4th Age and beyond

[alhaQQ]

Another "speculation" question (don't be horrified...)

Since the end of the 3rd Age/beginning of the 4th Age was reckoned to be (depending on where in ME you are, I believe) the first anniversary of the Battle at the Black Gate/Destruction of the Ring and/or the sailing of the elvish rings into the west...where would one put "the end", etc. of the subsequent ages?

My own (humble) opinion:

Fourth Age: begins after destruction of ring or sailing into the west; ends with the "flood" (Noah as a distant descendant of the Dunedain?).

Fifth Age: Flood to the "Destruction" of Troy (VI) in the "Trojan War"

Sixth Age: Trojan War to End of WWII.

So we (as Tolkien guessed) are in the beginning (possibily) of the Seventh Age...

Any ideas?

[jammi567]

That works out to roughly 3000 years for each one.

[alhaQQ]

Hmmm. I think that the 4th "age" may have been "very long" (to make up for the first age?) almost twice (or so) the average age length to provide enough time for Tolkien to "hide the bones", so to speak, so that there'd be no trace of any of his "prehistory" left, other than the "shadowy" memories that he comes up with. To break the "spell" for a moment--it's a nice, convienent literary gap that he can exploit.

Back to the enchantment--it would be interesting to tie some of this "long age" with other stories--I believe that this was done with Conan (tha' Politician...) and others (that I am not familiar with). Also interesting would be to link (as mentioned before) Noah and his ancestors to the Dunedain, in a post-Dunedain dominated timeline--Minas Tirith is dust (not even rubble), as is all the other Dunedainic Cities/Sites. Maybe the claim that the Easterlings were "growing" was no idle comment by Denethor--breeding like "rabbits", fighting over seemingly limited resources, moving like nomads and eventually "squatting" on the outlying territories of the western realms. In time, this encroachment would increase, pushing back the old realms further west--draining them of resources (including fighting men), until there was no trace of them (other than a "shadowy" memory in the minds of the "squatters") except for the occasional family group or clan, that has somehow escaped the "bitter end"--and cling onto their ancient traditions as a "blanket" against the cold and dark eastern wind blowing through their existence.

Actually, there are a huge series of events that may take longer than 6000+ years (solar years) to adequately explain. Some things come to mind--what happened to all the other sentient beings (Elves, Ents, Dwarves, Drugs, Hobbits, Beornings, Orcs and their ilk, and anyone else not Genus Homo)? Did the Elves flee west to Valinor--or were some too stubborn and fought for their "homes" to the bitter end? The rest, didn't have the "out" that the Elves had--presumably they diminished with the influx of migration or were "run over" by it. I can see the Ents, Drugs and Hobbits "butchered" for their land or resources by maurauding hordes looking for those very resources to survive themselves. The Dwarves may have held out longer--moving further west till they finally "die out". Maybe this is the cause of the "flood"--Eru has had enough--and, boom, the flood arrives--with Eru sparing only those who still remain faithful to Him. I take the "multiple" Noah approach, myself; one needs more than 8 people to repopulate the earth...how many cultures have "flood" stories with their own survivor group? Extrapolate the numbers and see where it leads.

Needless to say, the Fourth Age looks very grim indeed.

[ecthelion]

I would think that the fall of Numenor is the flood.
And that the mythical creatures began simply hiding more and more. Initially, they would have contact with humans, which would account for our legends of them.
And more, I think that the ages were counted really by Elves, so the counting really stops at the fourth. After that we have our own ages count... (all IMO alone)

[alhaQQ]

Tolkien turned history on it's head a bit with Numenor. He dated the "Atlantis" story much earlier than the "universal" flood, I believe. I know that he didn't reference the "flood" directly (maybe in his letters, not 100% sure about that). I think, as above, he could use the flood (if he continued the timeline to today) to cover up the "evidence" (convienently) of the "hidden" past.

I like trying to fit Tolkien's sub history into the "actual" timeline of pre-history. Unfortunately, genetics is pushing this date further into the past--at least 150,000 years--thanks to Mitochondrial Eve...our most recent common female ancestor. Working from memory about Hildorien, Tolkien states that there were many "humans" in the Vale of Murmenalda (forgive the spelling) that awoke--with no common ancestor (I assume); so it's difficult to reconcile these two events without some type of natural or man-made disaster to shrink human-kind down to a small number of survivors occupying a small piece of land in East Africa; this would push the date for Tolkien's world into the remote past. A possible reconstruction (off the top of my head):

Eru creates universe: 13-15 B. Yrs ago. (=Great Music?)

Eru causes our Solar System to condense from interstellar cloud of gas/dust. (~5 b. yrs ago.)

Solar System forms--coming of Valar (?) + Melkor (causes havoc, like Earth mk 1 colliding with large "mars" sized object--called Orpheus--creating Earth mk 2--btw, no flat earth. Earth/Arda rotates on axis with large moon, and very fast days, d=4hrs. Slowing gradually.)

Earth (Arda) evolves over 4.5 b. yrs. Spring of Arda (evolution of life) interspersed with more Melkor chaos (tectonic movement, volcanic activity, stellar collisions with comets and asteroids, etc.) causes Valar to flee to Valinor.

Hard to explain here--coming of the elves in twilight. Cannot stop Earth's rotation. (Have to ditch the flat Arda idea from the beginning, sorry.) Natural disaster (eg. Nuclear Winter, no good, too cold.) Weak link.

According to some sources doing the math of Valar years--solar years, the inverval between the creation of the two trees and the first sunrise was ~15000 solar years, and within that time--the elves and dwarves arose at some point.

"First sunrise" (hard to fathom or explain, but ok), Men awake.

Three ages: around 6400 years or so. Fourth age: unknown length. (for fun, say 3000 years or so) So, 4 ages=10,000 years.

M.Eve--c. 140000 BC (lower estimate)+unknown time frame for decay (let's give it 3000 yrs) +4 ages (10000 years)+15000 years (2 trees)= close to 170,000 BC for all this noise to begin (with the two trees). That means we have to find a suitable disaster around 145,000 BC to reduce men and kill off all the rest and one before 170,000 BC to explain the necessity of the two trees--one that doesn't violate nature (eg. earth's roundness or orbit or clouding up the sky.)

There's a bunch left off here--archaeological evidence, mainly.

Anyone care to embellish?

[ecthelion]

I don't know how to comment on all, but definitely the earth was not always round. You cannot fully connect the mythos with scientific so called knowledge. Some things you have to take on faith. Some things (like early human bones) cannot be fit into JRR's world.
I think history can be fit into it, however.

[Olmer]

Very interesting! Thanks for posting.
You can't write out the probability of another civilization that has existed on the earth millions years ago. Considering that if we will count our planet existence as 365 days, then the development of a contemporary Homo sapiens took only 4 minutes before the end of the year.
I wouldn't be so presumtious on insistence that nothing similar, like birth and death of human race, has not happened before.
Our science is too young to assume that we know everything about Earth's past.
Very probably we are not the descendants of monkey (thank you, Darvin, for a stupidiest and never proved, but widely accepted idea), but a remnants of more higher civilization, and if you'll look around, you will find another singposts of the diminished Arda.
How real is Tolkien's world?

About your attempt to fit the history of ME into the history of the Earth...On some site about global warming has been mentioned that 8200 years ago has been an unusual splash of epidemics, famine and change of climate.
8200 it's approximately 6200 b.c.
So by Tolkien's calendar it's 1700 г. 3 .A. (+/-100 years)
And in the "Tales of the Years" we see:
1636 г.: The Great Plague devastates Gondor and Arnor.

[alhaQQ]

...well to try to tie in Tolkien into a time-period that could actually make sense, from an historical/archaeological/scientific point of view. (Not to be smug or haughty, I posess a degree in Ancient History--studied Latin, Greek, and many of the modern tongues...plus I have an engineering and physics background. I am a bit lite on the archaeological knowledge--however, as an ancient historian, I've read plenty of site reports and surveys... )

Many, including Tolkien himself, tried to tie all this to a more recent past. I just cannot buy that. (Sorry, professor, but I have too much bias toward real proof, eg. facts...are like bricks...truth/faith, etc. is a fog.) BTW, Darwin, never tried to prove that Genus Homo was ever ascended from the "monkey" (directly); others have proven that we do belong to the same "family" as other "primates" and that we have our own branch on this tree.

There is also some mention of some astronomical sightings that could only occur on certain dates with certain alignments. One date put (I'm working from memory) put the constellation Orion in a certain place during the WotR, which was worked out to be somewhere around the 13th or 12th Millienium BC. Since the stars that form the various constellations are at such distances that would have very small (from our perspective) "proper motions", one could argue that the date for such a sighting could be "recurring" and could be an alignment in the remote past. (Just have to get the data and run the numbers backwards.)

My only idea here was to try to see if one "could" fit "Tolkien" into the recent past (in geologic terms) in a way that could fit what modern science and history/archaeology...without violating or causing the need for "magic" ( ) to explain something away. (er. No "Deus ex Machina", please)

More simply put, I am not a fan of Tolkien's "fairie" or "fairey" (or magical) elements. I'm not a fan of elves suddenly breaking into uncontrolled dancing, singing, or poetry reciting--it's unseemly at best, and makes them look damn stupid at the worst. (If I was an Elf, I'd definitely look at Gildor and crew as a bunch of kooks, and begin to back up and walk the other way.) There is no such thing as magic--as much as some people want to believe in it--in the modern context of today--things that may seem like magic (or miraculous) (oh Lord--I can't spell... ), eg. the "unexplainable", if not already explained , will be by science.

What I am a (serious) fan of--is Tolkien's vast, unexplored timeline of events and characters, his cosmology, and the history he has created and the range of events that occured--like any historian would be. (Kinda like offering crack to a junkie... ).

On the other hand, that doesn't discount the "belief" (or faith) of those who "witnessed" the event--to borrow from Christian Scholarship--they who witnessed or took part in the event--believed the event to be miraculous or magical. I cannot question their beliefs, because that would be interjecting my own (later or modern) bias into the "event". I can, however, examine the event itself and examine it's credibility--was the account accurate, or were there differing views of the event? Is the event itself something that needs to be questioned as something that would be germain to the principal characters (eg. is this something that "they" would "do"?); also, what about the sources themselves--how credible are they? Do we have "first generation" (eg. signature copies) of the description of the event? If not, how much or little was added or removed to the event that was thought either important or trivial--and how did the "author" of the document (either the actual witness to the event or some later redactor summerizing the event) transmit the details? And so on, ad infinitum. As an Ancient Historian, I (and everyone else in the field) am faced with these dilemas--I am sometimes having to take a minor even that will have major implications, say, 100 years later, from a source who is redacting a text of someone who was "biased" against this event, who may have been writing 50 years after the "implications" take effect, and this redactor is summerizing this 700 years later based on the writing (second hand) of another author who was in opposition to the original author. (History is held together by the slenderest of threads...)

Sorry for the diatribe ...anyway, it would be interesting (maybe to me only) to try to "fit" Tolkien's Legendarium (at least as much as plausable) into real history, just as an interesting mental excercise. Trying to reconcile as much as possible is a great "learning" tool about the past, as long as one is "honest" with the events. Most likely, as pointed out, some things cannot be reconciled--and since we know Tolkien is "fiction", but it is interesting how much can be made to "fit" into a particular timeline.

I guess that's my (poor) version of "fun".

[Landroval]

I think we are taking too far the fitting of Ea into our Universe. Tolkien went the furthest in trying to mimic our world in Myths Transformed, HoME X. There, he commented:

At that point (in reconsideration of the early cosmogonic parts) I was inclined to adhere to the Flat Earth and the astronomically absurd business of the making of the Sun and Moon. But you can make up stories of that kind when you live I among people who have the same general background of imagination, when the Sun 'really' rises in the East and goes down in the West, etc. When however (no matter how little most people know or think about astronomy) it is the general belief that we live upon a 'spherical' island in 'Space' you cannot do this any more.

Now, as we see, Tolkien is trying to make his world believable to our imagination. Why? Because this is the hallmark of a great story, as can be seen in presentation at the St. Andrews University, as early as 1939:

Originally Posted by On fairy stories

Children are capable, of course, of literary belief, when the story-maker's art is good enough to produce it. That state of mind has been called “willing suspension of disbelief.” But this does not seem to me a good description of what happens. What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful “sub-creator.” He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is “true”: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside. If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to stay, then disbelief must be suspended (or stifled), otherwise listening and looking would become intolerable. But this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or less willingly) to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed.

Tolkien intention for resemblance (which eases credibility) was made clearer in his 1971 BBC interview:

Interviewer Dennis Gerrolt: It seemed to me that Middle-earth was in a sense as you say this world we live in but at a different era.

Tolkien: No ... at a different stage of imagination, yes.

[Jon S.]

Originally Posted by Olmer

Very probably we are not the descendants of monkey

A common misconception. The paleontological and genetic evidence is rather that humans and monkeys share a common ancestor.

[The Gaffer]

Very interesting quotes, Landroval, thanks

Particularly "at a different stage of imagination"

[alhaQQ]

I understand Tolkien's PoV on story-telling (and literature in general) and accept it as "his"--but it is not "mine". I am not interested in Tolkien as a "reciter-of-tales of fantasy" (or more properly, a writer of fictional literature); I am interested in the "sub-history" he created, just as I am interesed in Frank Herbert's Dune Chronicles, because they present a "potential" past (or future, in Herbert's case). I am not saying that either is a "literal" fact --however, it is "window" (imho) into one of the "infinitely possible" universes that could have happened or may happen or may not nor never did or will happen (which also stimulates the scientist as well). These are interesting to the odd historian who wants/likes to "wander" into and explore these civilizations--we all have our "fetishes".

Whether or not we are "taking too far" is NOT the question I am asking now. I am asking that the "blinders" of fantasy be removed (maybe just the blinders of literary scholarship)--and look at this from a different perspective; one certainly alien to Tolkien, for sure, however, one that "I" am interested to pursue (along with those who are, possibily, like-minded) --whether it is "canonical" to Tolkien is not my concern in this excercise; whether JRRT would have approved or not is not something I care about, either.

If you're not interested in this line of thought, then don't read it.

I should have split this discussion into it's own thread...my own fault, really, because it has gone off the initial topic. Let the yelling commence...

[Landroval]

Then again, your previous statement was misleading then.

Many, including Tolkien himself, tried to tie all this to a more recent past. I just cannot buy that. (Sorry, professor, but I have too much bias toward real proof, eg. facts...are like bricks...truth/faith, etc. is a fog.)

It is this statement in particular which I addressed in my last post.

[alhaQQ]

You're not understanding the context of my "not buying it"--I am speaking of Tolkien's comment (I don't have the texts in front of me--they are, unfortunately, boxed up; I believe the comment is from one of the letters--but admit to a faulty memory) as to "when he thought" his secondary world could fit into a pre-historical timeline, and where we are "now" in relation to his secondary world, in his opinion. This is the line of reasoning I began with--eg. Tolkien's own comments (paraphrased, and hopefully stated faithfully) at the beginning of the post. I was originally trying to reconcile the apparent unknown length of the fourth age, with "actual" events that could be considered "milestones" to succeeding ages so that one could meet Tolkien at the time and place he thought "we" were/are.

After posting on 2-5, I reconsidered JRRT's timeline comments and the actual historical/scientific events of the era in question. I came to the conclusion that I had to dismiss this 'recent' hypothesis, first on purely genetic grounds, (despite the bad grammar--I should have wrote "I would like to try..."), then considering a whole host of events in geologic/cosmologic/human history that needed to be preserved for this to "work". So, I am here trying to form a timeline that could be more plausable (in my mind) than a more "recent epoch theory" of twelve to fifteen thousand BC (or so). In this respect, I wanted to create a timeline that is close enough to our own, which would/could give more credence (and room, in terms of time) in the timeline of JRRT's secondary world, without disturbing following "actual" historical events (eg. Mitochondrial Eve, see above; these later actual events could be also useful in explaining the demise of JRRT's world), or altering the "laws of nature" (as they are understood at "this" moment--see the diatribe on "faith/miracles in the past" for this tie-in). I then worked backwards all the way up to the "Big Bang"/Moment of Creation to (hopefully) equate earlier "events" in JRRT's timeline with actual cosmological events. All the while, I presented unresolved problems between actual events and JRRT's events and hoping for someone more witty, to come up with good solution to possibily reconcile the two, or possibily to come up with a "rational" solution that would not violate said "laws of nature".

I realize that you are/maybe trying to point out some other issue concerning JRRT's own thoughts on the topic and how he "saw" his secondary world (vs. the primary world) and his views on the "imagination", etc.; however, I am just stating that I cannot agree with the position "he" (seemingly) took as to the "dating" of his timeline in reference to actual history, as well as the "difference in imagination" in terms of storytelling; it may be fiction, however, I would like to have "fact" have more of a hand in the telling, that's all.

[Landroval]

In that particular letter to Rhona Beare, Tolkien confessed he aimed for "literary credibility", which only reflects his previous points I presented. He aimed for a "long, undefined gap" and only in the footnote did he risk to put a number of years. He also doubted it would have helped his work "much" if events would have been made to fit better. In the end, it was all about literature, and I think we should stick with the "undefined" gap part - which is not to say that your endeavor lacks scientific merit.

[nokom]

I always thought the fourth age would have lasted 'til the signing of the American constitution (Read it in Mallorn I think)

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Mallorn, sorry, what? I very, VERY highly doubt that the American system government would usher in a new Age.

[nokom]

Mallorn is the magazine of the Tolkien society. However, I think it could be true, since the signing was one of the most important events in history (Even for other countries). We are supposed to be in the sixth age if I am correct, the fith ending at the end of WWII

[Kevin McIntyre]

Originally Posted by Olmer

Very probably we are not the descendants of monkey (thank you, Darvin, for a stupidiest and never proved, but widely accepted idea),

Not to put to fine a point on it - but Charles Darwin never claimed that homo sapiens are decendants of monkeys or apes. The idea that Darwin postulates is that homo sapiens share a common genetic ancestor with apes (an idea which genetifc research actually supports).

Since the fossil record of past primates species is vastly incomplete , you could fit the ages of middle earth somewhere between 5 and 15 million years ago when there were many more species of apes than there are today - some of which, as Olmer speculates, could have been more advanced than ever imagined.

I find it interesting that myths have always harkened to a past of greatness with only hints remaining in the history and the stories. However I see that as more fanciful than real - similar to how some nostaligize for the 1950's as if that was the end of age and we are now the lesser decendants of the Dunedain.

[The Telcontarion]

Evolution is quite simply, crap. It's like superstition, there is no proof of it nor has there been any observation of it.

Originally Posted by Kevin McIntyre

I find it interesting that myths have always harkened to a past of greatness with only hints remaining in the history and the stories. However I see that as more fanciful than real - similar to how some nostaligize the 1950's as if that was the end of an age and we are now the lesser decendants of the Dunedain.

Love this paragraph, very poignant.