Split Personality?

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

STW, you make much real world sense. Trouble is, we're talking about Middle Earth here. Gimli's famous run with Aragorn and Legolas is not the only instance in which Tolkien describes a Dwarf or Dwarves with such incredible running endurance. In The Hobbit, the Dwarves of the Iron Hills run a "forced march" trot all the way from the equivalent of the Aral Sea to Finland in (I believe) three days. That's a lot of miles. So Tolkien apparently intended Dwarves to be understood as capable of the kind of thing he describes.

That's all I have time for right now. I'll see to your previous post directed to me when time avails.

To my mind there's no reason why a Dwarf would not be able to run an exceptional long distance at speed, after all, they are not homo sapiens! It's no more odd to me than an Elf having exceptional long life or the ability to walk on snow (or custard ) lightly as the fact that they are different species explains a lot. I have more problems with accepting that the Dunedain could live for a few hundred years as that seems to be not compatible with the species.

Middle-earth of course has three species of 'human ape' - Men, Elves and Dwarves. At one point in prehistory the earth itself supported at least three species too - homo sapiens, neanderthals and homo erectus. We can accept that each of these had quirks and big differences, so why not accept these between Men, Elves and Dwarves? They are not all the same, biologically speaking.