08-20-2019, 10:23 PM | #41 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: Elven maturation and population growth
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Cirdan, for ex, was one of the oldest Elves. Of the three great Elda lords left in Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age (Elrond and Galadriel are the other two), he's vastly the oldest. He was part of the original migration of the Eldar westward, before the First Age. He was contemporary with King Finwe, King Thingol, and can remember the time before Thingol married Queen Melian, even by Elvish standards he's been around for a looonng time. And he looks it, at least somewhat. Most male Elves are beardless, he has a white beard. He actually looks older than the other Elves. That suggests to me that the Elves do age, very, very, very slowly, in time with the aging of the world.
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08-20-2019, 11:37 PM | #42 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Earth, mostly
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Re: Elven maturation and population growth
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The Eldar do grow weary of the world, which is why they see Eru Iluvatar's gift of death to Men as just that, a gift. Men need not hang around endlessly in life after all joy is gone, but can choose to pass onward to whatever Iluvatar has prepared for them, while Elves must endure until called back to Valinor. (They still live in Valinor, but in a state of endless bliss, the state that Feanor and his followers turned their backs on in order to follow after Melkor's theft of the Silmarils.) Originally, in fact, the Edain of Numenor would live until life began to grow tiresome, then choose to pass after ensuring their successors were properly trained. It was Sauron who began reminding them of the fear of death that Morgoth had trained in them in the beginning, causing the kings of Numenor to insist on clinging to life as long as they possibly could.
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08-21-2019, 04:19 PM | #43 | ||
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: Elven maturation and population growth
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As they came to the gates Círdan the Shipwright came forth to greet them. Very tall he was, and his beard was long, and he was grey and old, save that his eyes were keen as stars;…I'll note further that Tolkien seldom mentioned the beards of Men either. Strider must have had one, as must Boromir, but they aren't mentioned that I recall. When Men's beards are mentioned it is usually "his beard was…", not "he had a beard", so I assume that a lot of characters actually had beards that weren't worth mentioning, just as I assume characters were wearing clothes between the ankles and the waist, though those are seldom mentioned either. Tolkien's style for describing characters tends to go straight to the impressions and social implications of their appearances, bypassing specifics and cultural signifiers (which the readers might not be able to interpret anyway).
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Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. Last edited by Agemegos; 08-29-2019 at 02:21 PM. |
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08-22-2019, 02:25 PM | #44 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: Elven maturation and population growth
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08-22-2019, 05:54 PM | #45 | |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: Elven maturation and population growth
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Tolkien was mostly nonspecific on the question, I think. Other than dwaves, he rarely mentions beards -- but that doesn't necessarily mean they were absent. Some people take the phrase "fair of face" to mean "beardless", rather than merely "attractive". Last edited by Anaraxes; 08-23-2019 at 07:34 AM. |
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08-22-2019, 10:00 PM | #46 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: Elven maturation and population growth
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But it has its own issues, of course. Most of the Dunedain were not descended from Elves, after all. The royal family (and eventually through them some of the nobility and probably a few commoners) had Elvish and Ainurin blood, but most of the commoners were of pure Mannish descent.
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08-23-2019, 12:06 AM | #47 | |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: Elven maturation and population growth
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They won't have had much Elvish ancestry, with only one part-Elvish ancestor in their initial gene-pool, but they would likely have had about the same proportion at every level of society. And by the time of the War of the Ring there will be a substantial proportion of the human population of the West and South who are descended from Faithful or Black Númenoreans, and therefore of Elros, and therefore of Elvish royalty.
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08-23-2019, 10:26 PM | #48 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: Elven maturation and population growth
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It also fits with JRRT's comments to the effect that one reason the Beren/Luthian and Tuor/Idril marriages were allowed/fated was to introduce the strengths of the Elves into the Mannish race (and vice versa, though that matters less to us).
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09-01-2019, 06:38 AM | #49 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Elven maturation and population growth
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Not that I expect Tolkien would have thought of that. The genetics of "race mixing" were certainly a hot topic during his life, and one he cared about enough to write some fairly angry letters about the Nazi delusions on it, but almost everything about it in the popular consciousness was (and for the most part still is) nonsense.
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09-01-2019, 07:47 AM | #50 |
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Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Elven maturation and population growth
"Race mixing" is a very different kettle of fish to species mixing. Not that any of that matters for overtly magical creatures like elves and even heroic human populations. That whole half elf thing of getting to choose whether to follow the fate of man or elf means even early 20th century genetics may not exist in Tolkien reality.
But even deleterious genes can get easily fixed in small populations. LotR world never seemed very populated to me. Also bad or neutral genes can go along for the ride with some truly beneficial genes which I'd assume elves would pass on. Some recent analysis suggests we inherited some negative genes from neanderthals along with the useful immune system ones, for example.
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