So I'm making a setting. An 'Atlantean' past, set in an alternate pre-history, where the non-human races of Tolkien-esqe mythology actually exist.
Part of what is driving my compulsion to do this is recent research into human anthropological history. 50K years ago, we had a whole lot of 'homo' species running around, competing and interbreeding. So I'm creating 'homo' species that resemble the standard fantasy races, and then trying to retro-engineer the evolutionary pressures that would lead to that. Hobbits are easy: 'homo florensis' are tiny due to Island Dwarfism. Dwarves are beetle browed, broad chested homo neanderthalis/homo robustus. Large eyed, wide chested, thick-boned. But elves...elves are a pain.
'Mela' itself refers to a Byzantine-esque human culture that surround the Middle Sea (circa 834, our Chronology). Post-imperial, quasi-feudal. Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbits all exist, but they are all exotic: They come from place very very far away. Elves from from Argoth, a heavily forested island over the sea to the east. Dwarves live on the high plateau to the north of Mela, and hobbits on the archipelago (EarthSea style, far far to the East).
In Mela, humans think of the World in terms of the OTO, the Orbis Terram Ordinal. (pardon my pseudo-latin nonsense). Humans think of the world, (the civilized world), as a T-shape inside inside an O. The T-shape represents the three seas (Black, Red, and Blue (Middle). The spaces between the seas are the continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa. And that's all the world that matter, the 'O' of civilized land set around the Middle sea. Beyond that, there is nothing by wasteland and monsters. Cosmopoligically, the people of Mela are pretty sure that there is a big body of water that surrounds all the continents (the 'Oceanus'). The climate a few hundred miles beyond the middle sea is pretty inhospitable to civilization, climactically. In Mela, this is conceived of as 'The Four Wastes', one for each Ordinal Direction: Cold (North), Grass (East), Sand (South) and Water (West).
The Cold Waste emerges from the planes near the middle Sea, and rises up to be something like the Alps...except the Alps are merely the edge of a gigantic plateau, like the Himalayan plateau, where the climate varies between Taiga, Tundra, and Cold Desert. Completely inhospitable to agriculture.
The Grass Waste is comparable to the central Asian grasslands; vast steppes, cold and arid. Also populated by roving bands of barbaric centaurs. (// Turko-Mongolic Nomads).
The 'Waste of Sand' is the Sahara desert. No water, terrible heat, trackless wastes. Populated by cyclopes and elephants. (The Melanese are a little unclear on how the two relate: They have very similar skulls, but the cyclopes are tremendous single-eyed two-legged things, and elephants are tremendous snake-nosed four-legged things. The two are often seen in company of one another, but it's not clear if the cyclopes herd the elephants, the elephants keep the cyclopes as 'guard dogs', or if one gives birth to the other. However, they are unified in their hostility to humans. While not civilized, cyclopes wield both slings and clubs. ("We call them 'Chuck'."). The sling stones range in size from croquet balls to bowling balls.
The 'Waste of Water' (at the foot of the 'T') is where the Middle Sea flows out onto the Oceanus. Navigation in Mela is primitive, and sailing too far out of sight of land is generally considered suicidal. Monstrous creatures like the leviathan (which eats ships) encourage this. The islands of the hobbits exist (somewhere) amidst it, but even the hobbits are hard-pressed to say exactly where. (They merely ride the currents to and from the islands, which are specks of land scattered amidst the water like stars in the sky. )
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