#'also have an analysis of the existential tragedy of arda marred'

[vardasvapors]

I have a genuine question but with the sindar, avari, nador when the humans woke up the elves are pretty much dominant over all of the continent same with the dwarves and then you have Morgoth and crew living it up...,where did humans live when they first woke up like where could they live without coming on land that wasn’t already someone else’s home. I always thought morgoth’s first offer to the humans was like crushing the elves there and (Real estate agent voice) “And this could be yours!”

difuhjdfdgj SORRY ANON for completely forgetting about this ask! I would say no, it’s actually somewhat the reverse – according to Tolkien, Morgoth managed to snag so many humans into his service in part because the Valar’s not-that-well-advised attempt to protect the elves from Morgoth by offering to bring them to Valinor meant the elven population of Middle Earth and beyond was actually much sparser than intended (and a large proportion of them gathered into Beleriand and therefore isolated from humans for a long time) and completely devoid of Vanyar and Noldor.

Therefore the intended cooperation between elves and humans, and elves’ protection and conferring of knowledge and stuff to humans, in order to pass the torch, since humans were meant to replace elves over time, was severely disrupted, the help they got from elves before the Edain came to Beleriand was a lot less substantive than it would have been otherwise, since the Avari didn’t have civilizations as big and high-yield as Doriath or Mithrim or Ossiriand etc, or any of the Noldor realms the Edain eventually discovered. (Humans also got a lot of knowledge and language osmosis’d and taught to them by dwarves in the canon timeline though, iirc.)

I would say this makes perfect sense – I’ve discussed before (gotta click back through the replies for full context lol) the sort of mutually-strengthening potential of elves and humans – elves, being so thousands of years older, and immortal, able to directly confer to humans the sorts of crafts, arts, tech, etc that it took hundreds of thousands of years for humans to develop IRL; and humans, being mortal, and therefore their societies being inherently unlike elves’ due to generational overturn, able to put these things to use in a huge array of ways specific to mortal lives. I stole @gurguliare‘s excellent phrase ‘elves as a patch for human continuity.’ That’s also how Morgoth’s influence on them in the early days was sorta explained in The Tale of Adanel from Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth – humans were very impatient when it came to learning and getting more knowledge.

However, Tolkien’s explanation of the thing seems to focus more on the Valar:

This is said because the invitation given to the Eldar to remove to Valinor and live unendangered by Melkor was not in fact according to the design of Eru. It arose from anxiety, and it might be said from failure in trust of Eru, from anxiety and fear of Melkor, and the decision of the Eldar to accept the invitation was due to the overwhelming effect of their contact, while still in their inexperienced youth, with the bliss of Aman and the beauty and majesty of the Valar. It had disastrous consequences in diminishing the Elves of Middle-earth and so depriving Men of a large measure of the intended help and teaching of their ‘elder brethren’, and exposing them more dangerously to the power and deceits of Melkor. Also since it was in fact alien to the nature of the Elves to live under protection in Aman, and not (as was intended) in Middle-earth, one consequence was the revolt of the Noldor.

-J.R.R. Tolkien, “Words, Phrases and Passages in various tongues in The Lord of the Rings.” Parma Eldalamberon No. 17.