Q: What Happened to Dwarves and Hobbits?
ANSWER: I received this question in February 2019:
We know that elves either left Middle Earth or faded in the fourth age, and ents died out because of lack of ent-wives (or became regular trees), but what happened to dwarves and hobbits? They aren’t around anymore, so they must have disappeared as well. How and why?
Let me say that I’m not convinced there would be no more Ents. Treebeard told Merry and Pippin that trees were growing more Entish and Ents were growing more Treeish. It doesn’t follow that all the trees growing Entish would be males. The Ents will be gone when Ilúvatar decides their time is finished.
Tolkien was not a botanist but he had some interest in the topic. He probably knew that many plant species have male and female genders. He also knew some tree species are quite ancient. I cannot verify that he knew about it, but there is a 200 milion-year-old Cycad tree species that is represented by only 1 male tree found in Ngoya Forest in Zululand in 1895 by John Medley Wood. The tree has been cloned several times and the trunk of the last wild specimen is believed to have died in 1964. The scientific name of the tree is Encephalartos woodii. Its descendants can breed with females of closely related species.
I bring up Wood’s Cycad because even if we cannot show that it served as a model for Tolkien’s tragic Ent history, it illustrates just how versatile and long-lasting a rare tree species can be. The Cycad family is about 280 million years old altogether. Most of the species to which Wood’s Cycad is closely related are completely extinct, but 3 species of Cycad trees are known to survive.
I find the idea of cloning an Ent somewhat repugnant but I think that Ents’ close relationship with trees implies that they – like trees – might survive longer than a normal animal species (in Tolkien’s vision). He was apparently open to the idea that Entwives might even have survived with an unexpected annotation of a fan-made map which you can read about here. Call it the Willis Map for lack of a better name. It deserves a place in Tolkien arcania, in my opinion.
It’s perfectly acceptable to believe the Ents (and Entwives) would all be gone by the 20th century of the Common Era. Tolkien imagined the events of The Lord of the Rings happening around 6,000 years ago. Even an Ent might not have lasted another 6,000 years.
But I think it would also be acceptable to say that Ilúvatar could bring new Ents (and Entwives) into existence. Even Tolkien did not have a definitive answer to the question of their fate.
As for Hobbits, he did say in the Prologue that they are still around today. But they have retreated into hiding and their numbers have dwindled. In The Book of Lost Tales Tolkien names many of the creatures of English and northern European folklore – at least in passing – who include the Wee Folk or Little Folk. Although Tolkien eventually stopped working on The Book of Lost Tales, his comments in the Prologue to LoTR seem to suggest that he still imagined the Wee Folk of European legend being connected to his fictional history. Perhaps he was thinking that Hobbits became the inspiration for many of the faeries and sprites of northern European legend.
On the other hand, the fate of Dwarves remains completely in the dark. I don’t know of any subtle references in Tolkien’s letters and private notes – or his published works – to modern descendants of the Seven Houses of the Dwarves. It is possible that they, like the Elves, are truly and completely gone from this our modern Middle-earth.
Then again, since they had relationships with Hobbits in days of old, I think it’s fair to imagine there may still be Dwarves living in remote mountain homes, perhaps close to groups of Hobbits. They would benefit each other and could keep alive the old stories – which somehow reached the hands of J.R.R. Tolkien in The Red Book of Westmarch.
I leave it to you to decide if that is what he had in mind.
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Hello Martin,
Could you maybe try and speculate how Tolkien might have felt about a discovery like the Homo floresiensis (an extinct species of humans that grew to a height of 1.1 m found in Indonesia)?
I do wonder whether he even cared about rectifying his literary world with the truths of our reality.
Sorry for confusing your first name. I have no excuse.
Happens all the time. Don’t worry about it.
In fact, my Dad’s nickname among friends was “Marty”. I’ve heard something like that all my life. I take no offense.
I think he would have been amused, scientifically curious, and might even have been a little playful with the discovery. But I would feel uncomfortable writing an article about such speculation. That would be best left to someone on the Tolkien family.
If Hobbits are closely related to Men, as has been said before, they may simply have merged back into the general “Human” race. As Big People slowly(?) overran Middle Earth, the Hobbits more often married them, and the distinctly “Hobbit” line gradually died out.
Look up “Laron’s Syndrome”, a form of Dwarfism. The full Syndrome, today, does have disadvantages, but those with it live full lives. They also seem to be resistant diabetes, in spite of obesity; resistant to cancer; and tend to live longer than “normal” people in the same areas, at least in areas with limited access to advanced health care.
National Geographic, years ago, had a report on Laron’s Syndrome, and the first reaction of everyone here was “Hobbits!”.
It’s inherited, through a recessive gene, so one has to inherit it from both parents. Hobbits would breed true, but mating with Big People would quickly dilute the gene pool.