  The gap between a microscopic theory for quantum spacetime and the
semiclassical physics of blackholes is bridged by treating the blackhole
spacetimes as highly excited states of a class of nonlocal field theories. All
the blackhole thermodynamics is shown to arise from asymptotic form of the
dispersion relation satisfied by the elementary excitations of these field
theories. These models involve, quite generically, fields which are: (i)
smeared over regions of the order of Planck length and (ii) possess correlation
functions which have universal short distance behaviour.
