How pointy were Elrond's ears?

[Celuien]

Originally Posted by alatar

This thread caught my attention, and so might as well add my two cents (or pence, or whatever ).

If one were to observe enough people, one would see that there are many different types of ear shapes. And I'm not just speaking about large or small; some are more open than others, etc. Could our elvish ancestors have had a more open large "leaf-like" type, while those of us with more human blood may have the smaller and closed curled-up type? And over time the intermingling and variations continued. To say 'ear' is like saying 'leaf' and accounting for all of the leaves on all of the trees that are now and have ever been.

The mind boggles.

A polygenetic trait? I wonder how many loci are needed to account for all of the variation in ear shape...

I am a member of the elves-do-not-have-pointy-ears camp. At least, not as pointy as the Peter Jackson ears. I envision something more like the slightly pointed ears I see in some people every day. I seem to recall a quote in the Silmarillion in which elves and Numenoreans could only be distinguished by the different light level in the eyes, though I can't check it until I go home next weekend.

[Elladan and Elrohir]

As for the original question of this thread: How pointy were Elrond's ears?

Hard to believe no one has mentioned GENETICS to this point, but the answer is to be found therein. The offspring of an Elf and a Man will NOT have "half-pointy" ears; he will either have ears that are fully pointed, or regular Man-shaped ears. There is no way to tell with Elrond since his genetic pool is about evenly divided as far as Elf and Man ancestors go. We can assume that his ears were fully pointed since he was grouped with Elven-kind, and yet he only made that choice after the end of the First Age.

Hmm...to be facetious, I think I've just found the reason Elrond chose to be of Elf-kind and Elros chose to be of Man-kind: because their ears perfectly suited them for it! Elrond's were pointed, and Elros' weren't! THEY'RE NOT IDENTICAL TWINS!!! AAAHH!!!

Seriously, there's no way to tell for sure, as far as I can see. Which isn't very far.