Some of Haeck's points seemed almost philosophical, worth noting as possibly having applicability beyond the world of role-playing games. You need orcs because you need a force of chaos.
Every D&D world needs a force of chaos to prevent the great nations of the world from simply conquering your setting and filling all the corners of the map. Exploration is a core tenet of Dungeons & Dragons, and chaos that keeps the forces of order in check make it possible for the heroes to explore the untamed wilderness and long-lost dungeons. Orcs are one way of keeping civilization from pushing too deep into uncharted territory, or at least forcing the settlements in that territory from developing into major cities.
And you need orcs because you need the power of the gods -- other gods.
Orcs are connected so closely to their pantheon that they are almost like a divine plague let loose upon the world. The Monster Manual even describes their clans as plague-like, as a tribe of creatures like bloodlust personified. . . . Orcs are a perfect way to introduce your characters to the power of gods beyond those that they worship.
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Shortly after reading that, I checked a few blogs, including Vox Popoli, where I found a link to an article called "When Orcs were Real," which presents an argument by Danny Vendramini that ogres and trolls and all their equivalents in other cultures represent a racial memory of Homo neanderthalensis.
The real question is why -- why does every civilization have similar myths? Why does every culture have legends of monstrous humanoids, and why are they are always depicted as fearsome and dangerous?Because the legends were real. The orcs were real.
The article outlines the latest view of Neanderthals as savage carnivorous apex predators, as smart as us and much more powerful, that preyed on humans and almost drove us to extinction -- forcing us to develop into apex predators ourselves and drive them to extinction.
I don't think the "racial memory" theory quite works, though. As the article says, every culture has legends about monstrous humanoids, but Neanderthals only ever existed in Europe and West Asia. Africans in particular have zero Neanderthal DNA in their genomes and, as far as we can tell, zero history of interaction with Neanderthals. If Vendramini's hypothesis is correct, we would expect "orc" folklore to be absent in Africa. It's not, though; see "What's a ghommid?"
I do like the idea of calling Neanderthals "orcs," though. "Hobbit" has already taken off as a nickname for H. floresiensis, so why not?
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When I lived in Maryland (age 8-11), my siblings and I all took it for granted that there were "orcs" living near our home, sometimes coming into our basement. We left them gifts -- berries mostly, and sometimes distinctive-looking pebbles -- and as often as not these disappeared. At one point we tried to open communications by leaving out slips of paper with runes on them. (We couldn't read the runes, but figured they might be able to.) The notes always disappeared, but we never got any notes in return. Not that we could have read them anyway.
6 comments:
The orc-Neanderthal idea is amusing, but as you say grossly exaggerated.
My understanding is that Neanderthals lived alongside Cro-Magnon (modern) Man for thousands of years, and interbred with them (it seems pretty certain that Europeans such as you and I have Neanderthal genes, even now). It seems likely that they would have fought and killed each other (as Men always do) but such a long coexistence seems incompatible with one-sided hostility. I think there must also have been some sustained alliance or cooperation.
I don't think mere coexistence proves much. After all, lions and zebras have also coexisted for thousands of years. Vendramini attributes the interbreeding to rape.
However, I agree that it seems unlikely that two intelligent species would have anything as simple as a biologically fixed predator-prey relationship.
Interesting post and article.
The thing I found most interesting from the linked article was the suggestion that at one time there were many subspecies of humans around (more than just homo sapiens and Neanderthals).
I am not so sure about Vendramini's thesis. The fact that Neanderthals buried their dead suggests they were more than just vicious brutes. Also, due to the extremely harsh environment of the Ice Age and the low population density of those times, it might well be that it was more of an era of "man versus nature", than "man versus man (or Neanderthal)".
The Neanderthals also seem (in terms of being stocky, living in caves) seem closer to dwarves than orcs.
As far as the cannibalism goes, that is something strange in that the vast majority of human beings find cannibalism viscerally repulsive, yet some researchers want us to think it was the "state of nature" at one time. But if that was really true, then how could we get to the point where we are now. That kind of feeling and belief doesn't change without something deep in the nature of human beings chaning.
I wonder if there is something to Rudolf Steiner's idea that rather than human beings originating from ape-like creates, the original ancestor of humans and apes was neither ape nor man, but a proto-primate with the potential to either ascend to human or descend to ape. From that persective, I could envision chimpanzees descending from proto-primates who descended into violence with bonobos descending those who went off the rails in a different way ...
I am not sure if that is the exact case with regards to the physical record but the idea that evolution can also motivated by spiritual considerations is very plausible. In that case, cannibalism would come about in those tribes (possibly Neanderthals or humans) that degenerated, though not all would and some might even become better.
@NLR
There's a theory out there (I can't remember whose name it is associated with) that gorillas and chimps are descendants of the robust (Paranthropus) and gracile (Australopithecus, "Lucy") australopithecines, respectively, and therefore "degenerated" from more human-like ancestors. It doesn't seem to have picked up much traction in the scientific community, but it seems prima facie plausible to me.
That's interestsing. I had not heard about that theory before.
@NLR
I think I may have read about it in “The First Chimpanzee” by John Gribbin and Jeremy Cherfas.
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