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Originally Posted by Inziladun
The large uruks with possible Mannish blood don't seem to have been around in the First Age, so I'm thinking that Morgoth's Orcs were from whatever the original stock had been. If that stock was indeed Elves, they should have been immune from disease, and Morgoth would have run no risk of infecting his own troops and possibly decimating his own forces by the plague. Especially when it doesn't seem to have really been necessary in a strategic sense.
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I like the internal approach here, but there's a bit of guesswork with respect to the effects of (heritable) corruption. I note this because, as you likely know already, even Tolkien seems to question whether Orcs should be 'immortal' if the stock were Elves -- although in the text concerned he then mused that orcs were beasts and short-lived, and that even if there was an Elvish strain this did not make a heritable state for long-lived orcs, as mixing would result in sterility in any event.
As for large Uruks in the First and Second Ages, if we look at two late statements concerning how tall the Eldar and the Numenoreans were, we are dealing with very tall warriors, at 6.5 to 7 feet, or taller for some. Were these warriors fighting 3 to 5 foot tall orcs?
As I noted above, before
The Lord of the Rings was written, and thus within the context of the Silmarillion as it stood at the time, Tolkien appears to have desired Orcs to have been of nearly human stature -- looking at
The Lord of the Rings, I would say this compares to the large Uruks, since the 'huge' Orc-chieftain in Moria, who must have been an Uruk, was still almost 'man-high', and the half-orcs, or at least some, were 'man-high'. In other words even this huge Uruk was yet of nearly human stature.
Again, this is characterizing an older citation
as if (!) it was written within the same conception as much later descriptions, which I like to be wary about, but
if we accept Orcs of nearly human stature in the First Age, which makes sense to me in any event (we might mix in some large Maiar-orcs), one would arguably assume that orcs diminished in size at some point after the fall of Morgoth. But still we have the Second Age: the Exiled Noldor would be tall, and do we imagine a seven foot (or more, according to one source) Elendil fighting orcs as small as 3.5 feet? or if a large one, say 5 feet? Possibe. Although maybe, if people agree that this seems a bit problematic anyway, the solution could be that the Last Alliance was the real turning point here.
Maybe the nearly man-high great orcs, along with many smaller ones, were almost wiped out at this time, and for many years in the Third Age, some orcs generally dwindled in size, or at least, did not breed in such a way as to produce many large fellows -- thus making the Uruks, especially the almost man-high ones of the Third Age, notable in size by comparison.
Not that JRRT wrote that! I think the Maiar-orcs of the First Age could be larger, stronger, 'immortal' and maybe even immune to disease, but JRRT doesn't seem to have imagined there were that many of these.