When Orcs Were Real
treeofwoe.substack.com
When Orcs Were Real
1–10 of 231 posts
Re: When Orcs Were Real
#2The first comment on the substack links to this article, from 2010, that basically refutes this theory and this book.
https://blog.waikato.ac.nz/bioblog/2010/10/killer-neandertal...
Re: When Orcs Were Real
#3If anyone is interested in a more informed and modern take try https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindred_(book)
Re: When Orcs Were Real
#4I'm not sure about the descriptions of Neanderthals presented in this article, but the idea that old tales of orcs and elves originated many millennia ago as descriptions of other human species or other primates isn't that far-fetched.
Re: When Orcs Were Real
#5If anyone is interested in a more informed and modern take try https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindred_(book)
That might be the shortest Wikipedia article I have ever seen. Here[1] is a review from NPR that provides more info.
[1] - https://www.npr.org/2020/10/27/927772107/kindred-dismantles-...
Re: When Orcs Were Real
#6The first comment on the substack links to this article, from 2010, that basically refutes this theory and this book. https://blog.waikato.ac.nz/bioblog/2010/10/killer-neandertal...
"Proves" and "refutes" are both pretty vague words in a historical context. In my experience when historians say "I will prove this to you" they typically mean "not only is it a good story, but unusually I have at least 1 piece of actual evidence". So in the loose world of history where nobody has any idea, maybe the idea is refuted.
Realistically, probably both posts are wrong but we'll never know about which aspects. 10,000 years is a long time, there should have been multiple occurrences of the impossible. History is huge, and we only have tattered records for 1 in ~3,000 years events.
Re: When Orcs Were Real
#7Practically every sentence in this article should be prefixed with: “Wouldn’t it be amazing if …”
Re: When Orcs Were Real
#8I'm not sure about the descriptions of Neanderthals presented in this article, but the idea that old tales of orcs and elves originated many millennia ago as descriptions of other human species or other primates isn't that far-fetched.
I always though that dragons were also sourced from a vague genetic memory passed down from very remote ancestors that met dino descendants.
Re: When Orcs Were Real
#9I'm not sure about the descriptions of Neanderthals presented in this article, but the idea that old tales of orcs and elves originated many millennia ago as descriptions of other human species or other primates isn't that far-fetched.
I always though that dragons were also sourced from a vague genetic memory passed down from very remote ancestors that met dino descendants.
The other way around is more plausible to me: the way we reconstructed dinosaurs was influenced by the corpus of representations we developed with dragons.
Re: When Orcs Were Real
#10Why do we have to posit non-human monsters as explanations for these myths? After all, there were (and still are) real monsters out there that would kill, rape, kidnap and torture people - people from other communities. Strange danger was serious business back in the day, why could that not evolve into all kinds of boogeymen?