Hobbits Were Once Real

These tiny humans walked the Earth 60,000 years ago. Did they carry a ring to Mordor? Evidence still uncertain.

Did Bilbo Baggins really wander the planet, searching for Smaug with a band of dwarves? Probably not, but hobbits did exist, in a much more boring, scientific sort of way. Source.

When I was a teenager, I went on an eight-day hiking trip through the Boundary Waters, the large expanse of wilderness in northern Minnesota near where Lake Superior touches the state.

It was the longest amount of time I’d ever been out hiking, and I had to search for motivation to keep moving along the trail. I thought about my family and friends, about that one girl back at camp who smiled at me sometimes, about all of the amazing, artery-clogging, fat-laden food that I was going to devour once I returned to civilization.

But mostly, I thought about hobbits.

See, on the long bus ride that brought us up to the edge of the Boundary Waters, we’d watched half of the entire (extended edition!) Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, the three-part fantasy epic written by J.R.R. Tolkien and brought to life on the screen under the eye of Peter Jackson.

I watched as the two main hobbits of the film, Frodo and Sam, carried the cursed One Ring on its epic journey to the deadly mountain where it was forged, in order to destroy it and prevent it from being used by the evil Sauron. The race of hobbits were even shorter than the dwarves, known for their peaceful nature, hairy feet, and utter reluctance to get…