The dwarven clans of Middle-Earth

Question

I saw a question about the creation of the dwarves and this popped into my mind, bear with me.

The 7 fathers of the dwarves are given life by Iluvatar along with wives, yet Durin didn't have one. Considering all of this, how can Khazad-Dûm, keep of Durin the Deathless, or any other dwarven keep, be populated even after Durin found a wife and had children, because the house of Durin doesn't have that many heirs. And I don't think that any of the other fathers multiplied rabidly just to give Durin servants. They can't be all related either by the looks and their behaviours.

How can there be so many pure clans when there were only 13 dwarves at the beginning?

Answer 1

If you notice how many mentions of dwarf women there are in the books, you might have your answer. Tolkien's approach to genealogy is similar to medieval literature - men count, women don't.

In other words, as long as the males inherit lordship and titles - and they likely do - it doesn't matter for the clan's purity which clan the females come from. We did it similarly in the past.

Answer 2

According to judeo christian mythology 2 people were the ancestors of the whole human race.

Tolkien wrote a story that may or may not be true in the canon of middle Earth that all Elves descend from 144 elves who awoke at Cuivienan. I never read how many were in the first generation of humans.

Durin was the first dwarf to awake. Suppose that he woke 100 years before the other dwarves. Suppose that the average dwarf generation is 100 years. Then Durin's future wife might be born when Durin was only 200 and they might start having children when Durin was only 300. Most of Durin's sons and grandsons and great grandsons would have married female dwarves from other races and kingdoms, and vice versa.

Suppose that Durin had 3 children at age 300, 9 grandchildren at age 400, 27 great grandchildren at age 500, 81 in the next generation at age 600, 243 in the 5th generation at age 700, 729 in the 6th generation at age 800, 2187 in the 7th generation at age 900, 6,561 in the 8th generation at age 1,000, 19,683 in the 9th generation at age 1,100, and 59,049 in the 10th generation at age 1,200.

But if there were four children in each generation Durin would have 4 children about age 300, 16 grandchildren at age 400, 64 great grandchildren at age 500, 256 in the 4th generation at age 600, 1,024 in the 5th generation at age 700, 4,096 in the 6th generation at age 800, 16,384 in the 7th generation at age 900, 65,536 in the 8th generation at age 1,000, 262,144 in the 9th generation at age 1,100, and 1,048,576 in the 10th generation at age 1,200.

At the time of LOTR dwarves usually lived about 250 years but they probably lived longer during the Elder Days. Maybe the average dwarf lived to be about 500 during the First Age. Durin died before the end of the First Age, but he lived so long that he became known as Durin the Deathless. So Durin could have lived hundreds or even thousands of years longer than than the average dwarf at the time of LOTR, and could have had millions of descendants in his dwarf kingdom at Moria.

Answer 3

I'm not sure that there's any good answer to your question aside from "Aule did it". Their creation myth in The Silmarillion parallels Christian mythology too closely for Tolkien to be interested in plausible models of population growth.

We only see their creation and then jump to first contact with the Sindar however many thousands of years later. Aule could have been going away at it in his forge that whole time, after all, Illuvatar didn't say that he couldn't make more, only that the dwarves couldn't awake first.