Natural Evolution of Fantasy Races

[Majin Gojira]

A pretty straightforward proposition: What would it take to have the 'standard fantasy races' (Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, Orc) evolve naturally. What would the environmental pressures be to produce such sub-species?

Halfling is somewhat already figured out with Homo floresiensis. Island Dwarfism applying to the genus Homo is simple enough to work through (or applying the same to rift valley organisms and the like). But the others are a bit harder to work through, so I ask: what environmental pressures/factors would spur the evolution of Humans (Homo sapiens or an older species like heidelbergensis) into one of these races.

What do you think is needed to create such species (barring outside intervention of other species, of course).

[The Romulan Republic]

Dwarves- small size could be explained the same way as with halflings, or perhaps by living in confined spaces underground, as is typically the case with dwarves in fantasy. However, if they were underground, I'd expect other adaptations including sharper eyes and/or keener senses other than sight.

[Joun_Lord]

Orc could be humans who evolved over time for war. A people that made constant war and violence over the course of centuries or longer and adapted to it. They are bred to be bigger and stronger, have tougher skin, and possibly faster to breed (I think thats a thing for some Orcs, they can breed stupidly fast with some versions even able to "mate" with other species to further bolster their numbers). Probably only big strong brutes survived to become leaders and breed. If its like Skyrim the Chief is the only male allowed to breed in tribes, thus the smarter and smaller males wouldn't pass on the genetic spooge.

Probably bred to be dumber and better able to follow orders in a horde if their evolution is the result of outside intervention as Orcs make great expendable soldiers to toss at enemies.

Elves, I dunno. Elves are pretty much just really beautiful humans what have vulcan ears, immortality or atleast an extremely long life, and possibly a genetic disposition towards being racist dicks. They seem to breed really, really slowly and in many works I've read of with Elves or their analogs they tend to be dying out because they cannot compete with other faster breeding races. There was probably a good reason for their long life span and slow reproduction in the past, maybe they evolved in a land where food was for entire human lifetimes too sparse to make with the babies. There long lives allowed them to live through these ages of hunger and reproduce in later times of plenty.

Or with the outside intervention route, they are a pretty much like Chuck's theory of the Ocampan. A race created to be the plaything of another. They look good for like ever, have trouble getting knocked up, look exotic, even the dudes look like chicks, and are generally physically weaker then humans. The only thing that invalidates that theory is unlike the Ocampans and their ability to be fully developed adults in like a year whereas many elf species will take decades to reach adulthood, though for some its just the emotional and intellectual maturity and not physical maturity.

[Simon_Jester]

Elves make the most sense as a product of deliberate genetic modification, really. Someone DID something to make elves, they are someone's idea of what perfect humanoids would be like.

[Coop D'etat]

Elves make the most sense as a product of deliberate genetic modification, really. Someone DID something to make elves, they are someone's idea of what perfect humanoids would be like.

I was going to say that they make a ton of sense as the decendants of survivors from a previous human civilization that had the ability to genetically improve themselves.

Physical beauty, general enhanced athletic abilities and senses, better resistance to disease and most importantly longivity/biological immortality would be the basic laundry list of what a society with that kind of ability would want to get for themselves. Pairing that with reduced fertility would also be a prudent measure for an advanced, stable society that is increasing longevity in order to prevent the evils of over-population.

Your prototypical elves could be well explained by such a society collapsing and losing the ability to modify themselves. Then they are stuck in a world where they are frequently outcompeted by other humaniod species despite individual superiority due to a low-birth rate meaning they cannot survive battles of attrition against "lower races." They'd be particularly vulnerable to Pyrrhic victories where they defeat their enemies due to individual superiority but take irreplaceable casualites making them weaker in the long run. So they'd develop a tendancy towards isolationism to avoid unnecessary conflicts.

So that should lead to the stereotypical elven traits. Sense of superiority over the un-uplifted, nostalgia for a lost golden age, and isolationism to the point of xenophobia.

[Broomstick]

Halflings already noted - island or isolation dwarfism, most likely due to limited resources favoring smaller bodies.

Dwarves could arise in a situation where brute strength is an asset/requirement but there is some sort of pressure favoring shorter stature. Underground could potentially be such an environment, but so could living in a harsh environment (desert, arctic) where a lot of labor is involved in obtaining food, but not an abundance of food as a result. Get a society where there is less competition and more cooperation between males so there is less need for men to be large. Get the doubled-muscle variant of the myostatin gene running at large in the population and you wind up with short, overmuscled people. The downside is that such people have higher protein requirements than normal, which could end up running headlong into the "massive labor for little food" requirement, unless that food is also very high in protein.

Orcs/orgres/etc. could arise from situations involving a lot of combat or other activity that favors large size. Again, get the myostatin variant gene going and you get enormously strong people on top of them being large. The need for high protein food sources could lead to a lot of hunting/herding with perhaps associated conflict

Another downside to the doubled-muscle gene variant is that it tends to increase childbirth problems what with the infants also being a bit larger/muscled than normal but given enough generations/time evolution could tweak that. It might also account for such a preponderance of males seen in such societies if childbirth is even more hazardous than for H. sapiens.

Elves... hmm... Elves are K strategists, opting for few offspring. There is some indication that human lineages that tend to reproduce late have fewer children AND tend to live longer. Consider elves as an extreme of that. You might also consider that elven metabolism expends more energy on repair (those long lives) than bulking up or reproducing. So... conditions that favor such things. Maybe some nutritional bottleneck that requires years to build up before allowing successful reproduction, some trace mineral or some such. Maybe some periodic environmental catastrophe favors groups that have extreme elders who remember how the tribe survived the last time the Bad Thing Happened, so anything that favors long life is a distinct advantage. Some sort of food source that doesn't require massive brute labor so the body is freed up to use resources for other things (repair and maintenance, for example, or the brain for greater intelligence.) and having a slender frame without a lot of muscle is no disadvantage, maybe requiring less rather than more protein. Height and certain other attributes considered beautiful might be chosen by sexual selection. In a group where you have few offspring mate choice becomes very important so whatever criteria are used are going to be heavily selected.

If you stop and think about it, in a way we're the "elves" to Neanderthals, or even our more recent ancestors - we're taller, more gracile, and live longer. The current average human lifespan is about 2-3 times longer than what is believed to be the Neanderthal lifespan. We aren't as strong, though clearly that didn't hinder our survival.

[madd0ct0r]

I once wrote up an idea of orc's descending from hyenas.
This explains much of their similarities with humans, but with an emphasis towards taking the kills of others then endurance hunting, heavy shoulders and jaws. Very strong sense of smell, but with predilection towards scents humans find unsavoury.

I've seen comparisons between Tolkien's Urak-hai and his experience of rugby squads. I quite agree.

The Sword of Shannara has the dwarves being the descendants of humans who rode out a nuclear war and fallout in underground bunkers. They are terrified of the dark, but frequently agoraphobic.

Elves: the Artemis Fowl books suggest the elves (and other fairy races) may be descendants of pterodactyls - explaining the delicate bone structure and lightness of body.

Tolkien's elves eat very little, and very low level of food consumption (starvation) are associated with prolonged life in mice and other mammals. That's not an evolved trait, more of a side effect of the body delaying damaging growth and sex due to lack of resources.
Long, long periods of barrenness would surely result in elves programmed to bulk up fat when they can. Look at the polynesians for a human example.
http://www.articulateandintricate.com/2 ... ion-elves/ suggests elves as an offshoot of humans who return to the trees, living in the dim light of the rainforest, sacrifice endurance for strong long limbs.

[Lord Revan]

with Dwarves and to degree with orcs are as it could also be that there's some large predators makes having smaller size favorble as well as having greater strength then humans.

in Warcraft the orcs have deveploped the way they are due to Draenor being a really harsh place to live in so species either have to be though or cunning to survive.

[Lord of the Abyss]

They are all actually the same species, a hominid variant that is split into multiple specialized castes like social insects.

Goblins, orcs and ogres are warrior caste; they are actually three separate developmental stages of the same caste, as they mature and grow in size and strength. Dwarves are the worker caste. Elves are the leader caste; they are long lived so that they have the maximum amount of accumulated knowledge, and they look pretty so they are more appealing to those they lead. Halflings are the scout caste; small and sneaky.

[Starglider]

Elves would make sense in an environment where there is a huge benefit to a century plus of learning. In the real world, there are pretty rapidly dimminishing returns for primitive individuals learning to hunt, forage etc (although fortunately humans can learn as a species). I am having a hard time visualising it, but in theory a more complicated environment that requires a lot of intelligence plus experience to master would favour a very long lived organism even if it didn't reproduce quickly.

[Broomstick]

In most fantasy settings elves are either older as a species than other species, or have been civilized (however defined) longer than other species. So, initially they may have been as brutish as anyone else but if sufficient time and generations had passed in a civilization that valued learning and intelligence over brute force then such a shift could occur.

Think about our own world, where more highly technological societies favor fewer children and value education highly, leading to later reproduction, then extrapolate for a very long time.

In most fantasy settings elves are also associated with magic, which is usually associated with intelligence or cleverness over brawn. If the proto-elves had opted for magical solutions rather than mechanical ones that might have been sufficient to favor brain over muscle. As an example, the orcs and trolls might simply run prey down to the ground and kill them bare-handed. Humans engage in ambush, pack hunts, and building blinds/pits and other traps and tools that, while not requiring the brute force of the orcs and trolls, still require a certain physical strength but also require some smarts and cooperation. Meanwhile, the elves are using glamour and spells to trap their prey and hold it helpless while they kill it with some sort of tools or poison so they don't need to be very strong, just very smart. For the latter, experience would probably vastly improve their skills while old age will likely not diminish their ability to make a living as much as it would for the others. So, the more old and powerful people the group has the better off they are and the better able to raise their offspring, again favoring long life.

[Zixinus]

The problem with "evolution" is that it would require thousands of years to have minimal effect. Much more to radically change would require even more. So Orcs would have to be brutish warriors for an incredibly long time to have that kind of effect.

A better explanation is alteration trough magic or outright divine act. In Skyrim's case, Orcs were made out of a divine act and their (traditional at least) culture heavily centers around that deity (one of the Oblivion gods I recall, Malog Bal perhaps, yes I'm too lazy to look it up).

Elves living long and being good at magic (and they frequently are) are connected: what if they live long because of their mastery of magic? What if they have themselves changed as a species by magic so they live long, don't have an overpopulation problem due to too many children and appear charming for their own pleasure? While Orcs use magic to make themselves tougher, stronger, bigger, things they value the most?

And Humans were never that good at it to modify much more then individual wizards rather than an entire species?

[sarevok2]

Elves make more sense as being engineered. Perhaps created with magic by a past civilization.

[Purple]

Well if magic is a factor than perhaps the availability of magic, and magical affinity of the distant progenitor might explain a lot of things. The passive magical properties of a region would play as much part in shaping a species as anything we would call natural. Maybe the elves evolved within regions where the local aura caused a lot of disease (thus the high resistance to it evolved as an effect) but also without any large animals. Their tall thin statures could simply be a product of adaptation to a gatherer life style with no real threats or things to hunt.

[Esquire]

You might also stitch together the classical elements and modern genetic theory - maybe the disease resistance is because of a relatively high proportion of elemental Air to Earth in elven physiology, which as a purely coincidental side effect produces tall, thin bodies.

[biostem]

If humans evolved on a planet with, say, 1.5x our gravity, dwarves would probably be the result.

If we're talking non-green-skinned orcs, then perhaps if homo sapiens hadn't beaten out neanderthals, and if perhaps some hyper musculature gene mutated/got activated, then they might be the result. A lack of the mutation that reduced our jaw strength could also explain the more pronounced underbite and lower intelligence typically attributed to orcs.

Isolation on an island with limited resources could encourage the shrinking of a species - see the "real life hobbits".

If you had a limited population of people that were forced to mate within said small group, and if attributes like a lithe build and fairer skin were already prominent, you could get something like elves - perhaps they adopted the custom of ear clipping instead of it being a biological trait.

[Broomstick]

The problem with "evolution" is that it would require thousands of years to have minimal effect. Much more to radically change would require even more.

If you're talking about a fantasy realm evolution can work faster than in our world, or have Lamarckian characteristics, be the result of Intelligent Design, some combination or variation of all of the above.

[Panzersharkcat]

A better explanation is alteration trough magic or outright divine act. In Skyrim's case, Orcs were made out of a divine act and their (traditional at least) culture heavily centers around that deity (one of the Oblivion gods I recall, Malog Bal perhaps, yes I'm too lazy to look it up).

Malacath, who used to be Trinimac until Mephala or some other Daedric prince ate him. His followers, who used to be elves, became Orcs. Yeah, Elder Scrolls Orcs are a species of elf. Same with Dwarves, who weren't even short. (The short ones are Bosmer, Wood Elves.) I believe it was because giants gave them that name. They referred to themselves as Dwemer, or Deep Folk.

[eyl]

Well if magic is a factor than perhaps the availability of magic, and magical affinity of the distant progenitor might explain a lot of things. The passive magical properties of a region would play as much part in shaping a species as anything we would call natural. Maybe the elves evolved within regions where the local aura caused a lot of disease (thus the high resistance to it evolved as an effect) but also without any large animals. Their tall thin statures could simply be a product of adaptation to a gatherer life style with no real threats or things to hunt.

David Weber did something of the sort in the War God series.

Originally,humans were the only humanoid race. Some humans had a greater inborn affinity for specific aspects of magic.
Those with an affinity for stone-altering magic eventually became dwarves (the physical alterations and loss of fertility are also explained as effects of the conenction to background magic.
Another group with a natural connection to magic, which in this case didn't grant specific powers but rather increased hardiness, strength, size and lifespan, the first two at least even more than the dwarves IINM) became the hradani.
The elves originated from a group of humans who could cast spells and such naturally (I think they're to normal magic-users of the setting as sorcerers are to wizards in D&D3E). Their connection to magic was artifically altered so that they lost spellcasting and gained immortality.
The halflings are apparently the result of humans exposed to too much magic during a war with extensive magic use. This also resulted in the magi - people with psionic powers - who are currently humans but, if the trend holds, may well become a separate species eventually.

Note that the divergence in this case is sufficient that while all of the five races above can interbreed, the offspring are always infertile (except for elf-human crosses).

[Guardsman Bass]

You could get the individual races from a combination of originally being human populations scattered across highly different worlds before being brought together, plus selective breeding by known or unknown forces.

1. Orcs - selective breeding for toughness and strength, combined with genetic drift leading to some unusual aesthetic mutations (like the "tusks", if any).
2. Dwarves - high-gravity, high-radiation world selecting against tall, slender individuals and for tolerance of underground habitats.
3. Elves - selective breeding for greater capability to live in and tolerate sedentary social settings for long periods of time, as well as longevity, beauty, etc. Whereas humans came from extended family groups of hunter-gatherers, "primitive" elves dwell in "towns" of a thousand people or more. They're pale because they evolved in highly misty forest dwellings with only sporadic exposure to direct sunlight (or are nocturnal).

In fact, some fantasy settings explicitly have the whole "worlds brought together" factor. Elves in Forgotten Realms originally came from Faerie IIRC, and so forth.

[Purple]

And in a setting where for what ever reason you have wild magic existing that effect might just be a part of nature.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Try explaining Satyrs That should be a good one..

Like, maybe an Equine species that slowly evolved to be 'upright' And then lost it's fur as it walked on two legs? So only the lower legs remained furry? Shoot I got nothing for that...

[Tribble]

What about things like Ents? Walking sentient tree figures is fairly common in fantasy as well.

[Guardsman Bass]

With Ents, you'd have to posit something weird. Maybe they're animals with symbiotic plants that grow on and with them.

[Purple]

Or an animal whose shape resembles that of a tree for camouflage and allows it self to be inhabited by fungus and small plants to create the illusion of being a tree.