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<blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 8847146" data-attributes="member: 85555"><p>I would say that is setting specific. And a lot of scientific categorizing probably falls apart in a fantasy setting where you have magic, you probably don't even have natural selection (or at least it might not exist) and origins are often mythic rather than biological. But either way, I just think the basic point of having a term people grasp as meaning the difference between creatures like Neanderthals and humans in our planet, is one that works for what demihumans are meant to be. Species seems to do that. I guess my point here is elves and humans aren't different in the way existing human groups are different on earth, they are more like the difference between a chimpanzee and a gorilla. The issue is we don't live in a world where there are multiple sapient humanoid species. It is something of a creative leap to imagine what that means. I think race had become the established term for what that was, though I always saw it as separate from the real world meanings of race (clearly an elf isn't meant to be something like a different human racial or ethnic group as we've historically thought of). So if the idea is race is an issue and they need a new word, species seems the closest approximation. The issue with words like ancestry is then you are just basically drawing on a fairly minor and superficial difference between human groups (like the difference between being born in Italy versus England, or China versus Spain). To me that doesn't quite capture how different elves are meant to be than humans.</p></blockquote><p></p>

[QUOTE="Bedrockgames, post: 8847146, member: 85555"] I would say that is setting specific. And a lot of scientific categorizing probably falls apart in a fantasy setting where you have magic, you probably don't even have natural selection (or at least it might not exist) and origins are often mythic rather than biological. But either way, I just think the basic point of having a term people grasp as meaning the difference between creatures like Neanderthals and humans in our planet, is one that works for what demihumans are meant to be. Species seems to do that. I guess my point here is elves and humans aren't different in the way existing human groups are different on earth, they are more like the difference between a chimpanzee and a gorilla. The issue is we don't live in a world where there are multiple sapient humanoid species. It is something of a creative leap to imagine what that means. I think race had become the established term for what that was, though I always saw it as separate from the real world meanings of race (clearly an elf isn't meant to be something like a different human racial or ethnic group as we've historically thought of). So if the idea is race is an issue and they need a new word, species seems the closest approximation. The issue with words like ancestry is then you are just basically drawing on a fairly minor and superficial difference between human groups (like the difference between being born in Italy versus England, or China versus Spain). To me that doesn't quite capture how different elves are meant to be than humans. [/QUOTE]

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