Legends, Truth, and Tolkien’s Elves

The Scientific Fact of a “Lord of the Rings Type World” that existed Once Upon a Time.

Image: davesadnd.blogspot.com

J.R.R. Tolkien wrote that “legends and myths are largely made of ‘truth’,” and that certain types of truth can only be conveyed and received in the mythic mode. ¹Tolkien used the word “myth” to designate the kind of symbolic story that is intended to express truth (the opposite of the way the word is commonly used today). For him a legend could be the distilled and refined remains of ancient memory and a myth is a way of describing the rules and deeper laws by which the world is made.

The more profound truths that myths and legends communicate embrace the nature of the cosmos outside of us, the primeval history that precedes us, and the microcosmos within us. Myth persists as a form of communion and as an expression of man’s vocation as priest of the created cosmos. “Near the heart of Faërie,” explains Tolkien, “is the primal desire of men to hold communion with other living things.” ²Tolkien believed that there was much more to myth than mere fiction and that many fantasies were grounded in long-forgotten facts.

Myths and Legends as Ancient Echoes of Fact

When Tolkien began to chronicle his account of Middle Earth he believed that he had discovered something real that had been long obscured but not completely forgotten. According to Tolkien, Middle-Earth was not “created,” in the typical fashion of fiction, “for it was always there.”³ In his research and writing Tolkien strongly felt that he was “recording what was already ‘there,’ somewhere: not of ‘inventing’.”⁴

Tolkien would never say that his account of the various peoples of Middle Earth was fabricated fantasy, but he also never clearly expressed a theory concerning prehistorical reality. He always believed that there was more than a kernel of truth behind the ancient legends and stories that provided the background world of The Lord of the Rings, but he would not venture to say precisely how. It was, explains Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey, “as if Tolkien was hovering around some central point on which he dared not or could not land.”⁵

Tolkien did not invent the idea of elves and dwarves on which he based his novels. Instead, he carefully researched and derived his understanding of elves and dwarves from the ancient legends and myths of an age beyond memory that pervades the cultures across Europe. Tolkien’s language constructions were likewise based on the primeval languages of Europe. For Tolkien, the ancient prehistorical world of elves and dwarves was quite real and he viewed this bygone world as a product of philological discovery rather than pure creative invention.

Tolkien’s lifelong conviction was that his work of fantasy (or Farie) was not entirely made up, but he was not prepared to argue for this in any sort of scientifically explicit way. He often spoke of glimpsing elves and the worlds they come from as opposed to inventing them and he “would not let ‘fantasy’ mean either the one (rational) or the other (mystic) activity, but kept hinting it was both.” ⁶ This was especially the case with his concept of ‘elves’: which Tolkien insisted might not just be  “‘creations of Man’s mind’, which is what nearly everybody thinks,” but rather beings that “really exist independently of our tales about them”. While his accounts of accounts elves, dwarves, and hobbits “were all taking shape in his mind as fiction,” they “were all simultaneously related to philological fact.” Still, Tolkien never developed or “evolved a theory to connect the two.” ⁷ 

For Tolkien, the world that once existed when elves walked with men was on the other side of a vast chasm of time in a way similar to that of the far future Eloi and Morlocks of H.G. Wells’ Time Machine. As Tolkien reflected: the “Eloi and Morlocks live far away in an abyss of time so deep as to work an enchantment upon them; and if they are descended from ourselves, it may be remembered that an ancient English thinker once derived the ylfe, the very elves, through Cain from Adam.” ⁸

With the Lord of the Rings, says Tolkien, “The Fall of Man is in the past and off stage; the Redemption of Man is in the far future. We are in a time when the One God, Eru, is known to exist by the wise, but is not approachable save by or through the Valar, though He is still remembered in (unspoken) prayer by those of Númenórean descent.’” ⁹ Even though God was not yet known in a personal form in this bygone world of the far past, he was still the “alfwalda” or “Lord of Elves”.

The Scientific Fact of a “Lord of the Rings Type World” that existed Once Upon a Time

Image: Neanderthal: rosarubicondior.blogspot.com

Is Tolkien’s view of the pre-history of elves, dwarves, hobbits, and humans, as far-fetched as most modernist materialist minds think? Or was Tolkien’s mythical age of elves a once-upon-a-time fact? It would seem that the latter may indeed be the case. As recently as 50,000 years ago humans shared this Middle Earth with human-like beings who were not genetically or morphologically human but were like us in many ways. At this time Homo sapiens, Homo Denisova, Homo Neanderthalensis, and Homo floresiensis (the ‘Hobbits’) were all living, interacting, talking, trading, and occasionally marrying. As Mark Thomas, an evolutionary geneticist at University College London, says in the scientific journal Nature: “What it begins to suggest is that we’re looking at a Lord of the Rings-type world — that there were many hominid populations.”¹⁰

What were these humanoid non-human beings like? While we know little about the daily lives of individuals from these distinct human-like species, we are nevertheless able to ascertain from their DNA, material remains and artifacts that they had language, were accomplished bearers of culture and technology, that they created and used sophisticated tools and weapons, expressed their thoughts in art and symbolism, that they mastered the use of fire,¹¹ created clothing through sewing and worked leather, played music with instruments, crafted jewelry (including rings), constructed shelters with hearths, charted the stars, and ritually buried their dead.

Some of them built boats for seafaring, navigated by the stars, and discovered several medicinal remedies that are still essential in modern medicine. In essence, we find that all of the characteristics and behaviors displayed in Tolkien’s elves and dwarves were once present in primeval people groups that shared the earth with early modern humans.

When Elves Walked the Earth

Is there any evidence that something like Tolkien’s elves ever walked this earth in the prehistoric past? There is one species of ancient human-like beings who have much in common with Tolkien’s elves, and today we call them the Neanderthals. Far from the brutish cavemen of early 20^th-century invention, the Neanderthals actually had much larger brains (average 1600 cc) than those of modern humans (average 1400 cc) and their brains were at least as sophisticated as ours.¹² 

Neanderthals had the capacity for complex language and were accomplished in polyphonic singing. ¹³ From their DNA we know that they had the same FOXP2 genes as modern humans which play an essential role in language acquisition and speech. Another neurological indicator of speech in Neanderthals is the size of their hypoglossal canal through which passes the nerves to an exceptionally large tongue musculature, similar in size to that of humans—a fact which “suggests a similar function for the Neanderthal tongue in speech.”¹⁴ The middle ear anatomy of Neanderthals is likewise “similar to that of modern humans and specialized for speech perception.”¹⁵ 

Neanderthals were also very strong and fast. They were at least three times as strong as humans, could run much faster, and from their nasal cavities and lungs we know that they had more efficient breathing. Neanderthals were better suited for living in the forests of Europe than humans, and their longer toes and longer heel bones made them well-suited for hiking, hunting, and sprinting in the hilly and densely forested environments of ancient Europe.¹⁶ With superhuman strength and speed and expert hunting skills and weapons Neanderthals would have been truly “mighty men of old, and men of renown” (Genesis 6:4).

Neanderthals were at least as technologically innovative as their human counterparts, and in many ways even more so. They created compound weapons and specialized tools (called lissoirs or burnishers) that were used to work and polish leather. They developed such advanced tool types before Homo sapiens, and independently of humans. Many researchers thus believe that it is likely that humans first learned about many types of tools from Neanderthals. Humans may have also learned their first music from Neanderthals because we now know that Neanderthals were also the first to create music and to make instruments, such as flutes.¹⁷

Neanderthals were also skilled at making and using boats and had a seafaring culture for tens of thousands of years before modern humans started using boats. Because of the nature of the currents they crossed to arrive at certain islands and to trade with the mainland, it is clear that Neanderthals knew how to navigate in the open waters using stars as their guide. 

Evidence from Neanderthal art also shows that they were avid astronomers. Cave paintings from Neanderthals represent constellations in the night sky, and these were used to represent dates and mark events such as passing comets. To aid them in their stargazing, Neanderthals had eyes that were significantly larger than humans’ eyes, which would have been better at seeing in the dim light of dense forests and in discerning the stars at night. 

Neanderthals were skilled healers as well. Samples of microorganisms from 50,000-year-old Neanderthal teeth show that they used numerous medicinal plants such as yarrow and chamomile (bitter-tasting plants with little nutritional value but high medicinal value), aspirin in poplar bark (a natural painkiller) and even a form of Penicillium.

Neanderthals were deeply compassionate and routinely cared for the aged, the injured, and the infirm. They also cared for and provided for those who were permanently disabled. For example, one community cared for a child born with a congenital brain abnormality—enabling the child to survive for many more years than he could have without such compassionate care. At the Shanidar 1 site, care was provided for over 20 years for an individual with a withered arm, deformed feet and blindness in one eye. There is also evidence that Neanderthals mourned deeply when they lost a member of their community. Neanderthals were the first to ritually bury their dead and to offer grave goods and offerings of flowers for the departed.

Like Tolkien’s elves, Neanderthals had fair features. From their DNA we know that Neanderthals would have had blue or green eyes, as well as light skin with many individuals having light or red hair. This would have made them look quite strikingly different from the first humans who met them as these humans were entering Europe from more southern climates where hair, eye, and skin colors were darker. Interestingly the word elf—from Proto-Germanic álf (pl. álfar) derives from the same Proto-Indo-European root word from which the Latin albus (white) derives. Etymologically, the elves are literally the “white ones”, and this is indeed how the first humans entering Europe from Africa would have experienced them.

 The interaction between humans and Neanderthals was much more than just a casual encounter. From comparative DNA analysis of humans and Neanderthals (which has shown that all non-Africans have from 2%-4% Neanderthal DNA) we know that humans and Neanderthals occasionally married. Recently research has even found that chromosomes traced back to Neanderthals provide protection against severe COVID-19, HIV, and other illnesses. Microbe analysis on Neanderthal teeth has also revealed that Neanderthals and humans embraced each other with passionate kissing. While the last Neanderthals disappeared from Earth around 40,000 years ago, their legacy and many of their features remain in human culture and DNA.

Who were these fair, superhumanly strong and fast, musical woodsmen, healers, and shipbuilders who loved the stars and mourned so deeply for their dead? We have named them after the German valley in which they were first found, but perhaps they were also the historical fact that lies behind the long-forgotten memory of Tolkien's mythical elves.

1.  John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. H. Carpenter, London, 1981, no. 131.

2.  John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Tales From the Perilous Realm, 328.

3.  J.R.R. Tolkien, The Tolkien Reader (New York, NY: Ballantine Publishing Group, 1966), ix.

4.  J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Humphrey Carpenter, with Christopher Tolkien (New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000), 145.

5.  Tom Shippey, The Road to Middle-earth How J. R. R. Tolkien created a new mythology (HMH, 2014).

6.  Shippey, 38.

7.  Tom Shippey, The Road to Middle-earth.

8.  JRR Tolkien, Tales from the Perilous Realm, 325; Tree and Leaf, 13.

9.  JRR Tolkien, Letter 297 (Letters of JRR Tolkien, ed. H. Carpenter); See also Letter 156 “The High Elves were exiles from the Blessed Realm of the Gods (after their own particular Elvish fall) and they had no ‘religion’ (or religious practices, rather) for those had been in the hands of the gods, praising and adoring Eru ‘the One’, Ilúvatar the Father of All on the Mt. of Aman.”

10.  Nature, 19 (November 2013).

11. For example, Neanderthals used powdered manganese dioxide as a fire lighter. See Peter J. Heyes, Konstantinos Anastasakis, Wiebren de Jong, Annelies van Hoesel, Wil Roebroeks and Marie Soressi, “Selection and Use of Manganese Dioxide by Neanderthals,” Nature, Scientific Reports, (2016).

12.  90% of modern human endocranial volumes fall within the range of 1040-1595cc. Living humans have an average cranial capacity of about 1400 cc 1400 cm³. Stringer, Christopher & Gamble, Clive. Neanderthals had an average cranial capacity of approximately 1600cc. See G. Burenhult, The First Humans: Human Origins and History to 10,000 BC (New York: HarperCollins: 1993). Harvati, “Neanderthals and their contemporaries,” 1725; Stringer and McKie, African Exodus, 90.

13. There is scientific consensus about Neanderthal’s ability to sing and dance. See Steven J. Mithen, The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005).

14. Harvati, “Neanderthals and their contemporaries,” 1734; Neanderthals and humans also have similarly “enlarged thoracic vertebral canals, which could indicate an expansion of thoracic innervation.” This would in turn result in a greater control of the intercostal musculature and the type of enhanced breathing control that is suggestive of the ability for speech.

15.  Ibid., 1734; I. Martinez, et al., “Auditory capacities in Middle Pleistocene humans from the Sierra de Atapuerca in Spain,” PNAS 101:27 (July 6, 2004): 9976–9981.

16.  Humans are better adapted to running in open grasslands, steppes, and warmer climates.

17.  C. Tuniz, et.al. “Did Neanderthals play music? X-ray computed micro-tomography of the Divje babe 'flute'” Archaeometry, 54(3), 581–590.