On Gnomes, Elementals, and Archaic Humans

[Hriston]

This post is to share the current state of some ongoing light research I've been doing into some of the more common peoples of fantasy and folklore. For some time now, I've had an ongoing project to identify and pin down some of the real-world equivalents of certain setting elements of JRR Tolkien's Middle-earth novels and legendarium, and that has extended to the races with which he populated his world and has naturally, at least for me, bled over into how I think of species in D&D.

A recent thread on gnomes got me thinking about them again. Dungeons & Dragons (1974) refers to gnomes as the "slightly smaller" and "more reclusive" cousins of the dwarves. Curiosity about the origins of gnomes led me to Paracelsus who also associates them with dwarves. "About the dwarfs", he writes, "you must know they are born from the earth manikins [i.e. gnomes] in the mountains" and that "[t]hey are monstra" and, thus, "are strange in size and strength".

In A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, and on the Other Spirits, Paracelsus describes "the four kinds of spirit-men", one for each of the four classical elements, whom he describes as "having blood and flesh and bones", being "like man" in this regard. Paracelsus has this to say about the various forms of their physical bodies:

The water people look like men, both women and men. The sylvestres do not conform, but are cruder, coarser, longer and stronger than both. The mountain people are small, of about two spans. The salamanders are long, narrow and lean.​

Elsewhere, he says gnomes (the mountain people) sometimes "reach about half the size of man or so, sometimes more." Although the book is regarded as the origin of the concept of elementals, what Paracelsus describes seems a long way from how they are described in D&D which owes its elementals to Michael Moorcock. The Paracelsian concept, on the other hand, is more in line with descriptions of humanoids in D&D. In fact, I found the book somewhat reminiscent of this passage from the LotR:

Learn now the lore of Living Creatures!​

First name the four, the free peoples:​

Eldest of all, the elf-children;​

Dwarf the delver, dark are his houses;​

Ent the earthborn, old as mountains;​

Man the mortal, master of horses:​

I found Paracelsus' "elementals" to equate fairly well to each of Tolkien's major non-human races (not including hobbits), like so:

• Nymphs/undines ==> elves
• Gnomes/pygmies ==> dwarves
• Sylphs/wild men ==> ents
• Salamanders/vulcans ==> orcs

To pick up another thread of my thinking, I've long equated the dwarves of Middle-earth with the Neanderthals, imagining the elves as the first modern humans to colonize Europe (the Cro-Magnons) and the creator of the dwarves having already placed them there in their mansions in the Misty Mountains and the Blue Mountains. If gnomes are the cousins of the dwarves, then it seems reasonable to equate them with the Denisovans, the group most closely related to Neanderthals among identified archaic humans.

Yesterday, I came across this video of an interview with Christoper Bae, one of the anthropologists who erected Homo juluensis as a new species last year, and at about 26:50 he begins talking about three different populations present in the fossil record in China. This, to me, seemed to line up with the groups I was seeing in Paracelsus, Tolkien, and D&D, so here's a little chart showing the identified groups and the equivalent D&D species:

Homo sapiens (Modern humans)	Humans (incl. Halflings) and Elves
Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthals)	Dwarves
Homo juluensis (incl. the Xujiayao hominin, Xuchang Man, Penghu 1, and the Denisovans)	Gnomes
Homo longi ("Dragon Man", incl. Dali Man and the Jinniushan hominin)	Orcs, Goblinoids, Kobolds, and Brownies
The Narmada Human, Maba Man, and the Hualongdong people	Treants and Ogres

 

[Umbran]

The question is... why try to make these things align?

Some of it seems a bit... arbitrary. The Narmada Human and Maba man specimens are not indicative of larger proportions than any other hominid of the time, so why identify them with Treants and Ogres?

 

[Hriston]

The question is... why try to make these things align?

Some of it seems a bit... arbitrary. The Narmada Human and Maba man specimens are not indicative of larger proportions than any other hominid of the time, so why identify them with Treants and Ogres?

It isn't my intention to force a strict alignment between the <ahem> elements I've brought up, but I can see how my post might have given that impression, which is unfortunate. The reason I made the post, given the four Middle Pleistocene hominin groups mentioned (if the "Neander-sovans" are considered as a single group based on their common ancestry), was to express the idea that it might be possible to draw correspondences between them and the four "elemental" groups of Paracelsus and thus to the figures of folklore and fantasy.

The chart at the end of my post was an attempt to flesh out that idea, but I agree it was done somewhat hastily and without enough consideration of available evidence. Given that I'd already decided to assign elves to our species and gnomes and dwarves to the Neandersovan group, it was basically just an exercise in associating the remaining two categories of hominins with Paracelsus's air and fire peoples which he describes as both being "longer" than humans but with the implication that the sylphs are larger than the salamanders.

I did have reasons for my decision, but they weren't stated in my post, and they weren't what I'd consider very good or compelling reasons. In one case, they were based on false information. For Homo longi, I couldn't resist associating "Dragon Man" with the group that includes kobolds and is more generally associated with fire. The high robusticity of this species also aligns with Paracelsus's description of the fire people and conceptions of orcs in general, at least many modern ones. The Hualong Cave, where the Hualongdong people were discovered, also has the dragon element, so it's a wash as far as reasons go to associate one group or the other. For my association of the group that includes the Narmada Human with the group that includes treants and ogres, I was influenced by the description found in the Wikipedia article of a "sagittal crest" as being a feature of the Hathnora calvarium, a feature I would associate in hominids with a plant-based diet as can be seen in gorillas or the robust australopithecines (Paranthropus). This, to me, was suggestive of ents whom I don't imagine as being meat eaters. However, the terminology in the article is incorrect, and the unique trait identified by anthropologist K. A. R. Kennedy in his 2007 article "The Narmada Fossil Hominid" was a "furrowed sagittal ridge" and not a crest, per se. Therefore, after comparing estimated heights for the various groups, I've reconsidered this decision, as you suggest, based on the relative proportions and statures of the groups in question.

There is no doubt that Homo longi, as constituted by Christopher Bae, represents a highly robust group of individuals. According to Wikipedia, the Harbin skull is "the longest archaic human skull to date" as well as having "the longest brow ridge", and the Jinniushan hominin, with an estimated body mass of around 78.6 kg (173 lb), is "the largest female specimen ever discovered in the fossil record." So I've decided to switch the assignments made in my first post and have revised my chart below, including the average estimated heights of the populations in question:

Population	Average estimated height	Associated D&D species
Homo sapiens (Modern humans)	(pre-neolithic) male: 5' 6" female: 5' 2"	Humans and Elves
Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthals)	male: 5' 5" female: 5' 1"	Dwarves
Homo juluensis (incl. the Xujiayao hominin, Xuchang Man, and the Denisovans)	"Neanderthal-like build"	Gnomes
Homo longi ("Dragon Man", incl. Dali Man and the Jinniushan hominin)	female: 5' 6"	Treants and Ogres
The Narmada Human, Maba Man, and the Hualongdong people	male: 5' 5" female: 5' 3"	Orcs, Goblinoids, Kobolds, and Brownies