First Men, Andals, Rhoynar, Valyrians, Ironborn: Separate Species?

[Orphalesion]

Okay this is creepy, I already think it stinks of unfortunate implications when people in this forum try to push the First men/Northerners as somehow superior to the Andal "invadors" and decalred the Tagraryens "foreginers" after three bloody centuries and now people call them (sub)species?

Nothing, absolutely nothing points towards First Men and Andals being different species or sub-species. Look at the diversity Homo Sapiens Sapiens has in real life and look at how extremely similar the First Men and Andals are.

It's said they interbred because that word was used in such contexts prior to the 20th century. Colonists were also said to have interbred with Natives by their contemporaries in the real world. Language evolves just as much as species and sometimes Martin uses words in the way a Medieval person would use them. also, shock oh shock, people are not always 100% precise in the choice of their words. Not even GRRM pr Tolkien. 

I however am a bit split on Chicxulub's idea that Valyrians are a sub-species of homo sapiens sapiens. On one hand I like the idea. Ont he other hand, I do not think that Valyrians are really that different or that there really so much difficulty involved when Valyrian's have children with non-Valyrians. They seemed to have been absorbed into the other cultures of Essos rather quickly after the doom and the targaryens could just have some defect from all the inbreeding that makes conception in general difficult.

There's enough children with one Valyrian and one non-Valyrian parent in the books (or at least people who likely have Valyrian ancestry); all those purple eyed slave girls Jorah tells Dany about, Aegon, the Baraethons, Dany and Viserys themselves, that bastard guy Cersei makes master of ships, the Daynes.....etc....etc.....  

[Taenqyrhae]

From what GRRM has written, Valyrians may be a separate subspecies from most of the other humans in ASoIaF, but they are clearly not a separate species.

Ibbenese are a different species.  They have difficulty producing viable, fertile young with humans.  Even the Neanderthals could interbreed with humans, and there's some evidence that some of the long-lasting populations of Homo Erectus that persisted in Asia until only about 30,000 years ago interbred with Homo Sapiens, so the Ibbenese are pretty far off.

Don't know much about Brindlemen.

CotF are not close relatives of humans.  They aren't even primates, sharing more traits with carnivora (claws instead of nails, vertical slit pupils, dappled coats).  I think their superficial resemblance to humans is due to parallel evolution, not relation.

Giants may be primates, but they are definitely not genus Homo and probably more distantly related to us than any of the great apes.

[Magnar of Skagos]

For what it's worth, the Ironborn are not separate from the Andals and the First Men. The Ironborn are a mixture of the two, they are just off a slightly different culture than mainland Westeros.

[Jon Fossoway]

Who the hell named them "first men" by the way, the andals after written history was put into parchment? When a character states "I have the blood of the first men", thing that comes to mind is purely a cultural background, used to differenciate or validate a point.

[TheSovereignGrave]

Who the hell named them "first men" by the way, the andals after written history was put into parchment? When a character states "I have the blood of the first men", thing that comes to mind is purely a cultural background, used to differenciate or validate a point.

It probably was the Andal name for them, and as such was just adopted by the First Men themselves when they began to speak the language of the Andals. Or, perhaps the First Men called themselves that since presumably there were other men in Essos so they may have called themselves "First Men" (or whatever the equivalent in their language would've been) because there were no other men in Westeros aside from them.

[Jak Scaletongue]

On 2015-11-21 at 7:27 AM, StarkofWinterfell said:

Indeed, they could all be the same species; however, I believe the subspecies is where they diverge. The Ibbenese could well be an entirely different species but still part of the same genus.

I stake this claim on the fact that it is not considered interbreeding when members of different ethnic groups produce offspring, but GRRM states that the First Men and Andals interbred.

In the US at the turn of the (20th) century, when it was illegal for a white person to marry a black person they did often use the term "interbreeding."  We don't use it anymore when talking about humans having babies with humans, but we did used to.

On 2015-11-22 at 0:26 AM, Chicxulub said:

I have a background in biology and have some experience with cladistics and Linnaean taxonomy.  

It is my humble opinion that all of the "normal" humans shown likely are representative of modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens.   This is everything from the First Men to the Andals to Yi Ti all the way over to Asshai and the Summer Islanders.  I would consider Valyrians a strong candidate for subspecies (Homo sapiens valyrii maybe?) status based on the apparent difficulty of their breeding with with H. s. sapiens, the distinct morphological traits and allopatry.

When we consider other "humans" with notable morphological and behavioral differences, we come to the Ibbenese, I think that these are fairly clearly intended to be considered Homo neanderthalensis.  Keep in mind, that many (though far from most, admittedly) scientists consider Neanderthals to have been just as intelligent as modern humans and to have possessed a culture similar to the humans of their time.  A common thinking on their decline wasn't so much that they were poorly evolved compared to modern humans, just more expensive.  They were larger, heavier and had larger brains- all of that comes at a cost.  As the Pleistocene drew to a close and the megafauna started to become scarce, the resident predators who depended on the megafauna-- cave lions, Homotherium and Neanderthals-- were supplanted by generalist predators who filled similar niches but didn't require as much energy to take down smaller prey.  Namely, wolves and humans.  In a world where the megafauna is still present but greatly diminished, it isnt' surprising to see a relict population of the megafauna version of a human, though in a proportionately diminished state.

When thinking of the brindled men, my mind wanders to the Australopithecine lineage.  Where exactly they may fall based on available descriptions I'll admit that I'm not sure, but that seems like a fair guess on genus.  It is entirely fair to presume that they represent a lineage that doesn't even exist in our world: a relict Australopithecine population that has continued to evolve into something else entirely different.  Australopithecus atrox fits nicely with their observed behavior and temperament.

When we consider giants and the COTF, we are still considering what I would consider to be hominins, but those that would be in wildy divergent genera.  I would consider giants and the maze makers to share a genus: Giganthropus. I would further break them down into the giants: Giganthropus voreios (Giant Man of the North) and Giganthropus kanelabyrith (Giant Man who Makes Mazes).

As for the Children, since I can't actually study them in any truly scholarly manner, I must base my conclusions on the fact that they are apparently similar in age, sympatric but differing in niche and rather quarrelsome toward one another, though not overly aggressive.  I would consider them sister lineages, one favoring more open environments (giants) and the other favoring the woods (COTF).  I'd lump the COTF into Paidithropus dasos: (Child Man of the Forest.  Don't be jealous of my originality! )  As for the Ifequevron, I don't know enough about them to assign them a binomial nomenclature.  Paidithropus cf. "Ifequervon" is in this case likely appropriate.  This means that there is an undescribed specimen from the Ifequervon forest that likely falls into the Paidithropus genus.

Ok, so I probably put way too much though into that.  Lmao I hope you all at least enjoy reading it a little bit. 

Fascinating!  Really!

On 2015-12-12 at 7:48 PM, King Merrett I Frey said:

Who the hell named them "first men" by the way, the andals after written history was put into parchment? When a character states "I have the blood of the first men", thing that comes to mind is purely a cultural background, used to differenciate or validate a point.

It's quite common for various groups to use a word signifying their importance over their neighbours.  The term "Inuit" means "the people" implying anyone who's not Inuit isn't "people."  That's just the example I can dig out of my brain, but it is very common especially in tribal communities.  So I'm thinking that the Old Tongue term for themselves was likely was something that specified that they were the *first men* in Westeros. And the Andals translated the Old Tongue term as "First Men."

[Beorn Snow]

We don´t know if the Ibbenese are a different species yet. We haven´t really seen conclusive proof in the books, because a lot of info in the world books is bound to be wrong. (As medieval books tend to be based in part on legends).

However it would be fitting into other works by GRRM. All the focus on men, not-men, mock-men in Dying of the light f.x. And there is obviously a lot of focus on genetics in ASOIAF.

There seems to be no problem for Andals, First men or ironborn to interbreed. The Targaryens seem to have problems, but often with each other as well. It may be to many incestous relationships rather than difficulty "breeding" with "humans".

But it´s an idea that I like, could help explain some things.

[Melisandre's White Pubes]

On November 22, 2015 at 0:26 AM, Chicxulub said:

When we consider giants and the COTF, we are still considering what I would consider to be hominins, but those that would be in wildy divergent genera.  I would consider giants and the maze makers to share a genus: Giganthropus. I would further break them down into the giants: Giganthropus voreios (Giant Man of the North) and Giganthropus kanelabyrith (Giant Man who Makes Mazes).

As for the Children, since I can't actually study them in any truly scholarly manner, I must base my conclusions on the fact that they are apparently similar in age, sympatric but differing in niche and rather quarrelsome toward one another, though not overly aggressive.  I would consider them sister lineages, one favoring more open environments (giants) and the other favoring the woods (COTF).  I'd lump the COTF into Paidithropus dasos: (Child Man of the Forest.  Don't be jealous of my originality! )  As for the Ifequevron, I don't know enough about them to assign them a binomial nomenclature.  Paidithropus cf. "Ifequervon" is in this case likely appropriate.  This means that there is an undescribed specimen from the Ifequervon forest that likely falls into the Paidithropus genus.

Ok, so I probably put way too much though into that.  Lmao I hope you all at least enjoy reading it a little bit. 

I agree that the giants are probably primates, possibly some very distant hominins, but I don't think that CotF are even the same order as humans.  They have a couple of features that are almost completely unseen in primates - claws (seen only in Callitricidae) and vertical-slit pupils (I believe only in bushbabies).  They also have only 4 digits, which is a trait only seen among the spider monkeys.  All these traits are common in Carnivora, though.

[StarkofWinterfell]

If Planetos is part of Thousand Worlds Universe and we know that populations isolated from each other for extended periods of time will gradually grow different, then is it possible that when human civilization fell and all of the worlds in their empire went dark, the ones left stranded on Planetos were various travelers from the myriad planets in the Thousand Worlds?

And because all of these worlds were across the galaxy, it is reasonable to assume that the human populations on each world are slightly different. Seriously, just place some humans on Mars and in a couple hundred years they'll be adapted to the Mars environment and thus slightly different.

This is all my headcanon btw.