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[Halnoth]

DF technology will be always at the level of the 1400s.

Right, but the OP asked how deep dwarves could go IRL.

[a52]

Back to sensory methods, I just realized we're missing a very important and potentially useful adaptation -- echolocation. Unlike light, sound doesn't lose all that much energy on reflection, especially on hard, narrow cave walls. Even humans have some capability for echolocation, and a species adapted to navigation entirely by this method would be able to practically see with it. The ambient sounds from footsteps and other noises would be enough to provide constant echos off the walls, enough to know the terrain and general layout, and they could create directionalized clicks to determine the exact location of specific things.

It could become even more precise if they evolved extra ears on their forehead and back of their heads.

Of course, this wouldn't be precise enough to craft things with, they'd still have to use their eyes for that, which would be why blind dwarves can still mostly function as normal but suffer severe quality losses in high-skill jobs.

EDIT: And the symptoms of cave adaption could be not just the sensory overload from the sun, but also the abundance of soft, non-echoing materials like plants and dirt, rendering their echolocation useless. They'd feel disoriented and awful before they relearned how to function without that added aid and how to use their eyes to navigate again.

[Starver]

It could become even more precise if they evolved extra ears on their forehead and back of their heads.

That's why a group of dorfs wander off into the wilds. It's their wild front ear!

[Bumber]

In my opinion, two (or more) intelligent species could not exist at the same time on the same planet without one wiping out or subjugating the other. As in human history, the group with the more advanced weaponry will win out. I assumed dwarves would advance military tech right along with everything else. Especially if they had other intelligent species to content with.

That doesn't make sense, IMO, given that humans and dwarves have completely opposing attitudes towards sunlight. Neither really wants to engage the other on their own turf.

Maybe the humans get greedy for the dwarves' gold, but then the dwarves just collapse the tunnels on them. I don't really know what the dwarves want from the humans. Surface foods? Poetry? It's easier to just trade.

Really, it's those elves that should be worried. Humans and dwarves tag team them and chop down all their trees for housing and potash.

[Halnoth]

In my opinion, two (or more) intelligent species could not exist at the same time on the same planet without one wiping out or subjugating the other. As in human history, the group with the more advanced weaponry will win out. I assumed dwarves would advance military tech right along with everything else. Especially if they had other intelligent species to content with.

That doesn't make sense, IMO, given that humans and dwarves have completely opposing attitudes towards sunlight. Neither really wants to engage the other on their own turf.

Maybe the humans get greedy for the dwarves' gold, but then the dwarves just collapse the tunnels on them. I don't really know what the dwarves want from the humans. Surface foods? Poetry? It's easier to just trade.

Really, it's those elves that should be worried. Humans and dwarves tag team them and chop down all their trees for housing and potash.

For dwarves to actually exist in the real world with all the same attributes that are normally given to dwarves in a fantasy setting and without additional adaptations they would have to have a significant surface presence. Nearly all life on Earth relies on photosynthesis to produce food.

Even if we ignore the above, the simple fact that modern human civilization relies so much on metal would cause strife.

In my opinion, one group would have wiped out the other group long before the modern era. In most fantasy settings humans reproduce faster but dwarves generally possess more advanced technology. Human history would suggest that the dwarves would win out because generally the group of humans with the better weapons were the more successful. However, from an evolutionary standpoint, the higher birth rate might give the humans a big enough advantage to succeed.

Of course, elves with their wooden weapons are straight out. I can't recall if DF elves have a lower birth rate like in other fantasy settings but without metalurgy elves wouldn't stand a chance.

[GoblinCookie]

In my opinion, two (or more) intelligent species could not exist at the same time on the same planet without one wiping out or subjugating the other. As in human history, the group with the more advanced weaponry will win out. I assumed dwarves would advance military tech right along with everything else. Especially if they had other intelligent species to content with.

The only era in which your historical rules really apply is the 19th Century, but at that point the technological differences we are talking about really come down to machine guns VS no machine guns.  For the millennias prior, more primitive groups frequently defeated more advanced groups, especially when they were fighting on their own turf.

Species, as with races do not actually fight each-other or have technology.  It is groups fight each-other and have technology, those groups can consist of pure species or they can be mixed, equally different groups of the same species can have different levels of technology.  Also because groups are not species, a good number of groups will simply annex the other-species population of the weaker group. 

For dwarves to actually exist in the real world with all the same attributes that are normally given to dwarves in a fantasy setting and without additional adaptations they would have to have a significant surface presence. Nearly all life on Earth relies on photosynthesis to produce food.

Even if we ignore the above, the simple fact that modern human civilization relies so much on metal would cause strife.

In my opinion, one group would have wiped out the other group long before the modern era. In most fantasy settings humans reproduce faster but dwarves generally possess more advanced technology. Human history would suggest that the dwarves would win out because generally the group of humans with the better weapons were the more successful. However, from an evolutionary standpoint, the higher birth rate might give the humans a big enough advantage to succeed.

Of course, elves with their wooden weapons are straight out. I can't recall if DF elves have a lower birth rate like in other fantasy settings but without metalurgy elves wouldn't stand a chance.

The caverns of the real-world are full of lifeforms that have never seen the light of day, so your point about nearly all life relying upon the surface is not correct.  Birth rate does not really matter in most contexts, because the only point at which it will profit to reproduce faster is if the environmental conditions allow you to actually *use* your advantage in birth rate without starving to death.  In most cases the humans are not able to reproduce any faster than the dwarves are. 

Lifespan also matters here.  The shorter your lifespan the higher your birth rate has to be in order to maintain your population.  Since dwarves live longer than humans and elves live even longer than dwarves do, the differences in birth rate probably amount to little in the long run.

[FantasticDorf]

There's so many holes poked into the DF underground, it may actually be well ventilated but the breeze is very very cold when (which as you may note quite a lot of cavern creatures have fur, and those that aren't mammilian are likely not cold-blooded unless lava bathing counts) it passes through the caverns due to the lack of sun & heat which may nullify other things such as making it more difficult to maintain fires for long periods of time in the first place without constant stoking, and help disperse smoke particles clinging to the ceilings.

Spores also circulate rapidly in the air in very fungallly dense areas to make the fungal moss, this is another more grievous threat, but they don't interact with the outside world likely due to climate differences, and dont noticably have a effect on lungs though large masses of collected persistent spores could still possibly cause coughing fits or suffocation.

If the DF underground was a flat exit & entrance under settlements, all the above would be correct on terms of suffocation and possibly stagnant but it also supports many types of natural & supernatural life through naturally supported openings because its very hollow, like the caves in Thailand & Vietnam, erosion besides historical dwarven stonecutting opened up the space.

[Halnoth]

Food webs and energy pyramids are basic middle school science. Literally all life requires an energy source to continue to function. This is because life is essentially an energy transfer system where by kinetic (light, motion, sound, heat, etc) and potential energy (chemical) are transfered back and forth. This system requires a constant input of new outside energy. On Earth there are only really two sources of energy, solar and geothermal, ALL life requires access in some way to one of these two. For the majority of lifeforms on our planet solar is the input. Even in caves, the ecosystem is fueled by an animal that ventures to the surface, or by bacteria and detritus that filters down or into a cave. There are NO animals in existance that live underground, find all their food underground, and are the size of a dwarf. Even if there were, they would not have a large population and would be extremely unlikely to develop the set of adaptations that we associate with dwarves.

[a52]

Food webs and energy pyramids are basic middle school science. Literally all life requires an energy source to continue to function. This is because life is essentially an energy transfer system where by kinetic (light, motion, sound, heat, etc) and potential energy (chemical) are transfered back and forth. This system requires a constant input of new outside energy. On Earth there are only really two sources of energy, solar and geothermal, ALL life requires access in some way to one of these two. For the majority of lifeforms on our planet solar is the input. Even in caves, the ecosystem is fueled by an animal that ventures to the surface, or by bacteria and detritus that filters down or into a cave. There are NO animals in existance that live underground, find all their food underground, and are the size of a dwarf. Even if there were, they would not have a large population and would be extremely unlikely to develop the set of adaptations that we associate with dwarves.

The larger caverns in Dwarf Fortress tend to be very close to lava layers. Bacteria and simple fungi could exploit the energy differential between the hot rock underneath and the cool air blowing in from above (think the tubeworms that live on geothermal vents), and larger life could piggyback off of that.

FantasticDorf makes a very good point about the level of airflow through the tunnels as well -- this would help circulate gasses and mix spores and seeds from different layers. Those spores and seeds could then sprout in different areas, allowing life to spread, or there could be specialized filter feeders that consume the spores drifting near the cavern floor. The energy differential would also help drive these winds even further -- air would be blown in from the surface, cool in the middle layers, sink down to the hot lower layers, then rise back up, creating convection loops.

Life underground wouldn't be easy, and it's definitely unlikely that the dwarves, or any of the large animals we see in the caverns evolved there. But once a simple fungal ecosystem started up, the caverns would be able to support larger and larger animals wandering in and adapting to the environment.

[a52]

In fact, the dwarves themselves could be a primary driver of the ecosystem themselves. They would consistently transport biological materials from the surface to the caves (wood, charcoal, bones, livestock/elf corpses, etc.) while also increasing the number of pathways between the surface and the caves and between different sets of caves.

The increased availability of organic materials would cause an explosion in the local fungi (previously surviving on small mineral deposits carried by aquifers and underground rivers), which would provide more food for the animals.

[Halnoth]

a52, I agree with all of what you just said. This is why I said earlier that any dwarf civilization would need to have a significant surface presence. An energy input from outside (organic matter) would need to be consistent for there to be lifeforms as seen in dwarf fortress caverns.

This is why I think early dwarves would inherently conflict with early humans. Not necesarily in a war format, but rather as competition for resources. One or the other would win out as their socieites progress due to an inherent conflict of interests.

For instance, mining as humans practice it, would probably be seen as incredibly destructive to dwarves who would be interested in maintening their underground spaces. Sort of like knocking over an ant hill.

[Halnoth]

Something else occured to me, if dwarves existed on Earth IRL, then they would probably be of the genus Homo. This would mean that there would be a distinct possibility of interbreeding between the two species. Given the low reproductive potential of dwarves; dwarves as a species might have gone the way of Neaderthal and been bred out of existence. In fact there were several subspecies of the genus Homo that coexisted with Homo Sapiens and were either bred out of existence or they could not compete with Homo Sapien.

Of course they could of been different enough genotypically to prevent interbreeding. Or they weren't of the genus Homo and instead their last common ancester was shared with gorrilas instead of chimps (just as an example).

[Bumber]

The dwarves could go out at night when the sun's down. They probably wouldn't go near human towns if the lanterns were too bright.

Large scale mining is a difficult thing. Humans historically didn't mine that deep, focusing more on the top layers until the invention of TNT. Not sure how the dwarves would go about it, though. Patience and hard work, coupled with a long life?

[FantasticDorf]

Something else occured to me, if dwarves existed on Earth IRL, then they would probably be of the genus Homo. This would mean that there would be a distinct possibility of interbreeding between the two species. Given the low reproductive potential of dwarves; dwarves as a species might have gone the way of Neaderthal and been bred out of existence. In fact there were several subspecies of the genus Homo that coexisted with Homo Sapiens and were either bred out of existence or they could not compete with Homo Sapien.

Of course they could of been different enough genotypically to prevent interbreeding. Or they weren't of the genus Homo and instead their last common ancester was shared with gorrilas instead of chimps (just as an example).

I doubt dwarves are Homo, drunians are more like underground orangutans, as are troglodytes some far detached cousin of great apes the way blind cave bears are almost prehistoric and alien compared to grizzly bears on the surface for examples of inner-space xeno species (a broad term) dwarves are for artistic reference human looking, but that might be because generally upright (of some description) with a malleable neck is a effective bodyplan for creatures supporting a large brain without increasing total mass, quadruped's deal with this worse, wheras aquatic mammals have more space because a lot of development goes into the spine vertibrae & tail/fins so it is effectively one big neck with a usually large headcase.

Lets call them D(warf)omo-Sapiens for reference, detached genus of underground apes with either no eyesight (variably over time like other blind creatures) or highly refined darksight & other translocation. The underground is very demanding, so the creatures are very robust and physical, as are dwarves as of the moment.

(Surface migratory or native missing link of mammal) > Drunians > (missing link/Deep Dwarf splitoff before they got too large to pass through narrow spaces between layers) > Troglodytes > (Missing link) > Dwarves.

Rodents do exist underground and to that point are also super-sized by the surroundings so the best theory for the precursor of drunians would be a kind of small cave monkey like a tamarin of orange fur, given how biodiverse the caverns are a small opportunist vermin like creature would be able to eat the occasional cave sparrow egg, and not be devoured by flying hungry heads, bugbats, and gather stores of mushrooms to hide in cracks in the cavern wall.

The dwarves could go out at night when the sun's down. They probably wouldn't go near human towns if the lanterns were too bright.

Large scale mining is a difficult thing. Humans historically didn't mine that deep, focusing more on the top layers until the invention of TNT. Not sure how the dwarves would go about it, though. Patience and hard work, coupled with a long life?

Cross curiostity, if you were told of strange legends of a land unlike your own where minature men toiled over exotic metals and battled strange beasts you'd have your interest piqued not least by the greed of stealing what they make, in contrast humans appear to be threatening giants in a successfully spreading society as a cause for concern to dwarves. Exercising a larger dominon over the surface (a variable enviroment) than dwarves securing a few caverns at once and making very labour intensive underground roads to cross long distances, while humans spread out across wide open spaces.

Inevitably it causes conflict, the dwarf propensity to make artifacts & very fine good, ontop of a unforgiving authoritarian rule of law and humanity's apparent flaunting of it can brush human/dwarf relationships up very badly.

[a52]

There would definitely be conflict, but that doesn't necessarily mean they couldn't both exist at the same time. In the game, at least, dwarves and men tend to separate into clearly-defined clusters of settlements, despite the fact that they could theoretically live in the same spot (with men above-ground and dwarves below). Borders would help prevent conflict, just like they do in the real world.

Furthermore, because of the large morphological differences between dwarves and men, it's likely that they may have evolved on separate continents or sub-continents, preventing interaction between the two until they were intelligent and seperated/"specie-ized" enough to form diplomatic relationships.