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Cari
Bree
Apr 5 2015, 7:20pm
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Tolkien and Prehistoric Animals
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Does anyone know if anywhere in Lord of the Rings or in the Silmarillion does Tolkien ever make mention/allusion to Prehistoric animals such as Dinosaurs, Mammoths, Underwater Creatures, etc.? Thank you!
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squire
Half-elven
Apr 5 2015, 7:35pm
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He implies that the 'Fell Beasts' are pterosaur types
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And behold! it was a winged creature: if bird, then greater than all other birds, and it was naked, and neither quill nor feather did it bear, and its vast pinions were as webs of hide between horned fingers; and it stank. A creature of an older world maybe it was, whose kind, fingering in forgotten mountains cold beneath the Moon, outstayed their day, and in hideous eyrie bred this last untimely brood, apt to evil. - LotR V.6
It was interesting during an earlier discussion to speculate that Tolkien's invention of these creatures may have been influenced by Conan Doyle's 'Lost World'.
squire online:
RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Lights! Action! Discuss on the Movie board!: 'A Journey in the Dark'. and 'Designing The Two Towers'.
Footeramas: The 3rd & 4th TORn Reading Room LotR Discussion and NOW the 1st BotR Discussion too! and "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
squiretalk introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
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geordie
Tol Eressea
Apr 5 2015, 11:45pm
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Tolkien wrote something in Letter 211 -
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'I did not intend the steed of the Witch-King to be what is now called a 'pterodactyl', and often is drawn (with rather less shadowy evidence that lies behind many monsters of the new and fascinating semi-scientific mythology of the 'Prehistoric'). But obviously it is pterodactylic and owes much to the new mythology, and its description even provides a sort of way in which it could be a last survivor of older geological eras'.
(This post was edited by geordie on Apr 5 2015, 11:47pm)
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Apr 6 2015, 1:20am
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I think of the Oliphaunts/mumakil of LotR as being more akin to mastodons than to modern elephants. Similarly, when I imagine Wargs, I think of the 'dire wolves' of the Pleistocene Epoch. However, all this might have more to do with my own preconceptions than with Tolkien's intent.
"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." - Phantom F. Harlock
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SamBerry
The Shire
Apr 6 2015, 7:13pm
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It's not ever mentioned outright, but the kine of Araw have been compared to Aurochs, the ancestor of smaller modern cattle. The Horn of Gondor came from one of these killed by Vorondil in the East.
Aurochs didn't go extinct until the 1600's, but they are shown in prehistoric cave art.
The wild white kine that were still to be found near the Sea of Rhûn were said in legend to be descended from the Kine of Araw, the huntsman of the Valar, who alone of the Valar came often to Middle-earth in the Elder Days. Oromë is the High-elven form of his name
-LotR Appendices
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