Little people

In the mostly English and Irish legends I knew of, the Little People were not generally friendly. I read a suggestion about 40+ years ago that these were displaced indigenous peoples still hiding in the woods and wastelands. Insofar as such displacement happens pretty much everywhere, and the folks hiding will probably not be as well nourished and certainly not dressed in the usual fashions, it wouldn't be crazy to find smaller folk who look different, hiding in the woods. The tale would then "shrink" in the telling. Nice theory.

However, these tales show up in Alaska, where one expects the displace-ee's to live, and Hawaii, and Flores Island, and the rest of North America, and places in Africa. OK, Africa is different--they actually _have_ little people, but Hawaii had no indigenous people before the Polynesians showed up.

So from whence the stories?

Maybe the stories are retellings of retellings of truly ancient stories of the humans who met Neanderthals et al before they spread around the world. That would be interesting, but wouldn't tell us much about the encounters.

Maybe they are a kind of hard-wired reaction to tell a story that explains uncanny things that happen in the woods; attributing them to humanoids since we understand humans, and the humanoids have to be small because there's no sign of them afterward.

Or maybe they're real, and just have gotten good at hiding. Really good at it, because lots of former residences of the little people are now suburbia and farms. Maybe that explains why I can't find the garage door opener...