Humans
Humans are a highly intelligent species and subspecies of bipedal great ape which have proliferated across Aotra. Humans participate in complex societies, build complicated structures and tools, and use magic. The origins of the human species are unclear. While the study of fossils is not foreign to the people of Aotra, and the origins of many Aotran species have been traced back hundreds of thousands of years, the human fossil record appears to end rather abruptly about 17,000 years ago, and no predecessor species or common ancestors between humans and other Aotran great apes have been identified.
Approximately three thousand years ago, births of humans with highly unusual features—altered physiologies, different aging processes, and distinctive abilities—began to occur sporadically across Aotra. In hindsight, these unusual individuals are recognized as the first elves and orcs. Though it is common to say that elves and orcs "evolved" around this time, in reality their emergence is not a process of evolution; they simply began to appear among human populations. Within about ten generations, elvenness and orcishness had normalized into heritable traits that passed predictably from parents to children, and no more elves or orcs were born sporadically from human parents. Elves and orcs are now recognized as Homo sapiens subspecies, alongside Homo sapiens ssp. originalis, the subspecies referred to as humans today.
Terminology
The word "human" referred originally to the species Homo sapiens, but after the emergence of elves and orcs as distinct Homo sapiens subspecies, "human" became the term for Homo sapiens ssp. originalis, the subspecies recognized as humans today. While it is not incorrect to refer to Homo sapiens as humans, this use of the term has fallen out of favor. Presently, the term "humanoids" is used to refer to individuals of the Homo sapiens species, which includes humans, elves, and combinations thereof, while the term "humans" is used to refer specifically to those of Homo sapiens ssp. originalis, and "para-humans" refers to individuals of the Homo sapiens species not of ssp. originalis, e.g., individuals of ssps. aeternalis (elves) and robustus (orcs).Human Characteristics
The humans of Aotra are a culturally and physically diverse population, but they share some basic characteristics. The average human lifespan is just over 75 years, and it is relatively rare for humans to live more than 100 years. Humans are primarily of either male or female biological sex, though about one in a thousand is intersex, and gender identification is heavily influenced by cultural perspectives on sex and gender. Humans are sexually dimorphic in height and weight, with the global average height being approximately 5'9" (175 cm) for males and 5'3" (165 cm) for females. Humans have a variety of skin tones ranging from very light tan to very dark brown. Darker skin tones are most common, especially in surface-dwelling communities nearer to the equator, but extremely pale skin tones are common among the populations that live underground. Humans also have diverse hair colors ranging from pale blonde to black and similarly diverse hair textures. Red hair is rare in most human populations but occurs less infrequently among some ethnic groups, like the Viha People and the Sarlani People. Humans tend to be hairier than either elves or orcs, but humans are much less hairy than other great apes. Humans are highly intelligent, and many are capable of using magic, but they show no widespread incidence of innate magic, unlike elves and orcs.Human Otherborn
About 0.1% of humans are Otherborn. Humans can manifest as aasimar, genasi, tieflings, or kalashtar. Aasimar, genasi, and tieflings are all more common in humans and people with partially-human ancestry than people with close-to-pure elven or orcish heritage. Kalashtar are vanishingly rare among all heritages, humans included. When modern Otherborn began to appear around 700 YW, they did so sporadically, much like elves and orcs did when they first appeared. Modern Otherborn, however, have so far failed to normalize into predictably-heritable subspecies of their own, though many scholars believe tieflings show signs of heading in that direction.Human and Para-Human Reproduction
While humans and para-humans (those of humanoid but non-human heritage and morph, e.g., elves, orcs, and Otherborn) are morphologically distinct enough that some would intuitively believe them to be distinct species, the fact that humans and para-humans can reproduce with each other is strong evidence against that supposition. Indeed, due to the thousands of years of coexistence between humans, elves, and orcs, nearly all Aotran humans have at least a small amount of elven or orc ancestry (or both), and the same is true respectively for elves and orcs; no bloodlines are entirely "pure." As such, it is difficult to determine where the bounds of "full" humanness (or elvennes or orcness) begin and end. It is common to recognize someone as "entirely human" if all eight of their great-grandparents identified as human. When humans reproduce with elves or orcs, their offspring do maintain features that show their mixed heritage, but it is common for half-humans to seem closer to human than to their non-human heritage. For instance, though elven lifespans are typically around 750, half-elves usually live less than 200 years—much longer than humans, certainly, but not a halfway point between a human and an elven lifespan. Similarly, half-orcs are closer in height to humans than orcs. This lean towards human features over para-human features among half-humans can be seen in many characteristic traits of elves and orcs. Nevertheless, para-human features can show up unpredictably even among people with rather distant para-human ancestry. One individual who was estimated to be approximately three-quarters human and one-quarter elf was documented to have lived 315 years without life-extending magic, much longer even than typical half-elves and longer than many three-quarter elves. For this reason, predicting the attributes of individuals based on their heritage is a deeply flawed science.
Scientific Name
Homo sapiens ssp. originalis
Lifespan
75 years
Average Height
5'7" (170 cm)
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