Elves and Dwarves and Hobbits, oh my!

[Corva]

We've talked the topic of Dragons to death, it seems, and the board with it. But what about their prey species, who are crunchy and good with ketchup?

How much of these races were based on the existence of real human subspecies? How much from changeling tales, invented to explain odd children (I can see someone claiming their child has been stolen and replaced by a race of little people to explain why they have a child with dwarfism)? How much of our modern depictions of them was invented whole cloth by recent writers?

Certainly, the Tuatha de Danaan and the Light Elves fit our modern, Tolkienesque (unsurprisingly, since he based his elves on the older depictions) conception of Elves more than the small worker faeries of medieval and early modern stories, who are more like Dwarves.

It wasn't until relatively recently (as our species goes...) that the other subspecies died out, save for a few who interbred with the dominant one. Far more recently than that, there have been migrations and genocides. It's easy to imagine stories of the forest dwellers of Western Europe being transformed into stories about Elves...

[Ollan]

I'm guessing most of that has at least a kernel of truth in it. For example, how about the only just recently discovered race of hobbit-like humans that existed until very recently. Relatively speaking, of course.

[Corva]

Welcome, Ollan. Have a cookie.

If the Ebu Gogo shrank through insular dwarfism, perhaps other human subspecies did as well. Among current humans, the African Pygmy peoples are short enough to be classed as dwarfs (in the medical sense), and one theory is that it's an adaptation to low levels of UV, and hence vitamin D production, in the forests. Since light levels are already low in northern Europe, one can image a population of humans evolving the same way in some mountainous and forested northern region.