Whenever I pick up Nature of Middle Earth I have this same experience -- pages and pages of interesting, but not exactly earthshattering, Middle-earth metaphysics and then one casual sentence (or even a footnote) that just blows my mind and is emphatically not elaborated upon. It's frustrating and hilarious. Thank you for the validation 😅
Several of the mesopotamian kings would actually fund "archaeological" expeditions to go out and unearth ruins from 1-2 thousand years before their time because that was the level of continuity they were working with. It would be freaking hilarious if one of them unearthed a cache of elven weapons and went on an absolute tear through the region. Maybe that's how Sargon of Akkad got so big.
It's an idea I've never liked and I basically choose to ignore it when reading Tolkien. Though, I think it's perhaps taken by some more as a 'history of our world' rather than a 'mythical version of our world'. Tolkien's detailed thoughts in Letter 211 basically confirm that it's an imaginary time, with imaginary geography, set in "our world". I've never taken that to mean that Tolkien set these stories in some pre-history of our very real world. He wanted his own 'mother-earth' as the place and not 'remote globes in space'.
Agreed, I've always preferred to think of the story as being set in a secondary-world completely disconnected from our own, as it helps the escapist element.
So its more like an imaginary history of a world much like our own rather than our own literal world, in your opinion? I think of it as an alternative way that creation couldve happened within a broader christian framework. I still like the idea that middle earth would eventually evolve into the equivalent of the modern world during the Dominion of Men, complete with nuclear weapons, planes, trains, computers, as well as parking lots and fast food joints where elves once trod.
@@waltonsmith7210 - There's a BBC interview from 1971 that is on UA-cam. The interviewer asks if Midgard might be Middle-earth, Tolkien says they are the same word and goes on to say that most poeple make the mistake of thinking Middle-earth is a "kind of Earth" or "another planet". He says it's an old fashioned way of saying the world we live in as imagined surrounded by Ocean. That might make it seem like it's our prehistory but he is immediately asked if Middle-earth is the world we live in but "at a different era". Tolkien says "No, at a different stage of imagination, yes". Plenty of letters have him talk of it being a period of the actual "Old World of this planet" but yes, I see it as an imagined history of our world, an "imagined time" as Tolkien says in 211. I, of course, have no problem with how you view it. It's an idea that's never sat well with me. I prefer to think of it purely in mythological terms - set in our world but stories told instead of events that occured.
A couple notes. First, another good suggestion had already been published in the Silmarillion where he equated Numenor to Atlantis, the destruction of which is stated in Plato's writings to be ~9000 years before his time (~600 BC) giving us an approximate time of ~9600 BC (~11,600 years ago) for the Fall of Atlantis/Numenor. Second, if you want to attempt to establish your own timeline based on geophysics, then rising sea levels after the Last Glacial Maximum might be used to explain the flooding of Beleriand and/or Numenor. Third, the use of cuneiform is more like 3400 BC, not 14,000 BC. Fourth, while there is evidence that some people came to the Americas ~14,000 BC, new evidence shows that an earlier wave migrated to the Americas ~21,000 BC.
I always imagined that Tolkien's world existed at the very dawn of humanity, 200,000 + years ago & any evidence of his world would be utterly erased...with apologies to JRRT.
On a letter, tolkien comments that the sixth age is from the birth of Christ up until around WWII. In the same letter he writes that from the fall of Barar dur to the 1960s (when the letter is written) it's abound six thousand years.
Can you identify this letter? Your second sentence sounds like a paraphrase of a footnote in Letter 211, but the content of your first sentence isn't there (unless I've missed it) and isn't quite consistent with the tentative dating in Letter 211 (see my separate comment).
@@larrykuenning5754 you're right that's the letter I'm referring to, I can't recall where I got the idea of sixth age being exactly 0 AD-1945 AD, probably it's just fun fiction
In 'The Nature of Middle-earth' we also see the repetition of Tolkien's estimate that the War of the Ring ended approximately 6000 years ago (coinciding with the beginning of the Hebrew Calendar). This could place the end of the Fourth Age at about the alleged time of the Flood of Noah. That actually makes a certain amount of sense since we could trace the alteration in the geography of Arda to the more familiar geography of the modern world to that time.
I think you got an extra 10000 years on the earliest date for cuneiform. The usual date estimated for its creation is about 3200 bc. All of written human history occurs within the last 6000 years. That said, the drowning of Númenor towards the end of the Second Age wouldn't be too far from the time Plato put his imagined Atlantis, so those two works reconcile quite well.(Tolkien is unusually explicit in suggesting Atlantis being a memory of Númenor - and note its Quenya title Atalantë - "The Downfallen")
About the remains of Elvish civilization... the Elves did most of their building in Beleriand, which sunk into the sea. Lothlórien was mostly wood and would have vanished without a trace. We don't know how extensive Thranduil's caves were, but I can imagine them going unnoticed by diggers and archeologists up to this day. But Númenorian remains really should be everywhere, and we definitely should have dug into Moria or some other Dwarven stronghold already.
"we definitely should have dug into Moria" ... under which condition? If the places and events were real and not imaginary, yes, but they are exactly imaginary.
I am slowly working my way through a first reading of, "The Nature of Middleearth.", I am working slowly with the comparison of different types of years, going slowly to be sure to understand properly. This is helpful insight. However I am wiling to supend my dibelief to enjoy his works. i am not going so far as to believe that this is anything like a real history of our earth.. that Tolkien took the time to work all this out is part of what makes his work so wonderful. We do not ned to buy everything he is selling. Thanks for this analysis and keep up the good work.
The 16,000 year timeline helps me realize my fantasy of Ice Age megafauna in Tolkien’s world! Imagine Mumakil as mammoths (like in the animated ROTK) Also fun fact: recently discovered fossil footprints show that indigenous peoples have lived in the Americas for at least 23,000 years!
Notes to correct some of the historical stuff... No writing goes back to 14,000 BC. The oldest known writing arises around 3400 BC. The first writing arises about the same time (not coincidentally) as the first civilizations. Everything before about 3400 BC is "pre-history" because we don't have any written records of it. We only have archeological data. We basically know very little about any of that time. The oldest ruins of human settlements generally go back to about 7000 - 8000 BC, but all we have of those are the footprints of buildings and maybe pottery or carvings, etc. We know nothing about their culture and history etc.
yeah we were stillhunting mammoths in 14,000 bc lol. The closest equivalent I can think of in that time would be the advanced cave paintings humans were making. It makes me wonder how much of that stuff happened in Tolkiens timeline. There must have been a human stone age pre Beleriand. Also, their interactions with the Avari are so vague and tantalizing. I wonder if there was any conflict. We tend to be a quarrelsome species, and if there were any avari like the Green elves of Ossiriand with their unfriendship, who knows if avari didnt terrorize men from time to time?
What we often call the First Age is more properly called the First Age of the Sun. It begins not when the Noldor leave Valinor, but with the first rising of the Sun. This coincides with the time when the host of Fëanor is marching to confront Melkor in Angband.
Well, at the end of the First Age (during/after the War of Wrath), we get this in Silmarillion: "For so great was the fury of those adversaries that the northern regions of the western world were rent asunder, and the sea roared in through many chasms, and there was confusion and great noise; and rivers perished or found new paths, and the valleys were upheaved and the hills trod down; and Sirion was no more." I emphasize: "the sea roared in through many chasms," So you could see a parallel to Noah's Flood at the end of the First Age if you wanted to. :) Another interesting thing is that Plato's Atlantis is dated within that story to about 9000 years before Solon, or around 9500-ish BC. Which would be in the ballpark for Numenor. Not only that, if you read how Atlantis is described in the end, this imperial sea power with large armies subjugating the world, there are very clear parallels to Numenor's downfall.
14:22 I would actually solve a _similar_ problem about the Nodian civilisation (before the Flood) by claiming: a) our archaeology of the time features presumably savage (hunter gatherer) Neanderthals, but the cities were wiped out by the Flood, perhaps one could find remnants by digging under Himalaya or in the tunnel of Mont-Blanc; b) and our main extra-Biblical trace of it would be Mahabharata.
We do have one solid date in Tolkien's mythology. The fall of Numenor was Tolkien's version of the fall of Atlantis; this much is very clear from his writings. The fall of Atlantis is known from Plato to have occurred 12,000 years before the present. That would place The Lord of the Rings about 3,000 years later, or 9,000 years ago. It would place the end of the first age more than 15,000 years ago, roughly in the ballpark of Tolkien's date of 16,000 years ago that you mentioned.
I can’t splice it out. Might this help begin the dissection? “Glory dwelt in that city of Gondolin of the Seven Names, and in its ruin was the most dread of all the sacks of cities upon the face of the Earth. Nor Bablon, nor Ninwi, nor the towers of Trui, nor all the many takings of Rum that is the greatest among Men, saw such terror as fell that day upon Amon Gwareth in the kindred of the Gnomes, and this is esteemed the worst work that Melko has yet thought of in the world. Then said Littleheart, son of Bronweg: “Alas for Gondolin.”
When Tolkien write that his frame story was that Aelfwine of England somehow came to Tol Eressea and learned the history of the First Age, hence the references to Babylon, Troy, and Rome.
I wonder if Tolkien was aware of Doggerland, which suffered a fate similar to Belariand. I always assumed Numenor was intended to be Atlantis, which (according to the Ancient Egyptians) was destroyed about 11,000 years ago.
Numenor obviously is Tolkien's version of Atlantis but nothing about it is "according to the Ancient Egyptians" as Atlantis is solely covered in two of Plato's dialogues.
@@str.77 In his unfinished stories about Atlantis ( _Critias_ and _Timaeus_ ), Plato credits the story to Solon who learned it at the Egyptian Hall of Records ~600 BC, where Solon is told it happened ~9000 years earlier, suggesting the destruction of Atlantis happened around 9600 BC, or ~11,600 BP.
@@jakeaurod In these two dialogues, Plato says it was told by Critias who supposedly hot it from his grandfather who supposedly got it from Solon who supposedly got it from an Egyptian priest. That's a lot of "supposedly" in there. More likely, Plato made the whole thing up as not a single one of these, not even the Egyptian attest to the same story. It cannot possibly be true as around 9600 BC neither Egypt nor Athens existed.
The site I used might have had a typo I guess. Or else it pulled a site talking about 4th millennium even though I searched 14th and I just didn’t notice 😅
Gobekli Tepi in Turkey was literally ‘unearthed’ at an age marked date of about 10,000 BCE. 14:00 One more example of ancient civilizations turning up.
In Letter 211 (to Rhona Beare, 14 Oct. 1958) Tolkien refers to "the evidently long but undefined gap in time between the Fall of Barad-dûr and our Days" -- but then adds this footnote about the "gap": "I imagine the gap to be about 6000 years: that is we are now at the end of the Fifth Age, if the Ages were of about the same length as S.A. and T.A. But they have, I think, quickened; and I imagine we are actually at the end of the Sixth Age, or in the Seventh." I take it that the initial estimate "end of the Fifth Age" depends on the Fourth and Fifth Ages being about 3000 years each. But he then guesses that they have "quickened," which seems to mean that the Ages are getting shorter. If we figure that each Age is _roughly_ 500 years shorter than the previous, as the Second Age is about 3500 years and the Third Age about 3000, and if we start the Fourth Age at _roughly_ 4000 B.C., then we get: Fourth Age: 2500 years, from 4000 B.C. to 1500 B.C. Fifth Age: 2000 years, from 1500 B.C. to A.D. 500 Sixth Age: 1500 years, from A.D. 500 to "present" (_about_ 2000, or 1958 as the date of the letter) At least this arithmetic manages to fit the footnote. Unfortunately the dividing points (somewhere around 1500 B.C. and A.D. 500) have no obvious meaning. One might have expected Tolkien to use the birth of Jesus as an age-dividing date (as he does in _Nature of Middle-earth_ p. 39), but that messes up the idea of the ages "quickening" since the Sixth Age is approaching 2000 years long. Both this passage and the one in NoMe p. 39 take a tone of trying to work out something that might fit the legendarium -- not a tone of having fixed dates that he could expect to stick to in further considerations.
I know you just did a quick internet search, but you got some numbers wrong, 14,000 bc would not be the first writing, that wouldn't happen for another 10,000 years at that point, around 14,000 bc there would still be stone age hunter gatherers and that's it, no agriculture, no writing, not stone buildings even. However I must say that the end of the third age being around 7000bc works really well, because it means that the early european farmers from Anatolia come into an uncivilized europe about 1-2000 years later, and then the indo europeans come stomping into europe and asia another 1000 years later. I have a feeling the reign of Sargon the great (around 2330-2270bc) would be the start of one era, as it was the first recorded empire, and thus must have been a great rise of civilization, and one age certainly ended during the bronze age collapse
The first true, surviving, written records and stories don’t actually appear until roughly 2500 BCE. We do have some examples of writing going back to around 3000 BCE and primitive forms of proto-cuneiform and hieroglyphs appear as tags used for marking pottery and trade wares as far back as 3300-3400 BCE, but nothing we can really identify as writing going back any earlier. I think the Timeline as Tolkien might have envisioned it would be something like… 7th age 1-1960 CE 6th age would begin with the great Bronze Age collapse, fall of Troy, etc… right around 1150 BCE. 5th age begins with Noah’s flood Roughly 2500 BCE. Now this is where it gets a little dicey because I think Tolkien almost certainly equated Numenor with Atlantis which should be around 9360 BCE (9000 years before Plato). Which would place the War of the Last Alliance around 9240 BCE and the Lord of The Rings at roughly 6220 BCE, not 4000 BCE. Which makes me wonder if, perhaps, Tolkien misspoke and actually meant that the fall Barad-dur occurred “around” 6000 BCE as opposed to 6000 years ago. This puts the Indo-European migrations squarely during the 4th age, which Tolkien referred to as the Age of Men. So it kinda works out. So, 4th Age is 6220-2500 BCE. 3rd age is approximately 9240-6220 BCE. 2nd age would be 12,680-9240 BCE. 1st age would be 13,280-12,680 BCE. So this gives us 15,240 years before 1960. Now, Plato never gives us an exact date for Atlantis, only that it sank OVER 9000 years before his time. So, if Tolkien decided to bump it up to by 1000 years to 10,360 BCE, well then we land almost dead on 300 of the First Age as being almost exactly 16,000 years before 1960. Give or take a few decades. But that also throws the date for the fall of Barad-dur back to 7220 BCE, which doesn’t quite work. I think this was pretty close to the general idea he was going for. Problem is that I don’t think he was actually done figuring out all the math and his mythology was still evolving so he may have been spitballing approximate dates and his timeline was probably changing constantly just as his Annals were always changing. The key is that Numenor is Atlantis.
The missing three ages seem to be Later Stone Age (probably including Cooper Age), Bronze Age ending with Bronze Age Collapse (quite similar to apocalyptic ends of Tolkien's Ages), and Iron Age up to the birth of Christ. Almost all history we know is Bronze and Iron Ages (in Tolkien's time knowledge was much more fragmented and chronologies uncertain). Trojan War was in the end of the Bronze Age. Izrael is an Iron Age civilization. There were great cities and powerfull cultures (and religions) even in the Stone Age. They existed without writing and complex metalworking for very long time.
In my headcanon, it works a little like this... Indeed, as stated in the video, from the Tolkien Gateway website: "Tolkien said in a letter written in 1958 that he imagined that the events of The Lord of the Rings had happened approximately 6000 years earlier, so it was about the end of the Fifth Age if the length of the Ages had remained unchanged, but they had probably quickened and it was about the end of the Sixth Age or in the Seventh. However, he did not explain the criteria of why the Ages should be shortened." But... It is also says... "Two years after that letter, Tolkien changed this idea and wrote that, instead, we were already in the year 1960 of the Seventh Age, indicating that this Age follows the Christian reckoning." That being the case, this is how I imagine the link between the mythical past of Middle-earth and ours, I like to imagine a version where Tolkien's world blends with ours... 7th Age - 1AD to Present. 6th Age - 750 BC to 1 AD - Iron Age - Age of Greece and Rome - Foundation of Rome - Birth of the Son of Eru, Christ. 5th Age - 1500 BC to 750 BC - Great Flood - Mycenaean Greece - Trojan Wars - Bronze Age Colapse - Greek Dark Ages. 4th Age - 4000 BC to 1500 BC - Age and Fall of the Reunited Kingdom of Gondor and Arnor - Bronze Age. 3th Age - 7018 BC to 4000 BC - Fall of Barad-dûr. 2th Age - 10.459 BC to 7018 BC - Age of Atlantis/Númenor. 1th Age - 11.049 BC to 10.459 BC ...and so to the Creation of Time. Númenor and Atlantis... From Wikipedia: "Plato's vague indications of the time of the events (more than 9,000 years before his time)..." Plato 360 BC + 9000 = 9360 BC or 9500BC - Atlantis. Reunited Kingdom of Gondor and Arnor: The Reunited Kingdom of Gondor and Arnor lasted 100 generations after Eldarion, which would be around 2500 years. From the Tolkien Gateway website: "It was foretold that he should rule a great realm, and that it should endure for a hundred generations of Men after him, that is until a new age brought in again new things; from him should come the kings of many realms in long days after." "According to OECD a human generation typically ranges from 22 to 32 years, but let's assume an average of 25 years. That means 100 generations of human life takes us back 2,500 years." Interesting to think that after the fall of Barad-dûr several peoples at south and southeast of Mordor broke free from Sauron's rule and grew in friendship with the Reunited Kingdom, and the glory of that realm and the peace of those times may have helped in the rise of these ancient civilizations: Ancient Egypt, Greece, Crete and Mesoponamia. The Bronze Age collapse is a mysterious event in our history that coincides with the end of the Reunited Kingdom of Gondor and Arnor and the fall of several great civilizations, the hypotheses are diverse, using this "mythical and legendary version of the world", I imagine that there would have been the Great Flood and other catastrophes that change the shape of the Westlands into the Europe, Africa and the Near East that we know today, with the formation of the Mediterranean and other smaller seas, this would have put an end to the Reunited Kingdom and ushered in a Dark Age which would coincide with the Greek Dark Ages. Perhaps the great heroes of European mythologies and legends, from Achilles to Siegfried, would have lived in the Fifth Age. From Wikipedia: "Numerous and often detailed parallels make clear that the Genesis flood narrative is dependent on the Mesopotamian epics, and particularly on Gilgamesh, which is thought to date from c.1300-1000 BCE" It's not an exact correlation, but more of an imagination exercise on my part and I'm still working and thinking on it.
Actually, there's evidence now that humans arrived in the Americas as long as 30,000 years ago. The earliest civilization in recorded human history dates back to around 4,000 BC in Mesopotamia with the Sumerians. Of course, trying to reconcile Tolkien with the first appearance of modern humans about 200,000 years ago and very similar species that are now extinct even longer ago would be monumental undertaking. There is so much information has come to light in the nearly 50 years since the Professor passed away.
JRRT must have gone back and forth and changed his mind about this. I remember watching an interview where he is asked this very question. His response was basically that trying to map his legendarium onto real time isn't really possible. He mentioned specifically the fact that the hobbits having things like tobacco and umbrellas would make it completely anachronistic.
yeah “The Nature of Middle-Earth” is a slow read, my reading skills are pretty high but the way this book is written it is tedious or maybe ponderous going, but interesting
I prefer to think of Middle-Earth as part of an alternative version of the world we live in, rather than the same one. Tolkien's anachronisms are subtle but ultimately quite profound. My reasoning includes: Gandalf mentioned a clock on Bilbo's mantelpiece. Such a thing would be unheard of in times predating firearms, not because of a technical connexion, but because history pretty much makes it plain. Hobbits knew of and greatly enjoyed fireworks, which need gunpowder --- but there were no guns, and we know those came Very soon after explosives were introduced to Europe. Therefore I would equate the technical aspects of the end of the Third Age with, maybe, the 1100s to 1200s AD, a time when, just possibly, with enough fudging, everything could fit. However, I would place the events Tolkien describes much farther back, something like 10,000 to 20,000 (or more) years BC.
14000 BC is deep in the Ice Age. There is no human writing or civilization we know of from this period (there are archeological cultures though). As of cuneiform script, You are off by some 10 000 years It is very smart on Tolkien's part to set stories in those times. There were many lands then that have been sunken and most probably there were still other sentient human species alive, maybe even homo floresiensis ("hobbits"). For 1960's it was amazingly good call.
With so much water locked up in the ice-sheets, global sea-levels were also far, far lower - exposing broad, fertile plains which would have been perfect for humans to live on. As the ice melted, all those lands were drowned, erasing any traces of what was there before.
@@lotsofspots Exactly, but with one important note: we find signs of human settlement and general features of the terrain even underwater with modern techniques. That is how we kniw what Doggerland was like.
@@Deailon Not as much as you'd think - trawlers picked up random items from Doggerland that told us about the fauna there, and we've reconstructed the terrain from sonar scans, but somewhere like the Persian Gulf, dry during that time and just downstream from the Cradle of Civilisation (who had their own myths about lost ancient cities) would be buried in thousands of years of sediment from the Tigris and Euphrates.
Why would you tie the drowning of Numenor to the Noachide flood, rather than the much larger sinking of Beleriand which does tie into the start of a 2nd age and match up?
I have jet not had the time to pick up this book, let alone read it, but I wonder, does Tolkien have further explanations on the gift of men, aka death and an afterlife?
13:47 I have read somewhere Tolkien at times actually "constructed" Quenya in ways reminiscent of construction of Proto-Indo-European. Any given IE language has lots of words that cannot be traced back to common ancestry, even on the view of those supposing there was one. I think Tolkien's idea partly was taking remnants of pre-Indo-European languages. And making these words of Quenya.
He took the basic linguistic and sound changing rules. But Quenya was based on Finnish, which is an Ustalić language. And the similarities of IE are too deep and cover to huge a distance to be explained away, especially as there are small language pockets among them which cleary are not IE. So merely some reciprocital imfluences do not explain the deep similarities.
@@Chociewitka _"Quenya was based on Finnish,"_ Not purely. Alqua for swan is based on Sindarin alph which is based on Icelandic álft. Ranca is based on the Lithuanian form of ręka. _"So merely some reciprocital imfluences do not explain the deep similarities."_ Depends on how early and for how long, and also other circumstances.
@@Chociewitka Basque has ergative alignment, Hindi has split ergative alignment. Not sure whether it's present or past that is aligned with "accusative objects as well as intransitive subjects count as subjects, while transitive subjects count as ergative adverbials" but one of them is, and all of Basque is. Lexically, I'm not sure which of Basque and Hindi are closer to Spanish. I am however sure that Romanian and Bulgarian are closer to each other than Spanish and Polish. Balkan. Now, if the original home of the ancestors of Italics (of whom Latins, of whom Spaniards) was either directly or indirectly neighbouring or on same trade routes with those of Aryan, the mystery vanishes. Now, the furthest West Aryans have been is the language of the Mitanni élite. Eastern Turkey. A bit further West, you have Cappadocia, where Hittite originated. Now, a Church father counted both Cappadocia and Gaul, hence Celts, as Gomer's descendants, meaning that Italo-Celtic (or Italo-Celtic with Germanic even) might have origins not too far from Aryan. IE has both personal pronouns and personal endings. They are not the same. They could come from different languages that assigned 1st and 2nd person subjects in different ways, both ways merged, and each way had its morphemes from the language where it originated. Plurals for 1st and 2nd persons haven't merged. Germanic, Albanian, Latin-Romance have three different systems between each other or with Old Irish and its descendants.
@@hglundahl Please: "bat, bi, hiru, lau, bost, sei, zazpi, zortzi, bederatzi, hamar."/ "ēk, dō, tīn, cār, pāmc, chh, sāt, āth, nau, das"/ "uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, siete, ocho, nueve, diez/ which two of the three belong together linguistically and which two by geolocational proximity?
3400 BCE would be the cuneiform “first writing,” whereas the 14,000 BCE date is definitely into prehistory, unless you believe in Randall Carlson, etc.
Of course if you go back 16,000 years you are at the ending of the last Ice Age and much of Europe would still be under ice. There is also the flooding of Dogerland in what is now the North Sea between Europe and the British Isles.
If you start going this route, and take Middle Earth history as having actually happened, then what are Jesus, the Buddha, and other supposed divine beings, Ainur? Valar? Maiar? Also, I'm assuming it's intentional that we haven't discovered any signs of what happened in Middle Earth all those years ago. Also, I feel bad if the Elves are still able to view the world from where they are. They must be in despair about the state of the planet.
Well if Tolkien had ever decided to include (relatively) contemporary historical religious figures into his mythology, he'd most assuredly maintain Jesus as the Son of God, since he was a devout christian. In the Dialogue of Finrod & Andreth ("Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth"), he actually has an Elf and a Human from his Legendarium discussing a kind of "foreshadowing" of the birth of Christ. Plus, it would justify the Seventh Age beginning with our Year 0. As for the Buddha, Norse gods, etc. I suppose they would either be the Valar under another name (like how Manwë could be associated with Odin or Zeus, for example), simple humans with particularly acute wisdom, or maybe Maiar still walking along Middle-Earth. After all, for all we know, Radagast never left, we don't know for certain what happened to the Blue Wizards, or Tom Bombadil... And yes, with how much we've screwed up the lands, I imagine some of the Elves would be asking for a sequel to the Downfall of Númenor :/
@@1950sTardigrade The point is Tolkien left off approximately 6000 years in the past, while according to Christianity the manifestation* of God as Christ occurred approximately 2000 years ago, so we should not be looking for any parallels to the Gospels in Tolkien's work (e.g., Gandalf's death and resurrection is *not* intended to represent Christ's death and resurrection if for no other reason than it happens about 4000 years too soon). *This is certainly not the place to argue about the exact theological aspects of the Trinity, so understand I am trying to use a vague of term as possible.
well Jesus would be the physical manifestation of Eru-Illuvitar, and the angels of the old testament are Ainur and Maiar. many pagan gods would be lesser Maiar awaiting Morgoth's return, however others might be good Maiar trying to make sure the bad one's aren't to influential, especially pagan gods that were considered protectors, like Thor and Lugh
Regarding the seven ages of the world in Christian thought, the seventh age is identified with Christ's millennial kingdom. However, things very much depend on whether one undestands that millennium as a physical kingdom after the 2nd coming of Christ or as a spiritual reign before the 2nd coming. In the former case, we would still be in the 6th age while in the latter case we would be in the 7th age. BTW, there is no "official position of the Church" on this.
TL. You may want to check out (of course, you could have already seen it) a 1964 interview with JRRT. In it, he CLEARLY states that you can't connect his Middle Earth with our actual historical or palaeontologic record. His history stands alone, so we can enjoy the trees and the original lamps without trying to shoehorn them into the Pleistocene or Holocene. It does NOT correlate, and he did not intend that it do so.
Like many things though, his views on such matters changed over time. Trying to be fairly scientifically accurate came in his last few years when he wrote a lot of what is in Nature of Middle-Earth and Morgoth’s Ring, where he abandons the idea that the sun and moon came after the death of the Trees.
@@TolkienLorePodcast Good points; I suppose he changed quite a few things over time, as he ruminated on them. Things like warrior Galadriel, the origin of evil, or the redemption of orcs. Thanks for the prompt reply. And in passing, are you enjoying and commenting on the slow leakage of ROP trailers and teasers? They don't look promising to me, but perhaps I'm being too hard on them.
The thing the seem necessary is that there must have been some cataclysm that radically changes coastlines. Perhaps related to the biblical flood? Such events could explain the erasure of previous civilizations and substantial evidence of them. Perhaps that same cataclysm marks the end of the fourth or (less likely) the fifth age. Afterwards there would be a period before new civilizations had time to rise and produce a restarting of history. In keeping with this, it could also be that the oldest known cities, such as Jericho (dating from around 8000-9000 BC, I think), would have been founded later in this timeline than in the real world. One thing that seem clear is that the closer you get to the era of the stories the more different from reality things would be, but culminating in a world where Tolkien himself exists (as a translator rather than author). Times within recorded history would likely match history as we know it, but a time without history (the fifth age?) would need to be between the fictional accounts and anything we would recognize as looking like our real world. Fourth Age -> Flood -> Neolithic Prehistory (fifth age) -> Pre-Christian History (sixth age) -> Anno Domini (seventh age) seems to work reasonably well.
Sorry, but your information on the first written records seems to be wrong. 14.000 BC was still in the last ice age and before even the neolithic started - so basically stone age. The first records of cuneiforme and for that matter any writing is dated around 3.500 BC in the early bronze age. Anyway, I really enjoy your videos! But had the feeling that I had to correct you on this ;) Keep up the good work!
History buff here, but never tried to pin down Tolkien's world lol, I've also started a history channel which is exploring the beginning of history in Anatolia and also the post-Roman world in France Tolkien Lore, so if that interests you feel free to go over there. Planning to explore later the histories of Rome, Japan, Korea and the British Isles there, in the future. With that said, this is indeed fascinating as I wonder if Tolkien had lived a bit longer, if we might have seen more tales in the Second Age and the dates altered slightly, or if he might have written a proper history book of the whole of his world. Hmm, I always thought if the ending was connected to the start of human-history the 4th age would have ended at the 10,000 BCE period rather than 7000, but it fits to an extent with the rise of the Scorpion Kings starting to arise in Ancient Egypt between 5,400 BCE (first city in the middle-east dates to this era (5,400 I mean)) and 3,500 or so BCE. With Menes/Narmer possibly uniting Egypt I believe (going by memory here) some time between 3,300 and 3,100 BCE and this being the first real recorded civilisation that humans truly remember. So by then, if we go by Tolkien's history, it is highly likely all records of the ages of Arda had been wiped out. As we have a great many sources that have over the millennia been wiped out, such as all those from the Great Library of Alexandria. Heck, even the Middle-Ages' sources in some cases were wiped out with entire sections of Scotland's records of their history for example wiped out by English depredations and Nordic ones though a lot of those sources are also Irish ones with the English, Scottish (weirdly), other Irish (again weirdly) and Norse wiping out Irish monasteries and temples and their records. If you even look at Japanese history, there are gaps in the history before the 6th century, with only vague folktales and little snippets of events coming down to us via Chinese and Korean explorers and merchants. So history being wiped out wholesale is certainly believable. All of that said TolkienLore, your knowledge and familiarity with history and the great empires and the history of archaeology and history-keeping is commendable very impressed and pleased by your knowledge good sir! Thanks so much for this episode!
2:27 In other words, this was after that, perhaps tongue in cheek, comment on fall of Barad-Dûr being sth like 4004 BC (I think same letter as where Minas Tirith is same latitude as Rome, but further West)?
You could have also pointed out that, Elves lived with nature as one and didn't change it. And dwarves dug deep deep into the mountains, and a volcanic eruption would melt everything and leave no trace behind :) etc etc.. 😛
That’s really not true though. Elves did plenty to nature, as shown by Menegroth, Nargothrond, the Thranduil’s halls, and even large cities like Gondolin.
@@TolkienLorePodcast true that... But when elves are mentioned, that always comes up. They love nature and wouldn't change it very much and so on.. maybe that's Noldor elves that changed nature and built big cities? They were more like men anyways. Eager, hot blooded, closer to the dark side 😀
That mainly gets brought up outside the stories. Tolkien never says things like “Elves love nature” or “live in harmony with nature” except to the extent that elves love and have wonder for everything in the world in a way that humans might in childhood but that for us wanes quickly as we age.
Iv never liked the idea that it's the same world as ours... and like others, I ignore it best I can. It weakens the fantasy element straight away. I can't accept that Silmarils or Ents or Earendil are part of the same world as smart phones and playstations. I just can't. There's an interview on UA-cam somewhere where he flat out says no when asked if this is from another era in our time. He calls it a different stage of imagination... and that'll do for me.
All the speculation of how Christ is represented in the Tolkien legendarium may now be put to rest, since of course the two timelines come nowhere near to overlapping.
Not only that, but Tolkien (wisely) makes it very clear that not even the Valar can guess what Eru has in store for Men, so Christ could perfectly be the Son of God as defined by the dogma of the Holy Trinity, and it wouldn't contradict the lore of LOTR because there's nothing to contradict. (Of course, we all know that Christ is actually Tom Bombadil)
As others have pointed out, 16kya there was still plenty of ice hanging around the northern climes since the last glacial maximum (which lasted until about 20kya), and also that is well before the invention of writing. Also, and this may come as a surprise to those who are whining about Amazon putting brown-skinned persons in Middle-Earth, early inhabitants of Europe who were Homo sapiens had browner skin than the people many want to label as "European" today. As for Tolkien's writing - I say let myth do its work. Myth is not history. Myths are stories invented in an attempt to understand objects, events, and aspects of life that are too perplexing to understand. That is why in our modern age, with the advancement of modern science, the belief in old myths (as found in religious texts) is waning. Tolkien's "conceit" may be that he didn't invent the myths of Middle Earth but discovered them, but that is just more creative writing on his part. Tolkien did not have a good grasp of the geologic past (which probably contributes to why maps of Middle Earth are so screwy), nor of the deep past of H. sapiens. His expertise being languages means his knowledge about humanity pretty much was about the last few thousand years. So for me his myths are about teaching morality (as fables have often done) and other aspects of Tolkien's worldview (his religion and ideas about society.)
I realize Tolkien intended for it to be mythical but does anyone think that at least some of the events of his legendarium MIGHT have actually happened? I mean, how much can we trust our history books, y'know? Perhaps the Numenoreans were a civilization of the Nephilim (Biblical giants)? Just a thought haha
15:59 I'd say, the reason we don't accept LotR as history is, we have a tradition that Tolkien wrote it as fiction. We have no tradition whatsoever that anyone in 1900 regarded this as history. Tolkien was not continuing a tradition of history. And perhaps Tolkien had a point here. Book of Mormon ... apart from being a religion is also a long history, arguably invented like Tolkien invented his (point "yes, you can invent these things"), and we have as little historic tradition before Tolkien of Minas Tirith as we have before Joseph Smith of Nephites (point "check if a writer pretends to reveal sth hitherto totally unknown, that is suspect"). He never himself published the Loudham papers, in which Loudham et al. would have been credited with discovering a very long lost book as well as being given its language by some paranormal means.
Another reason, apart from what we can actually know about ancient history, is that now that we have the HoMe volumes (we didn't when I first read LotR in 1965) we can watch Tolkien's composition process. His manuscripts read like a storyteller trying to imagine what "happened" next -- not like a translator trying to figure out how to express what he finds in an ancient document.
@@larrykuenning5754 With the previous versions of LotR (like where Strider was a Hobbit), correct, but the overall viewpoint would depend on how the ancient document was formulated. Obviously very improbable people 6 - 9000 years ago had invented sth like the modern novel, but not totally impossible. So, the main reason remains, we have a tradition of Tolkien inventing it for the purpose of entertainment.
Letter 211 (14 Oct 1958, to Rhona Beare) suggests 6000 years from the fall of Barad-dur to the present. It's a bit contradictory, as he also says that Middle-Earth is our world but at an imaginary time. Anyway he guesses the ages have "quickened" and we are now at the end of the sixth, or in the seventh. (My speculation) the shorter Ages might answer to the astrological Ages marked by the precession of the vernal equinox (where the Sun crosses the celestial equator) among the zodiacal constellations. Conventionally these are of 2160 years. We are now in the age of Pisces (sometimes thought to begin with the birth of Christ) or possibly in the next one, Aquarius. I should say 4000 BC was "pre-history" to Tolkien. It's also near the Archbishop Ussher creation date, 4004 BC.
BAAAM! 1:55 🛑 Graham Hancock alert! Tolkien places his world in the age prior to the last ice age, and Meltwater Pulse 1-B: the age, some say, of the height of an ancient civilization-perhaps Atlantis. 😮😅😊
I'm almost positive I've heard about Tolkien saying it was all based on true history. Numenor would've been an obvious reference to Atlantis. I believe history is what the Bible says, and God did wipe out all flesh in a flood because it had been corrupted. I think many things Tolkien wrote about were true in some sense.
That’s actually a good question. Based on the similarity to wilderness I’d say it has a short I, but I also want to say long I because it seems a less awkward pronunciation, but maybe I’ve just been corrupted by the Rankin/Bass Hobbit film 😅
I've been giving it a short I since 1965, to parallel other derivatives of "wild" including "wilderness" and "bewildered." It was Bilbo's song of Eärendil that first made me aware that "bewildered" meant "lost in a wilderness" ("bewildered on enchanted ways beyond the days of mortal lands"). Tolkien was surely aware of all these connections.
Writing in 14,000 BC? You’re at least 9,000 years off. A lot of domestication took place between 10,000 and 5,000 BC, both plants and animals. Permanent settlements and agriculture between 7,000 and 5,000 BC. The first cities 4,000 to 3,000 BC. What I find interesting is that before the last few hundred years people actually believed in a factual mythic past. I think that both Tolkien and Lewis felt losing this was a bad thing. I don’t know if I agree with them, but a person who believes elves and wizards and gods (little g) are real is going to see the world differently then a person who knows none of those are real and we’re never real.
it was suggested that Jesus' ancestors were of the line of Luthien, but not necessary by Aragorn or Arwen - e.g. it might well have been by a Black Numenorean's offspring who rebelled against Black Numenoreans' ways
@@TolkienLorePodcast I think I seen that from the complete guide to middle Earth by Robert Foster. I can't find where Tolkien said it. Even in Lord of the rings appendix F, Tolkien said the exiled noldor came back to Middle Earth at the end of the first age.
Oh please. Tolkien started with a flat Earth, which then turned round. If you wrap a plane around a sphere then you'll raise mountains hundreds of miles high. Also his maps don't match ours.
Whenever I pick up Nature of Middle Earth I have this same experience -- pages and pages of interesting, but not exactly earthshattering, Middle-earth metaphysics and then one casual sentence (or even a footnote) that just blows my mind and is emphatically not elaborated upon. It's frustrating and hilarious. Thank you for the validation 😅
Several of the mesopotamian kings would actually fund "archaeological" expeditions to go out and unearth ruins from 1-2 thousand years before their time because that was the level of continuity they were working with. It would be freaking hilarious if one of them unearthed a cache of elven weapons and went on an absolute tear through the region. Maybe that's how Sargon of Akkad got so big.
I love that idea.
Even now crazy is that they have hardly found any weapons in ancient India
It's an idea I've never liked and I basically choose to ignore it when reading Tolkien. Though, I think it's perhaps taken by some more as a 'history of our world' rather than a 'mythical version of our world'. Tolkien's detailed thoughts in Letter 211 basically confirm that it's an imaginary time, with imaginary geography, set in "our world". I've never taken that to mean that Tolkien set these stories in some pre-history of our very real world. He wanted his own 'mother-earth' as the place and not 'remote globes in space'.
Agreed, I've always preferred to think of the story as being set in a secondary-world completely disconnected from our own, as it helps the escapist element.
So its more like an imaginary history of a world much like our own rather than our own literal world, in your opinion? I think of it as an alternative way that creation couldve happened within a broader christian framework. I still like the idea that middle earth would eventually evolve into the equivalent of the modern world during the Dominion of Men, complete with nuclear weapons, planes, trains, computers, as well as parking lots and fast food joints where elves once trod.
@@waltonsmith7210 - There's a BBC interview from 1971 that is on UA-cam. The interviewer asks if Midgard might be Middle-earth, Tolkien says they are the same word and goes on to say that most poeple make the mistake of thinking Middle-earth is a "kind of Earth" or "another planet". He says it's an old fashioned way of saying the world we live in as imagined surrounded by Ocean.
That might make it seem like it's our prehistory but he is immediately asked if Middle-earth is the world we live in but "at a different era". Tolkien says "No, at a different stage of imagination, yes".
Plenty of letters have him talk of it being a period of the actual "Old World of this planet" but yes, I see it as an imagined history of our world, an "imagined time" as Tolkien says in 211. I, of course, have no problem with how you view it. It's an idea that's never sat well with me. I prefer to think of it purely in mythological terms - set in our world but stories told instead of events that occured.
@@thebrotherskrynn
nah its better that its our world.
@@thebrotherskrynn It's not supposed to be "escapist".
A couple notes. First, another good suggestion had already been published in the Silmarillion where he equated Numenor to Atlantis, the destruction of which is stated in Plato's writings to be ~9000 years before his time (~600 BC) giving us an approximate time of ~9600 BC (~11,600 years ago) for the Fall of Atlantis/Numenor. Second, if you want to attempt to establish your own timeline based on geophysics, then rising sea levels after the Last Glacial Maximum might be used to explain the flooding of Beleriand and/or Numenor. Third, the use of cuneiform is more like 3400 BC, not 14,000 BC. Fourth, while there is evidence that some people came to the Americas ~14,000 BC, new evidence shows that an earlier wave migrated to the Americas ~21,000 BC.
I always imagined that Tolkien's world existed at the very dawn of humanity, 200,000 + years ago & any evidence of his world would be utterly erased...with apologies to JRRT.
On a letter, tolkien comments that the sixth age is from the birth of Christ up until around WWII. In the same letter he writes that from the fall of Barar dur to the 1960s (when the letter is written) it's abound six thousand years.
Can you identify this letter? Your second sentence sounds like a paraphrase of a footnote in Letter 211, but the content of your first sentence isn't there (unless I've missed it) and isn't quite consistent with the tentative dating in Letter 211 (see my separate comment).
@@larrykuenning5754 you're right that's the letter I'm referring to, I can't recall where I got the idea of sixth age being exactly 0 AD-1945 AD, probably it's just fun fiction
In 'The Nature of Middle-earth' we also see the repetition of Tolkien's estimate that the War of the Ring ended approximately 6000 years ago (coinciding with the beginning of the Hebrew Calendar). This could place the end of the Fourth Age at about the alleged time of the Flood of Noah. That actually makes a certain amount of sense since we could trace the alteration in the geography of Arda to the more familiar geography of the modern world to that time.
I think you got an extra 10000 years on the earliest date for cuneiform. The usual date estimated for its creation is about 3200 bc. All of written human history occurs within the last 6000 years.
That said, the drowning of Númenor towards the end of the Second Age wouldn't be too far from the time Plato put his imagined Atlantis, so those two works reconcile quite well.(Tolkien is unusually explicit in suggesting Atlantis being a memory of Númenor - and note its Quenya title Atalantë - "The Downfallen")
About the remains of Elvish civilization... the Elves did most of their building in Beleriand, which sunk into the sea. Lothlórien was mostly wood and would have vanished without a trace. We don't know how extensive Thranduil's caves were, but I can imagine them going unnoticed by diggers and archeologists up to this day. But Númenorian remains really should be everywhere, and we definitely should have dug into Moria or some other Dwarven stronghold already.
not unless plate tectonics had ground Moria and Erebor to meal, not unlike Gollum's riddle
"we definitely should have dug into Moria" ... under which condition?
If the places and events were real and not imaginary, yes, but they are exactly imaginary.
I am slowly working my way through a first reading of, "The Nature of Middleearth.", I am working slowly with the comparison of different types of years, going slowly to be sure to understand properly. This is helpful insight. However I am wiling to supend my dibelief to enjoy his works. i am not going so far as to believe that this is anything like a real history of our earth.. that Tolkien took the time to work all this out is part of what makes his work so wonderful. We do not ned to buy everything he is selling. Thanks for this analysis and keep up the good work.
The 16,000 year timeline helps me realize my fantasy of Ice Age megafauna in Tolkien’s world! Imagine Mumakil as mammoths (like in the animated ROTK)
Also fun fact: recently discovered fossil footprints show that indigenous peoples have lived in the Americas for at least 23,000 years!
Notes to correct some of the historical stuff...
No writing goes back to 14,000 BC. The oldest known writing arises around 3400 BC.
The first writing arises about the same time (not coincidentally) as the first civilizations. Everything before about 3400 BC is "pre-history" because we don't have any written records of it. We only have archeological data.
We basically know very little about any of that time. The oldest ruins of human settlements generally go back to about 7000 - 8000 BC, but all we have of those are the footprints of buildings and maybe pottery or carvings, etc. We know nothing about their culture and history etc.
Cuneiform was invented around 3,000 bc, not 14,000 bc.
Well you can’t trust the internet so I guess I should have cross-checked that with another site 😂
yeah we were stillhunting mammoths in 14,000 bc lol. The closest equivalent I can think of in that time would be the advanced cave paintings humans were making. It makes me wonder how much of that stuff happened in Tolkiens timeline. There must have been a human stone age pre Beleriand. Also, their interactions with the Avari are so vague and tantalizing. I wonder if there was any conflict. We tend to be a quarrelsome species, and if there were any avari like the Green elves of Ossiriand with their unfriendship, who knows if avari didnt terrorize men from time to time?
We can definitely draw a parallel between Numenor and Atlantis!
What we often call the First Age is more properly called the First Age of the Sun. It begins not when the Noldor leave Valinor, but with the first rising of the Sun. This coincides with the time when the host of Fëanor is marching to confront Melkor in Angband.
Well, at the end of the First Age (during/after the War of Wrath), we get this in Silmarillion:
"For so great was the fury of those adversaries that the northern regions of the western world were rent asunder, and the sea roared in through many chasms, and there was confusion and great noise; and rivers perished or found new paths, and the valleys were upheaved and the hills trod down; and Sirion was no more."
I emphasize: "the sea roared in through many chasms,"
So you could see a parallel to Noah's Flood at the end of the First Age if you wanted to. :)
Another interesting thing is that Plato's Atlantis is dated within that story to about 9000 years before Solon, or around 9500-ish BC. Which would be in the ballpark for Numenor. Not only that, if you read how Atlantis is described in the end, this imperial sea power with large armies subjugating the world, there are very clear parallels to Numenor's downfall.
Since Numenor is Tolkeins take on Atlantis, then there is no suprise that it bears more than passing resemblance to the Atlantis myths...
14:22 I would actually solve a _similar_ problem about the Nodian civilisation (before the Flood) by claiming:
a) our archaeology of the time features presumably savage (hunter gatherer) Neanderthals, but the cities were wiped out by the Flood, perhaps one could find remnants by digging under Himalaya or in the tunnel of Mont-Blanc;
b) and our main extra-Biblical trace of it would be Mahabharata.
14:30 Major upheavals or a lot of time passing - the Flood was really a major upheaval.
We do have one solid date in Tolkien's mythology. The fall of Numenor was Tolkien's version of the fall of Atlantis; this much is very clear from his writings.
The fall of Atlantis is known from Plato to have occurred 12,000 years before the present. That would place The Lord of the Rings about 3,000 years later, or 9,000 years ago. It would place the end of the first age more than 15,000 years ago, roughly in the ballpark of Tolkien's date of 16,000 years ago that you mentioned.
Not quite, as Numenor is Tolkien's version of the Atlantis myth - whether he would have adopted Plato's timeframe as well cannot be assumed.
The Fifth age would be the Hyborian Age and the Sixth age would be the Young Kingdoms.
I can’t splice it out. Might this help begin the dissection?
“Glory dwelt in that city of Gondolin of the Seven Names, and in its ruin was the most dread of all the sacks of cities upon the face of the Earth. Nor Bablon, nor Ninwi, nor the towers of Trui, nor all the many takings of Rum that is the greatest among Men, saw such terror as fell that day upon Amon Gwareth in the kindred of the Gnomes, and this is esteemed the worst work that Melko has yet thought of in the world.
Then said Littleheart, son of Bronweg: “Alas for Gondolin.”
When Tolkien write that his frame story was that Aelfwine of England somehow came to Tol Eressea and learned the history of the First Age, hence the references to Babylon, Troy, and Rome.
I wonder if Tolkien was aware of Doggerland, which suffered a fate similar to Belariand.
I always assumed Numenor was intended to be Atlantis, which (according to the Ancient Egyptians) was destroyed about 11,000 years ago.
Numenor is definitely Atlantis.
Numenor obviously is Tolkien's version of Atlantis but nothing about it is "according to the Ancient Egyptians" as Atlantis is solely covered in two of Plato's dialogues.
@@str.77 In his unfinished stories about Atlantis ( _Critias_ and _Timaeus_ ), Plato credits the story to Solon who learned it at the Egyptian Hall of Records ~600 BC, where Solon is told it happened ~9000 years earlier, suggesting the destruction of Atlantis happened around 9600 BC, or ~11,600 BP.
@@jakeaurod In these two dialogues, Plato says it was told by Critias who supposedly hot it from his grandfather who supposedly got it from Solon who supposedly got it from an Egyptian priest. That's a lot of "supposedly" in there. More likely, Plato made the whole thing up as not a single one of these, not even the Egyptian attest to the same story. It cannot possibly be true as around 9600 BC neither Egypt nor Athens existed.
@@str.77 But it is based on when Tolkien thinks it happens, not when it actually happened or thought to happen.
Hey there just a quick correction first writing is 4th milennium bc not 14th :)
The site I used might have had a typo I guess. Or else it pulled a site talking about 4th millennium even though I searched 14th and I just didn’t notice 😅
Great video!
Gobekli Tepi in Turkey was literally ‘unearthed’ at an age marked date of about 10,000 BCE. 14:00 One more example of ancient civilizations turning up.
In Letter 211 (to Rhona Beare, 14 Oct. 1958) Tolkien refers to "the evidently long but undefined gap in time between the Fall of Barad-dûr and our Days" -- but then adds this footnote about the "gap":
"I imagine the gap to be about 6000 years: that is we are now at the end of the Fifth Age, if the Ages were of about the same length as S.A. and T.A. But they have, I think, quickened; and I imagine we are actually at the end of the Sixth Age, or in the Seventh."
I take it that the initial estimate "end of the Fifth Age" depends on the Fourth and Fifth Ages being about 3000 years each. But he then guesses that they have "quickened," which seems to mean that the Ages are getting shorter. If we figure that each Age is _roughly_ 500 years shorter than the previous, as the Second Age is about 3500 years and the Third Age about 3000, and if we start the Fourth Age at _roughly_ 4000 B.C., then we get:
Fourth Age: 2500 years, from 4000 B.C. to 1500 B.C.
Fifth Age: 2000 years, from 1500 B.C. to A.D. 500
Sixth Age: 1500 years, from A.D. 500 to "present" (_about_ 2000, or 1958 as the date of the letter)
At least this arithmetic manages to fit the footnote. Unfortunately the dividing points (somewhere around 1500 B.C. and A.D. 500) have no obvious meaning. One might have expected Tolkien to use the birth of Jesus as an age-dividing date (as he does in _Nature of Middle-earth_ p. 39), but that messes up the idea of the ages "quickening" since the Sixth Age is approaching 2000 years long.
Both this passage and the one in NoMe p. 39 take a tone of trying to work out something that might fit the legendarium -- not a tone of having fixed dates that he could expect to stick to in further considerations.
Characters' birthdates could be determined using this.
I know you just did a quick internet search, but you got some numbers wrong, 14,000 bc would not be the first writing, that wouldn't happen for another 10,000 years at that point, around 14,000 bc there would still be stone age hunter gatherers and that's it, no agriculture, no writing, not stone buildings even.
However I must say that the end of the third age being around 7000bc works really well, because it means that the early european farmers from Anatolia come into an uncivilized europe about 1-2000 years later, and then the indo europeans come stomping into europe and asia another 1000 years later.
I have a feeling the reign of Sargon the great (around 2330-2270bc) would be the start of one era, as it was the first recorded empire, and thus must have been a great rise of civilization, and one age certainly ended during the bronze age collapse
The first true, surviving, written records and stories don’t actually appear until roughly 2500 BCE. We do have some examples of writing going back to around 3000 BCE and primitive forms of proto-cuneiform and hieroglyphs appear as tags used for marking pottery and trade wares as far back as 3300-3400 BCE, but nothing we can really identify as writing going back any earlier.
I think the Timeline as Tolkien might have envisioned it would be something like…
7th age 1-1960 CE
6th age would begin with the great Bronze Age collapse, fall of Troy, etc… right around 1150 BCE.
5th age begins with Noah’s flood Roughly 2500 BCE.
Now this is where it gets a little dicey because I think Tolkien almost certainly equated Numenor with Atlantis which should be around 9360 BCE (9000 years before Plato). Which would place the War of the Last Alliance around 9240 BCE and the Lord of The Rings at roughly 6220 BCE, not 4000 BCE. Which makes me wonder if, perhaps, Tolkien misspoke and actually meant that the fall Barad-dur occurred “around” 6000 BCE as opposed to 6000 years ago. This puts the Indo-European migrations squarely during the 4th age, which Tolkien referred to as the Age of Men. So it kinda works out.
So, 4th Age is 6220-2500 BCE.
3rd age is approximately 9240-6220 BCE.
2nd age would be 12,680-9240 BCE.
1st age would be 13,280-12,680 BCE.
So this gives us 15,240 years before 1960. Now, Plato never gives us an exact date for Atlantis, only that it sank OVER 9000 years before his time. So, if Tolkien decided to bump it up to by 1000 years to 10,360 BCE, well then we land almost dead on 300 of the First Age as being almost exactly 16,000 years before 1960. Give or take a few decades. But that also throws the date for the fall of Barad-dur back to 7220 BCE, which doesn’t quite work.
I think this was pretty close to the general idea he was going for. Problem is that I don’t think he was actually done figuring out all the math and his mythology was still evolving so he may have been spitballing approximate dates and his timeline was probably changing constantly just as his Annals were always changing.
The key is that Numenor is Atlantis.
The missing three ages seem to be Later Stone Age (probably including Cooper Age), Bronze Age ending with Bronze Age Collapse (quite similar to apocalyptic ends of Tolkien's Ages), and Iron Age up to the birth of Christ.
Almost all history we know is Bronze and Iron Ages (in Tolkien's time knowledge was much more fragmented and chronologies uncertain). Trojan War was in the end of the Bronze Age. Izrael is an Iron Age civilization.
There were great cities and powerfull cultures (and religions) even in the Stone Age. They existed without writing and complex metalworking for very long time.
In my headcanon, it works a little like this...
Indeed, as stated in the video, from the Tolkien Gateway website:
"Tolkien said in a letter written in 1958 that he imagined that the events of The Lord of the Rings had happened approximately 6000 years earlier, so it was about the end of the Fifth Age if the length of the Ages had remained unchanged, but they had probably quickened and it was about the end of the Sixth Age or in the Seventh. However, he did not explain the criteria of why the Ages should be shortened."
But... It is also says...
"Two years after that letter, Tolkien changed this idea and wrote that, instead, we were already in the year 1960 of the Seventh Age, indicating that this Age follows the Christian reckoning."
That being the case, this is how I imagine the link between the mythical past of Middle-earth and ours, I like to imagine a version where Tolkien's world blends with ours...
7th Age - 1AD to Present.
6th Age - 750 BC to 1 AD - Iron Age - Age of Greece and Rome - Foundation of Rome - Birth of the Son of Eru, Christ.
5th Age - 1500 BC to 750 BC - Great Flood - Mycenaean Greece - Trojan Wars - Bronze Age Colapse - Greek Dark Ages.
4th Age - 4000 BC to 1500 BC - Age and Fall of the Reunited Kingdom of Gondor and Arnor - Bronze Age.
3th Age - 7018 BC to 4000 BC - Fall of Barad-dûr.
2th Age - 10.459 BC to 7018 BC - Age of Atlantis/Númenor.
1th Age - 11.049 BC to 10.459 BC
...and so to the Creation of Time.
Númenor and Atlantis...
From Wikipedia:
"Plato's vague indications of the time of the events (more than 9,000 years before his time)..."
Plato 360 BC + 9000 = 9360 BC or 9500BC - Atlantis.
Reunited Kingdom of Gondor and Arnor:
The Reunited Kingdom of Gondor and Arnor lasted 100 generations after Eldarion, which would be around 2500 years.
From the Tolkien Gateway website:
"It was foretold that he should rule a great realm, and that it should endure for a hundred generations of Men after him, that is until a new age brought in again new things; from him should come the kings of many realms in long days after."
"According to OECD a human generation typically ranges from 22 to 32 years, but let's assume an average of 25 years. That means 100 generations of human life takes us back 2,500 years."
Interesting to think that after the fall of Barad-dûr several peoples at south and southeast of Mordor broke free from Sauron's rule and grew in friendship with the Reunited Kingdom, and the glory of that realm and the peace of those times may have helped in the rise of these ancient civilizations: Ancient Egypt, Greece, Crete and Mesoponamia.
The Bronze Age collapse is a mysterious event in our history that coincides with the end of the Reunited Kingdom of Gondor and Arnor and the fall of several great civilizations, the hypotheses are diverse, using this "mythical and legendary version of the world", I imagine that there would have been the Great Flood and other catastrophes that change the shape of the Westlands into the Europe, Africa and the Near East that we know today, with the formation of the Mediterranean and other smaller seas, this would have put an end to the Reunited Kingdom and ushered in a Dark Age which would coincide with the Greek Dark Ages. Perhaps the great heroes of European mythologies and legends, from Achilles to Siegfried, would have lived in the Fifth Age.
From Wikipedia:
"Numerous and often detailed parallels make clear that the Genesis flood narrative is dependent on the Mesopotamian epics, and particularly on Gilgamesh, which is thought to date from c.1300-1000 BCE"
It's not an exact correlation, but more of an imagination exercise on my part and I'm still working and thinking on it.
Actually, there's evidence now that humans arrived in the Americas as long as 30,000 years ago.
The earliest civilization in recorded human history dates back to around 4,000 BC in Mesopotamia with the Sumerians.
Of course, trying to reconcile Tolkien with the first appearance of modern humans about 200,000 years ago and very similar species that are now extinct even longer ago would be monumental undertaking. There is so much information has come to light in the nearly 50 years since the Professor passed away.
I always found the similarities with The Silmarillion and Genesis of the Bible. The world starts with singing in Sim and the Word in Gen.
JRRT must have gone back and forth and changed his mind about this. I remember watching an interview where he is asked this very question. His response was basically that trying to map his legendarium onto real time isn't really possible. He mentioned specifically the fact that the hobbits having things like tobacco and umbrellas would make it completely anachronistic.
yeah “The Nature of Middle-Earth” is a slow read, my reading skills are pretty high but the way this book is written it is tedious or maybe ponderous going, but interesting
I prefer to think of Middle-Earth as part of an alternative version of the world we live in, rather than the same one.
Tolkien's anachronisms are subtle but ultimately quite profound. My reasoning includes:
Gandalf mentioned a clock on Bilbo's mantelpiece. Such a thing would be unheard of in times predating firearms,
not because of a technical connexion, but because history pretty much makes it plain.
Hobbits knew of and greatly enjoyed fireworks, which need gunpowder --- but there were no guns,
and we know those came Very soon after explosives were introduced to Europe.
Therefore I would equate the technical aspects of the end of the Third Age with, maybe, the 1100s to 1200s AD,
a time when, just possibly, with enough fudging, everything could fit.
However, I would place the events Tolkien describes much farther back, something like 10,000 to 20,000 (or more) years BC.
14000 BC is deep in the Ice Age. There is no human writing or civilization we know of from this period (there are archeological cultures though). As of cuneiform script, You are off by some 10 000 years
It is very smart on Tolkien's part to set stories in those times. There were many lands then that have been sunken and most probably there were still other sentient human species alive, maybe even homo floresiensis ("hobbits"). For 1960's it was amazingly good call.
With so much water locked up in the ice-sheets, global sea-levels were also far, far lower - exposing broad, fertile plains which would have been perfect for humans to live on. As the ice melted, all those lands were drowned, erasing any traces of what was there before.
@@lotsofspots Exactly, but with one important note: we find signs of human settlement and general features of the terrain even underwater with modern techniques. That is how we kniw what Doggerland was like.
@@Deailon Not as much as you'd think - trawlers picked up random items from Doggerland that told us about the fauna there, and we've reconstructed the terrain from sonar scans, but somewhere like the Persian Gulf, dry during that time and just downstream from the Cradle of Civilisation (who had their own myths about lost ancient cities) would be buried in thousands of years of sediment from the Tigris and Euphrates.
@@lotsofspots I am quite sure that you don't know what I think. If you knew, you would be aware that your comment is completely unnecessary :D
@@Deailon "you'd think" = usually meant as "people in general would think" as no one really uses "one" any more.
6:36 you're off by 10 thousand years when it comes to first written cuneiform scripts
Why would you tie the drowning of Numenor to the Noachide flood, rather than the much larger sinking of Beleriand which does tie into the start of a 2nd age and match up?
I have jet not had the time to pick up this book, let alone read it, but I wonder, does Tolkien have further explanations on the gift of men, aka death and an afterlife?
Haven’t gotten that far lol
@@TolkienLorePodcast okay, still thank you :)
About 10500 BC for the end of the 2nd Age - well there was a massive flood about then.
13:47 I have read somewhere Tolkien at times actually "constructed" Quenya in ways reminiscent of construction of Proto-Indo-European.
Any given IE language has lots of words that cannot be traced back to common ancestry, even on the view of those supposing there was one.
I think Tolkien's idea partly was taking remnants of pre-Indo-European languages. And making these words of Quenya.
He took the basic linguistic and sound changing rules. But Quenya was based on Finnish, which is an Ustalić language. And the similarities of IE are too deep and cover to huge a distance to be explained away, especially as there are small language pockets among them which cleary are not IE. So merely some reciprocital imfluences do not explain the deep similarities.
@@Chociewitka _"Quenya was based on Finnish,"_
Not purely.
Alqua for swan is based on Sindarin alph which is based on Icelandic álft.
Ranca is based on the Lithuanian form of ręka.
_"So merely some reciprocital imfluences do not explain the deep similarities."_
Depends on how early and for how long, and also other circumstances.
@@hglundahl Well, it makes no sense for Hindi be more similar to Spanish than Basque - if there is no IE that simply would not make any sense.
@@Chociewitka Basque has ergative alignment, Hindi has split ergative alignment. Not sure whether it's present or past that is aligned with "accusative objects as well as intransitive subjects count as subjects, while transitive subjects count as ergative adverbials" but one of them is, and all of Basque is.
Lexically, I'm not sure which of Basque and Hindi are closer to Spanish.
I am however sure that Romanian and Bulgarian are closer to each other than Spanish and Polish. Balkan.
Now, if the original home of the ancestors of Italics (of whom Latins, of whom Spaniards) was either directly or indirectly neighbouring or on same trade routes with those of Aryan, the mystery vanishes.
Now, the furthest West Aryans have been is the language of the Mitanni élite. Eastern Turkey. A bit further West, you have Cappadocia, where Hittite originated. Now, a Church father counted both Cappadocia and Gaul, hence Celts, as Gomer's descendants, meaning that Italo-Celtic (or Italo-Celtic with Germanic even) might have origins not too far from Aryan.
IE has both personal pronouns and personal endings. They are not the same. They could come from different languages that assigned 1st and 2nd person subjects in different ways, both ways merged, and each way had its morphemes from the language where it originated.
Plurals for 1st and 2nd persons haven't merged. Germanic, Albanian, Latin-Romance have three different systems between each other or with Old Irish and its descendants.
@@hglundahl Please: "bat, bi, hiru, lau, bost, sei, zazpi, zortzi, bederatzi, hamar."/ "ēk, dō, tīn,
cār, pāmc, chh, sāt, āth, nau, das"/ "uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, siete, ocho, nueve, diez/ which two of the three belong together linguistically and which two by geolocational proximity?
3400 BCE would be the cuneiform “first writing,” whereas the 14,000 BCE date is definitely into prehistory, unless you believe in Randall Carlson, etc.
Of course if you go back 16,000 years you are at the ending of the last Ice Age and much of Europe would still be under ice. There is also the flooding of Dogerland in what is now the North Sea between Europe and the British Isles.
If you start going this route, and take Middle Earth history as having actually happened, then what are Jesus, the Buddha, and other supposed divine beings, Ainur? Valar? Maiar?
Also, I'm assuming it's intentional that we haven't discovered any signs of what happened in Middle Earth all those years ago. Also, I feel bad if the Elves are still able to view the world from where they are. They must be in despair about the state of the planet.
Well if Tolkien had ever decided to include (relatively) contemporary historical religious figures into his mythology, he'd most assuredly maintain Jesus as the Son of God, since he was a devout christian. In the Dialogue of Finrod & Andreth ("Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth"), he actually has an Elf and a Human from his Legendarium discussing a kind of "foreshadowing" of the birth of Christ. Plus, it would justify the Seventh Age beginning with our Year 0.
As for the Buddha, Norse gods, etc. I suppose they would either be the Valar under another name (like how Manwë could be associated with Odin or Zeus, for example), simple humans with particularly acute wisdom, or maybe Maiar still walking along Middle-Earth. After all, for all we know, Radagast never left, we don't know for certain what happened to the Blue Wizards, or Tom Bombadil...
And yes, with how much we've screwed up the lands, I imagine some of the Elves would be asking for a sequel to the Downfall of Númenor :/
Buddha didn't claim to be divine. As for Jesus, Tolkien always intended for Christianity to be canon. Jesus is Illuvatar
@@1950sTardigrade The point is Tolkien left off approximately 6000 years in the past, while according to Christianity the manifestation* of God as Christ occurred approximately 2000 years ago, so we should not be looking for any parallels to the Gospels in Tolkien's work (e.g., Gandalf's death and resurrection is *not* intended to represent Christ's death and resurrection if for no other reason than it happens about 4000 years too soon).
*This is certainly not the place to argue about the exact theological aspects of the Trinity, so understand I am trying to use a vague of term as possible.
well Jesus would be the physical manifestation of Eru-Illuvitar, and the angels of the old testament are Ainur and Maiar. many pagan gods would be lesser Maiar awaiting Morgoth's return, however others might be good Maiar trying to make sure the bad one's aren't to influential, especially pagan gods that were considered protectors, like Thor and Lugh
Regarding the seven ages of the world in Christian thought, the seventh age is identified with Christ's millennial kingdom. However, things very much depend on whether one undestands that millennium as a physical kingdom after the 2nd coming of Christ or as a spiritual reign before the 2nd coming. In the former case, we would still be in the 6th age while in the latter case we would be in the 7th age. BTW, there is no "official position of the Church" on this.
TL. You may want to check out (of course, you could have already seen it) a 1964 interview with JRRT. In it, he CLEARLY states that you can't connect his Middle Earth with our actual historical or palaeontologic record. His history stands alone, so we can enjoy the trees and the original lamps without trying to shoehorn them into the Pleistocene or Holocene. It does NOT correlate, and he did not intend that it do so.
Like many things though, his views on such matters changed over time. Trying to be fairly scientifically accurate came in his last few years when he wrote a lot of what is in Nature of Middle-Earth and Morgoth’s Ring, where he abandons the idea that the sun and moon came after the death of the Trees.
@@TolkienLorePodcast Good points; I suppose he changed quite a few things over time, as he ruminated on them. Things like warrior Galadriel, the origin of evil, or the redemption of orcs.
Thanks for the prompt reply.
And in passing, are you enjoying and commenting on the slow leakage of ROP trailers and teasers? They don't look promising to me, but perhaps I'm being too hard on them.
I see stuff occasionally but try to avoid most of it. I’d rather know as little as possible going into it.
The thing the seem necessary is that there must have been some cataclysm that radically changes coastlines. Perhaps related to the biblical flood? Such events could explain the erasure of previous civilizations and substantial evidence of them. Perhaps that same cataclysm marks the end of the fourth or (less likely) the fifth age. Afterwards there would be a period before new civilizations had time to rise and produce a restarting of history. In keeping with this, it could also be that the oldest known cities, such as Jericho (dating from around 8000-9000 BC, I think), would have been founded later in this timeline than in the real world.
One thing that seem clear is that the closer you get to the era of the stories the more different from reality things would be, but culminating in a world where Tolkien himself exists (as a translator rather than author). Times within recorded history would likely match history as we know it, but a time without history (the fifth age?) would need to be between the fictional accounts and anything we would recognize as looking like our real world.
Fourth Age -> Flood -> Neolithic Prehistory (fifth age) -> Pre-Christian History (sixth age) -> Anno Domini (seventh age) seems to work reasonably well.
So it's possible that I have a trace of elvish blood and I don't need die if I don't want? If it's the case I will write from Mandos stances
The first written text 16000 years ago? You're about 11,000 years early for that my friend.
Sorry, but your information on the first written records seems to be wrong. 14.000 BC was still in the last ice age and before even the neolithic started - so basically stone age. The first records of cuneiforme and for that matter any writing is dated around 3.500 BC in the early bronze age.
Anyway, I really enjoy your videos! But had the feeling that I had to correct you on this ;) Keep up the good work!
I’m guessing my source had a typo lol
History buff here, but never tried to pin down Tolkien's world lol, I've also started a history channel which is exploring the beginning of history in Anatolia and also the post-Roman world in France Tolkien Lore, so if that interests you feel free to go over there. Planning to explore later the histories of Rome, Japan, Korea and the British Isles there, in the future.
With that said, this is indeed fascinating as I wonder if Tolkien had lived a bit longer, if we might have seen more tales in the Second Age and the dates altered slightly, or if he might have written a proper history book of the whole of his world. Hmm, I always thought if the ending was connected to the start of human-history the 4th age would have ended at the 10,000 BCE period rather than 7000, but it fits to an extent with the rise of the Scorpion Kings starting to arise in Ancient Egypt between 5,400 BCE (first city in the middle-east dates to this era (5,400 I mean)) and 3,500 or so BCE. With Menes/Narmer possibly uniting Egypt I believe (going by memory here) some time between 3,300 and 3,100 BCE and this being the first real recorded civilisation that humans truly remember. So by then, if we go by Tolkien's history, it is highly likely all records of the ages of Arda had been wiped out. As we have a great many sources that have over the millennia been wiped out, such as all those from the Great Library of Alexandria. Heck, even the Middle-Ages' sources in some cases were wiped out with entire sections of Scotland's records of their history for example wiped out by English depredations and Nordic ones though a lot of those sources are also Irish ones with the English, Scottish (weirdly), other Irish (again weirdly) and Norse wiping out Irish monasteries and temples and their records. If you even look at Japanese history, there are gaps in the history before the 6th century, with only vague folktales and little snippets of events coming down to us via Chinese and Korean explorers and merchants. So history being wiped out wholesale is certainly believable.
All of that said TolkienLore, your knowledge and familiarity with history and the great empires and the history of archaeology and history-keeping is commendable very impressed and pleased by your knowledge good sir! Thanks so much for this episode!
2:27 In other words, this was after that, perhaps tongue in cheek, comment on fall of Barad-Dûr being sth like 4004 BC (I think same letter as where Minas Tirith is same latitude as Rome, but further West)?
Other commenter already noted:
_"Letter 211 (14 Oct 1958, to Rhona Beare) suggests 6000 years from the fall of Barad-dur to the present."_
You could have also pointed out that, Elves lived with nature as one and didn't change it. And dwarves dug deep deep into the mountains, and a volcanic eruption would melt everything and leave no trace behind :) etc etc.. 😛
That’s really not true though. Elves did plenty to nature, as shown by Menegroth, Nargothrond, the Thranduil’s halls, and even large cities like Gondolin.
@@TolkienLorePodcast true that... But when elves are mentioned, that always comes up. They love nature and wouldn't change it very much and so on.. maybe that's Noldor elves that changed nature and built big cities? They were more like men anyways. Eager, hot blooded, closer to the dark side 😀
That mainly gets brought up outside the stories. Tolkien never says things like “Elves love nature” or “live in harmony with nature” except to the extent that elves love and have wonder for everything in the world in a way that humans might in childhood but that for us wanes quickly as we age.
6:22 - the first written texts of cuneiform were from around 3300-3000 bc. Not 14,000 bc. Where ever you got that info from is strait up wrong.
Probably a typo for 4,000 lol
Iv never liked the idea that it's the same world as ours... and like others, I ignore it best I can. It weakens the fantasy element straight away.
I can't accept that Silmarils or Ents or Earendil are part of the same world as smart phones and playstations. I just can't. There's an interview on UA-cam somewhere where he flat out says no when asked if this is from another era in our time. He calls it a different stage of imagination... and that'll do for me.
All the speculation of how Christ is represented in the Tolkien legendarium may now be put to rest, since of course the two timelines come nowhere near to overlapping.
Not only that, but Tolkien (wisely) makes it very clear that not even the Valar can guess what Eru has in store for Men, so Christ could perfectly be the Son of God as defined by the dogma of the Holy Trinity, and it wouldn't contradict the lore of LOTR because there's nothing to contradict.
(Of course, we all know that Christ is actually Tom Bombadil)
As others have pointed out, 16kya there was still plenty of ice hanging around the northern climes since the last glacial maximum (which lasted until about 20kya), and also that is well before the invention of writing. Also, and this may come as a surprise to those who are whining about Amazon putting brown-skinned persons in Middle-Earth, early inhabitants of Europe who were Homo sapiens had browner skin than the people many want to label as "European" today.
As for Tolkien's writing - I say let myth do its work. Myth is not history. Myths are stories invented in an attempt to understand objects, events, and aspects of life that are too perplexing to understand. That is why in our modern age, with the advancement of modern science, the belief in old myths (as found in religious texts) is waning.
Tolkien's "conceit" may be that he didn't invent the myths of Middle Earth but discovered them, but that is just more creative writing on his part.
Tolkien did not have a good grasp of the geologic past (which probably contributes to why maps of Middle Earth are so screwy), nor of the deep past of H. sapiens. His expertise being languages means his knowledge about humanity pretty much was about the last few thousand years. So for me his myths are about teaching morality (as fables have often done) and other aspects of Tolkien's worldview (his religion and ideas about society.)
I realize Tolkien intended for it to be mythical but does anyone think that at least some of the events of his legendarium MIGHT have actually happened? I mean, how much can we trust our history books, y'know? Perhaps the Numenoreans were a civilization of the Nephilim (Biblical giants)? Just a thought haha
15:59 I'd say, the reason we don't accept LotR as history is, we have a tradition that Tolkien wrote it as fiction.
We have no tradition whatsoever that anyone in 1900 regarded this as history. Tolkien was not continuing a tradition of history.
And perhaps Tolkien had a point here. Book of Mormon ... apart from being a religion is also a long history, arguably invented like Tolkien invented his (point "yes, you can invent these things"), and we have as little historic tradition before Tolkien of Minas Tirith as we have before Joseph Smith of Nephites (point "check if a writer pretends to reveal sth hitherto totally unknown, that is suspect").
He never himself published the Loudham papers, in which Loudham et al. would have been credited with discovering a very long lost book as well as being given its language by some paranormal means.
Another reason, apart from what we can actually know about ancient history, is that now that we have the HoMe volumes (we didn't when I first read LotR in 1965) we can watch Tolkien's composition process. His manuscripts read like a storyteller trying to imagine what "happened" next -- not like a translator trying to figure out how to express what he finds in an ancient document.
@@larrykuenning5754 With the previous versions of LotR (like where Strider was a Hobbit), correct, but the overall viewpoint would depend on how the ancient document was formulated.
Obviously very improbable people 6 - 9000 years ago had invented sth like the modern novel, but not totally impossible.
So, the main reason remains, we have a tradition of Tolkien inventing it for the purpose of entertainment.
Letter 211 (14 Oct 1958, to Rhona Beare) suggests 6000 years from the fall of Barad-dur to the present. It's a bit contradictory, as he also says that Middle-Earth is our world but at an imaginary time. Anyway he guesses the ages have "quickened" and we are now at the end of the sixth, or in the seventh. (My speculation) the shorter Ages might answer to the astrological Ages marked by the precession of the vernal equinox (where the Sun crosses the celestial equator) among the zodiacal constellations. Conventionally these are of 2160 years. We are now in the age of Pisces (sometimes thought to begin with the birth of Christ) or possibly in the next one, Aquarius. I should say 4000 BC was "pre-history" to Tolkien. It's also near the Archbishop Ussher creation date, 4004 BC.
BAAAM! 1:55 🛑 Graham Hancock alert! Tolkien places his world in the age prior to the last ice age, and Meltwater Pulse 1-B: the age, some say, of the height of an ancient civilization-perhaps Atlantis. 😮😅😊
I'm almost positive I've heard about Tolkien saying it was all based on true history. Numenor would've been an obvious reference to Atlantis. I believe history is what the Bible says, and God did wipe out all flesh in a flood because it had been corrupted. I think many things Tolkien wrote about were true in some sense.
Atlantis though isn't true history.
Hello how is Wilderland pronounced
It wilderland as Wilder wild er land or
Wilderness wilderland please help sir thanks
That’s actually a good question. Based on the similarity to wilderness I’d say it has a short I, but I also want to say long I because it seems a less awkward pronunciation, but maybe I’ve just been corrupted by the Rankin/Bass Hobbit film 😅
I've been giving it a short I since 1965, to parallel other derivatives of "wild" including "wilderness" and "bewildered." It was Bilbo's song of Eärendil that first made me aware that "bewildered" meant "lost in a wilderness" ("bewildered on enchanted ways beyond the days of mortal lands"). Tolkien was surely aware of all these connections.
@@larrykuenning5754 Thank you
@@larrykuenning5754 ua-cam.com/video/EwTWzA4dWRI/v-deo.html
@@TolkienLorePodcast ua-cam.com/video/EwTWzA4dWRI/v-deo.html
Writing in 14,000 BC? You’re at least 9,000 years off. A lot of domestication took place between 10,000 and 5,000 BC, both plants and animals. Permanent settlements and agriculture between 7,000 and 5,000 BC. The first cities 4,000 to 3,000 BC.
What I find interesting is that before the last few hundred years people actually believed in a factual mythic past. I think that both Tolkien and Lewis felt losing this was a bad thing. I don’t know if I agree with them, but a person who believes elves and wizards and gods (little g) are real is going to see the world differently then a person who knows none of those are real and we’re never real.
I think the source I used for that had a typo lol
It probably meant to say 1,400 BC and was referring to alphabet and not writing.
Maybe, or else it left off the 1 lol
No doubt. That would make sense if it were an otherwise decent online source.
Soooooo, um Peter Jackson, could we please have a Dagu Dageroth movie set in the 34th century? Please? Pretty please?
Is Middle Earth Atlantis?
No, Numenor is Atlantis. ;)
Does that mean Jesus was a descendant of Numenor and Aragorn and Luthien and part elf, man, and 'angel'?
It’s certainly interesting that one of the most obvious Christ-like figures is Earendil, who has the same descent (other than being pre-Numenorean).
it was suggested that Jesus' ancestors were of the line of Luthien, but not necessary by Aragorn or Arwen - e.g. it might well have been by a Black Numenorean's offspring who rebelled against Black Numenoreans' ways
@@Chociewitka curious thought.
First!
The first age did not start with the rising of the sun
Depends on what stage of development Tolkien is at. 😂
@@TolkienLorePodcast I don't think Tolkien ever stated the first age began with the sun. Not sure where this misconception happened
“The first age of the sun” is a phrase he uses. Not sure where off hand but I know he does.
@@TolkienLorePodcast I think I seen that from the complete guide to middle Earth by Robert Foster. I can't find where Tolkien said it. Even in Lord of the rings appendix F, Tolkien said the exiled noldor came back to Middle Earth at the end of the first age.
I’m pretty sure it’s in The History of Middle-Earth somewhere.
Oh please. Tolkien started with a flat Earth, which then turned round. If you wrap a plane around a sphere then you'll raise mountains hundreds of miles high. Also his maps don't match ours.