Apart from Greg's rather excellent response -- and this, to which I'll make a quick one-liner of a response :
Chris Lemens :
> Evolution in Glorantha must be Lamarckian.
(... but Chaotic change in Gloranthan life forms is neither Lamarckian nor Darwinian ;) )
I'll say ...
> I can certainly see the case for people believing in a decline from a Golden Age of Perfection. However I would venture to sugest that it was also part of Glorantha back in RQ II (in the late 1970s) that there is a strand of thinking in many human cultures when they look at non-human races that is a bit more Darwinian.This is the idea that the other Elder Races (Uz, Aldryami, Mostali, Dragonewts and even Broo (though I doubt if they Broo are afforded the dignity of being an Elder Race)) are not as well-adapted to the here and now as humans are.
I think there are several aspects here.
Lamarckian evolution is based on the inheritance of acquired characteristics, which can be shown to exist in RW, although not necessarily as what we would call biological evolution -- although there actually are some examples in the animal kingdom of acquired characteristics being transmitted genetically to offspring, such as antibodies being transferred from mother to child either in utero or via mother's milk, or a peculiar species of North American frog which is acquiring chlorophyll and the ability to draw energy from sunlight off some local species of pond flora but transmitting this characteristic to offspring as something to be acquired rather than via the DNA, or even in the continuing accretion of new materials into our own understanding of Glorantha. This evolutionary theory is almost obviously appropriate to Glorantha.
Darwinian evolution is based on the survival of some individual traits by a process of natural selection, instead of some other traits that fail to be reproduced. The basic condition sine qua non for Darwinian evolution to exist is that there must be variations between one individual and another -- and such variations do in fact exist in Glorantha, if only because Chaos is integrated into the fabric of the World, however it is by no means certain that these variations can be seen as genetic in nature, due to the ever-changing nature of Chaos. To use a more extreme example, a broo with four arms is no more likely to produce four-armed rather than, say, blood-red haired or rock-skinned offspring instead. The existence of Chaos, and its presence in every living being (to a greater or lesser degree), therefore ruins the possibility of Darwinian evolution as a basis for Gloranthan evolution, because the deeply transformative nature of Chaos would preclude it.
However, that does not mean that Darwinian, or neo-Darwinian, evolutionary theories and phenomena cannot exist at all in Glorantha, they can exist as a secondary system within a basically "Lamarckian"/Chaotic framework -- because even if traits are transmitted in a basically Lamarckian fashion, as mutated on an individual basis by Chaos, it is nevertheless clear that various groups of populations sharing similar characteristics do exist within individual species, and the survival of this group instead of that one can certainly obey Darwinian principles. Well, right up until someone HeroQuests and upsets the evolutionary apple cart, that is.. ;)
So I personally wouldn't dismiss Gloranthan Darwinism entirely -- but I'd clearly view it as a set of local and marginal phenomena, rather than as the basic method of evolution among Gloranthan species and populations.
---
To take a more Gloranthan point of view, albeit a God Learner one, the reproductive faculty is governed by Uleria, who provides the power of life to make copies of itself ; Pocharngo, who provides the power of new life to be different to that of its progenitor(s) ; and the Compromise, particularly the Compromise between Stasis and Change, that provides balance to these various Powers. All of the other Powers and Runes also provide various characteristics to various living and non-living things, one should never forget this, and it is only within the specific focus of this question of why the child of any parent(s) is identical, similar, or different to them that the above three Entities can be seen as more prominent than others in the balance.
Every culture we have been able to observe has a set of myths that explain why children are both like and unlike their parents, and whilst our own Monomyth successfully shows that these are but variants of the successive Movements of Creation, and the interplay of the abovementioned Forces and the state of balance achieved via the Compromise, it is noted that this is a very difficult field of work and magic, because some wild discrepancies with and variations away from the central Myth are observable not only within each species, but even within specific Cultures, Tribes, or Clans !!
It is therefore only through some very extensive and basically encyclopaedic work that we will be able to discover the magical means to harmonise all of these different origin stories, so that the other peoples in God's Glorantha will be able to lucidly understand the proper interrelationship of these multiple origin myths as being a singular Unity in the Truth of God.
Julian Lord
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