Are Elves vegatarian? - Page 3 - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

Alfirin · 01-01-2015, 07:15 AM

Urbanized doesn't really help, unless there's a "rural" to go along with it. It isn't a matter of how civilized you are or how many cities you have. If there isn't a largish farm area around to provide it with food, the cities tend to have a big problem, since there tends not to be a lot of "direct" (first link in chain) food production there (depending on the level of the cities, there could be small gardens and little flocks and herds of eating animals, but probably not enough to cover the cities whole food needs. Food takes a lot of space to produce. That's sort of why camping out ouside a city is effective as a method of conquest; you CAN'T make enough food inside the walls to cover the population, so eventually the people inside starve. We already KNOW Thranduil is willing to trade for wine. I imagine that, if we looked closer, a lot of the base FOOD (flour, vegetables etc.) also had their origins outside of Thranduils domain.

All I was trying to get at is that, if you want to be vegetarian, you sort of need to know that there are people out there growing lots and lots of legumes or milking lots and lots of animals to provide you with all that protein.

Orphalesion · 01-01-2015, 05:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alfirin

Urbanized doesn't really help, unless there's a "rural" to go along with it. It isn't a matter of how civilized you are or how many cities you have. If there isn't a largish farm area around to provide it with food, the cities tend to have a big problem, since there tends not to be a lot of "direct" (first link in chain) food production there (depending on the level of the cities, there could be small gardens and little flocks and herds of eating animals, but probably not enough to cover the cities whole food needs. Food takes a lot of space to produce. That's sort of why camping out ouside a city is effective as a method of conquest; you CAN'T make enough food inside the walls to cover the population, so eventually the people inside starve. We already KNOW Thranduil is willing to trade for wine. I imagine that, if we looked closer, a lot of the base FOOD (flour, vegetables etc.) also had their origins outside of Thranduils domain.

All I was trying to get at is that, if you want to be vegetarian, you sort of need to know that there are people out there growing lots and lots of legumes or milking lots and lots of animals to provide you with all that protein.

Agreed almost all Elven realms described by Tolkien would have had to possess agrarian areas.

Even taking into account that Elves possibly were able to comfortably survive on less food than humans, Tumladen likely was non-stop farms from the walls of Gondolin all the way to the mountains, Nargothrond would have relied on nearby farming villages, Rivendell likely included farms and vegetable gardens/orchards.

It gets a bit more complicated to explain places like Ossiriand, Doriath and Lothlorien that were heavily forested and unlikely to trade with outsiders for large parts of their history.
However even those still had 1) enough fields in "hidden glades" to grow the corn needed for Lembas 2) likely practiced forest based agriculture like some tribes of Native Americans did.

Alfirin · 01-01-2015, 07:07 PM

I wonder if mallorn seeds are edible? (the seed is described as a "nut" but not every nut is something you can eat) However much they may have valued the trees for their beauty (and their convenience for putting houses in.) the grove probably produced far more nuts than it would be feasible to re-plant, so eating them could be a possibility.

Indian wise (if we are thinking along those lines), I might imagine something along the diet of some of the California Indian tribes, who often relied on acorns as their primary carbohydrate source. Assuming the forests of Lorien are similar to European forests in tree makeup, there'd probably be large areas of chestnuts and beeches as well (you can eat beech nuts if you know how to leach and prepare them, same as acorns) On the oily-fatty tree nut side, there'd probably be hazel copses, and maybe some walnuts and almonds (If Gondor/Ithillien is supposed to be somewhere in the Tuscany region latitude wise (I remember than from an earlier discussion about why Sam though Gollum would be able to find wild bay laurels), Lorien is probably something along the lines of Northern/Middle France, so walnuts can grow there (though not necessarily as well as further south.) Possibly, even some of the more cold tolerant varieties of olive. and of course all kinds of lesser plants in the odd open clearings.

But, given the food issues I sometimes wonder if Galadriel (who, having come from Aman, would have probably familiar with all of the trees of that place) Sometimes might have thought that, as nice and pretty as mallornen were, her people might have been better off if fate had given them a DIFFERENT kind of Amanian tree, like Yavannamire, which we KNOW has edible fruit (I assume that any fruit described as "luscious" is probably good to eat.)

01-01-2015, 07:15 AM	#81
Alfirin Shade of Carn Dûm Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 435	Urbanized doesn't really help, unless there's a "rural" to go along with it. It isn't a matter of how civilized you are or how many cities you have. If there isn't a largish farm area around to provide it with food, the cities tend to have a big problem, since there tends not to be a lot of "direct" (first link in chain) food production there (depending on the level of the cities, there could be small gardens and little flocks and herds of eating animals, but probably not enough to cover the cities whole food needs. Food takes a lot of space to produce. That's sort of why camping out ouside a city is effective as a method of conquest; you CAN'T make enough food inside the walls to cover the population, so eventually the people inside starve. We already KNOW Thranduil is willing to trade for wine. I imagine that, if we looked closer, a lot of the base FOOD (flour, vegetables etc.) also had their origins outside of Thranduils domain. All I was trying to get at is that, if you want to be vegetarian, you sort of need to know that there are people out there growing lots and lots of legumes or milking lots and lots of animals to provide you with all that protein.

01-01-2015, 07:07 PM	#83
Alfirin Shade of Carn Dûm Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 435	I wonder if mallorn seeds are edible? (the seed is described as a "nut" but not every nut is something you can eat) However much they may have valued the trees for their beauty (and their convenience for putting houses in.) the grove probably produced far more nuts than it would be feasible to re-plant, so eating them could be a possibility. Indian wise (if we are thinking along those lines), I might imagine something along the diet of some of the California Indian tribes, who often relied on acorns as their primary carbohydrate source. Assuming the forests of Lorien are similar to European forests in tree makeup, there'd probably be large areas of chestnuts and beeches as well (you can eat beech nuts if you know how to leach and prepare them, same as acorns) On the oily-fatty tree nut side, there'd probably be hazel copses, and maybe some walnuts and almonds (If Gondor/Ithillien is supposed to be somewhere in the Tuscany region latitude wise (I remember than from an earlier discussion about why Sam though Gollum would be able to find wild bay laurels), Lorien is probably something along the lines of Northern/Middle France, so walnuts can grow there (though not necessarily as well as further south.) Possibly, even some of the more cold tolerant varieties of olive. and of course all kinds of lesser plants in the odd open clearings. But, given the food issues I sometimes wonder if Galadriel (who, having come from Aman, would have probably familiar with all of the trees of that place) Sometimes might have thought that, as nice and pretty as mallornen were, her people might have been better off if fate had given them a DIFFERENT kind of Amanian tree, like Yavannamire, which we KNOW has edible fruit (I assume that any fruit described as "luscious" is probably good to eat.)