Timeline for Why wouldn't elves be the dominant species?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| May 17, 2018 at 19:39 | comment | added | John | Slow reproduction also makes them very vulnerable to disasters, natural or otherwise. Humans can recover from a war or plague in a few decades, elves would take millenium, several disasters in a row could easily wipe them out. worse if times are good human populations explode while the elf population barely changes. elves might simply not have caught up with the human population boom caused by the invention of agriculture. | |
| May 17, 2018 at 18:47 | comment | added | jamesqf | @Pinion Minion: Elves have mastered birth control (perhaps through use of mental powers), so they only reproduce if they want to. Being intelligent and forethoughtful - I mean, would YOU want to spend 50 years with an Elvish teenager? - they don't much want to. | |
| May 17, 2018 at 16:20 | comment | added | Daron | . . . and, AND, it took the first elf about 30 years to get that skilled with the bow. They are long lived and have a higher skill ceiling than humans. But they learn much slower than the average human. | |
| May 17, 2018 at 16:14 | comment | added | Daron | Combine THAT with the elves being peace-loving and thus having no need to develop warfare tactics before the humans arrived. While they CAN split a visor from 300 feet they only discovered that talent AFTER the humans invaded. And by they they had already suffered significant losses. | |
| May 17, 2018 at 16:12 | comment | added | Daron | Combine this with the Elves originally having low population density (to respect nature) and humans being a late arrival to the party -- either sailing from afar or 'awoken later'. The elves were unprepared for the arrival of such a fast-breeding species and could do nothing to compete. | |
| May 17, 2018 at 14:34 | comment | added | Pinion Minion | Ah, so they take 100 years to reach sexual maturity? That raises some questions about their mating habits (and makes me dread forty years of puberty), but is a great answer. Sorry for not reading your answer as carefully as I should've. | |
| May 17, 2018 at 5:11 | comment | added | Thorne | Ummm breeding age of 100 years means they don't start breeding until 100. They're children until then. Being good at surviving means squat when the attacking humans decide the best way to fight is to set fire to the whole forest | |
| May 17, 2018 at 4:48 | comment | added | Pinion Minion | Even if elves would only be fertile one month of the year and only after a long bath and some soft jazz, wouldn't their population still be massive sense they are as capable of reproduction at 100 as they were at 22? Not to mention they would be VERY good at surviving thanks to guidance from their elders. | |
| May 17, 2018 at 3:16 | history | answered | Thorne | CC BY-SA 4.0 |