Finished the Silmarillion, things still bother me though.

[The Saucepan Man]

I guess that solves the Hobbit issue.

Er, excuse me. I beg to differ.

Quite apart from the fact that it would take considerably longer than 5,000 years for natural selection to reduce Men of over 6' to the size of Hobbits, JRRT's works admit no scope for the theory of evolution. Otherwise, Men (and indeed all other creatures of ME) would have awoken as single cell organisms. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

No, JRRT based his origin of the species on creationism. Therefore, Elves awoke as Elves, Dwarves awoke as Dwarves and Men awoke as Men. It must (in my opinion) follow that Hobbits awoke as Hobbits, albeit that they were a sub-group of the race of Man.