D&D 5E Origin of pointy eared folk

[Nevvur]

Pointy tipped ears are (excessively) common for non-human fantasy races. It got me wondering about the earliest known Earth-based mythologies that depicted non-humans with this feature.

How did pointy ears become such a staple? Where did it come from? How did it get here? Wild speculation is fine for fun, but I'm a fan of attributable sources.

 

[aco175]

I think I saw some on the alien pictographs from the Mayas or Incas. They could also be from Spock in Star Trek.

 

[Charlaquin]

A quick Wikipedia search indicates that pointed ears are featured in various folkloric creatures such as the French croquemitaine, Brazilian curupira, and Japanese earth spider.

Specifically elves with pointy ears seems to have first become popular in Victorian era English literature, and its continued popularity can probably be attributed to Lord of the Rings, the films in particular (the canonicicity of pointed elf ears in the books seems to be a disputed point, as Tolkien describes them not as pointed, but as leaf-shaped).

 

[Sacrosanct]

I would say since probably the beginning of Homo sapiens. We as humans have always combined animal traits with human traits in our myths, so I'm sure a pointy eared humanoid "spirit" or creature has been around long before it was actually written down by a more established culture. Even early groups of homo sapiens believed in things like monsters and spirits so to speak, so it stands to reason a lot things originated then.

 

[Yaarel]

Pointy tipped ears are (excessively) common for non-human fantasy races. It got me wondering about the earliest known Earth-based mythologies that depicted non-humans with this feature.

How did pointy ears become such a staple? Where did it come from? How did it get here? Wild speculation is fine for fun, but I'm a fan of attributable sources.

At least in a Norse context, the pointed ears are an animalistic feature that a shapeshifter can't quite shake off when returning back into a human form. It is something that Troll and even Berserkar are known for. Specifically, the pointed ears are wolf ears. If you look at Teen Wolf in the transitional form, you can see that his ears are exactly like Elf ears.

 

[Nevvur]

I would say since probably the beginning of Homo sapiens. We as humans have always combined animal traits with human traits in our myths, so I'm sure a pointy eared humanoid "spirit" or creature has been around long before it was actually written down by a more established culture. Even early groups of homo sapiens believed in things like monsters and spirits so to speak, so it stands to reason a lot things originated then.

Indeed. I imagine other hominid species like neanderthals had a similar propensity. It's been a subject of scrutiny for my homebrew setting, as all the PC races evolved naturally alongside humans, with numerous sapient subspecies going extinct over the millennia. How those extinct subspecies interacted with the spiritual world during their time on the planet could be fun to explore.

Getting back to earth, I wonder what would be the earliest graphical depiction of pointed ears? I browsed google images for Mesopotamian art and couldn't find any examples, though there were some people with animal heads.

 

[Beleriphon]

Getting back to earth, I wonder what would be the earliest graphical depiction of pointed ears? I browsed google images for Mesopotamian art and couldn't find any examples, though there were some people with animal heads.

The annunaki sometimes look like maybe pointed ears, but that might just be depictions of hair.

 

[Iry]

Any accident with a grain-thresher.

 

[mrpopstar]

According to the art historians I work with, pointed ears are as old as human art itself, appearing across cultures, and almost universally are used to stylize an "otherworldly" entity presenting with human-like traits.

 

[Kobold Stew]

I love this question. But I think we need to be a bit more rigorous. There are several constraints in the question:

1. "races": representation has to be a feature of the depiction of a particular species of creature, not merely the representation of individuals. By definition, we are talking about "fantasy races", but that's okay since humans have consistently imposed animal features onto human beings (allowing art historians to use words like "theriomorphic") in creating their fantasies. But this would exclude (e.g.) the Egyptian god Anubis, since he is an individual, not a species.
2. consistency: the feature needs to be part of the representation of the species over time, at least within the culture of origin, not merely the habit of a single writer, informant, or artist.
3. nature of evidence: we can only gauge antiquity by the date of the source: a 21st-century source saying that something's been around for centuries is not as trustworthy as something from a few centuries ago.
4. humanoids: this is an assumption I am making, but since pointed ears are a regular feature of the animal kingdom, what's interesting is when the animal features are applied to a humanoid. Also, in games playable races tend to be humanoid.

Given this, I would propose that satyrs represent the earliest theriomorphic species consistently to have pointy ears. Here's an image from the 6th century BCE:
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but I think there are examples going back to the eighth century.

Now, admittedly, there are other animal features (in this case a horse tail), and sometimes satyrs are presented with a goat- or a horse-hindquarters, sometimes with human legs. But, despite the variations in representing satyrs, they consistently (I believe) have pointy ears. (Centaurs do too, from only slightly later in the tradition. They're not humanoids, though, and so I'll exclude them.)

That's more than 2500 years ago, with consistent, well-documented representation of a humanoid species across cultures for most of that time.