# Malthus and the Elves



## grendel (Jul 3, 2005)

I'm not sure where this should go; this seems as good a forum as any...

I haven't read every word written by Tolkien, but from what I have read, it seems to me that (a) Elves do not "die" from what one might call natural causes, and (b) Elves reproduce.

I'm seeing a problem right away. If it were not for the efforts of Melkor and then Sauron to cut them down like wheat at harvest time, the Elves would eventually fill up the available land in Middle-Earth and outstrip the food supply.

Or is it possible that they have a built-in limiter? I think scientists have theorized this (not about Elves, but creatures of this world!), demonstrating that mice in an enclosed environment will eventually just stop reproducing.

Another possibility: maybe the Western lands are limitless? My perception is that Arda was flat before the Change that wrecked Numenor; the world was made round at that time to prevent Men from finding Valinor. Perhaps it is still flat over there, and there is infinite land space for an infinite number of the Eldar?

An interesting subject (well, I thought so), and I'd like to hear other ideas....


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## Ingwë (Jul 4, 2005)

Well, I don't think that the Elves would full up the lands in the Middle earth or in Valinor. First, we mustn't forget that the Elves were not many at the beginning. They lived in only one town in Valinor and later the Vanyar dwelt near the Valar. And they don't have a thousants of children. Fëanor has...hm... 7 children...


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## HLGStrider (Jul 4, 2005)

Feanor has seven but Thingol has one. Elrond has three. Galadriel has one (Correct? I don't believe there is a mention of any but the daughter.). I think smaller families are more the norm for elves than larger. If it takes two elves to make one elf and big families are the exception to the rule (and Elves can die of broken hearts and such, and even child birth in the case of Feanor's mother), I think they would probably hold steady. 

Also, being immortal they wouldn't have a lot of problems with over crowding such as sickness. It would be more of an issue of comfort than life or death. Food, I also do not see as a problem. I think they could find their ways around it, and they don't seem to need much. 

I also think Elves are commonly celebate. I see more bacholar elves than married elves. Possibly this is because of the wars, but I think elves really don't get into the breeding thing. . .which is probably why female elves find human men so attractive.


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## Alatar (Jul 4, 2005)

Well, if all the elves who die are reborn in their childern...
Elves have a very slow population increase rate, proberbly only 10 per 100 elves a elvish year. And if eru has to make a Fea for each ewlf, he could just stop for a bit...


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## Hammersmith (Jul 4, 2005)

Ooh, those randy elves!

I think we need to remember that an elf like Elrond lives for several thousand years, and in the course of those several thousand years has what? Three kids? What Elgee says is true, there are a lot of bachelor elves, but not necessarily elves that want to remain thus. They have a different perspective on time, and so waiting eight hundred years to get married might not be such a stretch for them. Especially if they then waited another four thousand years before having their first child. I'm picking numbers out of the air, but you get the idea. It's not that they _don't _reproduce, just that they take their time about it.


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## Confusticated (Jul 4, 2005)

Here are some things JRRT wrote on the matter. 



> The Eldar wedded for the most part in their youth and soon after their fiftieth year. They had few children, but these were very dear to them. Their families, or houses, were held together by love and a deep feeling for kinship in mind and body; and the children needed little governing or teaching. There were seldom more than four children in any house, and the number grew less as ages passed; but even in days of old, while the Eldar were still few and eager to increase their kind, Feanor was renowned as the father of seven sons, and the histories record none that surpassed him.





> As for the begetting and bearing of children: a year passes between the begetting and the birth of an elf-child, so that the days of both are the same or nearly so, and it is the day of begetting that is remembered year by year. For the most part these days come in the Spring. It might be thought that, since the Eldar do not (as Men deem) grow old in body, they may bring forth children at any time in the ages of their lives. But this is not so. For the Eldar do indeed grow older, even if slowly: the limit of their lives is the life of Arda, which though long beyond the reckoning of Men is not endless, and ages also. Moreover their body and spirit are not separated but coherent. As the weight of the years, with all their changes of desire and thought, gathers upon the spirit of the Eldar, so do the impulses and moods of their bodies change.






> Also the Eldar say that in the begetting, and still more in the bearing of children, greater share and strength of their being, in mind and in body, goes forth than in the making of mortal children. For these reasons it came to pass that the Eldar brought forth few children; and also that their time of generation was in their youth or earlier life, unless strange and hard fates befell them. But at whatever age they married, their children were born within a short space of years after their wedding.* For with regard to generation the power and the will are not among the Eldar distinguishable. Doubtless they would retain for many ages the power of generation, if the will and desire were not satisfied; but with the exercise of the power the desire soon ceases, and the mind turns to other things. The union of love is indeed to them great delight and joy, and the ‘days of the children’, as they call them, remain in their memory as the most merry in life; but they have many other powers of body and of mind which their nature urges them to fulfil.
> 
> * Short as the Eldar reckoned time. In mortal count there was often a long interval between the wedding and the first child-birth, and even longer between child and child.



If anyone cares its all from _Laws and Customs_ in HoME 10. But anyone who reads that chapter for information on rebirth should also read _'The Converse of Manwe and Eru' and later conceptions of Elvish reincarnation_ found later in the book.


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## Hammersmith (Jul 4, 2005)

*Sound of my theory getting blown out of the water*


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## ingolmo (Jul 7, 2005)

Yeah, I did read somewhere that elves do have limits in reproduction;they're not like humans, they're like elephants. *pictures Legolas with an elephant's trunk, ears, and tusks.*


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## baragund (Jul 7, 2005)

I recall reading somewhere (I can't remember where. HOME 10 I think) that there [/I]was_ a finite number of Elven spirits. When they first awoke, there was a "ramping up" of their population but then they would be reincarnated when they were killed or died of natural causes._


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## grendel (Jul 15, 2005)

Baragund, I've never read that anywhere, but it would be an interesting solution to the "problem"....


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