of Middle Earth series, where truly a fringe audience is all that is remaining that even know these books exist, much less have actually read them.

So it's a topic that the audience will, for all practical purposes, have zero background or expectation for. And they will assume that we're making it up whole cloth lol. I can just see the armchair nerds pushing up their nerd glasses and "Ummm actually"ing the show on social media, only to be put in their place by deeper nerds. Hahahahahaha

As for the nature of the issue, it's one I'm not entirely happy with. There's no natural explanation for turning Men into Hobbits (or droghu) that is even remotely possible in the time frame we're looking at, and I can't think of a supernatural explanation that would be satisfying. But I'm all ears, hoping that there is one...

 

[Marielle]

It's a really interesting question, mostly because you have to go sooooo very deep into Tolkien lore to get even a hint of where hobbits might come from beyond a very vague "related to Men" handwave. Like, you cross the bar of reading the RotK appendices, which has already weeded out a huge percentage of the audience. Then you get past the Silmarillion which weeds out another huge percentage. Then you have to go beyond that into the History of Middle Earth series, where truly a fringe audience is all that is remaining that even know these books exist, much less have actually read them.

So it's a topic that the audience will, for all practical purposes, have zero background or expectation for. And they will assume that we're making it up whole cloth lol. I can just see the armchair nerds pushing up their nerd glasses and "Ummm actually"ing the show on social media, only to be put in their place by deeper nerds. Hahahahahaha

As for the nature of the issue, it's one I'm not entirely happy with. There's no natural explanation for turning Men into Hobbits (or droghu) that is even remotely possible in the time frame we're looking at, and I can't think of a supernatural explanation that would be satisfying. But I'm all ears, hoping that there is one...

My understanding of the lore is that Drughu are ancient, going all the way back to the beginning of the history of Men. Someone please correct me if that's wrong.

Possibly because I attended lectures by one of the discoverers of Homo floresiensis when I was young, I've always imagined the Hobbits to be a sort of natural selection/evolution phenomenon, though admittedly I have no idea what would cause that development in Middle Earth. Maybe contact with the Entwives?

Could we also connect them in some way to Beorn's skinchanging peoples? Both have a deep appreciation of the earth -- one for animals, one for growing things -- and both are of unusual sizes. We *could*, if we wanted, have them share a common origin, and one grow big and wild, the other small and domesticated.

 

[amysrevenge]

Other than the timeline, where we're talking thousands, not tens or hundreds of thousands, of years, I'd be down with a natural process. But what's the official timeline from the rising of the sun to the end of the 3rd Age? On the order of 7-8-ish thousand years or something? And we've got hobbits over 1500 years back into the 3rd Age in the lore already, so it's even shorter. It's just not enough time, without some external (supernatural) factor pushing things. It's not even like they are stranded on a remote island or something, they are living parallel to other Men in the same conditions as other Men.

As far as drughu, my understanding/guess is that if Tolkien had lived another 20 years (we can only dream) the drughu would have been retconned into the Silmarillion. Maybe hobbits too? No inkling of that on my radar...

The germ of an idea that I have is that Mandos and Manwe together realize that they need some little fingers to grab a Ring sometime in the future, so they "meddle" and make some. Very different from how Morgoth makes Orcs. Wait. Is that something worth exploring? I literally just thought of it as I was typing. Now I need to have a sandwich and think for a minute.....

 

[MithLuin]

Natural selection causes dwarfism in isolated island populations. I'd have to look up the time frames, but I doubt it's a matter of 5,000 years (which is really all we have to work with between the appearance of Men [at the rising of the Sun] and the appearance of hobbits [TA 1000].)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insular_dwarfism

So, we would likely need a driving force in addition to a simple issue of genetic isolation. A recessive trait can spread in a genetically isolated group because they all keep marrying their cousins, so we can have a founder effect fluke coupled with the island dwarfism...but even so, we'd be pushing it for that to occur naturally and universally.

It is noticeable that Entdraughts make hobbits grow taller. It is possible that if you exposed humans to {something else}, it would make them grow shorter - this could be done benevolently, to help protect them/keep them more secretive. Looking towards the Entwives is not a bad idea.

 

[Marielle]

What we know of hobbits, from what I remember of the Lore:

1) They do not appear to be their own, original race. Evidence #1 for this is Treebeard's song not having a place for them.
1a) Their mortality seems to connect them with the Secondborn.

2) They first enter the story on the banks of the Anduin.
2a) sometime in the beginning of the Third Age, at least some of them leave, beginning the Wandering Days, finally settling in Breeland and the Shire

Less hard "facts" and more general observations:

1) They are constantly overlooked by the Great: see the Men and Angmar not even remembering the Shireling archers at Fornost, etc.

2) They have made a little world for themselves in the Shire that Treebeard thinks the Entwives would approve of, and I see no reason to disagree.*

3) The Wandering Days might hint at some degree of longing for the West, as we see in early Men (is there a word for this? "Westlust"?), but that seems to be gone in the Third Age, as the overwhelming majority of Hobbits are completely content in the Shire.

*As I typed this, I thought of some of the comments Corey's made of Galadriel's Lothlorien, and Treebeard's explanations of the Entwives. The Shire is a complicated mix of order and the natural world, much like an English Cottage Garden expanded to the whole countryside. In a way, we could see the Shire as the Little People's version of the Girdle of Melian.

EDIT: Poking my nose in the Tolkien Gateway to double-check my facts... is it true that Tolkien never says they have unusually big feet? Is that fanon in origin? That doesn't sound right...

 

[MithLuin]

Timeline:

Rising of the Sun begins the official 'First Age.' Conveniently, also the year that Men awaken.
590 years later (well, based on one version of the timeline, but let's go with it) the First Age ends with the banishment of Morgoth to the Void after the War of Wrath.

Second Age lasts 3,441 years.

Hobbits appear in the histories in Third Age 1050. They are already 'halflings' at this point.

So, origin of Men to first historical record of hobbits = 5,081 years

There is clearly no reference to or knowledge of hobbits during the First Age, and they are virtually unknown outside their own lands in the 3rd Age. So, presumably they spent the 2nd Age germinating somewhere, and were first brought to the attention of other people during their migrations about 1,000 years into the 3rd Age.

As we will no doubt want to make some version of a story to show the loss of the Entwives, we can possibly tie the destruction of the 'Brown Lands' to the sudden desire by the hobbits to want to go wandering. The gardens of the Entwives are destroyed by Sauron at the end of the 2nd Age, and they are rather near the Anduin...

I am not suggesting we answer the question of what happened to the Entwives (did any escape/survive?). But I do think we should show the before/after of their gardens, and why not have that be the 'original' home of the hobbits?

(Selective breeding is of course the quickest way to change traits in a population, and I don't think we want the Entwives to go all Bene Gesserit on the hobbits, but...some crazy fan with too much time on their hands could come up with that 'explanation' of how hobbits got started if we show the hobbits coexisting with the Entwives...who are of course farmers.)

 

[amysrevenge]

I love this. So much. It explains so many things, not the least of which is the almost instinctive love that Treebeard has for the hobbits upon first meeting. If he can sort of sense the Entwives' fingerprints on them...

The question is - do we want to play up or play down the superficial similarities between what the Entwives do to Men (or are around for, if it's the Valar doing the actual turning) to turn them into Hobbits, and what Morgoth does to Elves to turn them into Orcs? We could say it's not the same at all, or we could highlight "here's how you do it wrong, and here's how you do it right".

 

[amysrevenge]

Maybe it's Ulmo doing the tinkering? Ulmo is the one who remains the most hands-on in Middle Earth, and there seems to be water involved in a lot of the important Hobbity bits. The Anduin is where they enter the story. The Brandywine keeps the Shire isolated. Smeagol finds the ring in the river. Bilbo finds it on the shores of Gollum's lake. Entdraughts make them grow.

 

[Marielle]

Timeline:
I am not suggesting we answer the question of what happened to the Entwives (did any escape/survive?). But I do think we should show the before/after of their gardens, and why not have that be the 'original' home of the hobbits?

(Selective breeding is of course the quickest way to change traits in a population, and I don't think we want the Entwives to go all Bene Gesserit on the hobbits, but...some crazy fan with too much time on their hands could come up with that 'explanation' of how hobbits got started if we show the hobbits coexisting with the Entwives...who are of course farmers.)

Goodness knows I didn't intend to suggest we give a blow-by-blow account of how hobbits came to be: if we're uncomfortable doing so for the orcs...

But I like the idea of connecting them with the Entwives. Maybe have a scene with an Entwife gardening with a human assistant who's rather on the short side... and then a couple episodes/seasons later, another one even shorter, with curly hair, etc...

We could even fit it in with a philosophy/theme of the Entwives, if we wanted to. Have one of them say "our Enthusbands think that 'to grow and flourish' is to become huge and unruly: we know better": making it clear that they don't see making their gardens ordered, and even keeping plants or people small, is a violation of their purpose or ethos.

 

[Marielle]

Maybe it's Ulmo doing the tinkering? Ulmo is the one who remains the most hands-on in Middle Earth, and there seems to be water involved in a lot of the important Hobbity bits. The Anduin is where they enter the story. The Brandywine keeps the Shire isolated. Smeagol finds the ring in the river. Bilbo finds it on the shores of Gollum's lake. Entdraughts make them grow.

My problem with this would be the aversion non-Brandybucks have to water: hobbits not being the best swimmers. Certainly, Ulmo/the Valar have a hand in Bilbo's finding the Ring, but otherwise... the Entdraught, at least, seems more a manifestation of the power of the Ents, rather than the water from a particularly potent spring or anything. Actually, if any of the Valar had a hand in their development, I would suspect Yavanna, and I understand that's not a unique suspicion in the fandom.

Still, their being associated with the Anduin and Brandywine, not to mention Gollum's lake, is intriguing. And Ulmo can certainly play the long game... still, I think we can keep their origins more... homey?... than the intervention of a Vala. That would play up the idea of "the least being the greatest" that LotR stresses so much, if they're not genetically engineered, as it were, for the purpose they serve later on.

 

[amysrevenge]

Initially I imagined a manifestation of Iluvatar himself walking among the proto-hobbits, rather than any Vala, but I suspect that theology-wise that is a non-starter...

But yeah, I think we certainly don't need to show the first stage, where something somehow somewhere starts the ball rolling from Manhood to Hobbithood. We can start to show Hobbits when there start to be Hobbits, in a controlled environment where their origin is hinted at without being explicitly stated. Did the Entwives do it? Someone above the Entwives? Who knows! (Well, we know, but nobody on the show says anything.)

P.S. "Enthusbands" makes me think of highschool musicians with more heart than skill: Enthused-bands.

 

[MithLuin]

Bilbo finding the Ring in Gollum's cave is seen as the work of Eru in the story, not the Valar. 'Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its Maker...and [Frodo] was meant to have it...' The Valar sent the Istari to combat Sauron. Ilúvatar sent hobbits.

Absolutely no incarnate Ilúvatar in Middle Earth prior to the 4th Age. No can do. If you want an alternative to the Entwives or the Valar interfering, there is always Tom Bombadil.

Yeah, I don't really want to genetically engineer the hobbits or put any indication on screen that they are part of an intentional breeding program. I think that showing the Entwives befriending and working with a group of Men, and then later with shorter folk, and finally, 'hey, are those hobbits???' will be a fine way to introduce hobbits into the tale while giving the Entwives a role between the time when they are estranged from the Ents and when they are finally lost.

The, 'Hey, a few thousand years is too short for that change to be realistic' is a problem I don't think the audience will have, and if they *do* take umbrage over it...the Entwives being there can be seen as the 'magical' mitigating factor.


I buy wine called 'Entwine." I realize that entwine is a word, but I say ent-wine

 

[amysrevenge]

The, 'Hey, a few thousand years is too short for that change to be realistic' is a problem I don't think the audience will have, and if they *do* take umbrage over it...the Entwives being there can be seen as the 'magical' mitigating factor.

Yar, even if it's not "the" explanation, it's "an" explanation and that's enough. I actually prefer to show as little supernatural stuff as possible in most cases, even when it's happening, so only showing the outcome is A-OK in my books.

 

[Marielle]

The Valar sent the Istari to combat Sauron. Ilúvatar sent hobbits.

This might very well be my favorite summary of LotR, ever.

Yes, of course, you're right. Eru is the one responsible for the remarkable chance of Bilbo finding the Ring. I tend to alight the actions of Eru and of the Valar. My bad.

 

[MithLuin]

EDIT: Poking my nose in the Tolkien Gateway to double-check my facts... is it true that Tolkien never says they have unusually big feet? Is that fanon in origin? That doesn't sound right...

I think that detail is mainly an artifact of the re-sizing used for the Peter Jackson films. When 'shrinking' actors down to 3'6", he wanted to keep their feet normal sized, hence the prosthetic feet (and ears).

Tolkien commented on the hair on their feet, and their tendency to go barefoot (though wearing boots as necessary). I do not recall him mentioning the size of their feet.

 

[Haerangil]

i think its quite possible that both, hobbits and woses were there from the beginning and awoke with the other men in murmenalda in hildorien but split from them at an earlier time and went their own ways.

somehow id like the idea to show men at hildorien and they are spied on from afar and it turns out the spies are small ancestors of the later hobbits who have already fled the great folk at such an early point...

 

[Haakon]

I think that detail is mainly an artifact of the re-sizing used for the Peter Jackson films. When 'shrinking' actors down to 3'6", he wanted to keep their feet normal sized, hence the prosthetic feet (and ears).

Tolkien commented on the hair on their feet, and their tendency to go barefoot (though wearing boots as necessary). I do not recall him mentioning the size of their feet.

According to a LOTR fan forum, the idea that the Hobbits have big feet began with the pictures of the Brothers Hildebrandt, who did a lot of illustrations in the 60s and 70s.

 

[Haakon]

An alternative to evolution and influence from Entwives is that they were there from the beginning; that Eru created a bunch of alternatives, mostly of roughly the same size and appearance, some somewhat darker and some a bit paler, people with a range of different hair colours and of various stature - and a few of them about as half as tall, who felt the best strategy to survive was to keep a low profile and learn to sneak and hide very well.

I guess one thing doesn't have to rule out the other; we could have a difference at the start which is accentuated as time passes.

 

[Marielle]

An alternative to evolution and influence from Entwives is that they were there from the beginning; that Eru created a bunch of alternatives, mostly of roughly the same size and appearance, some somewhat darker and some a bit paler, people with a range of different hair colours and of various stature - and a few of them about as half as tall, who felt the best strategy to survive was to keep a low profile and learn to sneak and hide very well.

I guess one thing doesn't have to rule out the other; we could have a difference at the start which is accentuated as time passes.

We could certainly have the hobbits associated with the drughu, which I think would be implied even if not intended if we have them at the beginning, because they'll look like less broad versions of them; but we'd have to at least suggest the means by which they separated and developed in different ways.

Or maybe I'm just being stubborn, because I've sort of fallen in love with the Entwives idea.