XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: steuard@slimy.com   
      
   [My apologies: I seem to have lost track of Paul's original reply. Two   
   in one, here:]   
      
   In message , Stan   
   Brown  wrote:   
   > On Fri, 6 Jan 2012 15:18:05 +0000 (UTC), Paul Ciszek wrote:   
   >> A related question: Had elven births already tapered off to zero by   
   >> the time of LotR? Was that how the Elves knew they were being   
   >> phased out?   
      
   I hadn't had the impression that Elven births were tapering off at   
   all, unless by choice. "Laws and Customs" indicates that the Elven   
   birthrate did gradually decline from roughly four per couple to two,   
   but there was some implication that the decrease was simply because   
   the Elves were no longer trying to rapidly expand their population to   
   fill the empty lands of Middle-earth.   
      
   I realize that there are serious demographic issues that an immortal   
   race would have to face, but it's not clear to me that enough time had   
   passed since their awakening for that to become a significant problem.   
   Among other things, the Elves would not have *exponential* population   
   growth but merely linear growth, since older Elves stop having   
   children. Together with the hundred year (minimum) time between   
   generations, I don't think that's a recipe for demographic disaster in   
   just a few thousand years.   
      
   My impression has always been that to the extent that the Elves did   
   feel themselves being "phased out", it was simply an effect of the   
   weariness that came with living through thousands of years of history.   
   (That is, exactly the things that the Great Rings were designed to   
   resist.) It's not clear to me that younger Elves would have felt that   
   they were being "phased out" at all, unless being surrounded almost   
   entirely by ancient relatives weary of life tended to rub off on them.   
   Which sounds awfully plausible, come to think of it. Elven society in   
   the late Third Age really wouldn't have been much fun.   
      
   > But, then ... why? Since Galadriel allowed the travelers to move   
   > freely in Lórien, why would any children have been kept away from   
   > them?  Particularly the hobbits would pose no threat.  So the fact   
   > that the travelers spent a month there and saw no children at least   
   > suggests there were no children in Lórien after all.   
      
   This has already been mentioned, but you seem to be making a much   
   stronger claim here than I would have thought was justified. We really   
   don't get descriptions of much at all of the Fellowship's time in   
   Lorien, and almost all of that is spent with the border guards or with   
   Galadriel and her retinue. Whether any of the Fellowship wandered   
   through a run of the mill residential district of Caras Galadhon or   
   not, Tolkien never took the time to describe it. Is there an explicit   
   comment like "Weird, no kids in the whole place!" that I'm overlooking   
   here?   
      
   						Steuard Jensen   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)