Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
We can get some notion of what the Hobbits might really have been like,
and what we may have lost through their disappearance, by observing simi-
lar peoples in our own time. The San people of the Kalahari diverged from
other modern humans somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 years
ago. Through a combination of luck and determination they survived the
onslaught of the Bantu peoples from the north, and the even more murder-
ous attacks of the Boers from across the ocean. The San are clever hunters
and observant gatherers. And they are lively and fun-loving, cheerfully relat-
ing to each other in ways entirely familiar to any other member of our spe-
cies.
The San laugh and shout as they gather food in the southern African
bush. Did similar laughter and shouts of excitement echo of the walls of the
Liang Bua cave? Did the Hobbits laugh with pleasure at some new discovery,
and poke cheerful fun at each other? The sound waves generated by those
far-of events have long since vanished. But the echo of the Hobbits' essential
humanness, and perhaps of a lost evolutionary opportunity, remains.
