Nice commentary, and using elves as an example highlights the stereotypes of this fantasy race. Since the “standard” elf is either immortal or can live for over a thousand years, I always wondered the impact that would have on fantasy economies. First, there is the question of ability to earn and amass wealth. Humans have a finite lifespan to do so this. Elves living in the same world as humans would upset the balance. Second, how many offspring could an elf produce in 1000 years?!?! Elf population would balloon and outpace all others. Factors of production would be very high, as there would be a huge population of elves which would have had nearly ten human lifetimes worth of learning to perfect their crafts. Finally, why would an elf who would live 1000+ years care about anything a human cares about in that moment? 5 years is a long time for a human, but is a drop in the ocean of time for an elf. To me, all elves would be playing the long game, completely unconcerned with petty human affairs.
Sam, you point out some very important factors and how elves are situated in a world could take drastically different forms depending on the worldbuilding choices. On one hand, elves could be highly aggressive in acquiring resources and/or hyper efficient in their use to support the population base... or, the urgency of time means far less given the extreme life span. Like say if an elven stone mason said that he'll show up on Tuesday - is that this coming Tuesday, sometime next month, or the following year... If an elf lived to be a 1000 years old, what general events would be considered important or uniquely remarkable? Maybe not the greatest example, but Halley's Comet is visible about every 80 years. A human *maybe* could see it twice if timing worked out. Would Halley's Comet even be a point of commentary for an elf? Maybe a once-every-500-or-600-year comet would garner special notice.... Lots of worldbuilding possibilities to consider with such lifespans!
Just to add some science: animals with longer lifespans tend to reproduce less (with exceptions), and those within a Class with higher infant mortality rates reproduce more. So, a fly has a short lifespan (depending on species, a few days to a few weeks) and reproduces incredibly fast, whereas an elephant can reproduce every four years (which is fast) but averages only 4–5 offspring per lifetime of 70 years.
Animals with longer lifespans (mammals) spend more time rearing their young, which leads to longer gaps between pregnancies. Granted, socio-economic context plays a large part in pregnancy rates in higher-functioning mammals (humans), but if we're looking at the broad strokes, then elves (assuming they're mammals) would reproduce much slower than humans.
Justinian, as you mention, there would be a number of variables that would have to be taken into account. If someone was writing a thesis paper in applied fantasy mathematics, would be interesting if one took the global population number from 10,000 years ago - created an elf analog - and then modeled out the population growth - including setting parameters for a multitude of factors and variables in the overall model (or several models).
I have to admit, the idea of writing a research paper on fantasy population growth would have been right up my alley when I was in graduate school. I actually wrote a research paper on medieval population growth in Europe and its relationship to emergent farming technology, so it's not that different. But this type of thinking is what goes into my world-building—looking at population booms, emergent technologies, local and regional economies, and so on. Even if I'm not writing about it in fiction or bringing it up at the table, establishing these types of details creates your engine, making it much easier to quickly develop socioeconomic conditions, build population centers, and then seed them.
Nice commentary, and using elves as an example highlights the stereotypes of this fantasy race. Since the “standard” elf is either immortal or can live for over a thousand years, I always wondered the impact that would have on fantasy economies. First, there is the question of ability to earn and amass wealth. Humans have a finite lifespan to do so this. Elves living in the same world as humans would upset the balance. Second, how many offspring could an elf produce in 1000 years?!?! Elf population would balloon and outpace all others. Factors of production would be very high, as there would be a huge population of elves which would have had nearly ten human lifetimes worth of learning to perfect their crafts. Finally, why would an elf who would live 1000+ years care about anything a human cares about in that moment? 5 years is a long time for a human, but is a drop in the ocean of time for an elf. To me, all elves would be playing the long game, completely unconcerned with petty human affairs.
Sam, you point out some very important factors and how elves are situated in a world could take drastically different forms depending on the worldbuilding choices. On one hand, elves could be highly aggressive in acquiring resources and/or hyper efficient in their use to support the population base... or, the urgency of time means far less given the extreme life span. Like say if an elven stone mason said that he'll show up on Tuesday - is that this coming Tuesday, sometime next month, or the following year... If an elf lived to be a 1000 years old, what general events would be considered important or uniquely remarkable? Maybe not the greatest example, but Halley's Comet is visible about every 80 years. A human *maybe* could see it twice if timing worked out. Would Halley's Comet even be a point of commentary for an elf? Maybe a once-every-500-or-600-year comet would garner special notice.... Lots of worldbuilding possibilities to consider with such lifespans!
Just to add some science: animals with longer lifespans tend to reproduce less (with exceptions), and those within a Class with higher infant mortality rates reproduce more. So, a fly has a short lifespan (depending on species, a few days to a few weeks) and reproduces incredibly fast, whereas an elephant can reproduce every four years (which is fast) but averages only 4–5 offspring per lifetime of 70 years.
Animals with longer lifespans (mammals) spend more time rearing their young, which leads to longer gaps between pregnancies. Granted, socio-economic context plays a large part in pregnancy rates in higher-functioning mammals (humans), but if we're looking at the broad strokes, then elves (assuming they're mammals) would reproduce much slower than humans.
Justinian, as you mention, there would be a number of variables that would have to be taken into account. If someone was writing a thesis paper in applied fantasy mathematics, would be interesting if one took the global population number from 10,000 years ago - created an elf analog - and then modeled out the population growth - including setting parameters for a multitude of factors and variables in the overall model (or several models).
I have to admit, the idea of writing a research paper on fantasy population growth would have been right up my alley when I was in graduate school. I actually wrote a research paper on medieval population growth in Europe and its relationship to emergent farming technology, so it's not that different. But this type of thinking is what goes into my world-building—looking at population booms, emergent technologies, local and regional economies, and so on. Even if I'm not writing about it in fiction or bringing it up at the table, establishing these types of details creates your engine, making it much easier to quickly develop socioeconomic conditions, build population centers, and then seed them.