A Point about Elf Ears

This is a lighthearted not terribly serious post. It's a joke really. So nobody stones anybody, okay?

The other night I came across a passage in Morgoth's Ring (209-10), which made me think about the ears of Elves more than I usually do, which is almost not at all. Most people think they have pointed ears, and there is some evidence that this is so. Growing up reading Tolkien I never pictured them as having anything but ears like ours. But let's go with pointed ears since the passage I read the other night sparks an interesting question to which I offer a tongue-in-cheek solution.

The text is Ælfwine’s Preamble to "Laws and Customs among the Eldar." Ælfwine is of course a Man, writing about Elves for other Men who know nothing about them. Naturally you would expect him to point out the differences and similarities.

The Eldar grew in bodily form slower than Men, but in mind more swiftly. They learned to speak before they were one year old; and in the same time they learned to walk and to dance, for their wills came soon to the mastery of their bodies. Nonetheless there was less difference between the two Kindreds, Elves and Men, in early youth; and a man who watched elf-children at play might well have believed that they were the children of Men, of some fair and happy people. For in their early days elf-children delighted still in the world about them, and the fire of their spirit had not consumed them, and the burden of memory was still light upon them.

Ælfwine says that as little children, Men and Elves are easily mistaken for each other. That sounds like Elves, or at least Elf-children, don't have pointy ears. That should make identification easy, especially of children running around and playing. So, does this mean that for Elves pointed ears are a secondary sex characteristic?