That's especially true for those who have come to Tolkien's work through the movie version, and so don't have access to the background details in the Prologue and the Appendices. Actually, the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings has some fairly explicit comments to make on the topic:.
These comments and many others, as we'll see make it clear that Middle-earth is actually no more or less than our own Earth, and the story belongs to a time that was certainly long ago, but not unimaginably remote in time.
Despite the change in the shape of the continents, it isn't hard to locate the action of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien makes this particular clear in a comment in the Prologue to that book:. In other words, the Shire and the lands around lay in the same region of the world as modern Europe. As the characters travel south from the northerly latitudes of the Shire , the climate becomes warmer and drier, just as it would for a traveller journeying from say Britain to the southern parts of Europe.
Beyond the lands visited by the Hobbits are others, less familiar, to the south and east. The Americas are a little more difficult to place in Tolkien's world. The new lands to the west must surely be the Americas. Those in the east are less easy to identify - perhaps these words refer to the emergence of, say, Australia or Japan, though it's much harder to be sure of Tolkien's intentions in this area. Though we can't fix the dates of Tolkien's tales to the precise year, it's clear that he had in mind a time-scheme placing them just a few thousand years ago.
The most specific comment he made on the topic comes from Tolkien's letters:. This is less definitive than it might appear, because other references hint at slightly longer time-scales, up to about 8, years. So, we can't say exactly how long ago Frodo made his journey into Mordor , but it's clearly somewhere between about 6, and 8, years ago. The dating of Tolkien's world places it just on the fringes of our own prehistory.
Historically, 6, to 8, years ago most of the world was still in the Stone Age, and the shapes of the continents and their shorelines were basically in their modern form - quite different from those shown in Tolkien's maps.
So, what happened? Such drastic change seems to imply that some great catastrophe overtook the civilizations of Middle-earth before our own era began, but if that was Tolkien's intention, he does no more than hint at the possibility. Whatever the cause, at least something of the old world survived into modern times. For instance, it seems clear that Tolkien imagined both Hobbits and Dragons surviving into historical times, and even to modern days for instance, see the quote above from the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings , where he speaks of Hobbits still lingering in the North-West of the Old World.
It seems some of the Elves still remain, too, but in quite changed form - for instance, the Third Age is described as the time of:. By our time the fading of the last Elves east of the Sea is all but complete, but a few still remain, as whispers or echoes of their ancient selves. Middle-earth was dark. At first it was largely controlled by Melkor and his servants, but when the Elves awoke the Valar went to war against Melkor, defeating him and imprisoning him in the Halls of Mandos for "three ages".
During this war, many of the westernmost areas of Middle-earth were drowned beneath the waves. During the captivity of Melkor, the Valar invited the Elves to dwell with them in Aman. Many Elves accepted this invitation, and set out for the West; these became known as the Eldar. Along the way, some groups of Eldar, notably the Nandor and the Sindar , chose to remain in Middle-earth. The Sindar settled in the region of Beleriand , a north-western coastal area of Middle-earth.
When the Years of the Sun began, Arda experienced the so-called Second Spring, a new period of growth and vitality as a result of the light of the sun in Middle-earth. At that time, Men also awoke in the east of Middle-earth.
At the end of the First Age , Beleriand was destroyed during the War of Wrath , and much of it sank beneath Belegaer; only a few high points, such as Himring later Himling and parts of Dorthonion later Tol Fuin , remained above sea level as islands. As Aman was taken away from Arda, new lands and continents were created.
Tolkien stated many times that Arda was our world in a fictional time, so we can interpret the known regions of Middle-earth as Europe.
However, the entire continent of Middle-earth extends beyond the regions known to Gondor, far into the uncharted East and South, and Middle-earth probably encompassed all of what later became Eurasia. Information regarding both was very vague. To the south were the Hither Lands including Harad , though "Harad" means "South" and while properly used for the region immediately south of Gondor.
There were many stretches of sun-scorched desert in Near Harad, but like Africa there was supposedly a jungle beyond it which few had ever ventured to, from which the great Oliphaunts were found.
Tolkien also said that the Haradrim loosely corresponded to the Berbers though "Haradrim" refers to a group of many races, not just the one. Men of Far Harad are also described as being black skinned. I have, I suppose, constructed an imaginary time, but kept my feet on my own mother-earth tor place.
However curious, they are alien, and not lovable with the love of blood-kin. Many reviewers seem to assume that Middle-earth is another planet! So, now that we have established that it is literally our Earth, we come to the problem you mention:.
I do sometimes wish that I had made some sort of agreement between the imaginations or theories of the geologists and my map a little more possible.
So Middle-Earth is literally our Earth, in a 'mythical' time that eventually became our own 'historical' time. The Shire 'became' England, somehow or another. Tolkien unfortunately didn't come up with this idea until much of the geographical work was already done, and the theories of continental drift were new to him, so unfortunately he didn't get much work done toward making the part of Middle-Earth we are familiar with actually correspond with Europe geographically, even though it is Europe.
In fact, we are living in the later days of this history:. I imagine the gap [between TA and now] to be about years: that is we are now at the end of the Fifth Age, if the Ages were of about the same length as S. But they have, I think, quickened; and I imagine we are actually at the end of the Sixth Age, or in the Seventh. Of course, one could simply say "the Valar reshaped it again ", but not only this is a bit unsatisfactory, it also doesn't make much sense in context, as Valar are well known for not wanting to meddle with Arda unless absolutely needed, and even then, as little as possible.
Well, unfortunately, this is probably the best answer we have - there was some further action of the Ainur or Eru that reshaped the world in time, or some geological process which is not known in the actual world. But there are indications, in some of his earlier writings, that this is exactly what happened.
For example:. Probably it is safest to assume the geography was largely modern after the sinking of Numenor, and then some event in the Fourth or Fifth Age corrected the remaining geography.
Book of Lost Tales 2 will help you understand the mythology of the Norse. The average person who reads Tolkien will not understand the posting of Norse mythology ahead of this. Plate tectonics , the science which describes the motion of the continents over time, ranged from fringe science to likely theory to widely accepted model over the course of Tolkien's professional life.
While he was almost certainly aware of it there is no way it was a real consideration of his during his development of Arda, which began in the s. The LotR wiki has a map showing an approximate alignment of Middle-earth with Europe, based in part on Tolkien's own hint that The Shire eventually became the British Isles this hint occurs early in Fellowship of the Ring , and basically amounts to saying that the seas rose and eventually surrounded the Shire, turning it into islands.
However, trying to make sense of this issue in any detail is an exercise in futility. Tolkien's world is one of mythology and magic rather than history and science.
Tolkien Gateway adds a bit of insight here:. On Tolkien's maps, the Shire is located at about the same position as England is on modern European maps and has been cited as an example of Deep England ideology though, of course, England is on an island while the Shire is inside the continent.
Throughout the narrative, Tolkien also implies numerous points of similarity between the two, such as weather, agriculture and dialect. One can also see England as Tolkien's source of inspiration for the Shire in its very name. According to Paula Marmor, the hobbit brothers Marcho and Blanco names are related to horses, parallel to Hengest and Horsa, legendary leaders who brought the Saxons to Britain.
Hengest was the founder of Kent whose geography is similar to the Shire North Downs above, hills to the west, water to the east and marshes to the southeast. Another entry on the Gateway says:. As for the later legendarium, The Shire not only was conceptually based on rural England but also was expressly stated to be "in this region", "the North-West of the Old World, east of the Sea".
Concerning the Shire, Tolkien stated that he intended it to correspond about to the latitude of Oxford, which would result to other Middle-earth locations to correspond but not necessarily equate with real-life locations. For instance, Pelargir would fall to about the latitude of ancient Troy. This enabled Andreas Moehn to make more correspondences, and even project the Westlands on a real map of Europe. On the other hand, Tolkien designed his maps to accommodate the mythology, and was conscious that they did not fit the ancient Earth, as understood by contemporary archaeology and historical geology.
Obviously we are supposed to imagine that sometime after the end of Lord of the Rings there was another great cataclysm in which Eru reshaped the world for some reason which is as unexplained as the date of the event. After that catastrophe the world resembled our modern geography.
Since writing began in Mesopotamia about BC or about 5, years ago, and since Tolkien said in a letter written about that Lord of the Rings was about 6, years earlier, or about 4, BC, that gives about years - give or take decades or centuries - for things to be fine after LOTR and then lead to the catastrophe and then for society to rebuild itself and start writing and start recording events and the dawn of recorded history.
The hundreds of different dates calculated for the creation of the world in Genesis mostly cluster in two different groups, one group in the centuries around the year BC, the first year of the Jewish calendar, and one group in the centuries around the year BC, the first year in the Byzantine calendar. Thus Lord of the Rings should happen within less than a millennium before or after the Biblical Creation of the world.
On one hand Tolkien was a believing Roman Catholic. On the other hand, he probably did not have a strong belief in the literal accuracy of Genesis and other early books of the Bible. On the third hand, he probably did not feel comfortable extending the game of pretending that LOTR was real history into a era when it would be competing with the Biblical accounts as history or as a story. And that discomfort is probably why I have never read anything which indicates that Tolkien ever wrote even a few notes or even thought about the one single most obvious omission in his Middle-earth legendarium - how and why mountains fell into the sea and sea floors rose up as new lands and the shape of lands and seas was drastically altered in the comparatively few centuries between the time of LOTR and the dawn of recorded history!
Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. How exactly is Arda supposed to be an ancient Earth?
0コメント