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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bloodstone Press" data-source="post: 1522595" data-attributes="member: 12468">Yeah. Well, they live for hundreds of years, so it isn't perceived the same to them as it is to you. 70 years to them isn't the same as 70 years to you.  Think about dogs and cats.  Imagine dogs trying to figure out how an elephant society functions when they have to take care of the young for soooo long....  As for intellectual maturity, perhaps the elves spend a lot longer thinking about stuff and meditating on various ideas so it takes them longer to process ideas and new experiences.  Furthermore, consider that human psychological development can be broken down into cognitive stages (concrete reasoning, abstract reasoning, etc). If their brains aren't wired to understand abstract concepts like spatial tasks and death, they won't understand them, no matter how many years they've been around. (Note that human children cannot comprehend basic spatial tasks until they are about 6-8. Most humans children don't come to understand death until they are about 8 years old.) Also consider that the brain waves of teenage humans are markedly different from those of adults or children.  The maturity you experience growing up has a lot to do with the biology that takes place in your brain.  Also consider that the elf's parents will keep them sheltered, much the same way humans protect and shelter their 6-year-old children.  I imagine that since they mature at around 100 years old, and live for 100s of years after that, that every stage of their lives is drastically prolonged, not just their middle years of adulthood.  Just because an elf has been around for 18 years doesn't mean he has the same cognitive functioning, the same freedoms, the same chance to learn and experience that a human has in that same time.  I don't have a problem imagining that at all, and to me it makes more sense than saying that they simply mature in the same 20 years that a human does. That seems like an oversimplified cope-out to me.   Consider, if elves mature to adulthood in 20 years, than a couple of elves could pop out hundreds of children in their lifetime. How would a society like THAT function? Family reunions would be enormous, perhaps 10,000 or more in attendance. You could hang out with your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather and his grandparents, too.  No, I think the gestation period is longer. The new born stage lasts several years, the toddler stage another 8-10 years, the adolescent stage another 10-20 years, the teenage stage probably last 30-50 years. That makes a lot more sense to me.</blockquote>

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