Younger Children of Ilúvatar

		Younger Children of Ilúvatar (Men)
		Wild Men	Drúedain	Hobbits
Edain	Middle Peoples	Easterlings	Haradrim
Númenóreans	Northmen
Dúnedain	Northmen

The descent of the major branches of the race of Younger Children. Note that, though the Drúedain and Hobbits are established as belonging to branches of the race of Men, and must therefore have descended from the first people to have awoken in Hildórien, the precise details of their descent remain unknown.

The descent of the Northmen was rather more involved than this simple diagram can show. For more on this subject, see the entry for 'Northmen'.

The two speaking peoples fated to awaken within the world of Arda were known collectively as the Children of Ilúvatar. These two peoples, Elves and Men, were similar in some ways, but had quite different natures and abilities. They did not awaken at the same time, and the Elves came into being first, in the deep past of the world when it lay under starlight, long before the making of the Sun. The Elves were thus known as the Firstborn, the Elder Children of Ilúvatar.

For long ages, the Firstborn were the only Children of Ilúvatar in the world, until the time when the Two Trees were slain and the Sun first rose into the sky, heralding a time of quickening and change. It was then that the first Men awakened, the Younger Children of Ilúvatar, in the land of Hildórien on the far eastern coasts of Middle-earth.

The Younger Children were much like the Elder in appearance, if generally shorter and less hardy. Where the Elves were immortal, and bound to the world as long as it lasted, Men were mortal. After a span of years, which seemed brief indeed to the undying Firstborn, the Younger Children would pass from the world to some destination unknown even to the Valar.

When the Elder Children had awoken in the distant past, they were at first troubled by the creatures of Morgoth, but were discovered by the Valar and placed under their protection. For the Younger Children, things were different. No Valar came to them after their awakening except Melkor, and thus Men later spoke of a darkness that lay in their past. Many sought to escape the Dark Lord's influence, travelling westward away from Hildórien, and of these some found their way over the Blue Mountains into Beleriand, where they allied themselves with the Eldar in the Wars of Beleriand.

At this time in history, the Elder Children were in the ascendancy, and those of the Younger Children who had entered Beleriand joined themselves to the kings of the Eldar as vassals. Thus began the Edain, the Three Houses of Men who fought beside the Elves in the Wars of Beleriand. From a joining of both peoples sprang Eärendil, who called on the Valar for aid and so brought about the ultimate defeat of the Dark Lord in the War of Wrath that ended the First Age.

During the Second Age, the Younger Children reached their greatest heights in Númenor. The Númenóreans built an paralleled civilisation that lasted for millennia, before ultimately reaching its cataclysmic end. Only a few survived the Downfall to reach Middle-earth, and there the Exiles of Númenor fought beside the Eldar in the Last Alliance. With great loss, they defeated Sauron, bringing the Second Age to an end.

As the years of the Third Age wore on, the Elder Children began to weary of Middle-earth, and many of them made the voyage across the Great Sea into the West. In Rivendell and Lórien, whose rulers held two of the Three Rings of the Elves, the long waning of their people was held back for a time, but at the end of the Age, the One Ring was destroyed and the Three Rings lost their power. After this, almost all the Elves remaining in Middle-earth departed across the Sea. With the Elder Children gone into the West, Middle-earth was thus inherited by the Younger Children, and the Dominion of Men began in earnest.