I think it would be interesting if the lore was confusing and conflicting, and if each religion had a different perspective on creation and how Elyria got to present day. It would be kinda like religions in real life.

Remeber this is still all pre-alpha info. Also I would like to think that by the time expo hits we will have a very vague understanding of the backstory/lore of this world. Just as @Barri said I also hope that the lore and mythos is confusing or vague in the beginning. Just as in real life, no one really knows how or why we as humans and man developed the way we did.

Honestly I feel like it would take at least tens of thousands of years for the Tribes as we know them to arise according to evolution, and SBS seems to consider evolution as canonically true in CoE.

History only apply here about the big drought, every thing else is myths that come from 3 sources, the Qindred religion, the Virtori religion and the tribes lore.

Myths are myths no one knows if they really happened as described, but what we know is that something happened. Are Elyrian religions based on some reality ? i do not know and i do not seek to provide an answer to that question.

My goal is to organize knowledge, point incoherences when they arrise and try to go beyond the myth to try link that with history, how to insert facts into myths?

Facts :

• there are 12 tribes of mann
• 4 tribes of mann are not on the starting continent
• the world was a pangaea
• the 4 mann tribes of the temperate region all come from the same proto-neran tribe
• the catalyst that forced the proto-neran to split happened before the virtori war between the virtues and the vices
• the waerd were erishe at some point
• the dras were janoa at some point
• the dras were banished from the tropical forest before the big drought
• the dras were banished from the wet lands after the big drought
• the waerd and the erishe are not on the same continent so the partition between the waerd continent and the erishe continent happened after the second gods war

We have to seek more information to be sure...

In one of the last 3 Tribe Q&A's they said that the 4 "lost" tribes haven't been discovered yet. They pointed out it doesn't mean they aren't on the starting continent, just that they had to be discovered first to be playable.

Evolution can happen fast with appropriate selective pressure applied. It sounds like this world went through quite a cataclysm, so it's not unreasonable that significant changes could happen quickly. Especially if the basal mutation rate is higher than on Earth.

As far as evolution goes, I don't think they necessarily evolved per se as a mutation style evolution but it was more a survival of the fittest. For example the Kypiq, those who were the smallest of the group of Neran who went to the Broadleaf forest fell out of the trees less, if the taller Neran kept falling and getting injured and dying the smaller Neran genes kept getting passed on so in the end after generations the only Neran left were the tiniest ones genetically. Also those with the best eyesight and bigger eyes could judge leaping between trees better and thus survived better and thus their genetics won out when it came to procreation.

Same with the Hrothi, some of the Neran who went to the mountains could have had genuine Dwarfism ala Peter Dinklage or many were small and bulky in general and they found it easier to live in and burrow through smaller tunnels and their children went on to have more children until eventually their genome became the dominant.

It could simply be natural selection over several generations rather than evolution of thousands of years or millenia.