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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5112699" data-attributes="member: 2067">I think the folks who did the Human Genome thing, one of the first things they announced is that there is no genetic marker for race (in humans). And we still share 98% or so of our genetic material with chimpanzees. Mice are pretty close, too.I think humans and elves in fantasy are more like humans and chimps, or wolves and domestic dogs, than like, say, Asian humans and African humans. And I don't think it's too much to say a chimp has a dramatically different outlook on the world from a human (though they aren't as completely alien as older science traditions might have supposed). Chimps use tools and communicate and have culture and strong social bonds, but they don't naturally make art, they don't naturally develop religion, they don't naturally organize into supergroups, and though they make tools, they don't make technology.It's also probably not very controversial to say that a domestic dog has a very different "personality" from a wolf. Breeds are even said to have their own distinct personalities (small and yippy vs. large and playful, forex). In my book, that is what underpins the fantasy racial archetypes that are going on here -- biology. An orc and an elf and a dwarf are biologically distinct. It's more like a human and a chimp (or even a human and a neandertal) than like two different races of humans. Fantasy worlds merely envision, to an extent, a world where we are not the only species of homo in existence. Which has actually been the norm throughout history according to the archeological record, modern life notwithstanding. That said, I do have a tendency to view that biology as flexible in my own games -- the racial descriptions are descriptive, not proscriptive. An orc has the possibility of being benevolent, but it might be kind of like teaching a chimp sign language. It's certainly not something that naturally occurs to them to do.</blockquote>

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