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Originally Posted by Bźthberry
So, was Tolkien merely borrowing the anthropological focus on indigenous cultures to characterise his hobbits? Or was something more involved, something which would prompt a Frodo to accept an obligation to preserve the group?
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I think it might perhaps be a bit of both, although I'm most inclined to think that Tolkien was attempting to make the Hobbits the "most English" of the peoples of Middle-earth. Genealogy appears to be a pastime of the mortals rather than the immortals, no doubt because there are more generations of Hobbits and Men than there are of Elves (and possibly of Dwarves, but being secretive in nature, we know less about them). There are certainly aspects of the importance of lineage among the descendants of the Numenoreans; remember Faramir's comment to Frodo, "Kings made tombs more splendid than houses of the living, and counted old names in the rolls of their descent dearer than the names of sons." I find it interesting that the tracing of family history is a common interest among the "lowly" Hobbits and the "high" Numenoreans, particularly since it seems a more wholesome pursuit among the Hobbits. The Men of Gondor seem to have made it into something not exactly twisted, but also not quite healthy. In the Hobbits, it feels more like a connection to life, remembering all your relatives as part of one large family. And among the Numenoreans, it feels like a preoccupation with death and an attempt to gain some kind of immortality, in memory if not in the flesh. I often think that the people I know who are genealogy buffs are like the Numenoreans, searching for the nobility of their ancestors so that they can become a part of a family tree that will never die, since they themselves will, and fear becoming forgotton.