Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical | Characters: Wood-elves and Woodmen

This week, I look at the rarely discussed relationship between Wood-elves and Woodmen, two peoples of Middle-earth who lived in Mirkwood. While the short-lived mortal Men had vastly different lifestyles than the immortal Elves, the two groups shared the forest peacefully, united against the Dark Powers of Mordor. During this essay, I will review the background of these two fictional groups and compare them to other forest-dwellers in the real world, including a pair of cultures in Cameroon that once shared the forest and prehistoric collaboration between early humans.

A Quick Review of Elves and Men

While Mirkwood is most often remembered as the home of Legolas and his father Thranduil Elvenking, the Woodmen also lived in Mirkwood and seemingly in harmony with their immortal neighbors. They were distant relatives of the Northmen who had since migrated to Rohan and Dale or learned magic to become the Beornings, Men who could shape-shift into bears. During previous design work, I designed the Men of Dale and Men of Rohan to wear similar outfits inspired by Viking Age clothing: soft tunics, loose-fitting trousers, leather boots, cloaks, and aprons. I dressed the Men of Dale in olive, khaki, and blue while the Men of Rohan wore green and white. I have designed the Woodmen to wear a similar clothing style in camouflage brown and greens like their allies, the Wood-elves.

The classification of Elves is somewhat complicated. The Elves who lived in Mirkwood were Teleri, meaning they had never crossed the water into the West even though they had started the trip. The ruling class were Sindar from Doriath who fled to Mirkwood after the destruction of their country. The other Elves were Silvan, who had been colonized by Sindar. As mentioned during “Appendix F, II On Translation”, the name “silvan” can refer to a wood or forest along with the metalloid sylvanite, implying that these Elves frequently had a silvery appearance. Collectively, the group spoke a distinct dialect of Sindarin called Doriathrin along with Adûnaic or Westron, which they used to communicate with the Woodmen and Men of Dale.

Forest Cultures in Cameroon

The concept of two distinct cultures sharing the woods in harmony is nearly absent in history. More commonly, two groups of equal power fight over a shared space, ultimately destroying it, or the dominant group captures and colonizes the dominated group. However, some scholars argued that relatively tall Bantu and relatively short Batwa or Pygmy peoples of central Africa were able to coexist, possibly peacefully, beginning as early as 4000 B.C.

In her award-winning book “The Pygmies Were Our Compass”: Bantu and Batwa in the History of West Central Africa, Early Times to c. 1900 C.E., linguist Kairn A. Klieman of the University of Houston hypothesized based on similarities between the two languages that although both cultures relied on hunting and foraging rather than subsistence farming, they occupied separate ecological niches, allowing peaceful coexistence. This did not last, as the coming of the Iron Age around 1000 BC, along with the development of agriculture through banana cultivation, allowed Bantu people to dominate their neighbors. Increasing contact with Europeans and the development of the transatlantic slave trade, along with other forms of European colonization, aggravated relations between the two groups.

Dr. Chika Esiobu, author of Indigenous Knowledge and Education in Africa, argues that Bantu expansion might always have been a form of colonialism, even as far back as five thousand years ago. Her own hypothesis is that the similarity in language is not the product of peaceful coexistence but one of oppression and slavery, which forced Pygmies to speak the language of their colonizers while retaining little of their own language.

Recent scholarship conducted by researchers from universities throughout Cameroon, where members of these two groups live, have tracked cultural studies conducted with support of the government since 1975, noting that Pygmy minorities have been historically described as “primitive” and “marginalized”, more likely to “retreat… in the unfathomable depth of the evergreen virgin forest” than conform to Bantu norms. A survey conducted by the researchers revealed that Bantus could not definitively decide whether Batwa culture had contributed to their own customs and traditions. One survey revealing that 44% of the 120 Bantu in the study believed this was “very true” or “true”, while 56% believed this was “false” or “very false”. As nice as the legend of Bantu and Batwa working together may seem, it contributes little to modern relations between the two groups.

Prehistoric Human Collaboration

If a story of forest friendship cannot be found among anatomically modern humans, perhaps one can be found further back in our history. Changes in climate around 60,000 to 120,000 years ago, known as the marine isotope stage 3 period (MIS3) to geologists and part of the Middle Paleolithic period (MP) for archaeologists, caused the Laurentide Ice Sheet to advance and humans to migrate into more habitable climates. During this period, some of these ancient humans settled near Tinshemet Cave in Israel and chose to use the site as a cemetery. Both Neanderthal and Homo sapiens remains have been found at the site along with stone tools, animal bones, plant materials, and ochre, a type of orange clay used in ceremonies. The two groups may have learned burial rituals from each other, although this cannot be confirmed.

Genetic testing has revealed that modern humans have ancestors from Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, and Denisovans, three separate groups of people. The earliest known mixed-ancestry person is called Denny, a teenage girl with a Denisovan father and Neanderthal mother who died about 90,000 years ago and was buried in Denisova Cave of Siberia. Cohabitation occurred in northern Europe around 45,000 years ago, a time known as the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic or the Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician (LRJ) transition period as stone technology slowly progressed. Archaeologists are not always sure which tools were left by Neanderthals and which by Homo sapiens, as the two groups seemed equally intelligent, social, and adaptive to the changing climate. Only further research will reveal which groups made which tools, or if they indeed lived side-by-side. It may be that the concept of two distinct groups of early humans peacefully cohabiting in the forest exists only within the realm of fantasy.