Our Sponsor Sideshow Send us News
Lord of the Rings Tolkien
Search Tolkien
Lord of The RingsTheOneRing.net - Forged By And For Fans Of JRR Tolkien
Lord of The Rings Serving Middle-Earth Since The First Age

Lord of the Rings Movie News - J.R.R. Tolkien

  Main Index   Search Posts   Who's Online   Log in
The One Ring Forums: Tolkien Topics: Reading Room:
The Empty Lands

Otaku-sempai
Immortal


Jul 5 2015, 5:05am

Post #1 of 6 (2156 views)
Shortcut
The Empty Lands Can't Post

The Empty Lands were the uninhabited continents (and islands?) to the east of Middle-earth: The Dark Land (a.k.a. South Land); and, beyond it, the Land of the Sun where the Sun rose over the Gates of Morning. The Numenoreans became great mariners and explored these lands but never seem to have founded colonies or outposts in them. When the Change of the World brought about the destruction of Numenor, Tolkien wrote that these lands formed the basis for new continents (although Karen Wynn Fonstad, in The Atlas of Middle-earth depicts the Dark Land as little-changed from its earlier incarnation). The Dark Land would have probably broken up to become principally Antarctica and Australia while the Uttermost East might have become part of the Americas.





In our real world, humans from East Africa seem to have reached Australia and New Zealand around 40,000 years ago. In Tolkien's legendarium, Men only awoke in Middle-earth about 20,000 years ago. And as far as the histories of the Free Peoples relate, the Empty Lands remained uninhabited at least through the end of the Third Age. Or did they?


I'm speculating that Men from Harad and/or Rhun might have set forth from the eastern coasts of Middle-earth to settle in the New Lands as early as the last years of the Second Age, or at least soon after the fall of Sauron as a result of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men. This would have been about 9000 years before the present day. These might have been groups of Men fleeing from the tyranny of the servants of Sauron or simply unsettled by the coastal changes brought about by the Change of the World.


Thoughts?

"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 Jul 5 2015, 5:11am)


Otaku-sempai
Immortal


Jul 5 2015, 8:50am

Post #2 of 6 (2129 views)
Shortcut
The Years of the Sun to the Present [In reply to] Can't Post


In Reply To
In Tolkien's legendarium, Men only awoke in Middle-earth about 20,000 years ago.


The above is a bit off. The period from the beginning of the Years of the Sun to the present would only be a bit over 13,000 years. Hardly any time at all to a paleoarchaeologist.

"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." - Phantom F. Harlock


squire
Half-elven


Jul 5 2015, 12:53pm

Post #3 of 6 (2116 views)
Shortcut
Spinnin' the globe [In reply to] Can't Post

As best I can tell, Tolkien spent as little time as possible sketching out the hinterlands of Middle-earth and almost no time at all after the 1930s and thus before writing The Lord of the Rings. His work on that epic is what led him to the grand synthesis of the Numenor myth, now known as the Second Age, into the cycle of Elvish falls and Mannish redemptions that we know as the First and Third Ages. Clearly his earlier work informed his ability to write things like the idea that the Numenoreans explored the known world by sea, and that after the Akallabeth Men found that one could sail around the newly-formed globe without ever finding the Straight Road to Valinor.

For us to speculate further on which Men these were, or to try to link Tolkien's appendicial cultures and eras with his very-loosely imagined connections to Earth's real prehistory, always strikes me as going further than Tolkien ever wanted to go. One can speculate on anything and in any way one wants, of course - and Fonstad has a lot to answer for, as one sees when comparing Tolkien's faded cocktail-napkin type sketch maps with her solid-seeming renderings of globes and continents - but I guess I just don't think we have either enough good information or authorial support to push these pieces around like this!

But for starters, why do you have your Southern or Eastern Men colonize the "Americas" across the "Pacific" (from their eastern shores, as you guess) rather than across the "Atlantic", heading into the West as all other Men and Elves had done? And, given that these peoples were civilized in the sense of having had contact with Sauron and possibly Numenor, wouldn't the resulting settlements in the unknown new continents have built upon that civilization to the point where some hideous new Fall would have to be arranged for them? How else could we think that they didn't emerge in the Third and Fourth Ages as challengers to the seamanship and imperialism of Gondor and Arnor, but instead devolved into the isolated paleolithic tribes that greeted the European explorers 9000 years later - if the two timelines are really to be connected like that?



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


= Forum has no new posts. Forum needs no new posts.


Otaku-sempai
Immortal


Jul 5 2015, 6:35pm

Post #4 of 6 (2087 views)
Shortcut
Prehistoric precedents [In reply to] Can't Post

As a gamer, I feel a desire to flesh out Middle-earth in ways that could be utilized in a rpg campaign. Admittedly having people populate the Empty Lands isn't something that is likely to come into play before the Fourth Age of Middle-earth.



In Reply To
But for starters, why do you have your Southern or Eastern Men colonize the "Americas" across the "Pacific" (from their eastern shores, as you guess) rather than across the "Atlantic", heading into the West as all other Men and Elves had done?









Actually, there is a good reason for this. In the history of Middle-earth, which was alleged to be a flat earth until the Change of the world, the only things to the West were Numenor and the Undying Lands. The existence of the Empty Lands was known to Numenorean mariners who could have relayed that knowledge to others. The Men of Far Harad and Rhun could have also learned to build seaworthy vessels from the Numenoreans. In addition, this is the path that was followed by ancient peoples in the real world (many millennia, in fact, before Tolkien's Years of the Sun). That said, Lossoth crossing the arctic ice to new lands to the West would be another possibility.


I did previously fail to consider that the most eastern land, where the Gates of the Morning would have been found, would probably have had no direct connection to the land-mass(es) that would become the Americas. The pre-existing contintent is just too near to Middle-earth and would probably have been swallowed by the emerging Pacific Ocean. The Americas were more likely to be an entirely new land (even though we can actually trace them to the ancient supercontinent of Pangea).

"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 Jul 5 2015, 6:41pm)


squire
Half-elven


Jul 6 2015, 12:04pm

Post #5 of 6 (2048 views)
Shortcut
Some good thoughts [In reply to] Can't Post

Thanks for explaining the gaming motivation!

That's not something I bring to my own appreciation of Tolkien, and I can imagine how it would change how and why one looks into the backstory and "unreachable vistas" that he so deliberately left vague for literary reasons.

Don't forget the Druedain, who were brought to Numenor and fled before the Fall like rats sensing the imminent sinking of a ship. Couldn't they be the ones who reached the new, mundane, New World? They would be a better fit for the First Peoples of a mythical America, I should think, than proto-Africans, Indians, and East Asians all of whom, as I said, would already possess the half-corrupt, half-elevated, lore and crafts of Numenor and Mordor.



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


= Forum has no new posts. Forum needs no new posts.


Otaku-sempai
Immortal


Jul 6 2015, 2:56pm

Post #6 of 6 (2036 views)
Shortcut
The Nascent Americas of Arda [In reply to] Can't Post


In Reply To
Don't forget the Druedain, who were brought to Numenor and fled before the Fall like rats sensing the imminent sinking of a ship. Couldn't they be the ones who reached the new, mundane, New World? They would be a better fit for the First Peoples of a mythical America, I should think, than proto-Africans, Indians, and East Asians all of whom, as I said, would already possess the half-corrupt, half-elevated, lore and crafts of Numenor and Mordor.


Actually, no. The Druedain make me think more of the Picts of northern Scotland and the legendary (semi-?) mythical Tuatha Dé Danann of Ireland. For the precursors of the Native Americans I would choose the Lossoth arriving by crossing over the Arctic ice sheet much the way that Fingolfin's host came to Middle-earth from the Undying Lands. At the very least, the Lossoth would have probably been the ancestors of the Siberians, the Inuit and the Ainu.


However, I am also taking into consideration that the very first Americans might have arrived by boat 13,500 years ago and were the of the same stock as the people who first inhabited Australia. In terms of Middle-earth, this aboriginal people might have started out from Far Harad, colonized the northern remnants of the Dark Land (South Land) with some of them continuing farther east to the New Lands.

"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." - Phantom F. Harlock

 
 

Search for (options) Powered by Gossamer Forum v.1.2.3

home | advertising | contact us | back to top | search news | join list | Content Rating

This site is maintained and updated by fans of The Lord of the Rings, and is in no way affiliated with Tolkien Enterprises or the Tolkien Estate. We in no way claim the artwork displayed to be our own. Copyrights and trademarks for the books, films, articles, and other promotional materials are held by their respective owners and their use is allowed under the fair use clause of the Copyright Law. Design and original photography however are copyright © 1999-2012 TheOneRing.net. Binary hosting provided by Nexcess.net

Do not follow this link, or your host will be blocked from this site. This is a spider trap.