7:17 Isn't it the Stoors who are the Dwarf-like hobbits that can grow beards and sometimes wear boots? And the Harfoots who are the smallest and the "default" hobbits?
I believe you're correct. Sméagol was of the Stoors, the last to migrate westwards, and the Harfoots are the smallest and most numerous. Edit: See my comment below. Stoors have the beards, but Harfoots have the cultural connection to Dwarves.
@@Enerdhil The Harfoots did associate more with Dwarves, and liked living underground more than Fallohides. But they are also explicitly beardless. (Prologue, Concerning Hobbits, LotR)
@@EriktheRed2023 Thanks for the reminder. I knew all this stuff from my "Harfoot" research into the Amazon characters. I guess I flushed all that knowledge out with the 💩 that the series is nded up being.😅
In the third book of the Space Trilogy, Lewis actually tips his hand that the whole thing is Tolkien fan fiction; Merlin is an istari, and Arthur (and from him the main character, Ransom, who is molded in appearance and character after a young Tolkien) is a descendant of the kings of Numenor.
IIRC Tolkien betrayed some irritation at what he perceived as Lewis' misrepresentation of 'his' Numenor ideas🤣 I thought it was rather sweet, particularly Ransom (the original action-hero linguistics professor IN SPACE!) being a calque on Tolkien. There's a reference to 'Tor and Tinidril' (ie Tuor and Idril) in there somewhere too... Perelandra maybe?....
@@GirlNextGondor: Yes, Perelandra. In the last chapter the Oyarsa of Venus gives the King and Queen a string of paired names, of which Tor and Tinidril are the ones that stick for the rest of the chapter (e.g. in indicating who is speaking at any point). ... I think it was Tolkien who commented somewhere that besides this derivation, Lewis seemed to have modeled "eldil" on "eldar." ... In the last volume, _That Hideous Strength_ (which Tolkien didn't like as much), Ransom ceased to be modeled on Tolkien and became a "fancy portrait" (Lewis's term) of Charles Williams instead, including Williams's tendency to attract a sort of cult-like following (not what you'd expect of the Ransom of the earlier volumes).
I forget if you mentioned this in this episode, but I think that the link that you are looking for between the Orcs & the Drûghu (as they called themselves) is this passage from *Unfinished Tales*, in the Druedain section (p. 379 of my edition), and talking about how the Orcs feared the Drûghu watch-stones: ‘These figures served not merely as insults to their enemies; for the Orcs feared them and believed them to be filled with the malice of the *Oghor-hai* (for so they named the Drúedain), and able to hold communication with them.’ Tolkien absolutely knew that the /gh/ phoneme in English is related to the /ch/ phoneme in German (English “light” = German “licht”, English “night” = German “nacht”, and so on). So when he has the Orcs referring to the Drúedain as “oghor-hai”, it’s likely not to be pronounced as an aspirated /g/ but rather as an aspirated /k/ sound, as in ‘loch’. So he’s telling us that the Orcs call the Drúedain something that sounds like “ochre-hai”, of which the first syllable is very similar to the word “orc”. Further, in the notes on this section (Note 6, pg. 385 in my edition) that the /gh/ in Drûghu represents a spirantal (ie: fricative, or voiced) consonant, which would make it a parallel with the English “night” / German “nacht”, above. Assuming that Tolkien is following the Welsh use of the caret (the “hat” on the letter “u”), then the first “u” carries the emphasis & is a long sound and the second “u” is a short sound. Hence Drûghu is pronounced something like “droh-kheh”. If we assume that the initial “dr” consonant sound is dropped and that Orc speech features an intrusive-R feature (adding an “R” sound to separate two vowel sounds in consecutive words, “Brenda-r-and-Eddie” from Billy Joel’s ‘Scenes from an Italian Restaurant’) we could end up with [dr]Oh-khe-r-hai (with the “E” in the second syllable being a schwa, an unstressed & voiceless vowel). The only remaining hurdle is adjacent metathesis (like “Calvary” for “cavalry”). This is a common-ish feature of the transition from Old to Middle/Modern English: OE “bridd” became ME “bird”; OE “hros” became ME “horse”; OE “thrid” became ME “third”. The letter /r/ is known to be very flexible linguistically, moving around within words & word phrases relatively often. So it’s probably reasonable to assume that the /r/ moved from after the “gh”/“kh” sound in “oghor-hai” to give us “orc-hai” and finally “orc”, giving us a hypothetical linguistic progression from Drûghu > [dr]ogho-hai > ocho-er-hai > ochor-hai > orc-hai or orog-hai. If this progression tracks linguistically, then we have a decent amount of evidence that would support a hypothesis that the Orcs were a subspecies from the same lineage as the Drûghu and originated during the Great Darkness of the First Age. Now, I’m just working with a barely-remembered Introduction to Linguistics class and quick references to relevant Wikipedia entries for a reminder of how the basic mechanics of this stuff works. So if there’s an actual person with real linguistics knowledge who can jump in and correct any mistakes I’ve made here, that would be awesome.
In his video "Tolkien's Elves", In Deep Geek explains that there are three different elven tribes, because there were three tribes of Germanic immigrants who came settled in England: Angles, Saxons and Jutes. This sounds reasonable, since Tolkien was professor for Old English and therefore quite interested in the history of this language and the cultures which were at the base of it.
*GirlNextGondor uploads a video* Me: I had not even the slightest idea this topic could even exist, but it is so interesting I cannot believe I didn't think earlier about it and now I can't stop thinking about it
The connection theory between drugs and uruks is amazing, but there's one issue. It would've made complete sense for orcs, due to their lifestyle and lineage, to be naturally shortlived, but then there are Azog and Bolg, who both aproximate quite Nunenorean or dwarvish lifespans. Also, PIE language is at this point as "hypothetical" as evolution.
So delightful for you to bring Proto-Indo-European into the mix- as a connoisseur of languages, that’s *exactly* the sort of thing Tolkien would have kept up with the research of, and drawn inspiration from for his works.
Listen, just wanted to drop a comment to say how much i appreciate all the work you put into these. You're not just my favourite UA-cam creator, but also my favourite Tolkien expert, and honestly close to my heart because you've unknowingly been with me through really tough times. I'm just grateful ❤
💖deeply appreciated as always, my dear. I'm always glad to hear that my videos help people out, even if just in a small way. Hope you continue to find fellowship and food for thought, here and wherever else you seek it! 🌟
Another video so soon? And on a topic I've actually studied? Fantastic! Some things you mentioned: Proto-Indo-European is a huge rabbit hole you can dive into. There are varying degrees of speculation going on there, some people think they can reconstruct the PIE cosmology and mythology by analyzing later mythologies, linguistics and the like. It's good stuff though one should always be careful not to just instantly accept any of the most elaborate theories as the more fanciful you get the more leaps of logic and assumptions you have to make. But it must surely have been in Tolkien's mind when he wrote about the various people of Arda migrating from the east. If you want to really blow your mind, look up Doggerland. As it turns out back in the rough era when Tolkien set his ficticious slice of history there WAS a further chunk of land west of the current land mass of Europe, namely Doggerland. It was a lowlands area that connected France, Belgium and the Netherlands and the British isles were the high points of the region. Several British and continental rivers were once connected into one river through this area. However due to flooding, Doggerland was submerged and the highest points are now reefs and sandbanks in the north sea. AKA Beleriand is real. (Okay Doggerland is a lot smaller than Beleriand and Tolkien's story was much more influenced by pure myths like Hy-Brasil but _still_. We need to name some island there after the island where Turin's grave is ) In regards to the Druedain, I always wonder if the connection between them and the orcs had something to do with the "darkening" that happened at the dawn of humanity back in Hildorien. This darkening has always been so mysterious to me because I don't think Tolkien EVER wrote any solid theory on what it could have been, but if it involved Morgoth splitting orcs off from men then yeah, I guess that might be part of it. In regards to Tolkien talking about "scientific novels", the term "science fiction" existed when he was a young man but was not commonly accepted. Hugo Gernsback who condified the genre prefered terms like "scientification" and there were a slew of terms for it that competed for the first four decades of the 20th century. So I think to Tolkien and Lewish, "science fiction" was just not common parlance. Finally it is very fitting that a relatively newly discovered human species of short stature (Homo floriensis) was widely called "the real-life hobbits" after their discovery due to the proximity to the Peter Jackson movies. Great video!
The first Indoeuropean triade that comes to my mind would be Italoceltic, Germanic, and Slavic - these three covered basically all the Northwest and Center of Europe
I love listening to your videos when I crochet. They're interesting and kinda soothing. Excellent listens for when your hands are occupied making things or cooking but you want something thoughtful to listen to. They are usually on the longer side, which is perfect because when your hands are wet or wrapped in yarn or something, switching between short videos every few minutes is inconvenient.
While Tolkien stated he wanted Arda to be our Earth he was equally as clear that the timeline was imaginary, as in totally imaginary. He uses that word "imaginary". Though JRRT did not use the phrase (as far as I have found) "alternate universe" he certainly seems to have been thinking somewhat down those lines. Still, I think the obvious creationism in JRRT's created world so overwhelms any other interpretation that I can't get away from looking at Arda as another instance of the ancient near-east cosmology.
Definitely - particularly in letters and interviews where the inquirer might have suspected that Tolkien had some rather esoteric beliefs, he made it very clear that M-e was an 'invented' world, a 'sub-creation' that came from his imagination and not something he mistook for Primary Reality. "Alternative universe" (or 'alternate timeline') seems pretty close to how that project would be described nowadays. (Coincidentally I think that's why people are often confused or frustrated about the length Tolkien went to in his last writings, trying to make the timelines more 'naturalistic' or rewrite the story of the Sun and Moon so that they synced up better with astronomy. Those things work just fine in the story from a Secondary Belief standpoint, and Tolkien seems so adamant elsewhere that you *shouldn't* try to apply real-world physics to a 'fairy-story' or fantastic world, so it's odd to see him focusing in on those details when he could have been - oh, I don't know - *actually finishing the Silmarillion* 😭)
@@GirlNextGondor Along those lines, in one of Tolkien's published letters he throws some serious shade at those who call themselves physicists. The constant tension between Tolkien's (Catholic/Christian dominated) archaic views and his self-awareness that the post-WWII society was ever more interested in science (especially space exploration) seems to me to be a large part of his later letters. Today's authors fully embrace that they have a freedom to make as many alternative universes as needed, but perhaps Tolkien thought his own creation had to be simultaneously consistent with modernity and much older views of the cosmos.
@@GirlNextGondor not to mention, trying to make your alternate history sync up too closely with the current scientific theories will end up dating your work (as opposed to making a timeless myth), as observations of the natural world are constantly re-interpreted and old theories are frequently contradicted by new ones
I think it's nice that Tolkien put thought into making myths somewhat congruent with scientific knowledge. When I read about how Tolkien and Lewis scoffed at _Voyage to Arcturus's_ "back-rays and crystal torpedo ships", it reminds me of Margaret Atwood dismissing sci-fi as "talking squids in outer space", a contempt for modern sense of wonder compared to the ancient equivalent. But when I learn about how Tolkien made an effort to consider modern cosmology and paleontology, I think, "Oh, so he wasn't that stuffy, at least not in the '40s and onwards".
Perhaps the laughter of the Drúedain indicates that there were some of their ancestors who could be used by Melkor to breed effective Orcs. Those then were taken or fell, and only those with a different spirit, expressed in their laughter, went on to become the Drúedain we know.
For info about the PIE I can greatly recommend the youtube channels "Crecganford" and "Dan Davis"! So cool to see my interests in prehistory and Tolkien come together like this😃
I don't know about that Crecganford guy. I don't have the knowledge to know for sure that he spreads BS, but he has strong LARPer misinfo vibes. I'd suggest Jackson Crawford way before him. Crawford studies Old Norse, but some of his videos and discussions go into PIE.
Tolkien would've been *very* familiar with Proto-Indo-European. The crucial thing about language families of course is how the *differences* between them show regular patterns. Since it's long been surmised that these languages were introduced to Western Europe by steppe nomads, the Wain Riders could be seen as an early prototype of the kind of migration involved.
"Tolkien would've been very familiar with Proto-Indo-European" - perhaps, from the linguistics aspect. But when Tolkien went to school, and in his early professional life, anthropology was still stuck in very racialist ways (something with Tolkien himself expresses.) Today's anthropology and current thinking about migrations is different than back in the early 20th century.
Fwiw I did poke around to see whether the early formulation of the theory had changed significantly (or if it had been motivated more by outdated social/racial theories than by linguistics) and was surprised to find that the current prevailing hypothesis had been in place since the turn of the 20th century. What conclusions or interpretations could be drawn from it no doubt vary based on, well, let's say a variety of factors including historical and cultural ones? 😬 but the basic shape of it has been borne out so far!
@@GirlNextGondor I remember reading that some scholars started noticing that some words in some languages could be traced back to increasingly similar words in older languages some centuries ago. Long before the idea of a Proto-Indo-European language came about but beginnings of the idea have been around for quite some time.
The Druedain / Orc question (and some evolutionary concept) is much less troublesome when you condsider Tolkien’s work in the collections we now have as “Nature of Middle-Earth.” There he was “erasing” the concept of pre-solar Arda (except perhaps as an in-universe, mythic tradition; Silmarillion doesn’t go away but becomes a true myth rather than an accurate history). This forced Tolkien to wrestle with the timeline and he drafted several possible revisions to restore coherency in an Arda where the Sun and Moon were creations of Eru and existed before the Valar came down to order/populate things. In some of these speculative timelines, Men awoke much earlier and spent more time migrating West; that gives more time for some genetic diversification (micro-evolutionary scale) but also, and more importantly, gives more time for Men to have been taken by Morgoth and corrupted into orcs in time to trouble the Elves in Beleriand.
13:48 this is a very interesting point, because there is a hypothesis that was formulated around the 1920s called the Trifunctional Hypothesis, which states that PIE society was divided up between three groups: priests, warriors and commoners, which would match up with the three different flavours of the different peoples of middle earth
3:27 The source of "I much prefer history, true or feigned" is not "On Fairy-stories" but the Foreword to the Second Edition of LotR (in the paragraph that begins "Other arrangements could be devised"). (Comment written before watching beyond this point.)
Hi! Huge fan of your content and first time commenter. A potential parallel to the three branches pattern that Tolkien might have been familiar with is Tacitus' grouping of Germanic tribes into three groups: the Istvaeones, Ingvaeones, and Irminiones, who correspond to the three children of Mannus. In 1942 these accounts were used to propose three groupings of West Germanic languages: Istvaeonic (would include Modern Dutch, Afrikaans, and other closely related languages), Ingvaeonic (would include English, Scots, Frisian, Low German, and others) and Irminionic (would include Modern Standard German and related dialect, Bavarian, Alemannic, and some others) Another parallel could be the story of Lech, Czech, and Rus, three brothers who split off in different directions and became the ancestors of Poles , Czechs and Slovaks , and Ruthenians (modern day Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Rusyns)
I've always wondered, on the elves→orcs model, whether there was a hall for Orcs in the halls of Mandos, and what that would be like, what an orcish soul would be like. This video has made me think for the first time about the destiny of Druedain souls. This really is a thorny business.
"what an orcish soul would be like" - Eru Ilúvatar is the source of "souls" as he alone can breath the Eternal Fire or Flame Imperishable into creatures . The Dwarves originally didn't have them being created by Aulë but Ilúvatar permitted them to live and upgraded them. Other creatures like the Eagles and Ents seem to have undergone a similar process, their creation by the Ainur approved by Ilúvatar. While hearts and minds can be twisted by Melkor, Sauron, Saruman, there is no evidence that their actual souls can be twisted or the Flame Imperishable altered. It is "imperishable" and "eternal". The whole idea of souls is nebulous, only certain special people resurrected like Glorfindel (who were not spirit beings to begin with like the Valar or Maiar). Otherwise there isn't much on whether identity persists after death, the common understanding of the term 'soul'. So orcs, or Uruk, have the same soul, the Flame Imperishable, as everyone else. That was the brilliance of Adar (the best thing about Rings of Power). Tolkien himself wrestled with this over the years, never at ease with his previous "it's okay to kill them on sight" and irredeemable nature of orcs. I actually think he'd enjoy the character of Adar.
@@seasidescott Tolkien explains how Elvish immortality and how they return from the Halls of Mandos in the HoME books Morgoth's Ring and The People's of Middle-Earth. All Elves can return to life after completing their time in the Halls of Mandos (how long that is depends on the Elf and how they lived their life). Glorfindel is simply the one named Elf we know returned to Middle-Earth as opposed to remaining in Valinor. There's also information on the fate of Men although not as much because they don't return to life except for Beren.
@@istari0 - If Elves are so damned immortal, then why was the "Kinslaying" such a big deal? Fëanor was just goofing around, no one really hurt permanently. If all the good peoples of Middle Earth are eventually reborn in some paradise then who cares what Sauron does? If the orcs don't enjoy the same treatment then only their lives, the only ones they have in the one body they have, are truly meaningful. Thorin said he was going to the "halls of waiting" just before dying; but, of course, Dwarves don't get into the Elven part. You are taking those obscure references as unchanging fact? Even the story of Gandalf reborn is nebulous. It says his spirit left but then was sent back (not quite dead yet) and the eagle bore him body to Lothlorien. He also had his same sword. He wasn't reembodied like the stories of Elves in Mandros. All these stories are similar to our own mythology of "souls"; mixed up and changed over time and by Hollywood. Every major Christian sect officially states that people's bodies will be resurrected "at the end of days" when Jesus returns (again again) - none of that dying and going to Heaven immediately and smiling down on your loved ones. No going to Hell either. What exactly is supposed to be going on is contradicted often in the Bible and most of what people believe is from later stories and comforting words to children. And the Christians had to come up with some new story after the 2nd coming (or 3rd?) didn't happen in their lifetimes as Jesus had told them. Oh, and there are no immortal souls of humans in the Bible: only God is immortal and His Breath that animates the bodies made from dust for a brief time. Buddha, when asked by some students about souls said he didn't know anything about souls. Yet people came up with elaborate stories about his eternal soul escaping the wheel of reincarnation, etc. It all reminds me of a what I've heard repeated in many families where the children were told to be good and obedient or they wouldn't get the trust funds set up for them when they got older. Years and years worrying about that only for the kids to later learn that their parents had made it up - no inheritance awaited them. Others that actually got something had sacrificed so much of their lives and became people twisted by chasing it, never happy (Gollum and his Ring?). Tolkien only gives us legends and tales from long ago. The one actual character in the book who seems to have some experience with it, Gandalf, had his spirit leave his body for what? a second, a minute, or an hour? We don't know. Sounds like people resuscitated by doctors or paramedics who say "I died and came back". So little information is given that we fill in details with our own current beliefs.
This was fascinating as ever GNG. i thought hwen i read LotR for the first toime a little over fifty years ago, that i had become a fan of fantasy. this is true, what i had not realised was at the same time tolkien had sneakily turned me into an amtuer philologist. i find these topics truly fascinating. Thank you.
Another great one Girl! Are you planning any super long form stuff like you did with Helen? I listened to that three part series yall did, while rolling hundreds of dollars in pennies, it carried me through.
As much problems with the timeline that idea brings with it... But answering the question "could there potentially be a good orc?" with "There ARE good orcs... and they are called Druedain." has a LOT going for it.
If we accept for the moment that Tolkien was prepared to seriously overhaul the timeline anyway, I think it's the most elegant solution to the Problem of Orcs
Sweet video! Thanks! Interesting to put those together. Theres a channel called Creganford that gets, scholarly, all into PIE mythology (along with its development into european mythology). You might get really into it.
I dunno about that Crecganford guy. He seems like the kind of guy who will take one study and run to wild places with it. I don't have the expertise to know he's a charlatan, but I can apply the smell test.
I was just thinking about this sort of thing, the seeming similarities between the ancient Middle Earth migrations and how it might relate to Proto Indo European migrations and language groups. I am fond of the theory that PIE was a language of commerce between groups, but that it did originate from one specific place or people from around the Black Sea. Maybe that people was particularly adventurous, well traveled and successful in trade, using some sort of revolutionary technology this people developed first that met the needs of the changing world. (Look at the ancient origins of Denisovans and the theory that this proto human group were the first to domesticate and ride horses, as well as craft extremely fine jewelry!) You pointed out in another video about how in LOTR Merry and Eomer have a conversation about the similarities between the languages of Hobbits and Rohan. which gives credence to the theories you discuss here. I love your breakdown of the triad of similarities between the different 'flavors' of Hobbits, Men and Elves. There is no way that's a coincidence! What I think is, Tolkien wants to show us the will of Illuvatar in creation throughout these different peoples, that there is always a balance preserved on different levels of analysis. Reality is 'fractal' in a sense. So It's inevitable that things naturally unfold this way, with the threefold counterparts, appearing both 'vertically' and 'horizontally.' The idea that the Druedain are the original stock of the Orcs is intriguing and compelling. Even if Tolkien never explicitly stated that it was the case, he definitely thought about it, at least subconsciously. They are 'edain' (human). But just because middle earth history has it that Men appeared liong after elves does not necessarily preclude the idea that there were proto men. From the perspective of the history of middle earth, the proto human is not exactly relevant because it leaves behind no obvious physical legacy. But it is definitely implied that a 'less advanced' race of people not only can exist but they still DO exist in Aragorn's time. They retain more animalistic characteristics, like the keen sense of smell, lesser technology, they're physically built like tanks and have short lifespans because no doubt their lifestyle is hard and cruel. It makes sense for Morgoth to just pick a species from among already existing races that were the closest to what he needed, but turn it to evil purposes. Evil is always lazy, and cannot create anything, it can only blend and corrupt other things together almost beyond recognition.
Sean Carroll has a good Mindscape podcast episode with Stefanos Geroulanos on "the Invention of Prehistory". Geroulanos described how everyone figured mankind arose in the East and migrated westward, until we started finding lots of ancestral fossils in Africa starting in 1947. Before those fossils, the most famous was Peking Man in China. That, along with Biblical notions of Eden being in the East, may factor into why Tolkien placed Hildorien on the east coast of Middle-earth. However, I think it's important to remember that the westward migrations in Tolkien are a logical conclusion of basing the early stories thematically on the _immrama,_ the Irish tales of voyages to magical islands in the west. If the stories of St. Brendan and King Arthur and so on had placed the Tir na nOg and Avallon in the north, east or south, Aman might have been in those directions instead. But Tolkien wanted to evoke voyages across the western sea with Tol Eressea and Aman, and that means people have to start out east of the western shores, and the farther east they start the more mythic. That would be the case even if Tolkien was unaware the PIE languages spread from the Pontic steppe to the west (and east). And we know Tolkien knew of Proto-Indo-European through that draft of a letter he wrote to German publishers: "I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by _arisch._ I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-iranian... But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people."
Another thing I think Tolkien could be referencing with that "eastern migration and 3 different houses of elves/men/hobbits" thing could definitely be the Germanic invasions of Britain. There you had three distinct but closely related Germanic tribes, the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes invading Britain from the East (modern day Denmark) and establishing a bunch of kingdoms that would later on become England, to which Tolkien initially wished to dedicate his mythology. We even have a bit of a parallel on the specific flavors of the tribes, with the Jutes being the least numerous ones (only really settling in Kent) and having blonder hair than the other tribes due to being from the northernmost areas of Denmark; the Saxons being the more Dwarfy tribe maybe due to their skills at metalsmithing (the Sutton Hoo helmet for example); and the Angles being the baseline, more numerous tribe after whom England is named. Another interesting thing that I don't think Tolkien was aware of because the usage of autosomal DNA in archaeology is very recent afaik, but the appearances of the Dunedain, the Middle-Men and the Northmen kinda line up with the appearances of the three main prehistoric human groups of Europe: the dark-haired, blue-eyed Dunedain kinda resemble the dark-haired, blue-eyed and tan/brown-skinned Western Hunter Gatherers (their main descendants are Scandinavians); the swarthy, brown-haired Middle-Men kinda resemble the olive-skinned, brown haired Early European Farmers (their main descendants are Mediterranean peoples like Greeks and Spaniards); and the Northmen kinda resemble the Proto Indo-Europeans, not so much in appearance as they weren't as predominantly blonde as the Rohirrim, but yes in lifestyle, as both were very horse-centric pastoralist nomads who'd go on to conquer the lands belonging to the Dunlendings and Early European Farmers respectively. Also, on the Druedain thing, I still personally prefer the Orcs being tortured Elves angle, but its clear that Tolkien wanted Orcs to either be of mannish stock or to be partly that. Still, my personal headcanon is that Orcs are descended from Elves (as I'm pretty sure the Orcs hate Elves more than anything, and their hatred of the Drughu is more like the hatred they have for everyone else), and that the Druedain hate them so much because, perhaps, some memory of that ancient time at Cuivienen when Men awoke and chose to follow Morgoth (which all Men did iirc), maybe the Drughu were the first to run away from Morgoth's dominion, as they seem capable of "magic" and have a special ability to detect bad shit before it hits the fan (like the Numenorean Drughu leaving before the island sank), so maybe Orcs see them as renegades because they were the first tribe of Men to "defect" from the Shadow, and as such they were the first tribe of Men to be hunted by Orcs. Also, I don't think (and maybe I'm completely wrong) that Tolkien meant the Orcs to be mortal originally, but rather that it was exceedingly rare for an Orc to ever live past, say, 40 or 50 years due to how disposable and prone to violence they were. Another theory on the Drughu I heard that I'm not sure is substantiated at all, is that Hobbits are descended from the Druedain, specifically from a group of Beleriand Druedain that might have found Dior's twins after Amrod and/or Amras left them on the forest to die. I don't think or know if there's anything to back up that claim, but I find the idea that the Hobbits have a tiny little bit of Beren and Luthien in them pretty neat.
Very interesting. Thank you. On the triads of races theme, it might be significant that in Lewis's "Out of the Silent Planet," there are three species of Martians: seroni, hrossa, and pfiffltriggi. I'm pretty sure you got the labels switched on "Stoors" and "Harfoots." Summarizing from "On Hobbits" at the front of LotR, Harfoots are shortest, slightest, and darkest, are the most numerous and typical of hobbits, and had the most to do with dwarves. Stoors *look* most like dwarves--able to grow some peachfuzz on the chin, wearing "dwarf boots" in swampy areas--but have most to do with Men. Don't be reluctant to introduce evolution into the discussion. Tolkien alluded to biological deep time in the Silmarillion when he notes that, while Middle-Earth lay in darkness and the Valar were away, animals developed into huge, grotesque beasts. Please do go on in this vein.
Tolkien was often vague or mysterious about certain details, but he did say the first elves were formed of the soil of Arda and awoke. With Man being the Second Children of Illuvatar, I'd imagine a similar origin for them. That doesn't discount evolution as a natural process within ME, but I doubt Tolkien would have Man origin stem from it. It still is fantasy, after all, not an actual historical mythos.
Can you make a video about the bodily forms and functions of Ainu ? ( fana , ealar etc ) this I think is a fascinating topic covered by no one yet. There are interesting hints about their speed and bodily resilience as well. I found this kind of topics pretty intriguing among all of Tolkiens works. A great example would be this It is hinted twice in both early versions of the Beren and Luthien that dwarves of Nogrod tried to get to Melian and disembody her but they failed because of Melians Ainurin inheritance. Why is that? It is also hinted in the Letters that Saurons capture was voluntary and he was “ far too powerfull “ to be captured by Numenoreans. One might say because Sauron was still a shapeshifter he could be a bat and fly but appearently no. Melian was unable to change shape or even take of her raiment until Thingol and Luthien was killed. So both Melian and Sauron “somehow” could defend themselves from incoming armies while even Mordor and Doriath couldnt . Do you guys have any theory why that might be?
I think Melian could not change her appearance, because she was "fully" incarnated due to her becoming a mother. Perhaps it's somewhat similar to the Istari, who accepted the limitations of full incarnation to fulfill their purpose. Whereas Sauron, in the days of Númenór, was still taking and changing shape according to the way all other Maiar could.
@@LeHobbitFan That is the case but as we see results are the same. Melian could never transform herself to a bird and escape as long as Luthien was alive ( it is said after her death Melian took of her reimant and fled to Valinor ) so Melian and Sauron had an ability that allowed them to resist such armies without using shapeshifting. It is hinted in the Lost Road that Sauron created a tsunami to impress Numenoreans while Numenor was transporting him to Numenor and on the road and that tsunami nearly destroyed their ships. I can imagine Sauron destroying Numenoreans by himself but Melian never seemed that offensive to me. Dain the Ironfoot also said that they could never defeat Balrog as long as another power helped them, that being Gandalf of course. Maybe it required divine power to disembody an Ainu? I dont really know
@@oguzhanenescetin5702 The version in The Lost Road is an earlier version that was superseded by the later version we see in The Silmarillion. I would say Sauron decided to surrender after seeing his armies in some form refuse to fight the Númenoreans. However, he made the decision to surrender to suborn the Númenoreans from within, otherwise he would have likely fled eastward as he did after the War of Wrath. We know Ecthelion and Glorfindel slew Balrogs in Beleriand during the War of the Jewels and Elendil and Gil-Galad slew Sauron so divine power is not needed to slay an Ainu, at least not a Maia.
@@istari0 "Ar-Pharazon terrified Sauron's subjects not Sauron himself,Saurons surrender was voluntary and cunning." "So Sauron had recourse to guile.He submitted, and was carried off to Numenor as a prisoner-hostage.But he was of course a "divine" person ( in terms of this mythology; a lesser member of the race of Valar) and thus far too powerfull to be controlled in this way." Sauron could escape them somehow text makes it clear .Sauron was killed by Elendil and Gil simply because he was weakened after Numenors fall and the things Ecthelion and Glorfindel killed were not wholly Balrogs either. Post-Lotr Balrogs are way more advanced compared to Silmarillion Balrogs or at least by the perspective of author.
As an alternative to the Drúedain and Orcs being offshoots from Homo Erectus (which I have to confess I think opens up big issues regarding the amount of time evolution takes), I'd like to suggest the following. Men awaken in Hildórien but earlier than in The Silmarillion, perhaps even shortly after the Elves. However, the Valar do not discover Men; they only find the Elves. Melkor on the other hand finds Men and takes some (this would occur before the War for the Sake of the Elves) to corrupt to his own purposes. After the war, Melkor is locked up but Sauron is still around to continue his master's work. This allows for the existence of large numbers of orcs before Morgoth returns to Middle-Earth. However, sometime during this process of creating orcs, before they have been corrupted all that much, some of them rebel and escape. These would be the Drúedain. This still doesn't resolve the issue of Orcs and their having souls but as you say Tolkien hadn't resolved that either.
I did find it interesting that Orcs and Drugs mutually deride each other as *renegades,* ie betrayers and deserters, which implies an initial shared loyalty, maybe not to Morgoth but to *some* kind of cause - perhaps the fair-sounding proposals with which Morgoth (or his lieutenant) seduced the proto-Druedain. As it became clear Sauron was lying and their very genes were suffering as a result, there was a schism between those who remained loyal to *Sauron* personally, or maybe the edifice of Morgoth-worship he'd created, and those who remained loyal to the ideals he falsely espoused. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?) one guess is as good as another (unless someone discovers a 20-page essay titled 'An Inquiry on the Evolution of back-spirants in Melkorian and pseudoMelkorian tongues' in their auntie's attic that just so happens to contain Tolkien's final, complete, and clearly expressed views on the matter 🤣)
I think i found new binge-able channel for me :) This is second video ive watched and im blown away. Do you by any chance have a background in academia ? Because your videos sound like made by a scholar rather than a fan. Love it!
24:01 how about this? the first orcs were lesser spirits that morgoth had convinced into inhabiting mud and rock statues, once those got killed the spirits could just return and inhabit new bodies. but after a time the spirits started to give him lip, so he started experimenting with other ways of making servants, and then he turned to the elves and humans he had imprisoned and was forcing to work for him.
First, regarding the quote about Tolkien preferring history, true or feigned. This was said in the context of allegory, not myth. I think it is somewhat of a mischaracterization to imply that Tolkien had a over-arching tension between preference for myth or history. Even the distinction itself is a little, perhaps anachronistic, to Tolkien's worldview. The concept of myth making or mythopoesis, was central to Tolkien's artistic vision and aesthetic sentiments. This was something he shared in common with C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Owen Barfield. They all had the core idea that mythic imagination was not only not antithetical to fact or truth, but can even be an essential means of seeing and apprehending truth. They all influenced each other in this notion, and they all expressed it differently in their work, but it is there in all of them. It was Tolkien (and Hugo Dyson) who famously convinced Lewis that Myth could be both true, and historically factual. Lewis had, up to that point, a deep attraction to mythology and poetics, but believed that they conflicted with his materialist, fact-based worldview. He referred to them as "breathing lies through silver". Tolkien and Lewis both, then, distinguished between myth which conveyed truth, but was not factual (lacked primary reality) and myth which conveyed truth and was factual (had primary reality). I would submit that this is perhaps the tension that Tolkien is trying to work out when he puzzles and niggles over problems like the believability of the changing of Arda at the sinking of Numenor, and the problems resulting from the world being lit by the lamps, or the trees etc. It isn't so much a tension between myth and history, but rather trying to come as close as possible to giving his myth the consistency of primary reality. Perhaps a small distinction, but I think an important one. I would argue also, that perhaps the issue was simply that he was trying to logically work out the consequences of setting his story in the primary reality of our world. Regarding the splitting into three 'families' during the great migrations. I've never thought about this before, but one of the first ideas that jumps to mind is the table of nations in Genesis. In this tradition, the 70 nations of men are all grouped into three basic people groups stemming from Noah's three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. In this division, the line of Shem is considered the inheritor of the Covenant, the senior line, the chosen, the most noble, etc. Japheth is often considered the more intellectual and industrious, and Ham's line is more at enmity with the others and has frequently been considered to be cursed (though technically it was Ham's son Canaan who was cursed, not Ham or his other descendants). Regarding introducing evolutionary biology, a lot of the thought work on this has already been done in primary reality. Most Catholics (I think most is accurate) believe that God used evolution as a tool to create life, including Man. As a result there has been a fair bit of thought and conversation about the topic of when biological humans became what are sometimes referred to as "theological" humans. In other words, at what point God imbued man with the divine image, and presumably a rational soul. In this view biological humans evolved as any other animal, even including development of intelligence etc. Then when they had reached the point God desired, he imbued them with the divine image, and a rational soul. (noting that the rational soul is not a prerequisite for intelligence as we think of it today). If this were taken into Tolkien's legendarium and applied to say the Druedain, I think we would have to say that they are capital M Men, and diverged after Men had received their status as Children of Illuvatar. It would be possible for Orcs to have diverged before this status was given, or even for Orcs to be the same biological species that continued to develop without having received the divine image, that defines a people as Children of Illuvatar. (of course this contradicts the printed canon explanation in the Silmarillion, but leaving that aside and considering other possibilities.) This would have the disadvantage, of making orcs, not the 'creation' of Morgoth, though he could still have twisted them I suppose. It would raise the question of how intelligence and fea are related in Tolkien's conception. However, the eagles also raise this question. Talking about the comparison between Tolkien and Lewis bears on this question as well. One of the persistent problems that Tolkien seems to have had was trying to fit his 'extra' creatures like Ungolient, Eagles, Ents, orcs, Tom Bombadil, etc into his metaphysics which seems to have catagories only for animals, children of Illuvatar, and Ainur. Lewis doesn't seem to care much about this problem as he routinely introduces random creatures and beings into his stories with little or no explanation or apparent concern for their continuity. Examples include the inclusion of Bacchus, Silinus, and Father Christmas in Narnia. My best guess here is that Lewis was concerned a little less with rigorous continuity of world building, and more concerned with consistency of theme. All of the characters he introduces serve to establish theme or feeling in the story, even when they don't entirely fit world consistency. Tolkien seems to have loved certain aspects of these creatures, but also seems to have struggled to fit them in to his cosmology. Which, perhaps not surprisingly, is exactly the same thing that occurred among medieval Christians when addressing the issue. One whole class of these beings, the Elves, Tolkien has essentially melded into the category of children of Illuvatar, effectively making them a parallel of humans in the real medieval cosmology. Others he struggles to come up with an explanation.
2:48 More precisely - alternate _prehistory._ Either The Hobbit or Chiefly on Hobbits features a comparison with "now" about "the North West of the Old World, near to the Sea" ...
I think the Druedain are supposed to have originated in the South, whereas the Orcs likely came from the East. How could they have the same origin? I DO, however, like the idea that Orcs were a separately created species. Perhaps Morgoth was permitted to create his own "children" because Aulë and Yavanna had created their own. Maybe Eru felt obliged to allow it. Of course, this kind of arrangement would never have been discovered by the Valar or the Elves, as they would have been kept out of the loop. There would be no historical record of it. It would not make sense for Eru to allow them immortality, especially knowing Morgoth's intentions for them. We would end up with the Orcs being who they are in the Legendarium plus we wouldn't have to do mental gymnastics to explain how the Elves' fëar would not escape their hröar during the so-called "corruption" process.
I don't know why Eru would feel obliged to allow the creation of Orcs as a separate species. When Aulë created the Dwarves, he had to explain to Eru Ilúvatar why he did so when he basically should have known better. Aulë intended only good from his action so Eru Ilúvatar "adopted" the Dwarves. Melkor had free will but I don't think Eru Ilúvatar would have done anything to aid Melkor by helping him create a species intended solely to do evil.
@@istari0 I see your point. Eru should not allow Melkor to create orcs and then give them sentience because they will be used for purely evil purposes. But then again, Eru DID create Melkor.....
@@Enerdhil Melkor ended up using himself for evil purposes. Regardless of what Iluvatar may or may not have foreseen about his future, Melkor was not originally created any more evil than the other Ainur. He himself decided to keep rebelling, despite the futility of his actions. The Orcs would have no choice in the matter at all, if they were made for Melkor in his fallen state, and would be under Melkor's thumb from the beginning.
With my genuine apologies for Being That Guy, but this is my dumb thing that I can't not bring up -- not _The Space Trilogy_ , despite so many people calling it that, but _The _*_Cosmic_*_ Trilogy_ . One of the early passages of _Out of the Silent Planet_ (which sets the tone for all three books) is the protagonist's silent soliloquy on how "space" is absolutely the wrong word for it, and that "the heavens" is the right one. This would make _The Heavenly Trilogy_ the obvious name, but "heavenly" has evolved different connotations in English (except in the phrase "the heavenly bodies"). However, the word "cosmic" -- besides sounding duly grandiose -- comes from a Greek word meaning "to set in order, arrange," with a secondary meaning "to make beautiful," and will therefore serve. Speaking of the said trilogy, though, I'd be really interested to hear any thoughts you have about Old Solar, the language supposedly common to Martians, Earthlings before the Fall of Man, and Venusians; it obviously isn't identical to any of Tolkien's languages, but the phonology and some of the phonotactics are quite reminiscent of Quenya or Primitive Quendian (as in words like _hross_ , _handramit_ , _hru_ , and _hnakra_ , and names and titles like _Oyarsa_ , _Arbol_ , _Perelandra_ , and so on), though the broken plurals (e.g. "one _hnakra_ " but "some _hneraki_ ") are an interesting departure. I half-suspect a number of Narnian names might deliberately designed on the same model, especially those of the stars -- "Tarva the Lord of Victory" and "Alambil the Lady of Peace," though they'd (probably) be meaningless, suit Quenya phonology perfectly. Also, re Indo-European! You may know already that one of the key divisions between Quenya and Sindarin is their handling of the ancient _kw_ sound; Quenya preserved it almost unchanged ("transliterated" as _qu_ ), while Sindarin turned it into a _p_ . This is based directly on sound changes that happened prehistorically in multiple Indo-European languages, notably in -- wouldn't you know it -- Common Italic, the ancestor of Latin (which kept the _kw_ ), and Common Celtic, the ancestor of Welsh (which went with _p_ )! If you're interested in PIE studies in general, J. P. Mallory's "In Search of the Indo-Europeans" is quite good and pretty accessible -- on the old side (it was published in 1989), but includes a lot of history of twentieth-century scholarship, much of which would have been current in Tolkien's middle and later years.
Proto-Indo-Europeans definitely were one nation, with not only common language, but the same mythology. For example the story of Romulus and Remus, and the story of Ymir both come from a common Indo-European creation myth. Both names mean "twin", from PIE "Yemo".
The word "nation" there can be misleading. Of course there is an older meaning of "nation" that refers to something like tribe or culture, like we'd use with "Cherokee Nation", but just because a group had common language and descent doesn't mean they had a common government or would all have thought of themselves as having a shared identity, like a lot of people today would take "nation" to mean. They could have had different villages or bands that would war with each other, for all we know.
@@coreyander286 Indo-Europeans had more than just shared language. Their gods, myths and rituals were shared as well. They also had common genetics and ancestry. Maybe "folk" would be a better word, I don't know, but they've had more in common than any modern "nation". It's not just the language.
On the subject of the recurring threefold division them and Indo-Europeans, common theories about the Euro half during Tolkien's time that are not so popular today do divide them similarly into three, the Nordics who were the Tall Blonds, the Alpines who were the Celts and maybe also Slavs, and the Medditerians who were the Greeks and Latins.
Interesting video, this is the first time I’ve seen someone explicitly mention the parallels between elves, men and hobbits coming in groups of three strains or archetypes (this has been at the back of my mind for some time now). Also I wonder how we are supposed to reconcile the Orcs’ supposedly short lifespans when Bolg from the hobbit is at least 140 years or something at the time of his death.
The idea of three-flavored clans of various peoples (with always the same flavors, as you rightly point out) most probably came from the historical records of the three Germanic tribes which migrated from what is now Denmark to Britain in 5th or 6th century A.D., thus effectively founding the early medieval England. These three were the Angles (described in sources as blond-haired and, well, "angelic"), the Saxons (long-bearded, stout, stocky, warlike and arguably most "dwarfish" of the three) and the Jutes (said to have settled on the Isle of Wight and on the shores of Kent, therefore being the most "watery" of the three). I'm pretty certain that this was the scheme Tolkien consciously channeled into his tripartite clans of Eldar, Edain and Hobbits, all making great journeys from East to West. I also agree with everything you've said about Druedain and the Orcs, with the exception that the Wacthers of Kirith Ungol, as was said in the text, were the work of ancient Numenoreans (as was that entire tower), which were presumably later on corrupted by the Sauron or Nazgul when they captured that fortress. However, since it was said there were Druedain living on Numenor of old, it's quite possible that this was, in fact, ancient Druedain work - or at least something which was taught to old Numenoreans by them. And great video, btw! I shall even burn a like to demonstrate how much... well, I like it :)))
I am pretty sure Sauron sent those "Watchers" to guard the Gate(s) of the Tower of Cirith Ungol. There is no way the Gondorians did such a sinister thing during a time of peace. Nor does it make sense they added them later. Those Watchers were evil from day one.
@@Enerdhil To quote what the frightened Orcs themselves say in the Chapter I of Book 6, when Sam is coming up the stairs of Kirith Ungol to free Frodo imprisoned in there: "Gorbag was right, I tell you. There’s a great fighter about, one of those bloody-handed Elves, or one of the filthy tarks.* He’s coming here, I tell you. You heard the bell. He’s got past the Watchers, and that’s tark’s work. He’s on the stairs." As Tolkien explains later on in Apendix F, "Tark" was an Orcish word for Numenoreans in general. Therefore, Orcs of Kirith Ungol themselves were of the opinion that their Watchers were the work of Numenoreans, and they presumably knew best what was added to that tower by Sauron/Nazgul, and what was part of the original fortress.
@@lukatrkanjec899 So.... You seem to think the orcs believed that the "tark" knew the command word(s) that opened the gate. I think it is obvious that the evil spirits in the Watchers shrieked and opened the gate because of a fear of the "tark." NOT because they received a command from the children of their creator.
@@lukatrkanjec899 I disagree with that interpretation. That the Orcs feared a great Elven or Gondorian soldier was about is clear. But the Watchers were there to warn against intruders trying to get in, which is why the Sam's intrusion triggered the alarm. The appearance of the Watchers is not something Gondorians would have built on the tower. The tower was also built to guard against possible enemies trying to get into Ithilien from Mordor.
@@Enerdhil @Istari There is hardly any room left for interpretation here. The orc in the text clearly states "Watchers are tark's work"; and Tark = Numenorean. That's the only info we have about who made the Watchers; and since the entire tower of Kirith Ungol was built by Numenoreans, it would stand to reason Watchers were part of it originally, and corrupted by Sauron/Nazgul once they took it over. This is, btw, perfectly in line with the general theme in the books, where we constantly learn that forces of evil take over and corrupt great and powerful works of the past. Palantir is one such example; Orthanc another. They were both wondrous works of the West, which Sauron/Saruman's corruption made scary and sinister. As for "no way" that Gondorians would ever made something as the Watchers, re-read in the Book II, Chapter 9 what effect Aragonaths, the pillars of kings, have on Fellowship when it sails between them. That's an example of how such uncorrupted stone sentinels of Numenor were probably intended to work. Here, I'll quote that passage for your convenience here as well: "As Frodo was borne towards them the great pillars rose like towers to meet him. Giants they seemed to him, vast grey figures silent but threatening. ... Great power and majesty they still wore, the silent wardens of a long-vanished kingdom. Awe and fear fell upon Frodo, and he cowered down, shutting his eyes and not daring to look up as the boat drew near. Even Boromir bowed his head as the boats whirled by, frail and fleeting as little leaves, under the enduring shadow of the sentinels of Numenor. So they passed into the dark chasm of the Gates."
The fact that you get hobbits out of Men is a good examole of evolution. Although never stated as thus. Also somewhere else is mentioned about the malleability of Hobbit height. I dont remember where but I remember reading that they either grw taller or that they dwindled in size (cant remember which) still further in later Ages. Petty dwarves were of less stature than the base stock. Either genetic change or consequence of living harder life with less nutritious diet so thats a little up in the air.
I could be wrong, but I believe trolls considered there to really only be one flavor of hobbit, although they can change that with seasoning. EDIT: Ok, on a serious note, Dr. Jackson Crawford, Crecganford, and Simon Roper all have some interesting videos on PIE. As you probably know, it's not just that there are similar words, but that there are systematic changes between the words (e.g. p changing to f when we move from Latin to Germanic languages, pater becoming father and pisces becoming fish).
I really like this idea of Druedain as Neanderthals. For a while, I was actually entertaining the opposite idea: elves as Neanderthals. Not necessarily for aesthetic, but because of their role in humanity. Like elves, Neanderthals were humanity’s “older siblings” in a way. Migrating out of Africa, we found much of Eurasia full of them. We know that for thousands of years there was cultural exchange and interbreeding, to the point which a bit of Neanderthal survives in almost everyone on Earth (except some from Africa)
There are also some similarities between the movements of peoples in ME and the late migratory period. For example, the movement of the Eorlings from the North down to Rohan is very reminiscent of the Anglo-Saxon and Germanic tribes migrating back through Western Europe. I believe this was purposeful on Tolkien's part since he modeled the Rohirrim language after Old/Middle English. *Concerning Orcs:* My own head canon (since Professor Tolkien couldn't seem to make up his mind) is that a bit of all theories are true. Generally, I believe that the early orcs were bred from some type of ape-like beast and the tortured, corrupted elves that Melkor first captured. Elves, as we know, have a long gestation period followed by approximately a century of development before adulthood. This is not enough time to breed the types of armies Melkor had, so it seems likely (and within his character) to accelerate the process by crossbreeding with a lower lifeform that can reproduce more quickly. They don't need to be exceptionally intelligent (only marginally so) if he can just exert his will over them. After Melkor's capture, it is said that Sauron fled far to the East (or perhaps South), where he secretly continued breeding orcs and other evil creatures, devising for them the Black Speech. In my mind, this is when Man was used as stock, perhaps even taking from those of the Druadain. It would explain both the enmity and similarities, as noted in the video.
Hmm. That's an Orc origin I had not considered. In this version, do the Druedain awake at or near the same time as the Elves? They would have to be up and about when Feanor started listening to, "Highway to Hell," on repeat and started looking into Unbreakable Vows. Right?
PIE descended languages are grouped into two halves, the Satem group and the Centum group. Roughly East and West, though the Tocharian tongues, the Easternmost, were part of the Centum group, the Western group. That division is based on the pronunciations of one hundred. Centum is pronounced with a hard C. C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien were members of a writing group called the Inklings. Back to PIE, another division is the division of genders. Hittite broke off earlier than the others so it only had two genders, best described as animate and inanimate. After it broke off, the animate in the remaining PIE split into masculine and feminine. That was the latest theory, last I knew. Profé Tolkien postulated that the Tower of Babel theory was at least symbolically true. That at some point Man must have had a common tongue.
24:44 I think Tolkien would have been very clear that men descend from Adam, and that language is a major cut-off between human and bestial realms. Think through the fact that the human language has three tiers: * phonemes, don't have, but distinguish meaning (bad and bat are not the same thing, but D and T don't mean either of them) * morphemes have incomplete meaning (BAD, and BAT - what about them?) * phrases have complete meaning (THE BAT IS BAD AT SEEING IN DAYLIGHT) Notice, I omitted "word" but the Latin and Greek word "verbum" and "logos" would be closer to phrase. A phrase with two morphemes can be one word in one language (AMO) and two words in another (I LOVE). Or the fact that the complete meaning is often not emotive or pragmatic. Ape communications could be written as traffic signs and smileys, human language can't. That fact btw explains why ape communications have so few typified complete meanings that "phoneme X rhythm X (optionally) gesture= phrase" is sufficient for them. Or the fact that adding a morpheme called "negative marker" can completely turn around the meaning (THE BAT IS *NOT* BAD AT SENSING IN THE DARK). Dito for conditionals, pasts, futures, absents here and presents elsewhere and so on. Or the fact of (potentially) infinite recursivity ("this is the mouse that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built"). Or the fact that subjects are clearly expressed.
Tolkien was aware in a 1960 writing that he should have around 80,000 years between the Awakening of Men and them having large enough numbers for the Edain to migrate into Beleriand. Adam and Eve could have been the only two Men to awaken in Hildorien, and the Debate of Finrod and Andreth has an Edain version of the Garden of Eden story. But there's still room for Adam and Eve to have been an ancestor of multiple species of humans, with Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo florensiensis (not that Tolkien would know of the latter two) being offshoots of Adam along with Homo sapiens. Also, some Catholics square the Adam and Eve story with the biological fact that all humans probably aren't descended solely from one single couple with the idea that there was a large Pre-Adamite population that eventually wound up with all remaining humans having at least partial "Adamite" ancestry. Like a "such-and-such percentage of people have Genghis Khan's DNA" type scenario, except if eventually everyone had some Genghis Khan DNA, while _also_ having lines that _don't_ pass through Genghis Khan.
@@coreyander286 _"the Debate of Finrod and Andreth has an Edain version of the Garden of Eden story"_ Unfortunately a fairly heretical one. Not necessarily condemned as such at the time, or now for those who follow "Pope Francis" but one that was pre-condemned by the Council of Trent. Tolkien's so much better on Apocalypse than on Genesis, his Akallabêth is genius both for picturing the pre-Flood world (one aspect of Genesis, though) and the end times. _"the biological fact that all humans probably aren't descended solely from one single couple with the idea that there was a large Pre-Adamite population"_ 1) It's not a biological fact 2) the solution is not Catholic. The idea is that without a very large gene pool, the race will extinguish. The assessment of what is sufficient is disproven by Pitcairn islanders, and the fact itself depends on genetic faults in the parent group, which Adam and Eve hadn't before the fall, and none or few after (I suspect the inability to synthesise vitamin C, since we have a gene made for that, but which is broken, may come from the fall). Isaac de la Peyrère suggested this, and his book was on the Index Librorum. That said, this is somewhat off topic from my initial comment.
1:23 Whether he believed the concept (probably) or not, he was clearly familiar with the concept. In what form? Urheimat up North? Urheimat in Yamna? Other? I don't know. To me two things struck out: a) if one took pre-Indo-European languages of Western Europe as partly Semitic, or similar, partly Finno-Ugrian, Tolkien would have exploited that as Adûnaic / Westron and as Quenya; b) the Kurgan culture could, realistically, be described as "wain riders" - the word is not exactly a complement in the appendices.
I think the distinction you're catching is between 'Dunedain' (ie Numenoreans; Rangers, Gondorians, and such) and Druedain (the Woses/ Pukel-men/ Wild Men of the Woods, of which Ghan buri Ghan is the only named example in the 3rd age). The similarity in sound to 'druid' is probably a coincidence, though a fitting one!
my family comes from mercia originally and the founding of the area was of three tribes the saxons the anglos and the jutes which im also a practicing anglo saxon pagan which is where Tolkien got a lot of his lore well some of it more or less but so it could stand to reason he repeated the three families to potentially represent the three clans that went from Germany to England one of them who had a king who's name was Eomer. but thats just my opnion and theory on it.
@@Heike-- wow a bigot who attacks someone with a disability from an accident having to relearn to read and write and build grammer is shameful to you eh?>
Three flavors of Hobbits , well mushroom flavor might be universal, but so would be beer, perhaps potatoes, turnips and one more root that i might have missed in the canon,?
One can also mention, Germanic languages come in the flavours North, West and East. Examples : Swedish, German, extinct Gothic. Slavic languages come in the flavours South, West and East. Examples : Croatian, Polish, Ukrainean. North Germanic or Nordic languages come in the flavours West Norse, East Norse, Guthnic. Examples : Icelandic, Swedish and - as already said, it's a one language branch - Guthnic.
Language is a concept that evolves like a biological entity and changes over time. The geographical separation that occurs as a result of migrations creates a change pressure on the language, and this causes the formation of languages that are born from the same common ancestor but differ due to the effect of the environment factor. As a linguist, I think Tolkien was aware of this anthropological phenomenon and reflected it in his work. I prefer to interpret the Druedain race as trying to transform humans with the same teaching, as Melkor created orcs by transforming them from elves, but this was an unsuccessful attempt.
Hope it's not too late to comment. Great discussion. It would be very tricky to try and tie the history of men in LotR timelines to real evolutionary biology. Homo sapiens diverged from Homo neanderthal about 400,000 years ago. Modern humans appeared about 300,000 years ago, probably at first in Africa, spread to Asia, and appear to have taken over Europe only about 40,000 years ago. If the Druedain were Neanderthals, that part could sort of work at least in Europe (i.e. Eriador, Gondor, west Rhovanion). Assuming modern humans 'awakened' in Africa not Asia (where Cuivienen presumably is), the timelines would be difficult but maybe reconcilable. But for Elves to have come first, they would have had to awaken at least 300,000 years ago, and probably more than a million years ago (or maybe 2) to truly pre-date any kind of 'human' (i.e. Homo erectus). Maybe the term 'awakening' could be interpreted to mean self-aware, or human style consciousness, rather than actual coming to life. But then it would be unclear if Elves were independently created, or also 'evolved', maybe even as a side branch of Homo with genetic traits giving them their very different lifespans and lifestyles and powers. There's a funny essay where an immortality/regeneration mutation is posited to explain the X-Men character Wolverine. Cheers!
RE: your comment on how the pre-solar Arda is problematic for believable world-building if Middle-earth is in fact Earth. Tolkien used historical mythos from Western European cultures to inform his own 'mythical history of England,' as you know. He interpreted what those cultures' myths were as 'remembered history,' and incorporated those ideas. Anthony Peratt, David Talbot, et al, also hold that what modern scientists dismiss as myth may have just been ancient people describing what they physically saw, and attributing meaning to them. Concepts like the world mountain, the 'first sun' or 'best sun' preceding the current sun, ancient years longer than solar years, a time of the gods before man, terrible cataclysms that reshaped the earth, drowned continents, battle in the skies, a time without the sun, and more, are all neatly covered in the Silmarillion. It's fascinating to draw the parallels. If 'myth as remembered history' holds any water, Tolkien may have been onto something by using the same legends in his legendarium. Just a thought.
The fact that Tolkien describes certain nations dividing into three distinct subgroups, always three specifically, may have been inspired from the Bible, specifically how the book of Genesis describes a multitude of nations arising from Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the three sons of Noah. Adam also had three sons, namely Cain, Abel, and Seth.
Eh Druadian and orcs may be similar, but that doesn't make them the same, or related per say. Tanooki and racoons looks similar but are not the same. It could be however that at some point after the initial creation of orcs, and during the ages of men, that orcs bred with humans: in which case it can be assumed that Druadians and orcs might be brother or cousin or (if you will) in-law clans.
Elves have been smug bastards often; not only about the orcs but they committed genocide on the Petty-Dwarves. There is no morally perfect group of creatures though there is a good case for the Elves being the most homicidal. The Petty-Dwarves were considered a separate group though they were made up of "criminals" and undersized dwarves - dwarf dwarves, yep - for long enough that the Kinslaying Noldor could say they didn't recognized them as dwarves and mistook them for bunny rabbits or some lame excuse when they weren't looting their homes.
So I am confused about whether the Drúedain could have existed before the other Men? I thought, but maybe I am wrong, that there are only two sets of Children of Illuvatar, and each had a single awakening in time. Or did different groups of Men have different awakening points? I did think Tolkien considered having Men awaken much earlier in the timeline than he originally considered (and much earlier than the published version suggests), to let them get Orcified.
I'm also going to throw a completely ridiculous idea out there. We know, from the athrabeth finrod ah andreth, that there is a great Darkness in the past of Men. What if this involved Morgoth tempting some men with an 'elf like' existence of reincarnation? It does seem he can prevent the fëar from going to Mandos if the fëa in question is willing to remain. So he promised to let them reincarnate into their descendants, and Sauron continued this process as the Necromancer? We also know there are many breeds of orcs, perhaps coming from different types of Men in the first place. So perhaps most of the orcs came from the Drúgs, thus their hatred of orcs in particular? This is, again, probably ridiculous. But it would be a way of getting some orcs to be intelligent and have fëar, while some of them would be just sort of highly intelligent 'animals' without fëar. Which I think was Tolkien's big issue when dealing with what orcs were (since he didn't want to have any fëar that were inherently evil and incapable of choosing the good).
@@blakewinter1657 My understanding is that the souls of Elves could resist the call to the Halls of Mandos but those of Men could not. They went to the Halls for a short while and then go beyond the Circles of the World.
@@istari0 Unaided that's true, but who knows what Morgoth or Sauron could do (and also remember Isildur's curse that kept that group of men around for a few thousand years). Perhaps also if Tolkien had modified his view of orcs he might have changed some other things about how this works.
@@blakewinter1657 It is the Gift of Men that commands their souls will go to the Halls of Mandos and then leave the Circle of the World and that comes from Eru Ilúvatar. Not even Melkor at his mightiest would have been able to stop that. It's why one of Beren's most impressive feats was that he was able to remain in the Halls long enough for Lúthien to join him, resulting eventually in their resurrection. I am uncertain that the Army of the Dead was actually dead or simply appeared to be that way as a result of the curse. In Tolkien, breaking an oath always has seriously bad consequences. The only way I can see that being true throughout Arda is if the enforcement of oaths comes from Eru Ilúvatar, which is what keeps the Army of the Dead in Middle-Earth.
@@istari0 I dunno, there's also the barrow wights, who appear to be undead men. And Sauron is called the Necromancer for a reason. It's got to be because he could do something with the dead. The Army of the Dead is repeatedly called the Dead, so it certainly seems like everyone thinks they are dead. I agree the idea seems at odds with Tolkien wrote about the Call of Mandos as it applies to Men, but on the other hand, I think his wrestling with the metaphysical problem of orcs and fëar might have forced him to rethink this in some way had he continued down that path. I'm not suggesting Tolkien actually thought what I said. It's definitely not canonical. It's more of a 'heretical headcanon' idea of mine. It also kind of fits with the Tolkienian idea of sometimes the punishment for a thing is getting exactly what you want. Instead of getting to leave the circles of the world, the fëar of these Men being forced to endure repeated reincarnation into orcs until the orcs go extinct and they can finally leave.
7:17 Isn't it the Stoors who are the Dwarf-like hobbits that can grow beards and sometimes wear boots? And the Harfoots who are the smallest and the "default" hobbits?
I believe you're correct. Sméagol was of the Stoors, the last to migrate westwards, and the Harfoots are the smallest and most numerous.
Edit: See my comment below. Stoors have the beards, but Harfoots have the cultural connection to Dwarves.
I think Lexi was saying the Harfoots were like Dwarves in that they had beards. I don't think she was talking about their vigor or height.
@@Enerdhil The Harfoots did associate more with Dwarves, and liked living underground more than Fallohides. But they are also explicitly beardless. (Prologue, Concerning Hobbits, LotR)
Yeah, switch Stoors and Harfoots for that bit, and the 'water-tolerance' part of the pattern wouldn't apply in that case.
@@EriktheRed2023
Thanks for the reminder. I knew all this stuff from my "Harfoot" research into the Amazon characters. I guess I flushed all that knowledge out with the 💩 that the series is nded up being.😅
Upon my first reading of the Sundering of the Elves, my mind went: "oh, so it's like PIE migration. Nice!"
In the third book of the Space Trilogy, Lewis actually tips his hand that the whole thing is Tolkien fan fiction; Merlin is an istari, and Arthur (and from him the main character, Ransom, who is molded in appearance and character after a young Tolkien) is a descendant of the kings of Numenor.
IIRC Tolkien betrayed some irritation at what he perceived as Lewis' misrepresentation of 'his' Numenor ideas🤣 I thought it was rather sweet, particularly Ransom (the original action-hero linguistics professor IN SPACE!) being a calque on Tolkien. There's a reference to 'Tor and Tinidril' (ie Tuor and Idril) in there somewhere too... Perelandra maybe?....
@@GirlNextGondor: Yes, Perelandra. In the last chapter the Oyarsa of Venus gives the King and Queen a string of paired names, of which Tor and Tinidril are the ones that stick for the rest of the chapter (e.g. in indicating who is speaking at any point). ... I think it was Tolkien who commented somewhere that besides this derivation, Lewis seemed to have modeled "eldil" on "eldar." ... In the last volume, _That Hideous Strength_ (which Tolkien didn't like as much), Ransom ceased to be modeled on Tolkien and became a "fancy portrait" (Lewis's term) of Charles Williams instead, including Williams's tendency to attract a sort of cult-like following (not what you'd expect of the Ransom of the earlier volumes).
@@larrykuenning5754 to be fair I don’t think you’d expect anything in That Hideous Strength from the earlier volumes 😂
@@chables74 I certainly didn’t expect him to predict VR cybersex in, well, anything, but there you have it. It’s in the text.
Great point about the parallels between the watchers at Cirith Ungol & Minas Morgul and the Pukel-men
I forget if you mentioned this in this episode, but I think that the link that you are looking for between the Orcs & the Drûghu (as they called themselves) is this passage from *Unfinished Tales*, in the Druedain section (p. 379 of my edition), and talking about how the Orcs feared the Drûghu watch-stones:
‘These figures served not merely as insults to their enemies; for the Orcs feared them and believed them to be filled with the malice of the *Oghor-hai* (for so they named the Drúedain), and able to hold communication with them.’
Tolkien absolutely knew that the /gh/ phoneme in English is related to the /ch/ phoneme in German (English “light” = German “licht”, English “night” = German “nacht”, and so on).
So when he has the Orcs referring to the Drúedain as “oghor-hai”, it’s likely not to be pronounced as an aspirated /g/ but rather as an aspirated /k/ sound, as in ‘loch’. So he’s telling us that the Orcs call the Drúedain something that sounds like “ochre-hai”, of which the first syllable is very similar to the word “orc”. Further, in the notes on this section (Note 6, pg. 385 in my edition) that the /gh/ in Drûghu represents a spirantal (ie: fricative, or voiced) consonant, which would make it a parallel with the English “night” / German “nacht”, above. Assuming that Tolkien is following the Welsh use of the caret (the “hat” on the letter “u”), then the first “u” carries the emphasis & is a long sound and the second “u” is a short sound. Hence Drûghu is pronounced something like “droh-kheh”. If we assume that the initial “dr” consonant sound is dropped and that Orc speech features an intrusive-R feature (adding an “R” sound to separate two vowel sounds in consecutive words, “Brenda-r-and-Eddie” from Billy Joel’s ‘Scenes from an Italian Restaurant’) we could end up with [dr]Oh-khe-r-hai (with the “E” in the second syllable being a schwa, an unstressed & voiceless vowel).
The only remaining hurdle is adjacent metathesis (like “Calvary” for “cavalry”). This is a common-ish feature of the transition from Old to Middle/Modern English: OE “bridd” became ME “bird”; OE “hros” became ME “horse”; OE “thrid” became ME “third”. The letter /r/ is known to be very flexible linguistically, moving around within words & word phrases relatively often. So it’s probably reasonable to assume that the /r/ moved from after the “gh”/“kh” sound in “oghor-hai” to give us “orc-hai” and finally “orc”, giving us a hypothetical linguistic progression from Drûghu > [dr]ogho-hai > ocho-er-hai > ochor-hai > orc-hai or orog-hai. If this progression tracks linguistically, then we have a decent amount of evidence that would support a hypothesis that the Orcs were a subspecies from the same lineage as the Drûghu and originated during the Great Darkness of the First Age.
Now, I’m just working with a barely-remembered Introduction to Linguistics class and quick references to relevant Wikipedia entries for a reminder of how the basic mechanics of this stuff works. So if there’s an actual person with real linguistics knowledge who can jump in and correct any mistakes I’ve made here, that would be awesome.
You have no idea how glad I am that youre thinking about this aspect of middle earth anthropology.
As a swart, sallow-faced, slant-eyed man, looking half a goblin, I appreciate your scholarship and attention. I feel "seen" lol.
Are you a Man-orc large and cunning? Or an Orc-man treacherous and vile?
This was such an excellent reference to Tolkien's weird (by today's standards) way of describing suspicious outsiders lol
In his video "Tolkien's Elves", In Deep Geek explains that there are three different elven tribes, because there were three tribes of Germanic immigrants who came settled in England: Angles, Saxons and Jutes. This sounds reasonable, since Tolkien was professor for Old English and therefore quite interested in the history of this language and the cultures which were at the base of it.
*GirlNextGondor uploads a video*
Me: I had not even the slightest idea this topic could even exist, but it is so interesting I cannot believe I didn't think earlier about it and now I can't stop thinking about it
The connection theory between drugs and uruks is amazing, but there's one issue. It would've made complete sense for orcs, due to their lifestyle and lineage, to be naturally shortlived, but then there are Azog and Bolg, who both aproximate quite Nunenorean or dwarvish lifespans. Also, PIE language is at this point as "hypothetical" as evolution.
Yes, I wondered about this ever since I first read the Silmarillion!
You're absolutely right with it being mind blowing, I was in a similar place of about PIE before this video and now i know my new hyperfixation.
Interesting factoid: Tolkien based Quenya on one of the few non-Indo-European languages currently spoken in Europe (Finnish).
So delightful for you to bring Proto-Indo-European into the mix- as a connoisseur of languages, that’s *exactly* the sort of thing Tolkien would have kept up with the research of, and drawn inspiration from for his works.
Listen, just wanted to drop a comment to say how much i appreciate all the work you put into these. You're not just my favourite UA-cam creator, but also my favourite Tolkien expert, and honestly close to my heart because you've unknowingly been with me through really tough times. I'm just grateful ❤
💖deeply appreciated as always, my dear. I'm always glad to hear that my videos help people out, even if just in a small way. Hope you continue to find fellowship and food for thought, here and wherever else you seek it! 🌟
@@GirlNextGondor ❤️❤️ changed my @ btw 😂
Edit: wondering if FinrodBitesWolves may be better 🤔
Another video so soon? And on a topic I've actually studied? Fantastic!
Some things you mentioned:
Proto-Indo-European is a huge rabbit hole you can dive into. There are varying degrees of speculation going on there, some people think they can reconstruct the PIE cosmology and mythology by analyzing later mythologies, linguistics and the like. It's good stuff though one should always be careful not to just instantly accept any of the most elaborate theories as the more fanciful you get the more leaps of logic and assumptions you have to make. But it must surely have been in Tolkien's mind when he wrote about the various people of Arda migrating from the east.
If you want to really blow your mind, look up Doggerland. As it turns out back in the rough era when Tolkien set his ficticious slice of history there WAS a further chunk of land west of the current land mass of Europe, namely Doggerland. It was a lowlands area that connected France, Belgium and the Netherlands and the British isles were the high points of the region. Several British and continental rivers were once connected into one river through this area. However due to flooding, Doggerland was submerged and the highest points are now reefs and sandbanks in the north sea.
AKA Beleriand is real.
(Okay Doggerland is a lot smaller than Beleriand and Tolkien's story was much more influenced by pure myths like Hy-Brasil but _still_. We need to name some island there after the island where Turin's grave is )
In regards to the Druedain, I always wonder if the connection between them and the orcs had something to do with the "darkening" that happened at the dawn of humanity back in Hildorien. This darkening has always been so mysterious to me because I don't think Tolkien EVER wrote any solid theory on what it could have been, but if it involved Morgoth splitting orcs off from men then yeah, I guess that might be part of it.
In regards to Tolkien talking about "scientific novels", the term "science fiction" existed when he was a young man but was not commonly accepted. Hugo Gernsback who condified the genre prefered terms like "scientification" and there were a slew of terms for it that competed for the first four decades of the 20th century. So I think to Tolkien and Lewish, "science fiction" was just not common parlance.
Finally it is very fitting that a relatively newly discovered human species of short stature (Homo floriensis) was widely called "the real-life hobbits" after their discovery due to the proximity to the Peter Jackson movies.
Great video!
The first Indoeuropean triade that comes to my mind would be Italoceltic, Germanic, and Slavic - these three covered basically all the Northwest and Center of Europe
Another banger. Thank you so much for all your hard work and sharing your insight with us all.
Oh man you just gave me an idea for a video with that Watcher/Druedain parallel…. Random ruminations are so much fun!
Always glad to hear your thoughts
I love listening to your videos when I crochet. They're interesting and kinda soothing. Excellent listens for when your hands are occupied making things or cooking but you want something thoughtful to listen to. They are usually on the longer side, which is perfect because when your hands are wet or wrapped in yarn or something, switching between short videos every few minutes is inconvenient.
While Tolkien stated he wanted Arda to be our Earth he was equally as clear that the timeline was imaginary, as in totally imaginary. He uses that word "imaginary". Though JRRT did not use the phrase (as far as I have found) "alternate universe" he certainly seems to have been thinking somewhat down those lines. Still, I think the obvious creationism in JRRT's created world so overwhelms any other interpretation that I can't get away from looking at Arda as another instance of the ancient near-east cosmology.
Definitely - particularly in letters and interviews where the inquirer might have suspected that Tolkien had some rather esoteric beliefs, he made it very clear that M-e was an 'invented' world, a 'sub-creation' that came from his imagination and not something he mistook for Primary Reality. "Alternative universe" (or 'alternate timeline') seems pretty close to how that project would be described nowadays.
(Coincidentally I think that's why people are often confused or frustrated about the length Tolkien went to in his last writings, trying to make the timelines more 'naturalistic' or rewrite the story of the Sun and Moon so that they synced up better with astronomy. Those things work just fine in the story from a Secondary Belief standpoint, and Tolkien seems so adamant elsewhere that you *shouldn't* try to apply real-world physics to a 'fairy-story' or fantastic world, so it's odd to see him focusing in on those details when he could have been - oh, I don't know - *actually finishing the Silmarillion* 😭)
@@GirlNextGondor Along those lines, in one of Tolkien's published letters he throws some serious shade at those who call themselves physicists.
The constant tension between Tolkien's (Catholic/Christian dominated) archaic views and his self-awareness that the post-WWII society was ever more interested in science (especially space exploration) seems to me to be a large part of his later letters. Today's authors fully embrace that they have a freedom to make as many alternative universes as needed, but perhaps Tolkien thought his own creation had to be simultaneously consistent with modernity and much older views of the cosmos.
@@GirlNextGondor not to mention, trying to make your alternate history sync up too closely with the current scientific theories will end up dating your work (as opposed to making a timeless myth), as observations of the natural world are constantly re-interpreted and old theories are frequently contradicted by new ones
I think it's nice that Tolkien put thought into making myths somewhat congruent with scientific knowledge. When I read about how Tolkien and Lewis scoffed at _Voyage to Arcturus's_ "back-rays and crystal torpedo ships", it reminds me of Margaret Atwood dismissing sci-fi as "talking squids in outer space", a contempt for modern sense of wonder compared to the ancient equivalent.
But when I learn about how Tolkien made an effort to consider modern cosmology and paleontology, I think, "Oh, so he wasn't that stuffy, at least not in the '40s and onwards".
Perhaps the laughter of the Drúedain indicates that there were some of their ancestors who could be used by Melkor to breed effective Orcs. Those then were taken or fell, and only those with a different spirit, expressed in their laughter, went on to become the Drúedain we know.
Thanks, Lexi!
As someone who is interested in Anthropology, Tolkien and Ancient European history/myth this is great!
For info about the PIE I can greatly recommend the youtube channels "Crecganford" and "Dan Davis"!
So cool to see my interests in prehistory and Tolkien come together like this😃
I don't know about that Crecganford guy. I don't have the knowledge to know for sure that he spreads BS, but he has strong LARPer misinfo vibes. I'd suggest Jackson Crawford way before him. Crawford studies Old Norse, but some of his videos and discussions go into PIE.
I have always found the Druedain and the Forodwaith to be fascinating
Tolkien would've been *very* familiar with Proto-Indo-European.
The crucial thing about language families of course is how the *differences* between them show regular patterns.
Since it's long been surmised that these languages were introduced to Western Europe by steppe nomads, the Wain Riders could be seen as an early prototype of the kind of migration involved.
"Tolkien would've been very familiar with Proto-Indo-European" - perhaps, from the linguistics aspect. But when Tolkien went to school, and in his early professional life, anthropology was still stuck in very racialist ways (something with Tolkien himself expresses.) Today's anthropology and current thinking about migrations is different than back in the early 20th century.
Fwiw I did poke around to see whether the early formulation of the theory had changed significantly (or if it had been motivated more by outdated social/racial theories than by linguistics) and was surprised to find that the current prevailing hypothesis had been in place since the turn of the 20th century. What conclusions or interpretations could be drawn from it no doubt vary based on, well, let's say a variety of factors including historical and cultural ones? 😬 but the basic shape of it has been borne out so far!
@@GirlNextGondor I remember reading that some scholars started noticing that some words in some languages could be traced back to increasingly similar words in older languages some centuries ago. Long before the idea of a Proto-Indo-European language came about but beginnings of the idea have been around for quite some time.
Great topic!
Great video, filled with ideas I have wondered about. I think you made a very good argument!
Simon roper has some neat stuff about PIE
The Druedain / Orc question (and some evolutionary concept) is much less troublesome when you condsider Tolkien’s work in the collections we now have as “Nature of Middle-Earth.” There he was “erasing” the concept of pre-solar Arda (except perhaps as an in-universe, mythic tradition; Silmarillion doesn’t go away but becomes a true myth rather than an accurate history). This forced Tolkien to wrestle with the timeline and he drafted several possible revisions to restore coherency in an Arda where the Sun and Moon were creations of Eru and existed before the Valar came down to order/populate things. In some of these speculative timelines, Men awoke much earlier and spent more time migrating West; that gives more time for some genetic diversification (micro-evolutionary scale) but also, and more importantly, gives more time for Men to have been taken by Morgoth and corrupted into orcs in time to trouble the Elves in Beleriand.
Fantastic intro! I can't wait to hear the explanation!
I absolutely love these videos! Finally, analysis of the nitty gritty of Middle Earth 🤘
13:48 this is a very interesting point, because there is a hypothesis that was formulated around the 1920s called the Trifunctional Hypothesis, which states that PIE society was divided up between three groups: priests, warriors and commoners, which would match up with the three different flavours of the different peoples of middle earth
The Minbari (in JMS's world).
3:27 The source of "I much prefer history, true or feigned" is not "On Fairy-stories" but the Foreword to the Second Edition of LotR (in the paragraph that begins "Other arrangements could be devised"). (Comment written before watching beyond this point.)
I think that was originally from a letter. A section of the letter was put into forward.
Hi! Huge fan of your content and first time commenter. A potential parallel to the three branches pattern that Tolkien might have been familiar with is Tacitus' grouping of Germanic tribes into three groups: the Istvaeones, Ingvaeones, and Irminiones, who correspond to the three children of Mannus. In 1942 these accounts were used to propose three groupings of West Germanic languages: Istvaeonic (would include Modern Dutch, Afrikaans, and other closely related languages), Ingvaeonic (would include English, Scots, Frisian, Low German, and others) and Irminionic (would include Modern Standard German and related dialect, Bavarian, Alemannic, and some others)
Another parallel could be the story of Lech, Czech, and Rus, three brothers who split off in different directions and became the ancestors of Poles , Czechs and Slovaks , and Ruthenians (modern day Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Rusyns)
I've always wondered, on the elves→orcs model, whether there was a hall for Orcs in the halls of Mandos, and what that would be like, what an orcish soul would be like. This video has made me think for the first time about the destiny of Druedain souls. This really is a thorny business.
"what an orcish soul would be like" - Eru Ilúvatar is the source of "souls" as he alone can breath the Eternal Fire or Flame Imperishable into creatures . The Dwarves originally didn't have them being created by Aulë but Ilúvatar permitted them to live and upgraded them. Other creatures like the Eagles and Ents seem to have undergone a similar process, their creation by the Ainur approved by Ilúvatar. While hearts and minds can be twisted by Melkor, Sauron, Saruman, there is no evidence that their actual souls can be twisted or the Flame Imperishable altered. It is "imperishable" and "eternal". The whole idea of souls is nebulous, only certain special people resurrected like Glorfindel (who were not spirit beings to begin with like the Valar or Maiar). Otherwise there isn't much on whether identity persists after death, the common understanding of the term 'soul'.
So orcs, or Uruk, have the same soul, the Flame Imperishable, as everyone else. That was the brilliance of Adar (the best thing about Rings of Power). Tolkien himself wrestled with this over the years, never at ease with his previous "it's okay to kill them on sight" and irredeemable nature of orcs. I actually think he'd enjoy the character of Adar.
@@seasidescott Tolkien explains how Elvish immortality and how they return from the Halls of Mandos in the HoME books Morgoth's Ring and The People's of Middle-Earth. All Elves can return to life after completing their time in the Halls of Mandos (how long that is depends on the Elf and how they lived their life). Glorfindel is simply the one named Elf we know returned to Middle-Earth as opposed to remaining in Valinor. There's also information on the fate of Men although not as much because they don't return to life except for Beren.
@@istari0 - If Elves are so damned immortal, then why was the "Kinslaying" such a big deal? Fëanor was just goofing around, no one really hurt permanently.
If all the good peoples of Middle Earth are eventually reborn in some paradise then who cares what Sauron does?
If the orcs don't enjoy the same treatment then only their lives, the only ones they have in the one body they have, are truly meaningful.
Thorin said he was going to the "halls of waiting" just before dying; but, of course, Dwarves don't get into the Elven part.
You are taking those obscure references as unchanging fact? Even the story of Gandalf reborn is nebulous. It says his spirit left but then was sent back (not quite dead yet) and the eagle bore him body to Lothlorien. He also had his same sword. He wasn't reembodied like the stories of Elves in Mandros.
All these stories are similar to our own mythology of "souls"; mixed up and changed over time and by Hollywood. Every major Christian sect officially states that people's bodies will be resurrected "at the end of days" when Jesus returns (again again) - none of that dying and going to Heaven immediately and smiling down on your loved ones. No going to Hell either. What exactly is supposed to be going on is contradicted often in the Bible and most of what people believe is from later stories and comforting words to children.
And the Christians had to come up with some new story after the 2nd coming (or 3rd?) didn't happen in their lifetimes as Jesus had told them.
Oh, and there are no immortal souls of humans in the Bible: only God is immortal and His Breath that animates the bodies made from dust for a brief time.
Buddha, when asked by some students about souls said he didn't know anything about souls. Yet people came up with elaborate stories about his eternal soul escaping the wheel of reincarnation, etc.
It all reminds me of a what I've heard repeated in many families where the children were told to be good and obedient or they wouldn't get the trust funds set up for them when they got older. Years and years worrying about that only for the kids to later learn that their parents had made it up - no inheritance awaited them. Others that actually got something had sacrificed so much of their lives and became people twisted by chasing it, never happy (Gollum and his Ring?).
Tolkien only gives us legends and tales from long ago. The one actual character in the book who seems to have some experience with it, Gandalf, had his spirit leave his body for what? a second, a minute, or an hour? We don't know. Sounds like people resuscitated by doctors or paramedics who say "I died and came back".
So little information is given that we fill in details with our own current beliefs.
This was fascinating as ever GNG. i thought hwen i read LotR for the first toime a little over fifty years ago, that i had become a fan of fantasy. this is true, what i had not realised was at the same time tolkien had sneakily turned me into an amtuer philologist. i find these topics truly fascinating. Thank you.
Oh! This is the thoughts you mentioned in the other video about these guys! Awesome!
I'm now up to date with your channel and I couldn't be more sad😅
Another great one Girl! Are you planning any super long form stuff like you did with Helen? I listened to that three part series yall did, while rolling hundreds of dollars in pennies, it carried me through.
As much problems with the timeline that idea brings with it...
But answering the question "could there potentially be a good orc?" with "There ARE good orcs... and they are called Druedain." has a LOT going for it.
If we accept for the moment that Tolkien was prepared to seriously overhaul the timeline anyway, I think it's the most elegant solution to the Problem of Orcs
This origin story for orcs is so compelling that it just became my new headcannon. Another impressive think piece. Thoroughly enjoyed, thank you.
Nice to see a reference to "Out of the Silent Planet"
In The Great Divorce Lewis acknowledged that he may have gotten the idea for the bus growing as it traveled from 'scientifiction'
Sweet video! Thanks! Interesting to put those together. Theres a channel called Creganford that gets, scholarly, all into PIE mythology (along with its development into european mythology). You might get really into it.
Actually its crecganford. My bad spelling... last video is journey to hell. "There and back again without the hobbits"
I dunno about that Crecganford guy. He seems like the kind of guy who will take one study and run to wild places with it. I don't have the expertise to know he's a charlatan, but I can apply the smell test.
Convergent evolution comes to mind with the similar ways Elves, Dwarves, Men, and Hobbits all eventually came to be.
Another great gem of a video
I was just thinking about this sort of thing, the seeming similarities between the ancient Middle Earth migrations and how it might relate to Proto Indo European migrations and language groups. I am fond of the theory that PIE was a language of commerce between groups, but that it did originate from one specific place or people from around the Black Sea. Maybe that people was particularly adventurous, well traveled and successful in trade, using some sort of revolutionary technology this people developed first that met the needs of the changing world. (Look at the ancient origins of Denisovans and the theory that this proto human group were the first to domesticate and ride horses, as well as craft extremely fine jewelry!)
You pointed out in another video about how in LOTR Merry and Eomer have a conversation about the similarities between the languages of Hobbits and Rohan. which gives credence to the theories you discuss here.
I love your breakdown of the triad of similarities between the different 'flavors' of Hobbits, Men and Elves. There is no way that's a coincidence! What I think is, Tolkien wants to show us the will of Illuvatar in creation throughout these different peoples, that there is always a balance preserved on different levels of analysis. Reality is 'fractal' in a sense. So It's inevitable that things naturally unfold this way, with the threefold counterparts, appearing both 'vertically' and 'horizontally.'
The idea that the Druedain are the original stock of the Orcs is intriguing and compelling. Even if Tolkien never explicitly stated that it was the case, he definitely thought about it, at least subconsciously. They are 'edain' (human). But just because middle earth history has it that Men appeared liong after elves does not necessarily preclude the idea that there were proto men. From the perspective of the history of middle earth, the proto human is not exactly relevant because it leaves behind no obvious physical legacy. But it is definitely implied that a 'less advanced' race of people not only can exist but they still DO exist in Aragorn's time. They retain more animalistic characteristics, like the keen sense of smell, lesser technology, they're physically built like tanks and have short lifespans because no doubt their lifestyle is hard and cruel.
It makes sense for Morgoth to just pick a species from among already existing races that were the closest to what he needed, but turn it to evil purposes. Evil is always lazy, and cannot create anything, it can only blend and corrupt other things together almost beyond recognition.
Sean Carroll has a good Mindscape podcast episode with Stefanos Geroulanos on "the Invention of Prehistory". Geroulanos described how everyone figured mankind arose in the East and migrated westward, until we started finding lots of ancestral fossils in Africa starting in 1947. Before those fossils, the most famous was Peking Man in China.
That, along with Biblical notions of Eden being in the East, may factor into why Tolkien placed Hildorien on the east coast of Middle-earth.
However, I think it's important to remember that the westward migrations in Tolkien are a logical conclusion of basing the early stories thematically on the _immrama,_ the Irish tales of voyages to magical islands in the west. If the stories of St. Brendan and King Arthur and so on had placed the Tir na nOg and Avallon in the north, east or south, Aman might have been in those directions instead.
But Tolkien wanted to evoke voyages across the western sea with Tol Eressea and Aman, and that means people have to start out east of the western shores, and the farther east they start the more mythic. That would be the case even if Tolkien was unaware the PIE languages spread from the Pontic steppe to the west (and east).
And we know Tolkien knew of Proto-Indo-European through that draft of a letter he wrote to German publishers: "I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by _arisch._ I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-iranian... But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people."
Oh my God, two in one week, BAAAAAABE. WAKE. UP.
How long has babe been sleeping at this point?? 😆
@@GirlNextGondor at least like four videos. We might wanna lower the melatonin dose.
Another thing I think Tolkien could be referencing with that "eastern migration and 3 different houses of elves/men/hobbits" thing could definitely be the Germanic invasions of Britain. There you had three distinct but closely related Germanic tribes, the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes invading Britain from the East (modern day Denmark) and establishing a bunch of kingdoms that would later on become England, to which Tolkien initially wished to dedicate his mythology. We even have a bit of a parallel on the specific flavors of the tribes, with the Jutes being the least numerous ones (only really settling in Kent) and having blonder hair than the other tribes due to being from the northernmost areas of Denmark; the Saxons being the more Dwarfy tribe maybe due to their skills at metalsmithing (the Sutton Hoo helmet for example); and the Angles being the baseline, more numerous tribe after whom England is named.
Another interesting thing that I don't think Tolkien was aware of because the usage of autosomal DNA in archaeology is very recent afaik, but the appearances of the Dunedain, the Middle-Men and the Northmen kinda line up with the appearances of the three main prehistoric human groups of Europe: the dark-haired, blue-eyed Dunedain kinda resemble the dark-haired, blue-eyed and tan/brown-skinned Western Hunter Gatherers (their main descendants are Scandinavians); the swarthy, brown-haired Middle-Men kinda resemble the olive-skinned, brown haired Early European Farmers (their main descendants are Mediterranean peoples like Greeks and Spaniards); and the Northmen kinda resemble the Proto Indo-Europeans, not so much in appearance as they weren't as predominantly blonde as the Rohirrim, but yes in lifestyle, as both were very horse-centric pastoralist nomads who'd go on to conquer the lands belonging to the Dunlendings and Early European Farmers respectively.
Also, on the Druedain thing, I still personally prefer the Orcs being tortured Elves angle, but its clear that Tolkien wanted Orcs to either be of mannish stock or to be partly that. Still, my personal headcanon is that Orcs are descended from Elves (as I'm pretty sure the Orcs hate Elves more than anything, and their hatred of the Drughu is more like the hatred they have for everyone else), and that the Druedain hate them so much because, perhaps, some memory of that ancient time at Cuivienen when Men awoke and chose to follow Morgoth (which all Men did iirc), maybe the Drughu were the first to run away from Morgoth's dominion, as they seem capable of "magic" and have a special ability to detect bad shit before it hits the fan (like the Numenorean Drughu leaving before the island sank), so maybe Orcs see them as renegades because they were the first tribe of Men to "defect" from the Shadow, and as such they were the first tribe of Men to be hunted by Orcs.
Also, I don't think (and maybe I'm completely wrong) that Tolkien meant the Orcs to be mortal originally, but rather that it was exceedingly rare for an Orc to ever live past, say, 40 or 50 years due to how disposable and prone to violence they were.
Another theory on the Drughu I heard that I'm not sure is substantiated at all, is that Hobbits are descended from the Druedain, specifically from a group of Beleriand Druedain that might have found Dior's twins after Amrod and/or Amras left them on the forest to die. I don't think or know if there's anything to back up that claim, but I find the idea that the Hobbits have a tiny little bit of Beren and Luthien in them pretty neat.
Very interesting. Thank you.
On the triads of races theme, it might be significant that in Lewis's "Out of the Silent Planet," there are three species of Martians: seroni, hrossa, and pfiffltriggi.
I'm pretty sure you got the labels switched on "Stoors" and "Harfoots." Summarizing from "On Hobbits" at the front of LotR, Harfoots are shortest, slightest, and darkest, are the most numerous and typical of hobbits, and had the most to do with dwarves. Stoors *look* most like dwarves--able to grow some peachfuzz on the chin, wearing "dwarf boots" in swampy areas--but have most to do with Men.
Don't be reluctant to introduce evolution into the discussion. Tolkien alluded to biological deep time in the Silmarillion when he notes that, while Middle-Earth lay in darkness and the Valar were away, animals developed into huge, grotesque beasts.
Please do go on in this vein.
Tolkien was often vague or mysterious about certain details, but he did say the first elves were formed of the soil of Arda and awoke. With Man being the Second Children of Illuvatar, I'd imagine a similar origin for them.
That doesn't discount evolution as a natural process within ME, but I doubt Tolkien would have Man origin stem from it.
It still is fantasy, after all, not an actual historical mythos.
Can you make a video about the bodily forms and functions of Ainu ? ( fana , ealar etc ) this I think is a fascinating topic covered by no one yet. There are interesting hints about their speed and bodily resilience as well. I found this kind of topics pretty intriguing among all of Tolkiens works. A great example would be this
It is hinted twice in both early versions of the Beren and Luthien that dwarves of Nogrod tried to get to Melian and disembody her but they failed because of Melians Ainurin inheritance. Why is that?
It is also hinted in the Letters that Saurons capture was voluntary and he was “ far too powerfull “ to be captured by Numenoreans. One might say because Sauron was still a shapeshifter he could be a bat and fly but appearently no. Melian was unable to change shape or even take of her raiment until Thingol and Luthien was killed. So both Melian and Sauron “somehow” could defend themselves from incoming armies while even Mordor and Doriath couldnt . Do you guys have any theory why that might be?
I think Melian could not change her appearance, because she was "fully" incarnated due to her becoming a mother. Perhaps it's somewhat similar to the Istari, who accepted the limitations of full incarnation to fulfill their purpose. Whereas Sauron, in the days of Númenór, was still taking and changing shape according to the way all other Maiar could.
@@LeHobbitFan That is the case but as we see results are the same. Melian could never transform herself to a bird and escape as long as Luthien was alive ( it is said after her death Melian took of her reimant and fled to Valinor ) so Melian and Sauron had an ability that allowed them to resist such armies without using shapeshifting. It is hinted in the Lost Road that Sauron created a tsunami to impress Numenoreans while Numenor was transporting him to Numenor and on the road and that tsunami nearly destroyed their ships. I can imagine Sauron destroying Numenoreans by himself but Melian never seemed that offensive to me. Dain the Ironfoot also said that they could never defeat Balrog as long as another power helped them, that being Gandalf of course. Maybe it required divine power to disembody an Ainu? I dont really know
@@oguzhanenescetin5702 The version in The Lost Road is an earlier version that was superseded by the later version we see in The Silmarillion. I would say Sauron decided to surrender after seeing his armies in some form refuse to fight the Númenoreans. However, he made the decision to surrender to suborn the Númenoreans from within, otherwise he would have likely fled eastward as he did after the War of Wrath.
We know Ecthelion and Glorfindel slew Balrogs in Beleriand during the War of the Jewels and Elendil and Gil-Galad slew Sauron so divine power is not needed to slay an Ainu, at least not a Maia.
@@istari0 "Ar-Pharazon terrified Sauron's subjects not Sauron himself,Saurons surrender was voluntary and cunning."
"So Sauron had recourse to guile.He submitted, and was carried off to Numenor as a prisoner-hostage.But he was of course a "divine" person ( in terms of this mythology; a lesser member of the race of Valar) and thus far too powerfull to be controlled in this way."
Sauron could escape them somehow text makes it clear .Sauron was killed by Elendil and Gil simply because he was weakened after Numenors fall and the things Ecthelion and Glorfindel killed were not wholly Balrogs either. Post-Lotr Balrogs are way more advanced compared to Silmarillion Balrogs or at least by the perspective of author.
As an alternative to the Drúedain and Orcs being offshoots from Homo Erectus (which I have to confess I think opens up big issues regarding the amount of time evolution takes), I'd like to suggest the following.
Men awaken in Hildórien but earlier than in The Silmarillion, perhaps even shortly after the Elves. However, the Valar do not discover Men; they only find the Elves. Melkor on the other hand finds Men and takes some (this would occur before the War for the Sake of the Elves) to corrupt to his own purposes. After the war, Melkor is locked up but Sauron is still around to continue his master's work. This allows for the existence of large numbers of orcs before Morgoth returns to Middle-Earth. However, sometime during this process of creating orcs, before they have been corrupted all that much, some of them rebel and escape. These would be the Drúedain.
This still doesn't resolve the issue of Orcs and their having souls but as you say Tolkien hadn't resolved that either.
I did find it interesting that Orcs and Drugs mutually deride each other as *renegades,* ie betrayers and deserters, which implies an initial shared loyalty, maybe not to Morgoth but to *some* kind of cause - perhaps the fair-sounding proposals with which Morgoth (or his lieutenant) seduced the proto-Druedain. As it became clear Sauron was lying and their very genes were suffering as a result, there was a schism between those who remained loyal to *Sauron* personally, or maybe the edifice of Morgoth-worship he'd created, and those who remained loyal to the ideals he falsely espoused.
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?) one guess is as good as another (unless someone discovers a 20-page essay titled 'An Inquiry on the Evolution of back-spirants in Melkorian and pseudoMelkorian tongues' in their auntie's attic that just so happens to contain Tolkien's final, complete, and clearly expressed views on the matter 🤣)
I think i found new binge-able channel for me :) This is second video ive watched and im blown away.
Do you by any chance have a background in academia ? Because your videos sound like made by a scholar rather than a fan. Love it!
24:01 how about this? the first orcs were lesser spirits that morgoth had convinced into inhabiting mud and rock statues, once those got killed the spirits could just return and inhabit new bodies. but after a time the spirits started to give him lip, so he started experimenting with other ways of making servants, and then he turned to the elves and humans he had imprisoned and was forcing to work for him.
First, regarding the quote about Tolkien preferring history, true or feigned. This was said in the context of allegory, not myth. I think it is somewhat of a mischaracterization to imply that Tolkien had a over-arching tension between preference for myth or history. Even the distinction itself is a little, perhaps anachronistic, to Tolkien's worldview.
The concept of myth making or mythopoesis, was central to Tolkien's artistic vision and aesthetic sentiments.
This was something he shared in common with C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Owen Barfield. They all had the core idea that mythic imagination was not only not antithetical to fact or truth, but can even be an essential means of seeing and apprehending truth. They all influenced each other in this notion, and they all expressed it differently in their work, but it is there in all of them.
It was Tolkien (and Hugo Dyson) who famously convinced Lewis that Myth could be both true, and historically factual. Lewis had, up to that point, a deep attraction to mythology and poetics, but believed that they conflicted with his materialist, fact-based worldview. He referred to them as "breathing lies through silver".
Tolkien and Lewis both, then, distinguished between myth which conveyed truth, but was not factual (lacked primary reality) and myth which conveyed truth and was factual (had primary reality).
I would submit that this is perhaps the tension that Tolkien is trying to work out when he puzzles and niggles over problems like the believability of the changing of Arda at the sinking of Numenor, and the problems resulting from the world being lit by the lamps, or the trees etc.
It isn't so much a tension between myth and history, but rather trying to come as close as possible to giving his myth the consistency of primary reality. Perhaps a small distinction, but I think an important one.
I would argue also, that perhaps the issue was simply that he was trying to logically work out the consequences of setting his story in the primary reality of our world.
Regarding the splitting into three 'families' during the great migrations. I've never thought about this before, but one of the first ideas that jumps to mind is the table of nations in Genesis. In this tradition, the 70 nations of men are all grouped into three basic people groups stemming from Noah's three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
In this division, the line of Shem is considered the inheritor of the Covenant, the senior line, the chosen, the most noble, etc. Japheth is often considered the more intellectual and industrious, and Ham's line is more at enmity with the others and has frequently been considered to be cursed (though technically it was Ham's son Canaan who was cursed, not Ham or his other descendants).
Regarding introducing evolutionary biology, a lot of the thought work on this has already been done in primary reality. Most Catholics (I think most is accurate) believe that God used evolution as a tool to create life, including Man. As a result there has been a fair bit of thought and conversation about the topic of when biological humans became what are sometimes referred to as "theological" humans. In other words, at what point God imbued man with the divine image, and presumably a rational soul.
In this view biological humans evolved as any other animal, even including development of intelligence etc. Then when they had reached the point God desired, he imbued them with the divine image, and a rational soul. (noting that the rational soul is not a prerequisite for intelligence as we think of it today).
If this were taken into Tolkien's legendarium and applied to say the Druedain, I think we would have to say that they are capital M Men, and diverged after Men had received their status as Children of Illuvatar.
It would be possible for Orcs to have diverged before this status was given, or even for Orcs to be the same biological species that continued to develop without having received the divine image, that defines a people as Children of Illuvatar. (of course this contradicts the printed canon explanation in the Silmarillion, but leaving that aside and considering other possibilities.)
This would have the disadvantage, of making orcs, not the 'creation' of Morgoth, though he could still have twisted them I suppose.
It would raise the question of how intelligence and fea are related in Tolkien's conception. However, the eagles also raise this question.
Talking about the comparison between Tolkien and Lewis bears on this question as well. One of the persistent problems that Tolkien seems to have had was trying to fit his 'extra' creatures like Ungolient, Eagles, Ents, orcs, Tom Bombadil, etc into his metaphysics which seems to have catagories only for animals, children of Illuvatar, and Ainur.
Lewis doesn't seem to care much about this problem as he routinely introduces random creatures and beings into his stories with little or no explanation or apparent concern for their continuity. Examples include the inclusion of Bacchus, Silinus, and Father Christmas in Narnia. My best guess here is that Lewis was concerned a little less with rigorous continuity of world building, and more concerned with consistency of theme. All of the characters he introduces serve to establish theme or feeling in the story, even when they don't entirely fit world consistency.
Tolkien seems to have loved certain aspects of these creatures, but also seems to have struggled to fit them in to his cosmology. Which, perhaps not surprisingly, is exactly the same thing that occurred among medieval Christians when addressing the issue.
One whole class of these beings, the Elves, Tolkien has essentially melded into the category of children of Illuvatar, effectively making them a parallel of humans in the real medieval cosmology. Others he struggles to come up with an explanation.
I really enjoy the image on these videos.
2:48 More precisely - alternate _prehistory._
Either The Hobbit or Chiefly on Hobbits features a comparison with "now" about "the North West of the Old World, near to the Sea" ...
I think the Druedain are supposed to have originated in the South, whereas the Orcs likely came from the East. How could they have the same origin?
I DO, however, like the idea that Orcs were a separately created species. Perhaps Morgoth was permitted to create his own "children" because Aulë and Yavanna had created their own. Maybe Eru felt obliged to allow it. Of course, this kind of arrangement would never have been discovered by the Valar or the Elves, as they would have been kept out of the loop. There would be no historical record of it. It would not make sense for Eru to allow them immortality, especially knowing Morgoth's intentions for them. We would end up with the Orcs being who they are in the Legendarium plus we wouldn't have to do mental gymnastics to explain how the Elves' fëar would not escape their hröar during the so-called "corruption" process.
I don't know why Eru would feel obliged to allow the creation of Orcs as a separate species. When Aulë created the Dwarves, he had to explain to Eru Ilúvatar why he did so when he basically should have known better. Aulë intended only good from his action so Eru Ilúvatar "adopted" the Dwarves. Melkor had free will but I don't think Eru Ilúvatar would have done anything to aid Melkor by helping him create a species intended solely to do evil.
@@istari0
I see your point. Eru should not allow Melkor to create orcs and then give them sentience because they will be used for purely evil purposes. But then again, Eru DID create Melkor.....
@@Enerdhil Melkor ended up using himself for evil purposes. Regardless of what Iluvatar may or may not have foreseen about his future, Melkor was not originally created any more evil than the other Ainur. He himself decided to keep rebelling, despite the futility of his actions. The Orcs would have no choice in the matter at all, if they were made for Melkor in his fallen state, and would be under Melkor's thumb from the beginning.
Really great video, thank you
With my genuine apologies for Being That Guy, but this is my dumb thing that I can't not bring up -- not _The Space Trilogy_ , despite so many people calling it that, but _The _*_Cosmic_*_ Trilogy_ . One of the early passages of _Out of the Silent Planet_ (which sets the tone for all three books) is the protagonist's silent soliloquy on how "space" is absolutely the wrong word for it, and that "the heavens" is the right one. This would make _The Heavenly Trilogy_ the obvious name, but "heavenly" has evolved different connotations in English (except in the phrase "the heavenly bodies"). However, the word "cosmic" -- besides sounding duly grandiose -- comes from a Greek word meaning "to set in order, arrange," with a secondary meaning "to make beautiful," and will therefore serve.
Speaking of the said trilogy, though, I'd be really interested to hear any thoughts you have about Old Solar, the language supposedly common to Martians, Earthlings before the Fall of Man, and Venusians; it obviously isn't identical to any of Tolkien's languages, but the phonology and some of the phonotactics are quite reminiscent of Quenya or Primitive Quendian (as in words like _hross_ , _handramit_ , _hru_ , and _hnakra_ , and names and titles like _Oyarsa_ , _Arbol_ , _Perelandra_ , and so on), though the broken plurals (e.g. "one _hnakra_ " but "some _hneraki_ ") are an interesting departure. I half-suspect a number of Narnian names might deliberately designed on the same model, especially those of the stars -- "Tarva the Lord of Victory" and "Alambil the Lady of Peace," though they'd (probably) be meaningless, suit Quenya phonology perfectly.
Also, re Indo-European! You may know already that one of the key divisions between Quenya and Sindarin is their handling of the ancient _kw_ sound; Quenya preserved it almost unchanged ("transliterated" as _qu_ ), while Sindarin turned it into a _p_ . This is based directly on sound changes that happened prehistorically in multiple Indo-European languages, notably in -- wouldn't you know it -- Common Italic, the ancestor of Latin (which kept the _kw_ ), and Common Celtic, the ancestor of Welsh (which went with _p_ )! If you're interested in PIE studies in general, J. P. Mallory's "In Search of the Indo-Europeans" is quite good and pretty accessible -- on the old side (it was published in 1989), but includes a lot of history of twentieth-century scholarship, much of which would have been current in Tolkien's middle and later years.
Wonderful!
Tolkien wrote an Alternate Universe earth long before the term was coined.
Proto-Indo-Europeans definitely were one nation, with not only common language, but the same mythology. For example the story of Romulus and Remus, and the story of Ymir both come from a common Indo-European creation myth. Both names mean "twin", from PIE "Yemo".
The word "nation" there can be misleading. Of course there is an older meaning of "nation" that refers to something like tribe or culture, like we'd use with "Cherokee Nation", but just because a group had common language and descent doesn't mean they had a common government or would all have thought of themselves as having a shared identity, like a lot of people today would take "nation" to mean. They could have had different villages or bands that would war with each other, for all we know.
@@coreyander286 Indo-Europeans had more than just shared language. Their gods, myths and rituals were shared as well. They also had common genetics and ancestry. Maybe "folk" would be a better word, I don't know, but they've had more in common than any modern "nation". It's not just the language.
On the subject of the recurring threefold division them and Indo-Europeans, common theories about the Euro half during Tolkien's time that are not so popular today do divide them similarly into three, the Nordics who were the Tall Blonds, the Alpines who were the Celts and maybe also Slavs, and the Medditerians who were the Greeks and Latins.
Interesting video, this is the first time I’ve seen someone explicitly mention the parallels between elves, men and hobbits coming in groups of three strains or archetypes (this has been at the back of my mind for some time now).
Also I wonder how we are supposed to reconcile the Orcs’ supposedly short lifespans when Bolg from the hobbit is at least 140 years or something at the time of his death.
We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!!!!
🙌🙌
Great video keep up the good work
The idea of three-flavored clans of various peoples (with always the same flavors, as you rightly point out) most probably came from the historical records of the three Germanic tribes which migrated from what is now Denmark to Britain in 5th or 6th century A.D., thus effectively founding the early medieval England. These three were the Angles (described in sources as blond-haired and, well, "angelic"), the Saxons (long-bearded, stout, stocky, warlike and arguably most "dwarfish" of the three) and the Jutes (said to have settled on the Isle of Wight and on the shores of Kent, therefore being the most "watery" of the three). I'm pretty certain that this was the scheme Tolkien consciously channeled into his tripartite clans of Eldar, Edain and Hobbits, all making great journeys from East to West.
I also agree with everything you've said about Druedain and the Orcs, with the exception that the Wacthers of Kirith Ungol, as was said in the text, were the work of ancient Numenoreans (as was that entire tower), which were presumably later on corrupted by the Sauron or Nazgul when they captured that fortress. However, since it was said there were Druedain living on Numenor of old, it's quite possible that this was, in fact, ancient Druedain work - or at least something which was taught to old Numenoreans by them.
And great video, btw! I shall even burn a like to demonstrate how much... well, I like it :)))
I am pretty sure Sauron sent those "Watchers" to guard the Gate(s) of the Tower of Cirith Ungol. There is no way the Gondorians did such a sinister thing during a time of peace. Nor does it make sense they added them later. Those Watchers were evil from day one.
@@Enerdhil To quote what the frightened Orcs themselves say in the Chapter I of Book 6, when Sam is coming up the stairs of Kirith Ungol to free Frodo imprisoned in there:
"Gorbag was right, I tell you. There’s a great fighter about, one of those bloody-handed Elves, or one of the filthy tarks.* He’s coming here, I tell you. You heard the bell. He’s
got past the Watchers, and that’s tark’s work. He’s on the stairs."
As Tolkien explains later on in Apendix F, "Tark" was an Orcish word for Numenoreans in general. Therefore, Orcs of Kirith Ungol themselves were of the opinion that their Watchers were the work of Numenoreans, and they presumably knew best what was added to that tower by Sauron/Nazgul, and what was part of the original fortress.
@@lukatrkanjec899
So.... You seem to think the orcs believed that the "tark" knew the command word(s) that opened the gate. I think it is obvious that the evil spirits in the Watchers shrieked and opened the gate because of a fear of the "tark." NOT because they received a command from the children of their creator.
@@lukatrkanjec899 I disagree with that interpretation. That the Orcs feared a great Elven or Gondorian soldier was about is clear. But the Watchers were there to warn against intruders trying to get in, which is why the Sam's intrusion triggered the alarm. The appearance of the Watchers is not something Gondorians would have built on the tower. The tower was also built to guard against possible enemies trying to get into Ithilien from Mordor.
@@Enerdhil @Istari There is hardly any room left for interpretation here. The orc in the text clearly states "Watchers are tark's work"; and Tark = Numenorean. That's the only info we have about who made the Watchers; and since the entire tower of Kirith Ungol was built by Numenoreans, it would stand to reason Watchers were part of it originally, and corrupted by Sauron/Nazgul once they took it over. This is, btw, perfectly in line with the general theme in the books, where we constantly learn that forces of evil take over and corrupt great and powerful works of the past. Palantir is one such example; Orthanc another. They were both wondrous works of the West, which Sauron/Saruman's corruption made scary and sinister.
As for "no way" that Gondorians would ever made something as the Watchers, re-read in the Book II, Chapter 9 what effect Aragonaths, the pillars of kings, have on Fellowship when it sails between them. That's an example of how such uncorrupted stone sentinels of Numenor were probably intended to work. Here, I'll quote that passage for your convenience here as well:
"As Frodo was borne towards them the great pillars rose like towers to meet him. Giants they seemed to him, vast grey figures silent but threatening. ... Great power and majesty they still wore, the silent wardens of a long-vanished kingdom. Awe and fear fell upon Frodo, and he cowered down, shutting his eyes and not daring to look up as the boat drew near. Even Boromir bowed his head as the boats whirled by, frail and fleeting as little leaves, under the enduring shadow of the sentinels of Numenor. So they passed into the dark chasm of the Gates."
The fact that you get hobbits out of Men is a good examole of evolution. Although never stated as thus. Also somewhere else is mentioned about the malleability of Hobbit height. I dont remember where but I remember reading that they either grw taller or that they dwindled in size (cant remember which) still further in later Ages. Petty dwarves were of less stature than the base stock. Either genetic change or consequence of living harder life with less nutritious diet so thats a little up in the air.
Nice work
I could be wrong, but I believe trolls considered there to really only be one flavor of hobbit, although they can change that with seasoning.
EDIT: Ok, on a serious note, Dr. Jackson Crawford, Crecganford, and Simon Roper all have some interesting videos on PIE. As you probably know, it's not just that there are similar words, but that there are systematic changes between the words (e.g. p changing to f when we move from Latin to Germanic languages, pater becoming father and pisces becoming fish).
I really like this idea of Druedain as Neanderthals. For a while, I was actually entertaining the opposite idea: elves as Neanderthals.
Not necessarily for aesthetic, but because of their role in humanity. Like elves, Neanderthals were humanity’s “older siblings” in a way. Migrating out of Africa, we found much of Eurasia full of them. We know that for thousands of years there was cultural exchange and interbreeding, to the point which a bit of Neanderthal survives in almost everyone on Earth (except some from Africa)
Towards the end, would you say the alarm/watchtowers systems of the dwarves are the ravens? Though now defunct?
There are also some similarities between the movements of peoples in ME and the late migratory period. For example, the movement of the Eorlings from the North down to Rohan is very reminiscent of the Anglo-Saxon and Germanic tribes migrating back through Western Europe. I believe this was purposeful on Tolkien's part since he modeled the Rohirrim language after Old/Middle English.
*Concerning Orcs:*
My own head canon (since Professor Tolkien couldn't seem to make up his mind) is that a bit of all theories are true. Generally, I believe that the early orcs were bred from some type of ape-like beast and the tortured, corrupted elves that Melkor first captured. Elves, as we know, have a long gestation period followed by approximately a century of development before adulthood. This is not enough time to breed the types of armies Melkor had, so it seems likely (and within his character) to accelerate the process by crossbreeding with a lower lifeform that can reproduce more quickly. They don't need to be exceptionally intelligent (only marginally so) if he can just exert his will over them.
After Melkor's capture, it is said that Sauron fled far to the East (or perhaps South), where he secretly continued breeding orcs and other evil creatures, devising for them the Black Speech. In my mind, this is when Man was used as stock, perhaps even taking from those of the Druadain. It would explain both the enmity and similarities, as noted in the video.
Hmm. That's an Orc origin I had not considered. In this version, do the Druedain awake at or near the same time as the Elves? They would have to be up and about when Feanor started listening to, "Highway to Hell," on repeat and started looking into Unbreakable Vows. Right?
PIE descended languages are grouped into two halves, the Satem group and the Centum group. Roughly East and West, though the Tocharian tongues, the Easternmost, were part of the Centum group, the Western group.
That division is based on the pronunciations of one hundred. Centum is pronounced with a hard C.
C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien were members of a writing group called the Inklings.
Back to PIE, another division is the division of genders. Hittite broke off earlier than the others so it only had two genders, best described as animate and inanimate. After it broke off, the animate in the remaining PIE split into masculine and feminine. That was the latest theory, last I knew.
Profé Tolkien postulated that the Tower of Babel theory was at least symbolically true. That at some point Man must have had a common tongue.
24:44 I think Tolkien would have been very clear that men descend from Adam, and that language is a major cut-off between human and bestial realms.
Think through the fact that the human language has three tiers:
* phonemes, don't have, but distinguish meaning (bad and bat are not the same thing, but D and T don't mean either of them)
* morphemes have incomplete meaning (BAD, and BAT - what about them?)
* phrases have complete meaning (THE BAT IS BAD AT SEEING IN DAYLIGHT)
Notice, I omitted "word" but the Latin and Greek word "verbum" and "logos" would be closer to phrase. A phrase with two morphemes can be one word in one language (AMO) and two words in another (I LOVE).
Or the fact that the complete meaning is often not emotive or pragmatic. Ape communications could be written as traffic signs and smileys, human language can't. That fact btw explains why ape communications have so few typified complete meanings that "phoneme X rhythm X (optionally) gesture= phrase" is sufficient for them.
Or the fact that adding a morpheme called "negative marker" can completely turn around the meaning (THE BAT IS *NOT* BAD AT SENSING IN THE DARK). Dito for conditionals, pasts, futures, absents here and presents elsewhere and so on.
Or the fact of (potentially) infinite recursivity ("this is the mouse that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built").
Or the fact that subjects are clearly expressed.
Tolkien was aware in a 1960 writing that he should have around 80,000 years between the Awakening of Men and them having large enough numbers for the Edain to migrate into Beleriand. Adam and Eve could have been the only two Men to awaken in Hildorien, and the Debate of Finrod and Andreth has an Edain version of the Garden of Eden story.
But there's still room for Adam and Eve to have been an ancestor of multiple species of humans, with Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo florensiensis (not that Tolkien would know of the latter two) being offshoots of Adam along with Homo sapiens.
Also, some Catholics square the Adam and Eve story with the biological fact that all humans probably aren't descended solely from one single couple with the idea that there was a large Pre-Adamite population that eventually wound up with all remaining humans having at least partial "Adamite" ancestry. Like a "such-and-such percentage of people have Genghis Khan's DNA" type scenario, except if eventually everyone had some Genghis Khan DNA, while _also_ having lines that _don't_ pass through Genghis Khan.
@@coreyander286 _"the Debate of Finrod and Andreth has an Edain version of the Garden of Eden story"_
Unfortunately a fairly heretical one. Not necessarily condemned as such at the time, or now for those who follow "Pope Francis" but one that was pre-condemned by the Council of Trent.
Tolkien's so much better on Apocalypse than on Genesis, his Akallabêth is genius both for picturing the pre-Flood world (one aspect of Genesis, though) and the end times.
_"the biological fact that all humans probably aren't descended solely from one single couple with the idea that there was a large Pre-Adamite population"_
1) It's not a biological fact
2) the solution is not Catholic.
The idea is that without a very large gene pool, the race will extinguish. The assessment of what is sufficient is disproven by Pitcairn islanders, and the fact itself depends on genetic faults in the parent group, which Adam and Eve hadn't before the fall, and none or few after (I suspect the inability to synthesise vitamin C, since we have a gene made for that, but which is broken, may come from the fall).
Isaac de la Peyrère suggested this, and his book was on the Index Librorum.
That said, this is somewhat off topic from my initial comment.
1:23 Whether he believed the concept (probably) or not, he was clearly familiar with the concept.
In what form?
Urheimat up North?
Urheimat in Yamna?
Other?
I don't know.
To me two things struck out:
a) if one took pre-Indo-European languages of Western Europe as partly Semitic, or similar, partly Finno-Ugrian, Tolkien would have exploited that as Adûnaic / Westron and as Quenya;
b) the Kurgan culture could, realistically, be described as "wain riders" - the word is not exactly a complement in the appendices.
I’m intrigued by your pronunciation of “Dunedain” as “Druidain”. Can you elaborate?
Anyway, Thanks for the insights here…
I think the distinction you're catching is between 'Dunedain' (ie Numenoreans; Rangers, Gondorians, and such) and Druedain (the Woses/ Pukel-men/ Wild Men of the Woods, of which Ghan buri Ghan is the only named example in the 3rd age). The similarity in sound to 'druid' is probably a coincidence, though a fitting one!
23:52 Do Orcs get unleashed then, or is it Balrogs?
my family comes from mercia originally and the founding of the area was of three tribes the saxons the anglos and the jutes which im also a practicing anglo saxon pagan which is where Tolkien got a lot of his lore well some of it more or less but so it could stand to reason he repeated the three families to potentially represent the three clans that went from Germany to England one of them who had a king who's name was Eomer. but thats just my opnion and theory on it.
Did they teach you to use sentences with periods at school?
@@Heike-- wow a bigot who attacks someone with a disability from an accident having to relearn to read and write and build grammer is shameful to you eh?>
@@Heike-- gotta love you supremacist.
Three flavors of Hobbits , well mushroom flavor might be universal, but so would be beer, perhaps potatoes, turnips and one more root that i might have missed in the canon,?
New video, Baby!
13:55 "three flavour" = Germanic Inguaeons, Instuaeons and Erminons as mentioned by Tacitus?
One can also mention, Germanic languages come in the flavours North, West and East.
Examples : Swedish, German, extinct Gothic.
Slavic languages come in the flavours South, West and East.
Examples : Croatian, Polish, Ukrainean.
North Germanic or Nordic languages come in the flavours West Norse, East Norse, Guthnic.
Examples : Icelandic, Swedish and - as already said, it's a one language branch - Guthnic.
Or Greeks in the main branches:
Aeolian, Dorian, Ionian.
Ionian comes in branches like:
Homeric, Herodotian, Attic-Koiné.
Language is a concept that evolves like a biological entity and changes over time. The geographical separation that occurs as a result of migrations creates a change pressure on the language, and this causes the formation of languages that are born from the same common ancestor but differ due to the effect of the environment factor. As a linguist, I think Tolkien was aware of this anthropological phenomenon and reflected it in his work.
I prefer to interpret the Druedain race as trying to transform humans with the same teaching, as Melkor created orcs by transforming them from elves, but this was an unsuccessful attempt.
27:27 Funny how your voice acts up just a bit as you talk about 'rusty, guttural voices'. 😊 Serendipity?
4:30 A round earth is indeed unavoidable, but Heliocentrism isn't.
Hope it's not too late to comment. Great discussion. It would be very tricky to try and tie the history of men in LotR timelines to real evolutionary biology. Homo sapiens diverged from Homo neanderthal about 400,000 years ago. Modern humans appeared about 300,000 years ago, probably at first in Africa, spread to Asia, and appear to have taken over Europe only about 40,000 years ago. If the Druedain were Neanderthals, that part could sort of work at least in Europe (i.e. Eriador, Gondor, west Rhovanion). Assuming modern humans 'awakened' in Africa not Asia (where Cuivienen presumably is), the timelines would be difficult but maybe reconcilable. But for Elves to have come first, they would have had to awaken at least 300,000 years ago, and probably more than a million years ago (or maybe 2) to truly pre-date any kind of 'human' (i.e. Homo erectus). Maybe the term 'awakening' could be interpreted to mean self-aware, or human style consciousness, rather than actual coming to life. But then it would be unclear if Elves were independently created, or also 'evolved', maybe even as a side branch of Homo with genetic traits giving them their very different lifespans and lifestyles and powers. There's a funny essay where an immortality/regeneration mutation is posited to explain the X-Men character Wolverine. Cheers!
Thanks lexi
RE: your comment on how the pre-solar Arda is problematic for believable world-building if Middle-earth is in fact Earth.
Tolkien used historical mythos from Western European cultures to inform his own 'mythical history of England,' as you know. He interpreted what those cultures' myths were as 'remembered history,' and incorporated those ideas. Anthony Peratt, David Talbot, et al, also hold that what modern scientists dismiss as myth may have just been ancient people describing what they physically saw, and attributing meaning to them. Concepts like the world mountain, the 'first sun' or 'best sun' preceding the current sun, ancient years longer than solar years, a time of the gods before man, terrible cataclysms that reshaped the earth, drowned continents, battle in the skies, a time without the sun, and more, are all neatly covered in the Silmarillion. It's fascinating to draw the parallels. If 'myth as remembered history' holds any water, Tolkien may have been onto something by using the same legends in his legendarium. Just a thought.
The fact that Tolkien describes certain nations dividing into three distinct subgroups, always three specifically, may have been inspired from the Bible, specifically how the book of Genesis describes a multitude of nations arising from Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the three sons of Noah.
Adam also had three sons, namely Cain, Abel, and Seth.
It is Stoors, not Harfoots, who are broad and can grow beards.
Eh Druadian and orcs may be similar, but that doesn't make them the same, or related per say. Tanooki and racoons looks similar but are not the same. It could be however that at some point after the initial creation of orcs, and during the ages of men, that orcs bred with humans: in which case it can be assumed that Druadians and orcs might be brother or cousin or (if you will) in-law clans.
Elves have been smug bastards often; not only about the orcs but they committed genocide on the Petty-Dwarves. There is no morally perfect group of creatures though there is a good case for the Elves being the most homicidal. The Petty-Dwarves were considered a separate group though they were made up of "criminals" and undersized dwarves - dwarf dwarves, yep - for long enough that the Kinslaying Noldor could say they didn't recognized them as dwarves and mistook them for bunny rabbits or some lame excuse when they weren't looting their homes.
Fascinating! 🧐
So I am confused about whether the Drúedain could have existed before the other Men? I thought, but maybe I am wrong, that there are only two sets of Children of Illuvatar, and each had a single awakening in time. Or did different groups of Men have different awakening points?
I did think Tolkien considered having Men awaken much earlier in the timeline than he originally considered (and much earlier than the published version suggests), to let them get Orcified.
I'm also going to throw a completely ridiculous idea out there. We know, from the athrabeth finrod ah andreth, that there is a great Darkness in the past of Men. What if this involved Morgoth tempting some men with an 'elf like' existence of reincarnation? It does seem he can prevent the fëar from going to Mandos if the fëa in question is willing to remain. So he promised to let them reincarnate into their descendants, and Sauron continued this process as the Necromancer? We also know there are many breeds of orcs, perhaps coming from different types of Men in the first place. So perhaps most of the orcs came from the Drúgs, thus their hatred of orcs in particular?
This is, again, probably ridiculous. But it would be a way of getting some orcs to be intelligent and have fëar, while some of them would be just sort of highly intelligent 'animals' without fëar. Which I think was Tolkien's big issue when dealing with what orcs were (since he didn't want to have any fëar that were inherently evil and incapable of choosing the good).
@@blakewinter1657 My understanding is that the souls of Elves could resist the call to the Halls of Mandos but those of Men could not. They went to the Halls for a short while and then go beyond the Circles of the World.
@@istari0 Unaided that's true, but who knows what Morgoth or Sauron could do (and also remember Isildur's curse that kept that group of men around for a few thousand years). Perhaps also if Tolkien had modified his view of orcs he might have changed some other things about how this works.
@@blakewinter1657 It is the Gift of Men that commands their souls will go to the Halls of Mandos and then leave the Circle of the World and that comes from Eru Ilúvatar. Not even Melkor at his mightiest would have been able to stop that. It's why one of Beren's most impressive feats was that he was able to remain in the Halls long enough for Lúthien to join him, resulting eventually in their resurrection.
I am uncertain that the Army of the Dead was actually dead or simply appeared to be that way as a result of the curse. In Tolkien, breaking an oath always has seriously bad consequences. The only way I can see that being true throughout Arda is if the enforcement of oaths comes from Eru Ilúvatar, which is what keeps the Army of the Dead in Middle-Earth.
@@istari0 I dunno, there's also the barrow wights, who appear to be undead men. And Sauron is called the Necromancer for a reason. It's got to be because he could do something with the dead. The Army of the Dead is repeatedly called the Dead, so it certainly seems like everyone thinks they are dead.
I agree the idea seems at odds with Tolkien wrote about the Call of Mandos as it applies to Men, but on the other hand, I think his wrestling with the metaphysical problem of orcs and fëar might have forced him to rethink this in some way had he continued down that path.
I'm not suggesting Tolkien actually thought what I said. It's definitely not canonical. It's more of a 'heretical headcanon' idea of mine. It also kind of fits with the Tolkienian idea of sometimes the punishment for a thing is getting exactly what you want. Instead of getting to leave the circles of the world, the fëar of these Men being forced to endure repeated reincarnation into orcs until the orcs go extinct and they can finally leave.