Seven fathers of the Dwarves
 

Sorry if this has been done before but,
how would there be a Dwarven population at all if all of the first Dwarves were men? [img]smilies/frown.gif[/img]

That's a good question, one I've been wondering about myself... Maybe Dwarf women really did grow out of stone! [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

Hmm... I can't find anything about it in the Silmarillion, but maybe there's something about it in the Unfinished Tales...

I believe it was mentioned somewhere that all the Fathers of the Dwarves had a partner with them,except Durin....wich means we still have a similiair problem,only on a smaller scale.A plothole,I think.

Noxomanus is right [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

A big plothole there [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]. How could Durin have an heir? Did some other Dwarve's mate cheat on him?
That's the only answer I can think of... [img]smilies/tongue.gif[/img]

one question is Dwarven marriage habits. maybe two dwarves could share one wife or something? Maybe one dwarf-father died, leaving an untaken wife?

Or maybe Durin married a daughter of another father of the Dwarves [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

I always took 'fathers of the Dwarves' to mean special heads of small groups. Kind of like when, in the United States of America, we speak of our "Founding Fathers." These men (and women) got the whole process going, but are not the biological sires of all of those that now live here. They were not alone in founding this country, but they were at the forefront - the kings, as it were.

Anyway, if it was only them, they'd have probably all died by the end of the First Age of genetic diseases (Unless their genes worked differently to ours).

Some would say, like Adam and Eve, that they were more, if not entirely "pure" and so contained no defects, and so random deleterious mutations would take some time to accumulate to observable levels. Surely by this time they found other groups and intermingled. :rolleyes:

At least, I hope.

Except for Ben Franklin- the randy old goat is probably responsible for a fair chunk of the population...:cool: