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Originally Posted by Kuru
Animals don't build tools (notice I said "build" and not "use" to prevent somebody tossing the chimpanzees at me).
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This is missing the point again -- namely, that simple tool-building (even if we suppose that the Petty-Dwarves retained some skill in this art) isn't enough to distinguish Incarnate from not. Orcs, for instance, weren't animals in the sense that we think of animals -- but were presumably ripe for being made Elvish pincushions of whenever and wherever they were encountered. I would imagine the Elves progressed rapidly from their evaluation of "cunning two-legged animals" to "believing them to be related to Orcs and creatures of Morgoth" (if indeed there was any meaningful difference between the two evaluations for them).
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Originally Posted by Kuru
I think that the Elves not referring to them as "Naugrim" is probably due to the influence of the Dwarves themselves who likely would not have taken kindly to it.
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Well, maybe... and then again maybe not. According to H-XI, though the great Dwarves despised the Petty-Dwarves, "they still acknowledged their kinship and resented any injuries done to them. [...] it was one of their grievances against the Eldar that they had hunted and slain their lesser kin." It seems unlikely that the Elvish naming was done out of any special consideration for Dwarvish feelings one way or the other.
In any case, the implication seems to be that the Petty-Dwarves lived "in caves" like animals, or at least like Orcs. And if we accept that they were mistaken for animals, and hunted as animals by the Elves, then... well, you know the saying, if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...? There isn't much evidence to support the notion of Petty-Dwarves as only slightly less sophisticated than the great Dwarves.
On the other hand, there
are contradictions here, and I think you're ultimately right that, as you mentioned a few posts back, Tolkien never brought this Petty-Dwarf stuff into a finished, consistent form.