It is an awesome thread - and I am a late-comer. I have once posted the following on another forum:
About “
uruks” and “
uruk-hai”: the words mean almost the same. The latter word means uruk-people - uruks as
race.
I recommend this article on the
Black Speech and its similarities with Hittite language
http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/orkish.htm
But the fact that they were called by the same word doesn’t mean that
Mordor and
Isengard uruks were the same race.
The
Black Uruks of Mordor I believe had NO
mannish blood added in
the Third Age (I leave out the question of the origin of
orcs back in
Utumno). I think they were simply the result of artificial selection among orcs.
Sauron (or the Witck.King, or both) took the biggest , fittest and most resistant to light (therefore with the darkest skin) and bred them over and over again for several generations.
Here is a quote from HOME 12, the draft for Appendix A:
10.
Denethor I. born 2375 lived 102 years died 2477. Great troubles arose in his day. The Morgul-lords having bred in secret a fell race of black Orcs in Mordor assail
Ithilien and over-run it.
It doesn’t seem there was any interbreeding with
men involved, or it would have been mentioned.
As for the Isengarders, I think that the words of
Treebeard (1) and especially the quote from
Morgoth’s Ring (2) leave no doubt that an interbreeding program of Man and orcs DID indeed take place in Isengard.
1. " For these Isengarders are more like wicked Men. It is a mark of
evil things that came in the Great Darkness that they cannot abide the Sun; but
Saruman’s Orcs can endure it, even if they hate it. I wonder what he has done? Are the Men he has ruined, or has he blended the
races of orcs and Men? That would be a black evil!" (The Two
Towers, Treebeard)
2. Finally, there is a cogent point, though horrible to relate. It became clear in time that undoubted Men could under the dominion of Morgoth or his agents in a few generations be reduced almost to the Orc-level of mind and habits; and then they would or could be made to mate with Orcs, producing new breeds, often larger and more cunning. There is no doubt that long afterwards, in the Third Age, Saruman rediscovered this, or learned of it in lore, and in his lust for mastery committed this, his wickedest deed: the interbreeding of Orcs and Men, producing both Men-orcs large and cunning and Orc-men treacherous and vile." (HoMe X: Morgoth’s Ring, Myths Transformed, Text X) )
There is a very important question:
When did the interbreeding program start? - At the earliest, it might have started after 2759 when Saruman took possession of Isengard. He desired to emulate Sauron for a long time – studying the Ring-lore, and breeding-lore (quote 2) as well. Quote 2 tells us that he rediscovered Morgoth’s secret himself.
Alternatively, the breeding could have started much later, when Saruman became ensnared by Sauron via his
palantir (TA 3000 according to the Tale of Years).
This quote from UT that was brought to my attention in one of the replies
dates the breeding program TA 2990.
'The Council seems to have been unaware, since for many years Isengard had been closely guarded, of what went on within its Ring. The use, and possibly special breeding, of Orcs was kept secret, and cannot have begun much before 2990 at earliest. The Orc-troops seem never to have been used beyond the territory of Isengard before the attack on
Rohan.' Unfinished
Tales
If Saruman’s interbreeding program was THAT recent –30 years before the
War of the Ring - there is indeed no way for all ten thousand of Sariman’s uruks to be cross-breeds. Just not enough time.
Some great uruks were already in Saruman’s service prior to 3000.
"
Eomer was born in 2991, and ...
Eowyn ... in 2995. At that time Sauron had arisen again.... Orcs began to raid in the eastern
regions. ... Others also came down from the
Misty Mountains, many being great uruks in the service of Saruman, though it was long before that was suspected (Appendix A, THE
KINGS OF
THE MARK, The Third Line).
He had got some Mordorian Black uruks from
Moria, it seems. Moria was populated by "Sauron’s
creatures" since 2500, probably the same
black uruk race that was spotted in
Minas Morgul in 2475. Others may have been deserters from Mordor, because, as we know from Gorbag and Shagrat, going away to roam in free bands was the sweetest dream of Sauron’s uruks. Perhaps some have found their way to Saruman’s service even prior to Sauron’s return to Mordor.
As Saruman’s uruk-hai were black skinned, there is no doubt that the genetic material used for their "production" were Mordorian black uruks, not white-skinned "maggots" from Moria.
As to the method: Did Saruman go to such lengths as Morgoth did? (Quote2:"undoubted Men could under the dominion of Morgoth or his agents in a few generations be reduced almost to the Orc-level of mind and habits; and then they would or could be made to mate with Orcs” ) - I bet, not. He didn’t have time to train Men for even "a few generations" and he had not Morgoth’s power to pervert creatures. I am sure he took the easiest way, capturing women from Rohan and maybe
Dunland and giving them to his uruks.
The program, undoubtedly, started as small-scale experiment. Of course, not everyone of Saruman’s 10000 uruks had a human mother. The disappearance of several thousand women from the area could not have remained unnoticed. No, I think less than a hundred women taken in raids over the years were used.
It is quite disgusting to talk about, so I will concentrate only on
genetics Let us look at what happened when Saruman crossed a black uruk with a white-skinned blue eyed captive woman. Both white skin and blue eyes may be considered (with some simplification) recessive genes. The first generation would be much like their fathers, with the skin color maybe only a shade lighter. Recessive genes would not be expressed. The first generation would be practically undistinguishable from black uruks. But, if we hypothesize that "resistance to light" is a dominant gene, then this first generation, unlike their fathers, would be resistant to light.
Also these half-breeds would call themselves "uruk-hai", like their fathers did. (I doubt that raised under Saruman’s tutelage they would be proud of their human ancestry or if they even knew about it – likely they were told that their superior abilities were a result of “good training”).
Then, as in the first generation of cross-breeds there were undoubtedly both males and females, Saruman simply made them mate with each other. And here, in total accordance with Mendel’s laws, the recessive genes, inherited from grandmothers, started to appear in about a third of the group. In the third and later generations more recessive genes were expressed, so the mixed-blood population (still in fact 50%
orc 50% human) became more and more heterogeneous, human and orc features appearing in different combinations. And here some would be called "Men-orcs" and used for spying, some would be called "Orc-Men", and the majority of the group, with the dominant genes expressed, would make some of Saruman’s best fighting uruk-hai we meet in the LOTR. Some others would be cross-breeds between half-orcs and orcs. Perhaps even 25% of human blood would assure the resistance to light.
As a side note, in a part of the second and further generations the recessive "fear of light" gene will reappear. I think those unfortunate uruk-babies were simply eliminated.
What I am trying to point out is that one will never get a homogenous population as a result of interbreeding very different genetic material. There would be inevitably those who looked like Black uruks but also those that could be called Men-Orcs and Orc-Men, especially in the second etc. generations. And a white-skinned Orc-Man could be a brother of one of the "uruk-hai".