So were
elves, so is man in the long run, and so must be
dwarves, though it never explicitly states it.
We all have a 'shelf life' for our time on Earth. Humans, dinosaurs,
hobbits, elves, dodos, etc. It doesn't mean they're extinct yet. There are some species that are dwindling on the point of extinction and their numbers have been declining for hundreds of years, and there are species thought to be extinct many years ago that they are now finding living specimens of. Things that we as humans long thought to have left the world forever are turning up more often than you might think. Giant squids, prehistoric piscines. 'There are fouler things than
orcs in the deep
places of the world.'
Look at the skeletons of the little people found in, (was it Indonesia?), in a remote mountain graveyard. 'They would be small, only children to your eyes.' Their remains point to the fact that they were only recently extinct (recently in terms of perspective to the entire lifetime of
homo sapiens) and that, in fact, it is hypothesized that some might still be alive somewhere in the world. And indeed the
menehune of Polynesia (Hawai'i in particular) are now being considered as possible relatives of the Indonesian specimens, rather than a mythical people as once was believed. (Though their legends and
tales of their deeds are most certainly exaggerated.)
There's a lot we don't know about the world, and there's a lot we don't know about the different species in the world. If the hobbits are still around perhaps they've adapted beyond recognition, or perhaps they've integrated, or perhaps emigrated from our shores to distant ones. Or perhaps there are now so few that they would be considered endangered if we recorded their numbers.
We'll all die out eventually. No species can last forever. Who's to say hobbits, if they existed, would have come to the end of their 'shelf life'?
/rubbish talk