How is your races' evolutionary history like?

Oh jeez here I go. My setting contains two different superclasses of vertebrates, these being tetrapoda and hexapoda. Two of the "humanoid" races in setting evolved along the hexapod line, along with a great deal of the monsters and sapient non-humanoids like dragons.

The ancestor of the modern Lizardfolk was a six-legged lizard that attracted mates with a form of complex mating song. Over millenia those lizards began to grow larger brains as females prefer longer and more complex songs, eventually hitting a point of bipedalism and intelligence that made them efficient hunters that accompanied their songs with gifts of food. When language began to develop, the songs turned to stories and social behavior went through the roof. In this case their four arms weren't a huge hindrance nor help and mostly stuck around by chance.

With the halfling equivalent, they were mammalian hexapod primates whose extra legs turned to wings, becoming very batlike in appearance. However, unlike bats they remained diurnal and, by virtue of not sharing a continent with dragons, had the sky mostly to themselves as they preyed on birds and insects. Their social behavior went back much longer, and they existed in family units where only higher status individuals could mate, much of which was determined by hunting prowess and food access as well as age. More food = more status, so the little shits got more food any way they could. Remnants of this ancestry is still seen today.

The tetrapod side has standard Humans evolving in the standard way, but Dwarves were a primate species that was uniquely monogamous thanks to a matriarchal family system that arose along with (or because of?) their almost complete lack of sexual dimorphism. With females just as large and strong as males, there was a caste system similar to the not-halfling one. It eventually led to the modern Dwarven clan mentality.

The goddess of life is very hands off and didn't design much personally.

we had sex with them and then killed the purebred ones

Humans evolved naturally. Giants fucking around with the human genome created duergar and drow as servitor races, who devolved into less magical forms later on.

Goblinoids were foul nature spirits that took shape, gnomes were vaguely pleasant nature spirits that took shape. No one knows where the halflings came from, they were just there one day. Orcs were crossbred goblins and humans bred by an ancient wizard to create a superior warrior servitor race.

>God(s). The end.
fixed that for you

magic and giant turtles
magic and turtles all the way down

Almost this but add a new branch or two of layers of "then gods fucked with shit again and it got worse"

Homo Sapiens very, VERY nearly went extinct because of some event in our past, we had a dire population bottleneck (which we still see the problems of even today) and only barely survived. Sure we killed some other Homos, interbred with some other Homos, but it's safe to assume that the rest (whom still existed at that time) died out where we made it by the skin of our teeth.

>Sure we killed some other Homos, interbred with some other Homos,

lol u said homo

no homo

They're all descended from humans. At least all the mammalian or near-enough humanoid ones. Pretty much all are the way they are now from divine intervention (magic changes, selective breeding, etc) but humans are the source.

Of course this was so long ago that no one knows this, but humans being able to crossbreed with any race, while other races only able to breed among their own and with humans, is a clue.

Because they were too busy with being homos to breed.

BRIEF HISTORY OF THE WORLD:

>Dragons: let's make slave races for us!
>Other dragons: Yeah, no way it could go wrong!

>Elves have joined the game!
>Trolls have joined the game!

>Trolls: wow fuck these guys
>Elves: wow fuck these guys

*EVERYTHING GOES WRONG HERE*

>Surviving trolls: Alright, to prevent us from completely dying out we're gonna store our souls in these machines and reincarnate later
>Other surviving trolls: Yeah, no way it could go wrong!

*EVERYTHING GOES WRONG HERE*

>Trolls have left the game!

>Surviving elves: We're back from brink of extinction and what is this
>Surviving elves: Let's make elves great again by meddling with this machinery no one understands anymore!
>Other surviving elves: Yeah, no way it could go wrong!

*SURPRISINGLY IT DOESN'T*

>Dragons: [sad exasperated sigh]
>Dragons have left the game!

>Humans have joined the game!
>Catpeople have joined the game!

>Smartest Elf: you know... don't these guys... look kinda trolly for you?
>Other elves: nah, it's just you. Let's just ignore them, no way it could go wrong.

>Humans: wow fuck these guys
>Catpeople: wow fuck these guys

*EVERYTHING GOES HORRIBLY, HORRIBLY WRONG HERE*

>Dragons: [a careful look from their own pocket dimension]
>Dragons: [even sadder sigh]

A spell blanketing the region is causing accelerated evolution towards the bio-print of the caster. Most races evolve into something that humans call 'human-like', what they don't know is that even they weren't going to look like what they do now, and their appearance was dictated by this ancient race of casters that started the spell.

I have no idea how you would write this down like the OP image. Evolution happening over the course of like, four generations, and suddenly heading sideways.

Made this some weeks ago in MSPaint. I guess I should rename some things and put giants in one of the lines.

This, mostly, plus some tinkering by wizards of different species who didn't know better or didn't have anything to do at the moment. And some extraplanar migration now and then.

>How is your races' evolutionary history like?

Salt?

I like this. How much do the modern species/cultures know about the tetrapod/hexapod differences? Are lizardfolk closer allies to lizard-halfings than they are to humans and dwarves (and vice versa)?

The differences are fairly obvious, but not many really know a whole lot about it. As far as allies go, there's a certain kinship those with the same body plan share but they're typically closer along class lines. Mammals to mammals, reptiles to reptiles, that kind of thing.

Humans are actually an eldritch anomaly that appeared and spread, causing the beastfolk civilisations to collapse.

All races were born simultaneously when the universe itself was created, 23 years ago.

They descended from robots.

Beastfolk are made by humans, by placing animal characteristics on humans to survive better or by a wizard placing human characteristics on animals to create a dumb servitor race.

Unknown and probably heavily meddled with by gods and spirits.

only two that aren't humans warped by are Orcs and gobbos

Something I was writing down 6 months ago.

I like Elven civilization being older, and I like to have Elves being boringly close to humans so my idea is that they're sort of made how Aulë made the dwarves. Knew that elves/humans were coming, so he started making them before elves/humans came.
So creatures like Elves, Dwarves and Gnomes didn't really evolve, they were created by deities. One deity took mixed the essence of earth with the essence of hobbits to create dwarves.

What program did you use to make that tree?

XMind, it's really nice.

Glorious, now I have an excuse to map the evolutionary histories of monstergirls.

So first the Gods came and created everything as a paradise for themselves. Then a trickster figure created or allowed to create the ancestor of humans to be made called the First. The Gods just ignored this as the First invented civilization and climbed the civilizational ladder until they grew powerful enough to challenge the Gods power, and the Gods freak out and try to destroy all of them.

This lasts forever until the head God in rage finds a source of literal darkness, and becomes an unceasing portal of eldritch beings forcing the Gods and First to ally to seal the portal.

They succeed and both are left devestated. The Gods fearing the First will regain their strength they invent dragons to destroy them. This forms a dragon worshipping civilization, and some dragons get down and dirty with the first creating the lizard folk. Unfortunately the First are top tier dragon slayers so they still manage to recover. The Gods decide to just destroy everything, but they lack the power, and only 90% of everything is destroyed.

Left super weak the Gods create Beast Folk in attempt to keep the First weak until they can regain their strength for the next round. It works for a while until the First make friends with the beast folk and together they form classical empires ala Rome and Egypt.

The Gods decide to trick the First rather than destroy them. They rewrite any past histories, they sow dissent and seek to divide them. In this time the First split off into elves Dwarves, humans, giants and Hobbits, and the empires crumble.

Using some leftover eldritch energy, the Gods come up with their last plan. They create demons and demon lords to cull the human population periodically, while they feed on the energy of worship to build enough power to finally destroy existence to start over. Angels are a slave race who are out of the loop. The Gods that people see are actually the lowest ranking divinities who get replaced if they ever dissent.

-Cont

Also there are fey races who are semi-elemental semi-shapeshifting trickster spirits who live in other dimensions that are descended from First who took shelter in other dimensions from the Gods wrath at some point. Most have been conned by the Gods, but the upper echelons have the last intact records and are trying to secretly undermine the Gods plan.

And scattered throughout the world are sentient AI from First civilizations that are in the deepest dungeons either asleep, or quietly still recording everything.

...