Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-62.255.98.169-20130504143516/@comment-173.80.208.205-20140702041738

Well, in general, no. It is impossible for something to evolve back into a copy of ancestral stock. If you, for example, bred together wolf-like dogs for generations you may get  something that looks like and acts like a wolf, but it would not, biologically speaking, be a wolf.

And that's the closest you'd ever get. Superficial similarities. And, even then, that'd be with carefully controlled artificial selection for the particular goal of creating a very wolf-like dog. With natural selection acting, that would never happen.

If their intellect did continue improving, and they started communicating with non-Falmer and came out of the caves, they very well could become a more "normal"-looking, civilized Elf race. However, they'd be distinct from the Snow Elves they descended from.

And, also, there's no such thing as de-evolution and it bugs me when people use the term. Evolution has no particular goal, it is simply changes in allelic frequencies over time and through generations. The fact that the Falmer may not be as civilized or intelligent in no way means that they have "devolved", whatever that even means. You could certainly argue that their culture and civilization has regressed horribily, but, ultimately, that doesn't seem to have impacted the Falmer's survivability.

And, ultimately, talking about whether something is more or less evolved is fairly meaningless. What matters (and is measurable) is whether something is more or less fit (ie suited for survival in its environment). And, if anything, Falmer are far better suited for where they live than they would be if they still resembled Snow Elves.