I came up with this sketch while I was at work and listening to a video about Paleolithic Fantasy; A fictional world that takes inspiration from the early stone age. Instead of kings and kingdoms you might have small tribes of nomadic people or if they are lucky an early village in a naturally fertile area, maybe not yet farmers but making use of the natural edible grain that grows around them. A Tool made of Copper is not just a tool, it is an incredible innovation that may even feel like Magic to have the knowledge to craft. A Tiger is not just an animal, it is a Monster. And most interestingly, we were not the only hominid race on the planet.

Early humans lived along side and may have interbreed with some of our genetic cousin species like Neanderthal, there is even a real equivalent of "Hobbit" in human history, Homo floresiensis, The Flores Man or the Hobbit People found in Indonesia who stood up to 3ft tall.
I started imagining what if there was a world where you had all the classic fantasy races but they are not magical beings, they really are just hominids that went a different direction than us.

Humans are the Tallest of them setting us apart from the other races by our stamina and ability to cross great distances and make a home almost anywhere.

The Elves I imagined being more like the human equivalent of a Gibbon or a Lemur. Big Eyes for seeing in the dark, big ears to be aware of predators, longer arms and posable toe thumbs for climbing, swinging, and generally spending most of their lives in the trees.

Dwarves fully invested in using caverns, becoming hairier especially around the face as a sort of air filter to protect themselves from getting miners lung breathing in dust, They are also smaller for fitting into small tight spaces but heavily built, and may be the first race to start cold working with copper and iron

Orcs are more like the human equivalent of a Baboon mixed with a Hippo. They look scary and they can be very territorial but their diet is primarily Grass and Grain which they have pot shaped bellies to help them digest.

Goblins are probably the closest to an in between of a hominid and a Chimpanzee

I don't plan on using this idea myself right now, I don't have a story for them anyway, but I thought it was fun to think about the possible ecology of fantasy races taking realism into account and how they might interact and progress?