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Elfquest population dynamics
Major warning sign that one's inner anthropology geek is getting out of control: I found myself wondering today, at work, how the population of the Wolfriders in Elfquest manages to stay in balance. They simply don't have enough children, do they?
After coming home I did some figuring, and even allowing for Recognition (which would enable a much smaller gene pool to breed successfully) there *still* aren't enough of them. It isn't even so much a function of population, as it is small family size. They're just not having enough children to keep their population stable, and by a very large margin. Basically, if what we currently see is typical of the species, then they should be decreasing at a nearly exponential rate.
It's never really been explicitly stated in the comic itself, but the creators have said in interviews that Woodlock and Rainsong's 3-child family is very unusual (I believe they called it "a one-woman baby boom"), and that only children are the elvish norm. This appears to be borne out by what we see in the series. However, it should be self-evident that this simply wouldn't work to support a species. Two children is the absolute minimum for population replacement -- that is, if every couple has two children and no one dies without reproducing, the population will stay the same. Clearly this is not happening among the Wolfriders, at least in the last couple of generations. The only siblings that we know of, in the previous generation, are Treestump and Joyleaf, one of whom is now dead. In the current crop of children, Woodlock and Rainsong's three children are considered unusual, as are Cutter and Leetah's twins. Many of the characters have no children at all, either because they don't have a partner (e.g. Pike) or they're not Recognized to the one they do have.
And in KotBW, when we saw the tribe advanced several centuries into the future, the situation looked even more dire: there were NO new children born in all that time, except for Tyleet (who was technically already born, and also required a healer's intervention in order to be conceived) and the unnamed baby who died in infancy. There were also no new Recognitions or pairings -- everybody was already paired off, and no one died to free up a partner. In short, the tribe was almost entirely static. Luckily for them, they were living in a safe area -- the death rate in the original Holt was apparently quite a bit higher, and in the original tribe at the start of original EQ#1, there was only individual who was old enough to have started growing a beard, indicating that the mortality rate over the centuries of a Wolfrider lifespan was very high: old age would be rare. But even if mortality through accident or injury is less likely in the new Holt, it is stated that Wolfriders do have a limited lifespan, so eventually, even in the safer Holt, they would have all died of old age, with no young people to replace them.
Out of curiosity, I decided to figure out how many people the tribe would have had to contain one or two generations ago in order to produce the current crop of characters. This is obviously affected by how closely the current characters are related. There's no way to be sure how many generations back the elves calculate kinship, or how strongly kinship figures in their sexual taboos -- in other words whether close relatives are likely to have children together. We do know that they pay attention to sibling relationships and first cousins; Cutter and Dewshine's relationship (first cousins) is mentioned more than once. Treestump appears to view Cutter (his nephew) as family. It's therefore unlikely that any of the other characters are related that closely if it isn't ever mentioned in the series; also, the quality and detail of the art is high enough that relatives actually resemble one another (both Scouter and Dart being good cases in point; they resemble their fathers very strongly) and none of the surviving elves look enough like one another to make it likely that they are either siblings, parents/children, or first cousins.
Therefore, at the very least, the size of the tribe in the previous generation would have had to have been nearly twice as large as it currently is. Since we can assume that none of the current Wolfriders are siblings or half-siblings unless it's explicitly stated, every one of them would have had to have two distinct parents. The tribe at the start of EQ #1 contained 17 individuals. (Yes, I counted.) Of these, five have at least one parent currently living -- Woodlock & Rainsong's two (later 3) children, Scouter, Dart and Dewshine. This means the 12 remaining elves would have had to have 24 parents ... add Dewshine's mother and that makes 25. The handful of elves killed by Madcoil add to the total of unknown, unrelated progenitors, because aside from (obviously) Bearclaw and Joyleaf, they don't appear to be parents of any of the existing characters. So we need about 30 elves, or so, to produce the ones we now see. And we know that their lifespans would have overlapped considerably with the older of the currently existing Wolfriders, thus at any given time there would probably have been more than 30 Wolfriders. Quite a LOT more if we circle back around to the sibling problem ... namely that there seem to be very few. Either the elves don't pay much attention to kinship and there are actually more siblings, half-siblings and first cousins than we know about, or there were a hell of a lot of them at one point, and the tribe is presently dying out.
... I cannot believe I've spent so much time speculating on this.
After coming home I did some figuring, and even allowing for Recognition (which would enable a much smaller gene pool to breed successfully) there *still* aren't enough of them. It isn't even so much a function of population, as it is small family size. They're just not having enough children to keep their population stable, and by a very large margin. Basically, if what we currently see is typical of the species, then they should be decreasing at a nearly exponential rate.
It's never really been explicitly stated in the comic itself, but the creators have said in interviews that Woodlock and Rainsong's 3-child family is very unusual (I believe they called it "a one-woman baby boom"), and that only children are the elvish norm. This appears to be borne out by what we see in the series. However, it should be self-evident that this simply wouldn't work to support a species. Two children is the absolute minimum for population replacement -- that is, if every couple has two children and no one dies without reproducing, the population will stay the same. Clearly this is not happening among the Wolfriders, at least in the last couple of generations. The only siblings that we know of, in the previous generation, are Treestump and Joyleaf, one of whom is now dead. In the current crop of children, Woodlock and Rainsong's three children are considered unusual, as are Cutter and Leetah's twins. Many of the characters have no children at all, either because they don't have a partner (e.g. Pike) or they're not Recognized to the one they do have.
And in KotBW, when we saw the tribe advanced several centuries into the future, the situation looked even more dire: there were NO new children born in all that time, except for Tyleet (who was technically already born, and also required a healer's intervention in order to be conceived) and the unnamed baby who died in infancy. There were also no new Recognitions or pairings -- everybody was already paired off, and no one died to free up a partner. In short, the tribe was almost entirely static. Luckily for them, they were living in a safe area -- the death rate in the original Holt was apparently quite a bit higher, and in the original tribe at the start of original EQ#1, there was only individual who was old enough to have started growing a beard, indicating that the mortality rate over the centuries of a Wolfrider lifespan was very high: old age would be rare. But even if mortality through accident or injury is less likely in the new Holt, it is stated that Wolfriders do have a limited lifespan, so eventually, even in the safer Holt, they would have all died of old age, with no young people to replace them.
Out of curiosity, I decided to figure out how many people the tribe would have had to contain one or two generations ago in order to produce the current crop of characters. This is obviously affected by how closely the current characters are related. There's no way to be sure how many generations back the elves calculate kinship, or how strongly kinship figures in their sexual taboos -- in other words whether close relatives are likely to have children together. We do know that they pay attention to sibling relationships and first cousins; Cutter and Dewshine's relationship (first cousins) is mentioned more than once. Treestump appears to view Cutter (his nephew) as family. It's therefore unlikely that any of the other characters are related that closely if it isn't ever mentioned in the series; also, the quality and detail of the art is high enough that relatives actually resemble one another (both Scouter and Dart being good cases in point; they resemble their fathers very strongly) and none of the surviving elves look enough like one another to make it likely that they are either siblings, parents/children, or first cousins.
Therefore, at the very least, the size of the tribe in the previous generation would have had to have been nearly twice as large as it currently is. Since we can assume that none of the current Wolfriders are siblings or half-siblings unless it's explicitly stated, every one of them would have had to have two distinct parents. The tribe at the start of EQ #1 contained 17 individuals. (Yes, I counted.) Of these, five have at least one parent currently living -- Woodlock & Rainsong's two (later 3) children, Scouter, Dart and Dewshine. This means the 12 remaining elves would have had to have 24 parents ... add Dewshine's mother and that makes 25. The handful of elves killed by Madcoil add to the total of unknown, unrelated progenitors, because aside from (obviously) Bearclaw and Joyleaf, they don't appear to be parents of any of the existing characters. So we need about 30 elves, or so, to produce the ones we now see. And we know that their lifespans would have overlapped considerably with the older of the currently existing Wolfriders, thus at any given time there would probably have been more than 30 Wolfriders. Quite a LOT more if we circle back around to the sibling problem ... namely that there seem to be very few. Either the elves don't pay much attention to kinship and there are actually more siblings, half-siblings and first cousins than we know about, or there were a hell of a lot of them at one point, and the tribe is presently dying out.
... I cannot believe I've spent so much time speculating on this.
no subject
But it helps some to remember than a Wolfrider's life-span can be, as was the case of Bearclaw, a thousand years or more. In that span, there could have been a number of elves who were born and then died tragically at like 100 years, but still managed to mate before dying, so those 30 didn't all have to have existed at the same time. And we must remember that their were High Ones and first--and-second-generation true-elves (like Willowgreen) among them at least until Two-Spear's time (according to BotC). I'm prety sure Willowgreen's mother had at least a few offspring. I remember counting the elves during Freefoot's time, and I believe there was about sixty of them then.
Oh, and Pike has had a kid -- or rather, no-one knows if Krim's child is really Pike's or Skot's. Tyleet and Scouter also has a child, Pool, and Strongbow and Moonshade just had their third (Dart's elder sister, Crescent, was killed before he was born). Dart had a child, though I'm not sure what happened to it, and he had a slashy relationship with one Jackwolfrider (Wing's son or descendant, I *think*) who was definitely born after KotBW. And Newstar had Kimo. Skywise had Yun, and I highly suspect Jink was his daughter by Timmain. And since Kahvi turned out to be a Wolfrider, that would technically make Venka, who was roughly Tyleet's age-mate, a Wolfrider by more than proxy (and probably all the rest of the Go-Backs as well, unless there are a few left who are entirely plainsdweller by descent). I'd be harder-pressed to ask where the hell all those Go-Backs came from, when the plainsdwellers that Kahvi was found by weren't all that numerous ... of course, excessive inbreeding (especially without Recognition) would explain how insane they all were ;)
I think Scouter had a sister who was killed before HIS birth as well, if I'm not mistaken. Moonshade had a sister, Brownberry, and One-Eye had a brother, Longbranch/Longbriar (who was about as old as Bearclaw), both of whom were killed by Madcoil, as was Foxfire -- I believe Brownberry may have been Nighfall's mother, if I'm not mistaken. And we know Rain was Rainsong and Pike's father (hey, there's more siblings!) So for all we know, of the other two that were killed, one might have sired Redlance. We know Strongbow was orphaned at a young age, and since Clearbrook and One-Eye are of an age with Treestump, it's likely their parents died long ago, possibly before Redlance, Nightfall, Skywise, or Foxfire's parents were even born. And we know how Shale and Eyes-High, Skywise's parents, were killed.
Skyfire and Two-Spears were thought to be siblings (although according to BotC, they really weren't -- Rahnee's mate, Zarhan, was actually Skyfire's father, not Rahnee's son, Preypacer, because the recognition-mating between Wreath and Prepacer did not take, so I guess it depends on if you consider BotC canon or not). Skyfire had at least two children, one of whom died before or shortly after childbirth. Rahnee supposedly had a number of children (we know of at least four), as did her brother Threetoes and her father Timmorn. Willowgreen had a child by Graywolf for sure, and I think another by Two-Spear sometime after the big tribe-split.
Does that help? :) I think the Wolfriders just had a really bad turn of luck in recent years, and that their ability to breed seems to have waned because a) their gene pool got too small, and b) times were just too dangerous and food scarce. They didn't live near humans very much in their ten-thousand=-year history -- only during Two-Spear's time and then from Mantricker's time onward -- so that may have been a factor in recent years.
I'd like to know how the Sun Folk built up such a large population with only five people to start! I'd have thought inbreeding would have become an issue genetically-speaking soon enough, Recognition or no Recognition!
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Kahvi's a WOLFRIDER? wtf? I started losing track of all the canonical details after Shards because I wasn't buying all the spin-offs, but I didn't know I missed something THAT major. What was the explanation for that?
Some of this I knew once upon a time and had forgotten ... like Dart having a sister ... and Rainsong being Rain's daughter -- DUH. I forgot about that. I don't think I ever really knew how Brownberry and Longbranch fit into the overall geneology. So there *are* quite a few sibling pairs. I was sort of deliberately ignoring the babies that were produced by mating outside the tribe, like Kimo, but that isn't really fair -- I do think the tribe would have been doomed if they hadn't gotten an influx of new blood from the outside, though. Like you said, bad luck -- it pretty much took them below a population level where they could replenish their numbers.
Ha! Good point about the Sun Folk! That was some serious inbreeding there ... although you know, maybe that's precisely WHY they hadn't had any Recognitions in umpteen years, at the time that Cutter & co. showed up. Maybe the gene pool was so small and badly inbred that even Recognition couldn't identify anyone who could viably mate with each other. Actually, of all the main groups, the Go-Backs (with their more human-like approach to reproduction) seem to be the only one who actually *were* capable of reproducing without getting fresh genetic material from the outside. Just think ... if the Holt hadn't burned, eventually no elves would be left on the WoTM except for a handful of surviving immortals and umpteen gazillion Go-Backs. ;)
What *is* the current status of the various tribes, anyway? Like I said, I started losing track after Shards -- I was buying some of the New Bloods so I knew some of the Forevergreen stuff (but have forgotten most of it) and I followed the future spin-offs (Rebels and Jink ... I loved Rebels -- did they ever resolve ANYTHING?) but I really, badly lost track of what was going on with the original group of main characters.
... also, your icon is adorable.
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I know ABOUT Kahvi's sitch, but I didn't read it, so my knowledge is vague. As I understand it, she was Two-Spear's daughter, and got stuck in a pool of High One's magic that both altered her into a full-blooded elf (like Leetah did to Skywise, and Winnowill did to Windkin), and made her sleep for a few thousand years until she was found by the plainsdwellers. I believe at the mo, she and Tyldak are MIA. No idea of the status if the Go-Backs that survived the war in Sorrow's End.
According to the latest graphic novel, The Searcher and the Sword, the Sun Folk have moved permanently into the Palace. Skywise is the new Master, but Suntop (who is now Sunstream) lives there too. The Palace is generally in Wolfrider territory, back in the old Holt (Goodtree's Rest), but will occiassionally leave on missions under Sunstream's direction.
Ember leads a splinter tribe of the Wolfriders, consisting of Mender, Tir (a plainsdweller), Pike, Krim & her child, Dewshine, Scouter, Tyleet, Pool, and a couple of Picknose's descendents. This tribe is hunting down Winnowill's evil creations.
The rest of the Wolfriders are with Cutter. Shushen, Cutter and Leetah's human adoptive daughter, meanwhile, is on a quest with Dart and Kimo to locate and make peace with human tribes. And Treestump and Clearbrook now live with Adhri (you know she discovered she's a rock shaper?) in Greymung's old kingdom, where Treestump mans the forge and makes weapons, after having discovered the secret of making Bright Metal (like New Moon is made of).
After killing her body, Rayek now has to safeguard Winnowill's soul within his own body, to make sure she can't harm the rest of the elves. There's an interesting graphic novel called Rogue's Curse, detailing his adventures with her and Ekuar. Rayek is now a High One in form, and is deliciously brooding/self-punishing. He still loves Winnowill, despite her evil.
Er, that's about all I know! :) I lost track of Jink and The Rebels ...
no subject
Ouch. My retcon-o-meter is reading HIGH on that one. ;) Was anything *wrong* with just having her be a regular elf to begin with?
I actually have Rogue's Curse, though I haven't read it in a while -- I bought it back when it first came out. I liked it. I'm such a sucker for self-flagellating characters. Poor Rayek.
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Totally! Goes in with my redemptionistra and h/c fetishes, I guess. And to think I'd hated him right up until that big brawl between him and Cutter -- the one where the intent was secretly really for Cutter to get his agression/grief out of his system, not to prove who was the "better elf"? That Rayek would do that for him and suffer that pounding was beautiful -- and yet still in character! It made sense for him to reach that maturity, finally, after all hed been through. (And yet he still continued to make prideful mistakes!) Ahhh, complexity in character development! :D
I hate it when a fandom won't let a character change or grow ... I say if they like Jackass!Rayek so much, they can go back and re-read Journey to Sorrow's End again and again! Like with Spike -- if people only like him as a bad guy, they can just watch the DVD of Buffy season 2 ad naseum. ;)
I found the Wendy-painted story in Rogue's Curse in the Frazetta magazine, back when it was first published -- in coulor. Oh, is it gorgeous like that -- the black & white just doesn't do it justice. You can tell she was flashbacking to her Law & Chaos/Elric days with it. :D
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