Click HERE to see this thread with all of the graphics, features, and links.

After ROTK they said they enter the 4th age of middle earth where theres peace...since the final elves have moved to the undying lands there are no more elfs in middle earth and probley no more orcs. what happens? are there any more wars..is gandalf the only wizard/most powerful..anyone have a website i can read up on this or have info

we are IN middle earth right now, tolkien writes that we are in the 6th age, maybe the seventh

after elves left men ruled, became all saruman-like, industrial, and we ended up how we are today

tolkiens dead dumbass

look i have read basically every tolkien book, i know he is dead i know alot of info about him, so i do not appreciate being called a dumbass by some punk rocker who can come here and think he nows everything, who also has a very bad attitude and basically is very anti social, u asked i answered how am i a dumbass

well struck gimli!
good job saron.

Kidrock,, ummm u were sorta original. hmm

oh well i'm not takin sides
wasn't the 3rd age a short one?

Yeap...We are in middle-earth now.

i wonder what happened to the hobbits?

They belong to the People's Republic of Eriador

for real? and the dwarves?

lol

Well...After consulting the attached map, they belong to the Republic of Rhovanion.But the map is from 1999 and I believe that they got independence in 2000 from that elvish republic

haha im very anti-social? u get that from a post with 3 words ooook good job champ

I've seen some maps that showed how Middle-earth changed and became where we are now. It was really cool. Anyone know whether what was Middle-earth would be Europe or Asia now?

http://images.killermovies.com/forums/moresmilies/dots.gif Why do you think you're all that? Guess what? You're not. If you were smart enough, you'd assume that we ALL know that Tolkien is dead. Though Tolkien wrote as though it was an alternative history to our timeline. Look at the map of Middle-Earth, does it not look like Europe?

Europe for sure or a lost region.

i feel like an ass now...sauron sorry when i read your post i thought u were being an ******* and acting sarcastic but i was wrong when i re-read your post...thats intresting how we are in the same world as they were..that would be cool if that was true lol


and again sorry sauron i read your post the wrong way and i apologize

*hangs head and leaves thread*

Yeah, I thought it would definitely be Europe too, but then I saw some map that made it look like Asia and got all confused. It would have to be Europe though.

The cruel Easterlings were the ancestors of the Vietnamese people. After Aragorn died, his son took the throne and then his son and so on. Near the end of the 4th Age, which was nearly 5000 years later, Gondor fell and split into many different states. Rohan fell in the middle of the 5th Age. We are in the 7th Age right now, which started 3000 years before Jesus Christ was born. The Hobbits went underground after the fall of Gondor. The 7th Age is nearing an end.

Middle-earth IS Europe. The name simply comes from the Middle English term Middel-erthe--the name Europeans called their land many hundreds of years ago.

True, Tolkien maps and descriptions of Middle-earth don't follow all the features of modern Europe--for instance, neither the shape of Britain nor today's Atlantic coast are obvious on his maps. As he says in the prologue to LOTR, those features don't match exactly because they changed over time. Still, there's no doubt about a few points of origin. Hobbiton is located--not surprisingly--near Tolkien's home, in Oxford. Gondor is roughly where we now find Italy, though it may extend as far as Turkey.

Tolkien believed that over the course of history, different directions come to mean different things. In England, for instance, East came to be connected with enemies and danger, because of invasions by Scandinavians to the East. Tolkien matches the meaning of the directions in LOTR with the meanings from real European history and legend.

South. In the real ancient world, heading South from Britain sent you towards great empires: Greece, Rome, Byzantium. The same is true in LOTR. Gondor, where humans reign over a great kingdom, is South of Hobbiton, and quite close to those real-life places. South is the direction of civilization, of large nations and complicated politics, as the hobbits learn when they reach Gondor.

North. No surprise here: in legends of northern Europe, the icy north is associated with death. It is where one finds Niflheim, a place of everlasting cold and night, where unworthy souls go after death. As a line in an Icelandic saga goes, "Cold arose out of Niflheim, and all terrible things." This land is the source of LOTR's "Region of Everlasting Cold", in Minas Morgul, home of the leader of the Black Riders, the Witch King.

West For Europeans, west was the direction of mysterym because the vast Atlantic Ocean stood in the way of exploration. Legends grew of magical lands beyond the sea and the people who lived there. The legend of the lost island of Atlantis, an important inspiration for Tolkien, grew from this fascination. According to some stories, people from those lands had crossed the sea to settle in Europe. Tolkien used that idea to explain how certain humans came to Middle-earth and established Gondor. He also relied on these legends when writing about the Undying Lands, or Valinor, part of the home of the angelic spirits, the Valars, Maias, and Elves.

East. Early in LOTR, Gandalf tells Frodo to begin his journey by heading east, "towards danger" (The Fellowship of the Ring,p. 65). Bilbo Baggins also headed east in The Hobbit, towards Mirkwood (where the spiders dwelt) and the Misty Mountains (where the Orcs lived and Gollum hid). For the people of Middle-earth, as for Western Europeans in real life, east came to mean danger because that's where foreign enemies and armies lived. Of course, it's also where one finds Sauron's realm, Mordor.

---The Magical World of the Lord of the Rings-----

great post where'd u find this?

also do u know where the maps are?

I have a book made by David Colbert entitled "The Magical World of The Lord of the Rings". Great book, it clarifies some stuff behind the books, Tolkien's motivations, etc. And sorry, I don't have a map. I suggest just look at a European political map then compare it to the Middle-earth map.

http://www.pixelhaus.com/downloads/screen/dtp_middleearth_800.jpg

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/europe/europe_ref01.jpg

Yes, that looks like Middle-Earth.

thanx thats cool

Yes, that sure does look like Middle-Earth to me.

Oooh I can't wait till the final battle of good and evil...

its ok lol


lord of the rings was supposedly based on the war, is that true, i know sauron was hitler, and saruman mussolini

NO LOTR is NOT an allegory for WWII! Tolkien stated many times that he hated allegories and that LOTR was never meant to be an allegory. He didn't like the fact that many people thought LOTR to be an allegory for anything at all.

ok sorry, its just what i heard

what east of mordor???? ASIA ??

I have a great map of that, hold on a sec

here it is

WHAT?? GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

allright here it is, had too make it a bit smaller, file was too big, u will just have too zoom, to see the names better

I love Tolkien's idea of Middle-earth being where we are today but...doesn't make you feel even the slightest bit embarrassed that we are invovled and living in this world that is SO different to when it was in the 3rd and 4th age?

I mean, I want it to go back to when there was no industry and your biggest worries were whether you had enough wood for the fire!

Random piece of trivia: did you know that China and the surrounding area used to call themselves Middle-earth too? (But obviously in their own language) Places all around the world believed that they were the centre and everything revolved around them! That is where Tolkien got part of his idea from for naming it what he did...

Human Nature is fragile. We tend to need a belief that we are infinetly important. The center of the universe. Gods greatest creation.

How arrogant.

Are you referring to me?

we are God's greatest creation. we were made in His image.

anywaythat map is cool.

YEAH!!!! GO SMODDEN!!! U SAID IT !!!


oh yeah AWSOME MAP ... it really cleared up sum of the hazzy stuff for me !


going back a little... it seems like even though tolkien never wanted LOTR to be an allegory ,I am not really sure why, but , there seems to be a few different allerorical twists ... ( return of the king -Jesus coming back to earth and lots of other biblical things as well as WWII and probaly more .

Here I find it again... the map of which I wonder where the hell these people took their information from.
This does absolutely not work with the descriptions and maps tolkien gives.



Exactly my opinion

here's how tolkien showed the rest of the world:

http://lotrmaps.middle-earth.us/maps/r3t_M145.gif (his own pic)

Exa that pic u posted was ment to descripe the first age, hers one of the secound age, third age looks pretty much the same

A couple of people have commented on my opinion, claiming it was 'arrogant'. Can I just ask what is so wrong with what I said? I meant no offence!

camellia dearest

they are not saying what you said is arrogant, they are saying the EXACT thing i feel. humans now-a-days are arrogant not your opinion

are we realy? hmm i never knew that

are we realy? hmm i never knew that

lol

the maps kinda fit with that whole "super continent" theory or is that just me?

Oh, I wish I knew what everybody was talking about! I'm so confused! (My excuse is that I'm getting over seeing RotK today!)

yeah what was the name of the continent? (must remember 9th grade history... )
anyway sombody said something about easterlings being from korea i think it was korea. that would be reasonable, cause they always seemed kinda middle eastern. and oriental...

Yes, I thought that about the Easterlings too...

I thought the Easterlings came from Cambodia(?) or something.

And I think I made a joke about how Aragorn would kill Jack Sparrow because he thought he was an easterling...(*whispers* The mascara...)

Lol, I'd never thought of that before!

oh that iss sooo funny!!!!