spankysalmon comments on What a man!

Tolkien presented hobbits as relatives of the human race,[T 4] or a "variety"[T 6][11] or separate "branch"[T 7] of humanity.[11] In Tolkien's fictional world, hobbits and other races are aware of the similarities between humans and hobbits (hence the colloquial terms for each other of "Big People" and "Little People"); nevertheless, hobbits consider themselves a separate people.[T 8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobbit#Description

Considering the vastly different physical and mental characteristics I think it's probably more fair to view them like we view Orangutans and Humans as all belonging to one taxonomic family but not being the same species. In that regard hobbits are not men.

Edit: or probably more accurately, a genus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo in which case I think I concede you're right after all, no matter how much I don't like the thought of hobbits being men

permalink

fedilink

source

parent

[–] arrow74@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 weeks ago

I'm playing with the two definitions of man, man the race and man as a grown adult male

permalink

fedilink

source

parent

[–] spankysalmon@fedinsfw.app 2 points 3 weeks ago

Interestingly, no. Even taking it to mean, "equivalently sized person", short bodies tend to have more leverage with their limbs. It's why a lot of shorter power lifters don't look as big as taller ones. Although that can be hard to tell, since many of them just look like a chubby dude until you see them move something insane.

The true answer as to whether it was equivalent would come down to hobbit anatomy and biomechanics. They could be stronger or weaker than a similarly statured human depending on how their musculature works.

permalink

fedilink

source

parent