Demi-human evolution

[dame duergar]

Hello, I'm new around here, and I wanted to share with you all some notions I've been having reacently. I'v had some thoughts about the evolutionary origins of different races in D&D world. First of all, I reckon that the dwarves are distant descendents of a neanderthal population, that survived by adopting a subterranian ecological niche. By so, they have managed to exist beside the homo sapiens population without becoming extinct. Besides that, the dwarves posses some typical neanderthal characteristics, such as larger muscle mass, a barrel chest, dense body and facial hair and, of corse, a much shorter posture.
I assume that elves and orks could have evolved as separate sub-species from the homo-sapians branch, since they can breed with humans and produce fertile offsprings together.
Goblins could have evolved from the Australopiticus (a.k.a "lucy") branch,rather than from the homo branch, since they cannot breed with humans. Besides, they have many ape-like features, such as a larger arm-chest ratio (longer arms in comparasent to the chest).
Halflings may have developed from a species related to the homo erectus rather than the homo sapians, since they look more human-like than ape-like' but they cannot breed with humans.
I hope someone would like to have a discussion with me about this topic, and share with me some other ideas.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

Providing a semi convincing evolutionary basis for various demi-humans and humanoid creatures may help quite a bit in enhancing suspension of disbelief.

However, I should point out that in typical D&D games, flat out creationism is a perfectly legitimate answer. My own assumptions within D&D are generally that the various races are created to suit the environment that their gods wanted them to live in. You can use whatever starting point you want for each of the races. If you want Elves and humans to share a single common ancestor, then you can run with that.

Now, if you are determined to stick with something along the lines of evolution, your general line of thinking sounds perfectly reasonable. However, I strongly suggest you pick more divergent starting points for various races. There is no reason to have everything even remotely humanoid and mammalian as descendant from great apes. Goblins can easily be descendant from rats.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Satori]

I think this would be a GREAT idea to have as a council of wizards or scholarly types arguing as part of a campaign setting.

"Humans, quite obviously, are descended from Titans! You can tell by the skeletal structure and their primitive form of government!"
"Dwarves, of course, evolved straight from the Earth after the Elemental Debacle of 1099."
"Elves certainly bear a resemblance to Nymphs, Dryads, and other nature-fey. It naturally follows that they simply embody a more Prime Material embodiment of these beings."

...and so on.

Now, as a true "Origin Story", I'm not quite sure it should EVER be set in stone, game wise. Leaving things open to discussion just seems so darn fun...and using a setting where myths interweave with daily life creates a scenario where you can actually entertain fantastical creation stories.

 

[diaglo]

gnomes are dwarves.
faeries are elves
hobbits are halflings.

they evolved in Chainmail (1971)

 

[Corathon]

There was an old issue of Dragon magazine where they speculated on the evolution of various types of humanoid monsters. IIRC, the article described goblins and hobgoblins as being descended from different strains of australopithecus, and ogres as descendants of gigantopithecus.

Michale Scott Rohan's "Winter of the World" books have a race called the Duergar who are smiths that live underground - and are basically neanderthals.

If there were civilized, intelligent beings in your game world in the distant past, then some of the changes between creatures and their long lost ancestors might be due to magic or selective breeding programs. Maybe some evil prehuman race needed a race of stupid disposable troops/cannon fodder and bred goblins or hobgoblins for that purpose.

 

[JDJblatherings]

How would an evolutionary tree help a typical D&D campaign?

 

[Orius]

I have similar ideas in my own campaign.

Long ago, ancient races like the illithids, beholders and so on enslaved early humans. After their ancient civilizations were destroyed, these slaves eventually evolved into the standard humanoids. Their evolution was partially affected by genetic engineering that was performed on them by the races which enslaved them. In addition, the evolution of elves was shaped by their mixing with extraplanar beings from the Plane of Faerie like eladrin and powerful fey (in 4e terms this would be natives of the Feywild and the whole elf/eldarin thing mixes with this nicely).

 

[Tonguez]

 

[Claudius Gaius]

Given the amount of planar travel, the number of worlds and dimensions, and the amount of transformation magic available in many d20 campaigns, "most of them evolved in other worlds and a few were magically split off from other races" seems pretty likely. Any kind of evolutionary origin on one world involves some pretty massive coincidences to have so many sentient races turning up at the same time.

Secondarily, given the adaptive value of intelligence, tool, and magic use, I'd expect the first sentient race to evolve in most worlds to occupy pretty much every niche and preclude the evolution of other sentient life forms. Life does tend to expand to the limits of its environment.

If you want to use conventional genetics, interfertile races must either be simply divergent - but not divergent enough to become new species - branches of the same race (say, stranded dimensional colonists), have been subjected to something quite impressive in the way of a convergent force to make their genetics compatible, or be the beneficiaries of a truly astounding coincidence.

 

[Tonguez]

Secondarily, given the adaptive value of intelligence, tool, and magic use, I'd expect the first sentient race to evolve in most worlds to occupy pretty much every niche and preclude the evolution of other sentient life forms. Life does tend to expand to the limits of its environment.

And we have this happening. Dragons seem to be a natural candidate for first sentient in the world and the adaptive radiation of the various dragon species would support this. We can assume that the proto-dragon did not have a breath weapon* (beyond an acidic spit perhaps) and that certain other factors including their size, territoriality and greed worked to mitigate the impact of proto-dragons on other evolving races. (*the breath weapon evolves later due to exposure to magic)

Now taking into account 'the adaptive value of intelligence, tool, and magic use" the threat posed by the evolving Proto-Dragons could in fact have encouraged other species to evolve sentience and magic use as protective mechanisms ie the smark monkeys escaped to breed another day and thus give rise to Homininds

It may also be that certain proto-dragons underwent dwarfism and emerged as the first Lizardfolk and at the extreme end Kobolds

If you want to use conventional genetics, interfertile races must either be simply divergent - but not divergent enough to become new species - branches of the same race (say, stranded dimensional colonists), have been subjected to something quite impressive in the way of a convergent force to make their genetics compatible, or be the beneficiaries of a truly astounding coincidence.

The Convergent force is of course magic which needs to be accounted for somehow but for now

If we take H. heidelbergensis as the Proto-humanoid we can assume that he was ancestral to both neanderthal (Dwarf), H. Sapiens (Human) and H. Sidhe (Elfs = Homo Sapiens who were exposed to magic). Hey it might be a twist if H. heidelbergensis were Orcs thus making Orcs the ancestral progenitors of Humans, Dwarfs and Elfs! Halflings I'd leave as H. Flores (ie Dwarf H. Erectus). A population of these wandered into a high magic extradimensional space and so became Fey, a robust form of Fey later returned to the Prime and became the first Gnomes.
IMC goblins are Amphibians however I can see the logic of having Goblins as Australopiticus with Hobs and Bugbears being more robust forms. Ogres and giants of course evolve from Gigantipethicus and any convergence (and interbreeding) is due to magic