Hello guys! I've been getting myself a writing job. And it's on my curiousity that if humans were applied to Darwin's evolution theory, about other races?
As far as my googling goes, they're mostly from Norse mythology. But I can't seem to get my hands on more information, so I'm really intrigued about knowing: Where did the first ones come from? Are they related to humans in anyways because of the body shape? Are they evoluted from animals etc...
Maybe, definitely that different writings calls for different solutions, in that case I would like to hear your thoughts.
The origin is basically racism and xenophobia, unfortunately. And discrimination. Dwarves and the short races are... well... midgets. Elves would be the foreign immigrant at first, always mischevious, causing problems, and hard to get rid of. Humanity in ancient fantasy is the struggling class/group in most scenarios so the masses can connect with the heroes when the stories are told around the bonfire. If you compare and look under the rug, you can see that the many fantasy races have similar origins to represent another group of humans. The Norse didn't know about evolution as we know it, so I doubt they thought about it from a sience perspective.
Highly depends on your setting. It's fine as long as it makes sense in your lore. If you're going for a more scientific setting, you can explain how boars evolved into orcs or something.
But for high fantasy, the explanation really depends on your lore. Are elves basically evolved plants? Were they created by some sort of god? (this is actually the most common explanation I think)
It's as you said, different writing calls for different solutions.
Hello guys! I've been getting myself a writing job. And it's on my curiousity that if humans were applied to Darwin's evolution theory, about other races?
As far as my googling goes, they're mostly from Norse mythology. But I can't seem to get my hands on more information, so I'm really intrigued about knowing: Where did the first ones come from? Are they related to humans in anyways because of the body shape? Are they evoluted from animals etc...
Maybe, definitely that different writings calls for different solutions, in that case I would like to hear your thoughts.
Hello guys! I've been getting myself a writing job. And it's on my curiousity that if humans were applied to Darwin's evolution theory, about other races?
As far as my googling goes, they're mostly from Norse mythology. But I can't seem to get my hands on more information, so I'm really intrigued about knowing: Where did the first ones come from? Are they related to humans in anyways because of the body shape? Are they evoluted from animals etc...
Maybe, definitely that different writings calls for different solutions, in that case I would like to hear your thoughts
You just need to think of a need, something that forces them to do so. Like beast people just like monkeys losing their fur but keeping their claws, ears, etc. since they are convenient. Elfs? They are not known to be naturally agresive so... thiner to hide and run better? Ears for better detection since they live in forests, filled with trees that blocks their vision? Some make their ears as a kind of mini bio-wand too
Yeah, most fantasy race origins predate Darwin, so not many do evolution as an explanation for the various races. As for why the middle age folk tales ascribed a human form to spirits, calling them fairies, nymphs, etc, that’s probably due to our need to personify things.
I think of the manatee, inspiration for mermaids. Why? They‘re in the water, so they’re a fish, but they’ve got the top half of a woman, that is to say, breasts. Thus, we get mermaids.
Or the story about trying to explain cotton to people who have never seen it. It’s a plant, but it’s like a sheep, having fluffy white stuff. Thus people think of a monstrous plant/sheep hybrid, not a cotton bush.
We understand the unknown in terms of what is known? I think?
Hello guys! I've been getting myself a writing job. And it's on my curiousity that if humans were applied to Darwin's evolution theory, about other races?
As far as my googling goes, they're mostly from Norse mythology. But I can't seem to get my hands on more information, so I'm really intrigued about knowing: Where did the first ones come from? Are they related to humans in anyways because of the body shape? Are they evoluted from animals etc...
Maybe, definitely that different writings calls for different solutions, in that case I would like to hear your thoughts.
Humans and the other races have a common ancestor. Dwarves lived in large twisting caves rarely traveling the surface, over the years they grew shorter and shorter. Gnomes come from a group of proto dwarves who migrated to an archipelago. They grew even shorter because there was little competition for food. Elves lived in the many forests they grew long ears so they could hear the things they could not see. Humans migrate from place to place.
Their areas of habitation were separated by great seas and ice. They were yo weak to ever meet. Their ancestors lived long enough on a central continet that lucky boats managed to reach the continents around it. And their simple tools allowed them to thrive in their new lands.
The first hominids to start farming was the dwarves. As their population grew their food was becoming scarce. Shortly after was the gnomes. The big difference was that gnomes figured out how to farm in caves and the dwarves didn’t. Over many many centuries the dwarves became more accustomed to the surface. It was then that humans began to farm, they went from a small population of hunter gatherers to massive cities.
Elves though, never found need to farm. They had had the toughest lives of all the hominids. The forests were filled with poisonous monsters, who could manipulate the world around them, and whose meat was poisonous to eat. Gradually the elves cut meat from their diet becoming less and less omnivoristic, they were the first to learn magic. The gnomes in their caves were second, the dwarves third, and humans last.
Dwarves and gnomes were the first to smelt metals, followed by humans, and elves. It was about now that elves began to leave their forests. They, using their magic, learned to farm the foods their peoples had lived off of. Yet, food was scarce to some extent for them. They started hunting and eating small game, for they were the least poisonous from their forest.
Dwarves began to explore the seas, and had managed to find the elves. The two groups kept to themselves with a few constant skirmishes. Dwarves began to build cities on their main continent about now.
The Gnomes found mana crystals deep in the earth. The crystals merged with them. Some became extremely powerful, and others became corrupt. They tried to kill all without crystals. Their bodies wrinkled and became green. They were the goblins.
Hello guys! I've been getting myself a writing job. And it's on my curiousity that if humans were applied to Darwin's evolution theory, about other races?
As far as my googling goes, they're mostly from Norse mythology. But I can't seem to get my hands on more information, so I'm really intrigued about knowing: Where did the first ones come from? Are they related to humans in anyways because of the body shape? Are they evoluted from animals etc...
Maybe, definitely that different writings calls for different solutions, in that case I would like to hear your thoughts.
I actually did a lot of research on this on my own. I will start writing up a list.
You are correct that Norse mythology is the original origin of Elves and Dwarves, but there are a lot more complexities to the picture than that and there is a lot of cross-interaction with German and English folk lore.
The origin of Gnomes is a lot more convoluted, and Orcs as we know them today actually originated with Tolkein. The term existed before that as a linguistically different term for an Ogre, Tolkein is the one who took that term and turned it into it's own distinctive creature that was different from an Ogre.
Anyway, I'm going to start working on a far more in-depth write-up now.
I actually did a lot of research on this on my own. I will start writing up a list.
You are correct that Norse mythology is the original origin of Elves and Dwarves, but there are a lot more complexities to the picture than that and it there is a lot of cross-interaction with German and English folk lore.
The origin of Gnomes is a lot more convoluted, and Orcs as we know them today actually originated with Tolkein. The term existed before that as a linguistically different term for an Ogre, Tolkein is the one who took that term and turned it into it's own distinctive creature that was different from an Ogre.
Anyway, I'm going to start working on a far more in-depth write-up now.
Ok. Now, here is the more detailed write-up as I promised.
The origin of Elves is a little uncertain as it arose out of German folklore and the Norse mythology of Scandanavia at around the same time.
In Norse mythology. elves are a race that was between the rank of the humans of Midguard and the gods of Asgard.
Meanwhile, in German folklore, they are a race of forest creatures who will kidnap young children and beguile lost travelers. They are not viewed as entirely a positive or negative force, rather they are viewed as a representation of the dangers of the forest. And, frankly, being taken by an elf is seen as better than being killed by a wild animal.
In the story of Riff Van Winkle, it is an elven ceremony that he stumbles upon, and it is the elven wine that knocks him out for 20 years (yet somehow remaining alive for that entire 20 years he stays asleep.)
Norse mythology actually does not have a whole lot to say about elves. Most of our modern understanding about Elves comes from a mixture of German folklore mixed with a sanitized re-interpretation of them by Tolkein. If you want to research further back on Elves, you can look at the works of Lord Dunsany or at stories from the original German folklore.
Dwarves are very similar to elves in terms of their mixed German and Norse origin. However, there is a very interesting thing to note about Dwarves. Norse mythology actually uses the terms "Dwarf" and "Dark elf" interchangeably. The two words were viewed as synonymous and were understood to refer to the same race.
In German folklore, Dwarves are described as a race of the forest who are short and youthful in appearance, and can easily be mistaken for an 11 year old child. This description of dwarves does not match the modern interpretation at all, and is a lot closer to our modern interpretation of a Hobbit or Halfling. We can assume that Tolkein's invention of Hobbits was likely a sorting out and separation of the German version of Dwarves from the Norse version which far more closely resembles our modern understanding of the race.
Norse mythology has a lot more to say about Dwarves/Dark elves than it does about it's standard Elves. It depicts them as a race that lives down in the mines and is skilled with blacksmithing, very closely resembling our modern-day interpretation of them. Norse mythology does not, however, make any mention of their height relative to a human.
Dwarves are very prominently featured in Das Reingold, the 1st entry in Wagner's famous Norse-based opera trilogy known collectively as "The Ring Cycle" (The ring cycle also almost entirely inspired the core elements, including the main plot, of Tolkein's "The Lord of the Rings.")
Dark elves deserve special mention at this point, because their origin is a little special.
Dark elves as an independent race is something that has a very strange history. As mentioned on the section about Dwarves, Norse mythology used the terms "Dwarf" and "Dark elf" interchangeably, but it was generally understood to refer to what we, today, understand to be Dwarves.
The first appearance of Dark elves as we understand them today actually comes from Dungeons and Dragons. However, their interesting history seems to come from a combination between the Norse use of the term to refer to Dwarves, as well as Tolkein's Orcs.
D&D dark elves and Tolkein's Orcs seem to have almost identical origins. They were once normal elves, but some evil thing happened that twisted and mutated them as they retreated underground.
Due to this strange origin, I found that dark elves needed this special mention.
Ok. Now it is time to get into one of the REALLY strange fantasy-race origin stories.
Gnomes seem to be something of a head-on collision between 2 folk practices at a specific time.
The 1st practice is of German origin. In the middle ages, Germans had a practice of placing small figurines which they called "totems" in their front yards. These "totems" are small humanoid figurines that are said to ward off bad luck and evil spirits.
The 2nd practice comes from a discipline of mysticism and fortune telling in the Renaissance era known today as "Renaissance magic." Most of the Renaissance magic descriptions you will look up describe it's various fortune telling practices, of which there were many. However, within the lore behind Renaissance magic, they also believed in a set of 4 spirits who governed over the power of the 4 classical Greek elements. (this being one of the earliest origins of such a concept.)
Anyone who has played JRPGs before will recognize these 4 spirits, because JRPGs reference these spirits a LOT.
They are the spirit of fire, Salamander.
The spirit of water, Undine.
The spirit of wind, Silf.
And, the spirit of earth, Gnome.
Only, unlike the JRPG portrayal of these 4 spirits, Renaissance magic believed that there were many spirits of each of the 4 types. That they were small, in the sense that we would view a lesser elemental in today's fantasy lore.
The Gnomes of Renaissance magic were described as looking like tiny humans, about "2 spans tall." (A "span" refers to the distance between the tip of your thumb and the tip of your pinky if you spread your hand out as far as possible.) They are described as having absolute power over the element of earth, and being able to travel through the earth as easily as a human travels through the air.
Now, here is the place where these 2 pieces of lore collide. The Gnomes of Renaissance magic are described as being "2 spans tall." This also, coincidentally, happens to be the exact same height of the Totems from German folklore that had pre-dated Renaissance magic. Somewhere along the lines, as Renaissance magic became popularized, people who placed totems in their front lawn began referring to them as Gnomes instead.
(Yes, this is also the origin story of Lawn Gnomes.)
Until D&D got onto the scene, everyone's image of Gnomes was identical to the Lawn Gnome. Dungeons and Dragons eventually scaled the Gnome's size up to be around equal to Dwarves and Halflings, and RADICALLY toned down their way OP earth powers.
I have already more or less covered orcs in my previous post, but it bears repeating.
Orc is a term that originated in some regions of Southern Europe, and historical evidence seems to point to that the southern European Orc was just another word for what people further north called an Ogre. The features of Orcs and Ogres had always been 100% identical in historical lore, and this was the case up until Tolkein wrote the Lord of the Rings.
Tolkein is the one who turned the Orc into it's own creature, no longer just an alternate term for Ogres. Tolkein's Orcs, however, had an odd origin. They were supposed to be Elves who were warped and mutated by some kind of dark and corrupt magic.
It was Dungeons and Dragons that finally made the Orcs a truly independent fantasy race, separating them from the Elven origin that Tolkein gave them. Our modern understanding about Orcs in fantasy lore comes almost 100% from Dungeons and Dragons.
The Goblin Slayer series out of Japan has also seen an impact on several fantasy races, including Orcs. This is a fairly recent development in their lore, but it is significant enough to be made note of. Goblin Slayer introduced the concept that Goblins, Orcs, and a few of the other more menacing fantasy races are an all male species that reproduce entirely by kidnapping and raping the females of other species, and that the resulting offspring would also be whatever fantasy race did so.
This is an entirely recent development within the lore, and 100% out of Japan with Goblin Slayer as it's origin. The intention is entirely to make these already monstrous races more threatening. Previous lore made no mention of this sexually predatory imperative in the species. All previous lore referring to these races does mention females of the species.
I will collectively refer to all animal humanoid races as beast-man races.
Each individual beast-man race has a separate origin in original lore, and several more have what one might refer to as a chimera race. For the purposes of this entry, I will regard a humanoid-animal race as any race that has a mostly human-like torso. A chimera race would be a combination of 3 or more creatures, one of which can include a human head.
There are 3 fantasy races that defy this categorization. Nagas, Bafolk, and Cherubim. However, I can simply settle this issue by making special mention of them and otherwise applying the criteria to the rest of the cases.
In Egyptian lore, we have Aldet, dog-headed humans, Anubis, Jackle-headed humans, and they also have a humanoid cat-headed deity but no mention of general cat-headed humans roaming about. However, that cat-headed deity is close enough to also accredit Egypt as one possible origin of cat-human hybrids.
English lore has an alarmingly large number of goat-human hybrids. There are fawns, humans with two goat-like legs instead of human-like legs. Satiers, which are more like bipedal goats, including goat heads, with furry humanoid arms. And, the afore mentioned Bafolk, who are actually considered a type of demon. They are like naked-chested Satiers with bat wings growing from their backs.
Greek lore is the origin of the Harpies, and thus a lot of the bird-human hybrid races. They also had Sirines, which seem to be the earliest origin of Merfolk.
However, there is a single piece of lore that brings all these human-animal hybrids down to a single point. The Japanese Yokai.
Yokai is a general umbrella term for several different types of mythological creatures that are largely humanoid in appearance, but have some other kind of fantastical element to them. The two best known are the Kitsune (fox) and Tanuki (Japanese variety of Racoon). Both of these perfectly normal animals, in Japanese lore, have the ability to transform themselves into humans.
As Japanese lore in regards to Yokai developed though, and we progress into the modern era, it is very easy to see how they can take these stories in their lore and come up with human-animal hybrids of almost every stripe. This is even more the case as they hear about the human-animal hybrid races from all across the world as Japan began to open up to the various outside mythologies and folklores.
As such, these beast-men races are largely the collective of all the human-animal hybrid legends from around the entire world tossed into a soup along with Japanese legends about the Yokai, and interpreted through the lens of your typical Japanese web-novel writer.
If you want a more detailed break-down on the origin of each individual human-animal hybrid race, I would recommend just using a web search. It is way too dense of a topic to go into here.
That is as far as my research brings me at the moment. I could write up a section on Chimeras, but it is a similarly murky concept to the beast-folk.
There may be a few mistakes, but that is as close to the true origin of these various fantasy races that my research has taken me. If anyone has a better idea of certain elements or a mistake in my presentation they would like to address, please feel free to do so.
As you can see, Tolkein and Dungeons and Dragons mark something of a 2 step turning-point that collects several pieces of older lore and re-contextualizes almost all of it, forming our modern day understanding. Almost all of the things they touch on pre-date them, but the impact those 2 things had on our modern popular understanding of the lore is incredibly strong to the point of being unshakable.
I decided not to go into the lore on any of the lesser known fantasy races and stuck to just the ones that we see in most popular web-novels these days. I also decided to only go into the ones that have more convoluted origins. Others, such as Vampires, are well known in their origins in terms of modern-day lore. They may have had earlier potential origins before the work that popularized them, but I will leave that to the truly dedicated.
(FYI, Vampires have their TRUE original lore in Babylonian mythology. If you dive down deep enough into original lores, you will actually get sick of how many times it winds up tracing back to Babylonian mythology. Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, and Orcs are among the very few exceptions to this rule. Just about every single other thing imaginable almost always winds up having it's origin in Babylonian mythos.)
EDIT: Oh! Right! Fairies! I forgot to mention fairies. Well, fairies are pretty easy, actually. They are straight-up English Folklore all the way. Nothing convoluted about it. About the only road-bump worth mentioning is that the original English fairies had behaviors that were similar in nature to German Elves, except a lot more mean-spirited in nature. (This also explains why Elves are often counted among the fey and associated with fairies in various lore despite their origin not being English.) It was Disney that wound up sanitizing fairies and giving them a far more nice and cutesy interpretation.
Hello guys! I've been getting myself a writing job. And it's on my curiousity that if humans were applied to Darwin's evolution theory, about other races?
As far as my googling goes, they're mostly from Norse mythology. But I can't seem to get my hands on more information, so I'm really intrigued about knowing: Where did the first ones come from? Are they related to humans in anyways because of the body shape? Are they evoluted from animals etc...
Maybe, definitely that different writings calls for different solutions, in that case I would like to hear your thoughts.
Tbh, evolution is highly compatible with fantasy races. They just naturally evolved in similar or even slightly different environments to humans.
The weird part is trying to figure out why they also exist in our world's stories. In straight fantasy, you just don't bother. In Isekai, you usually have stories like the Odyssey, where a previous traveler encountered them without realizing they weren't Earth native creatures. The story spread, and any differences between the story and the author's version can be attributed to exaggeration or misinterpretation.
Realistically, the stories come from things like human shaped rocks laying around, explanations for natural disasters, or just straight out made up stories meant to amuse. Hell, even real life animals sometimes get fairytales, like the Tiger and the Manticore, or the Rhinoceros being a possible origin for the Unicorn.
The most common myths for their creation are almost always 'A god did it'. But that's how myths explain humans, too, so that's not really special.
Now, if you really want an Evolutionary explanation for Fantasy creatures, it isn't Fantasy or Mythology that you should be reading. The old Sci-Fi stories is where it's at. The Time Machine, Larry Niven's stuff, things like that. A lot of the legwork is done, already. You just gotta read it, lol.
There seem to be two discussions going on at the same time, both about the real world history of different fantasy races (though species might be more accurate) and in universe possibilities.
(decided to cut most of it, go look at the original post)
Nice summary, though I noticed you stopped at the English iterations of goat-folk, while I'm pretty sure the Greek and Roman variants either predate and inspired these or share a common origin (Faunus and Pan have been depicted with goat-legs, Satyrs are, to my knowledge, a well known part of Greek mythology).
Now, in universe, there are many ways to explain how different fantasy species exist.
Evolution as in the real world is highly unlikely though, at least not without some influence by an actual external intelligence to actively move it towards the results we typically see.
All intelligent species being directly created by gods or other higher beings is an easy, but also simple and effective way to go about it, especially if the world itself is directly created by the same higher beings.
Another typical approach, especially in real world mythology, has all manner of creatures both intelligent and non-intelligent as the result of whatever the gods are doing almost by accident. This approach has little to know rules, at least by our standards and can be applied to things besides creatures too.
A rock a certain god sat on for a while might become alive and be the origin of a golem species.
Two gods have a fistfight and their blood forms into one or more kinds of creatures.
...
The fight between two or more primordial gods leaving one dead and becoming the world itself is rather common
In the end, it boils down to the specifics of the setting and there is no real right or wrong answer.
Humans and the other races have a common ancestor. Dwarves lived in large twisting caves rarely traveling the surface, over the years they grew shorter and shorter. Gnomes come from a group of proto dwarves who migrated to an archipelago. They grew even shorter because there was little competition for food. Elves lived in the many forests they grew long ears so they could hear the things they could not see. Humans migrate from place to place.
Their areas of habitation were separated by great seas and ice. They were yo weak to ever meet. Their ancestors lived long enough on a central continet that lucky boats managed to reach the continents around it. And their simple tools allowed them to thrive in their new lands.
The first hominids to start farming was the dwarves. As their population grew their food was becoming scarce. Shortly after was the gnomes. The big difference was that gnomes figured out how to farm in caves and the dwarves didn’t. Over many many centuries the dwarves became more accustomed to the surface. It was then that humans began to farm, they went from a small population of hunter gatherers to massive cities.
Elves though, never found need to farm. They had had the toughest lives of all the hominids. The forests were filled with poisonous monsters, who could manipulate the world around them, and whose meat was poisonous to eat. Gradually the elves cut meat from their diet becoming less and less omnivoristic, they were the first to learn magic. The gnomes in their caves were second, the dwarves third, and humans last.
Dwarves and gnomes were the first to smelt metals, followed by humans, and elves. It was about now that elves began to leave their forests. They, using their magic, learned to farm the foods their peoples had lived off of. Yet, food was scarce to some extent for them. They started hunting and eating small game, for they were the least poisonous from their forest.
Dwarves began to explore the seas, and had managed to find the elves. The two groups kept to themselves with a few constant skirmishes. Dwarves began to build cities on their main continent about now.
The Gnomes found mana crystals deep in the earth. The crystals merged with them. Some became extremely powerful, and others became corrupt. They tried to kill all without crystals. Their bodies wrinkled and became green. They were the goblins.
