Folk Tales, Hobbits, Collective Memory

Turns out-and I dont know why this was not talked about more, because I find it very interesting-that there were folk tales on the Indonesian island of Flores, home of homo floresiensis hobbits, of a mysterious race of little people called the "Ebu Gogo," who abducted children and spoke in murmurs.

I find it amazing that knowledge, in this case fear and mistrust, were passed down for so long that the stories were still alive today. This is of course true in many other contexts and settings, it is however all to easy to forget that many of the stories that we know and take for granted as foundations of our cultural heritage may have had their origins in collective memories from thousands if not millions of years ago.