"To my dying day I shall not forget her voice when she said to you: ‘You never told me once.’ It is as good as a poem. The entire tragedy is told in those five words."
what is probably a silly question

Submitted by Lily on Mon, 07/05/2010 - 01:44.
This is probably a silly question, but I haven't been keeping up with the story lately and I was just wondering, is the elven rate of maturity the same as a human's? I think Lothere's elves live longer that humans do, correct? So do they reach an "adult" state around the same time as humans, or do they take a little more time to age?

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Aw, that's a perfectly good
Submitted by Lothere on Mon, 07/05/2010 - 10:57.Aw, that's a perfectly good question.
I do have life tables online to show how I randomly calculate lifespans, so it's easy to verify that elves live, on average, live longer than humans. (Unless they are kisór males, in which case they hardly ever reach the age of 20.) About half of newborn humans can expect to die before they are 28, whereas half of newborn elves can expect to die before they are 36, so that's one way of looking it. Or, consider than a newborn human has about a 10% chance of living to be 70 (leaving aside possibility of death in childbirth for women), whereas an elf has about a 20% chance of living to be 70.
However, that doesn't answer your question about maturity rates.
Elves marry around the age of 16. Normally, since the girl marries a guy who is older, they wait until she is 16 and he is some number of years older. Thus they tend to marry later than humans were doing this period (human girls become marriageable around 13 or 14 years of age in this Anglo-Saxon society).
However, elf boys ritually become "men" when they turn 16, so that may seem a little young to us.
In terms of sexual maturity, they do mature a little later. Elven girls have their first period about 2 years later than human girls. So if the average human girl starts around the age of 11 to 13, then for elves it's more like 13 to 15.
However, they hit menopause at the same age as humans. They just live longer after that point.
Overall they are stronger and healthier, less likely to die of infections and pneumonia and that sort of thing. That's true from their infancy on up, and that's why their average lifespan is longer. It's not insanely longer: they still don't live past 120, which seems to be the approximate limit for modern humans, too.
Oh, okay. That answers my
Submitted by Lily on Mon, 07/05/2010 - 12:49.Oh, okay. That answers my question.
Thanks Lothere!