Dirty, nasty hobbitses! Old, extinct hobbitses!

You think Tolkien was making this stuff up?

Archaeologists discover remains of Hobbits

The partial skeleton of [the hobbit], found in a cave on the island of Flores, is of an adult female that was a meter (3 feet) tall...

Silly scienticians, it's a smial. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.