It’s not just magic. In the First Age children were more of a vanity project… every creature in existence had a downright biblical origin. Men don’t even exist

It’s not just magic. In the First Age children were more of a vanity project… every creature in existence had a downright biblical origin. Men don’t even exist until the Second Age, and “cities” at that time are basically just family settlements, with maybe a few dozen generations of men. And at first they’re below replacement rate. Look at the family tree of Beor: http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/B%C3%ABor#Genealogy… http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/B%C3%ABor#Genealogy… no one is having three kids. It’s two or one. The Third Age is only a few thousand years later. There’s just not enough time at those kind of birth rates to blanket a continent the way humans have.