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lionoferebor
Rohan
Mar 26 2015, 4:24am
Post #1 of 12
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I know The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings both take place during the Third Age of Middle Earth, but I was curious if anyone knew around what era that would have been in our world. i.e. Anglo Saxon Era; Victorian Era
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Elizabeth
Half-elven
Mar 26 2015, 4:42am
Post #2 of 12
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The time frame of Middle Earth is supposed to be in a dim prehistory. We may be in the 6th or 7th "age" in those terms. That does leave some unexplained anachronisms, especially in The Hobbit (which wasn't originally conceived as being part of Middle Earth history). In general, The Shire appears to exist in rural England of the 18th or early 19th Centuries, while other cultures seem to exist in a vaguely feudal era. There's a charming article on anachronisms in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings here.
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Mar 26 2015, 12:15pm
Post #3 of 12
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Tolkien estimated that the end of the Third Age would have been approximately six thousand years ago, or about the time of the beginning of the Hebrew calendar. This would pre-date the Biblical Flood by perhaps two thousand years; suggesting that some equivalently catastrophic event might represent the transition from Middle-earth to the modern world.
Similarly, the Isle of Númenor is Tolkien's take on the legend of Atlantis. After Númenor is swallowed by the sea, it becomes known as Westernesse or Atalantë.
"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." - Phantom F. Harlock
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Bombadil
Half-elven
Mar 26 2015, 1:24pm
Post #4 of 12
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Thanks, Elizabeth that was Quite Funny...
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It was take years to write about
all the Anachronisms in LOTR...
www.charlie-art.biz
"What Your Mind can conceive... charlie can achieve"
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Elarie
Grey Havens
Mar 26 2015, 3:57pm
Post #6 of 12
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Middle-earth is actually the English translation of Midgard, from Germanic mythology. This article is very helpful and references some of Tolkien's own comments about the name. The section on etymology explains the background of the word.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-earth
__________________
Gold is the strife of kinsmen,
and fire of the flood-tide,
and the path of the serpent.
(Old Icelandic Fe rune poem)
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dijomaja
Lorien
Mar 29 2015, 1:56pm
Post #7 of 12
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...for the answer and link. Prof. Tom Shippey also has an interesting discussion of the contrasting speech styles in the Bilbo/Thorin exchanges. Bilbo speaks like a country gentleman of the 18th Century while Thorin speaks in the high-flown rhetoric of the Age of Myth. Part of Tolkien's genius was that he made it all work.
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Mar 29 2015, 10:48pm
Post #8 of 12
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Well, if you mean what era in terms of technological levels then Middle-earth is all over the map. We have stone-age and bronze-age cultures next to feudal kingdoms and a Regency-era Shire full of Hobbits. Numenor was probably about as sophisticated as Europe during the Renaissance and Gondor might have been at about the level of ancient Rome.
"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." - Phantom F. Harlock
(This post was edited by Otaku-sempai on Mar 29 2015, 10:51pm)
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lionoferebor
Rohan
Mar 30 2015, 12:08am
Post #9 of 12
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I'm looking more at medicine...especially Dwarven medicine. It's research for a piece of fan-fiction I'm working on. I'm trying to figure out how the Dwarves would've treated certain injuries and illnesses according to the time.
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Mar 30 2015, 2:00am
Post #10 of 12
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Not sure there's a clear answer.
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I'm looking more at medicine...especially Dwarven medicine. It's research for a piece of fan-fiction I'm working on. I'm trying to figure out how the Dwarves would've treated certain injuries and illnesses according to the time.
Interesting question. Tolkien's Dwarves were very hardy and likely seldom became ill, although they wouldn't have been totally immune to natural disease like the Elves. At the same time, they would have been just as vulnerable to physical injury as anyone else, tough though they were.
I don't recall Tolkien ever writing much about dwarven medicine. They would have certainly been able to treat broken bones, lacerations and the like. They probably had extensive knowledge of underground fungi and their medicinal properties. No one would have had knowledge about micro-organisms, viruses or germs, but Elven magic would have overcome that problem. I'm not sure that the Dwarves would have had much (if anything) in the way of healing magic beyond herb-lore.
"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." - Phantom F. Harlock
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lionoferebor
Rohan
Mar 30 2015, 3:26am
Post #11 of 12
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I'm trying to avoid Elven medicine...
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besides I'm not sure Elven medicine would resolve these problems, especially one. And I may be wrong, but I would think that at some point even the healing magic Elves had it's limits.
Yes, unfortunately there is not much on Dwarven medicine, which is why I'm trying to pin down an era. If I can figure out an era then I could get an idea of how they may have treated certain long term injuries. From what I'm gathering the era of the The Hobbit cannot be compare to one era of our world. Rather each culture seems to fall into a different era, i.e. Rohan is very similar to the Anglo-Saxons, while Hobbiton is more like 17th century England. So I guess what I really need to figure out is what era would the Dwarves of Erebor, formerly of Ered Luin, fall into.
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Mar 30 2015, 2:47pm
Post #12 of 12
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I would think that the medical knowledge of the Dwarves would fall into some pre-industrial level, but perhaps with some different preconceptions than our ancestors possessed. Their herb-lore might have been superior, if only because of past contact with Elven and Mannish peoples who they could learn from and from a greater knoweldge of underground fungi (and maybe even mineral-lore). My guess is that their level of medical sophistication would fall between that of ancient Rome and the Renaissance before the invention of the microscope.
"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." - Phantom F. Harlock
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