A Question of Loyalty

[Formendacil]

Indeed, it asks some interesting genetic question about orks--ones that might be answered if we had a certain answer about their parentage... but not probably. Though Tolkien seems to have waffled between Elves and Men, and toyed with the idea of Melkor having originally incarnated some lesser Maia, who then reproduced--ala Melian, but nastier, nonetheless I think it's fair to say (granted, not going to argue it either way) that Tolkien more or less decided that the idea of Melkor not being able to create his own race of slaves from scratch was a keeper. It's nicely paralleled by Aulë and the Dwarves, anyway, and all in-text evidence in the Lord of the Rings--the only text Tolkien ever really said was canon--is that orks have individual and independent personalities, nasty as they are.

Thus, my opinion would tend to the idea that Orks must have been been perverted somehow from Children of Ilúvatar. This being the case, both Elves and Men (and if you want to throw them in for completeness, Dwarves too) can both stand the sun. No problem there. Tolkien also says that Elves and Men are biologically the same species, for all intents and purposes, since they can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, so as far as biology is concerned, it doesn't matter if Orks are bastardised Elves or bastardised Men--either way, they should have no more problem with sun than tanning.

But they do.

Or they did, until Saruman's reintroduction of non-tampered Eruhini DNA.

But (and as we stray from Tolkien to genetics, I admit my knowledge weakens), my understanding is that chromosomes come in pairs. Did Morgoth just tag ONE chromosome with the sun-pain, and then breed it into his orks? It certainly seems easier than hitting EVERY chromosome in that slot, and if sun-pain is a dominant gene, then once Morgoth had done enough breeding, practically every ork would hate the sun (quite apart from cultural pressures put on by the Dark Lord's antipathy, together with Sauron, the Balrogs, the Dragons, etc...).

If, however, Morgoth only tagged a dominant gene with the ork mutation, and then bred the species so that everyone, practically speaking, had it, then Saruman would NOT have needed to introduce an outside genetic, but could have just pursued crossbreeding the recessive, non-ork, genes that (making up numbers) only 2% of the ork population still carried in the late 3rd Age. Certainly, if what Morgoth was doing was playing god with genetics, when Saruman started doing the same thing 6 ages later, the rumours in Eriador could just as easily have assumed that he must have been doing vile crossbreeding with Men, since I'm going to assume genetics wasn't exactly your average Dunlending's forte.

Am I even in the right ballpark, science people? Or am I dressed for football at a cricket match?

[Eönwë]

Originally Posted by Formendacil

But (and as we stray from Tolkien to genetics, I admit my knowledge weakens), my understanding is that chromosomes come in pairs. Did Morgoth just tag ONE chromosome with the sun-pain, and then breed it into his orks? It certainly seems easier than hitting EVERY chromosome in that slot, and if sun-pain is a dominant gene, then once Morgoth had done enough breeding, practically every ork would hate the sun (quite apart from cultural pressures put on by the Dark Lord's antipathy, together with Sauron, the Balrogs, the Dragons, etc...).

But why would Morgoth want to make his orcs weaker by making giving them "sun-pain"? It seems to me to be a side-effect of the orc-making process rather than one of the features. Or maybe being deep underground made them mutate to having low levels of melanin in their skin in order to create as much vitamin D as possible, and then when they finally got out into the sun, it was too much.

Or am I totally wrong here...?

[Morwen]

Originally Posted by Eönwë

But why would Morgoth want to make his orcs weaker by making giving them "sun-pain"? It seems to me to be a side-effect of the orc-making process rather than one of the features. Or maybe being deep underground made them mutate to having low levels of melanin in their skin in order to create as much vitamin D as possible, and then when they finally got out into the sun, it was too much.

Or am I totally wrong here...?

I think that the Morgorth's first orcs may have been created before the first rising of the sun in ME. It is suggested in the published Silmarillon where the "orc from elves" theory is in play, that his first orc breeding experiments were with the Dark Elves who refused the summons to Valinor and this would be before the first ME sunrise. Treebeard, while discussing orcs with Merry and Pippin, also indicates that it was a trait of things bred in the Great Darkness that they could not abide the sun. So it would seem that at the time the first orcs were bred there was no sun and therefore resistance to sunlight was not something that was contemplated.

[JeffF.]

I don't know why there is still a question of their origin. The books are canon ahd the Silmarillion plainly states that Morgoth used Avari, not as one of many theories but clearly. Tolkien's notes published in the HoME series are just story notes, interesting and revealing but NOT canon. Story notes change constantly and until integrated into a finished story and published are merely evolutions of the story line.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by JeffF.

I don't know why there is still a question of their origin. The books are canon ahd the Silmarillion plainly states that Morgoth used Avari, not as one of many theories but clearly. Tolkien's notes published in the HoME series are just story notes, interesting and revealing but NOT canon. Story notes change constantly and until integrated into a finished story and published are merely evolutions of the story line.

To be fair, the idea of Orcs coming from captured Quendi is presented as the best guess of the 'wise of Eressëa', but that doesn't mean they were necessarily correct. That does seem the most likely scenario to me, though.

[Mnemosyne]

Originally Posted by JeffF.

I don't know why there is still a question of their origin. The books are canon ahd the Silmarillion plainly states that Morgoth used Avari, not as one of many theories but clearly. Tolkien's notes published in the HoME series are just story notes, interesting and revealing but NOT canon. Story notes change constantly and until integrated into a finished story and published are merely evolutions of the story line.

The Silmarillion is not canon under this definition, because it was made of notes integrated into a finished story by Christopher Tolkien. Some of the HoME notes are more valid than others because of when they were written, it's true, but which ones became the posthumous publication were not determined by Tolkien himself. Tolkien continually changed his mind on everything until publication set it in stone, and that never happened in the Silmarillion until after his demise.

[JeffF.]

I submit that the Silmarillion IS canon, Christopher is JRRT's heir as far as the story of Middle Earth goes, one might s well say that the story of the Jewels in the Silmarillion is untrue or decide that the Men came first. I would think the Wise of Eressea would know far more about the origin of orc than any of us, they will have seen them and fought them.

I think all five books, The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and the trilogy of the LotR must be considered canon together and only when one contradicts the other can there be much debate. There are probably segments of Unifinished Tales which can also be regarded as canon if they are not contradicted by the main books e.g. the Description of Numenor should be canon whereas the chapter on Galadriel and Celeborn might not be since it contradicts itself on minor points of their story (e.g. the name of the ruler of Lorien was Amdir or Magalad and the Elves of Greenwood were either Silvanized in speech or the Sindar lords Sindarized the Elven culture they ruled over).

[Inziladun]

Canon has been a fairly frequent subject of debate here in the past.