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Cenor
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Post Middle Earth in the Future?
on: January 01, 2018 01:15
I've been wondering lately how Middle Earth would progress. I know Tolkien was not a fan of progression, as shown in his books, but Middle Earth has already (I personally think) progressed from the First Age. I believe Tolkien, through his characters Legolas and Gimli, hints that the works of Elves and Dwarves will be lost under the rule of Men. I remember some sort of Middle Earth Ragnarok?

But, that aside, I was wondering. Does anyone else see Middle Earth evolving so to speak? Moving from a time of castles and machines to a more modern era. Could we rightfully compare our world's timeline to what Middle Earth could be? What kind of inventions would surface first? I believe in Farmer Giles of Ham there is mention of a blunderbuss. Is this the signs of an age of guns in middle earth?

I'd love to hear thoughts and ideas
Image "Every good pirate has an alias" Felix glanced down, looking at contraption around the stump of his wrist. "Hook," he answered. "My name will be Hook."
Lord_Sauron
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on: January 01, 2018 01:29
I think Tolkien mentioned somewhere that we are currently in the 6th or 7th Age of man. However do not take my word for it.
In the Two Towers Saruman is seen (in the movie at least) mixing up a powder to use against the Wall of Helms Deep so perhaps the cannon could be the first weapon to be created
Gandolorin
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on: January 02, 2018 02:09
A clear case for Elthir. And I’m sure the answers have been posted in some other thread, though I don’t know if here or in another JRRT site.

Off the cuff, in contrast to the at least 3000 years of the Second and Third Ages (the 600 of the First Age were just the tip of the iceberg, the years of the sun, with the much longer period of the two trees, and even the pre-tree time, before that), later ages would have become shorter, starting with the Fourth Age, say about 2000 years. So to speak with the Elves and their calming influence, we humans mess things up more quickly. And I also seem to recall JRRT’s statement about sixth or seventh age.

But we should be safe in assuming that, at least regionally, there would be ups and downs. The Second Age might have been that of the glory of Númenor – with the warping that occurred with the unrest of the Númenoreans and their shift to imperial, not to say imperialist policies towards Middle-earth proper. Which at this time was having serious issues with Sauron’s attempt at total domination. Similar to the situation in Europe after with the fall of the (western) Roman Empire, the administrative and technical skills of the Romans were lost for centuries, in that sense justifying the term “Dark Ages”. We tend to pat ourselves on the back in claiming that in the say last 500 years the long-term trend has been “upwards”, but quite a few definitions of which way is up are very much open to discussion.

[Edited on 01/03/2018 by Gandolorin]
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Cenor
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on: January 02, 2018 11:33
Hmm. I tried to make sure I wasn't repeating a thread...

Lord Sauron, I have heard theories about us being in the 7th or 8th age but I too cannot find a source...Yes, another sign of an age of guns.

So the Third Age would compare to the Middle Ages, while the Fourth would evolve into a sort of Renaissance period?

Ah yes, Gando, I almost put 'De-evolve'
Image "Every good pirate has an alias" Felix glanced down, looking at contraption around the stump of his wrist. "Hook," he answered. "My name will be Hook."
Gandolorin
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on: January 03, 2018 02:38
Comparing a period of about 3000 years with some (arbitrary, and western at that) age definitions, “squeezed” into “only” about 2000 years isn’t a comfortable fit. The end of the Third Age with the fall of Sauron (and Saruman) could be compared to the end of World War II – but you’d have to throw in the demise of the Soviet Union about 45 years later for good measure. The reunification of Gondor and Arnor under one crown is a better fit for a renaissance. But for how long? In the last book of HoME, volume 12 “The Peoples Of Middle-earth” there is chapter XVI in Part Four, “The New Shadow”. When this is supposed to occur varies between 100 years after the Downfall of Saurom (at which point Aragorn was still King, and would be for 20 more years!), and “the end of the reign of Eldarion about 100 years after the death of Aragorn.” Attributed for the earlier date to “… the most regrettable feature of [Men’s] nature: their quick satiety with good”, for the later date to “… almost certainly a restlessness would appear about then, owing to the (it seems) inevitable boredom of Men with the good.”

Something that modern sociology has confirmed with a vengeance, unfortunately. Them teen and tween men are the ticking time bombs of every society that has ever existed. So perhaps the proliferation of all sorts of team sports, alpine skiing, ski jumping, every kind on motorized sport, more lately bungee jumping, all variations of hang gliding, wing suits, BASE jumping, downhill mountain-biking, and in the non-officially-organized sector racing with again mostly motorized thingies, in the virtual reality sector the “ego shooters” (Doom and Quake come to mind, and probably seriously date me), have provided the potential time bomb set for opportunities to “let off steam” – though the term is such a pathetic case of 19th century (British “Victorian Age”) ignorance that it should be an official (and unavoidable) reason for sending someone to get professional help.

The non-officially-organized sector – used to be mostly motorized racing, but a few glimpses of what is posted in the Internet makes me believe there are far more hare-brained forms – has also become (and Darwin and Dawkins are in the background grinning sardonically) a new form of “natural selection” (though in truth very little of human activity can now claim to be “natural”). The new saber-toothed cat is the muscle car (over-motorized and under-everything else), and everything else that leads to a testosterone-induced short-circuit of the higher brain functions.

But as far as we know, no diversions of that sort existed between the Fourth age and the latter part of our own 20th century – so probably they indulged in the more traditional pastime of slaughtering each other every once in a while. That’s the reason why I would never exchange living in our very own post-WW II period with any previous period. Forget those Hollywood movies (can someone please make the US population realize that their view of the “cowboy era” is a myth perpetrated to 99.99% by Hollywood BS?!?), or even those produced by any other media industry – all earlier eras stank. Period.
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Cenor
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on: January 03, 2018 11:47
Ah, no true peace for Middle Earth. As one surviving henchman, of some book I have forgotten the title of, said: "Our Master was never defeated. I'm still alive aren't I?" It seems like all races on Middle Earth, especially Men, are flawed. Mentioned later in your post about other eras stinking, I think Middle Earth might represent two periods now. Hmm.

You make me wonder what future generations will say about us, haha! Yes Hollywood as romanticized the eras. I wonder if past generations were wary of us future generations and were happy to be in their own era.
Image "Every good pirate has an alias" Felix glanced down, looking at contraption around the stump of his wrist. "Hook," he answered. "My name will be Hook."
Gandolorin
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on: January 04, 2018 01:03
Cenor said:... I wonder if past generations were wary of us future generations and were happy to be in their own era.

I’d place my bet on that except for a handful of adults, most would be clamoring to get back in the time machine and “go home” (shades of ET!). We have had at least glimpses of how very much less technologically developed people react to the technology of the first third of the 20th century, in New Guinea (and I’m talking about the central highlands of the entire island, which includes the western part now occupied by Indonesia as inheritors of the former Dutch East Indies colony, not just the independent state of Papua New Guinea). The first contacts with this Stone Age culture (or cultures – the variety of highly diverse languages there still represents almost half of the language diversity on the planet!) was in the 1930s. Previously, as the first planes were available with the altitude and range capability to fly over the central highlands, Europeans were stunned to see a densely populated agricultural area. Don’t forget, the first true metal age, the Bronze Age, started about 5000 years ago. Agriculture etc. got its start almost 7000 years before that! Still, making contact on the ground remained fiendishly difficult due to New Guinea being both tropical jungle and very mountainous (the highest mountain being about 4,500 meters or 14,800 feet). I have books with pictures taken by the Europeans involved in that first contact, and the NGs were just totally freaked out. Things may only have gotten “better” there and in the Amazon basin in that rumors about these “extraterrestrials” managed to precede their actually showing up at the edge of native villages.

And there was one serious difference between the Amazon basin and New Guinea. In the Amazon basin, as in the Americas generally, the microbes the “extraterrestrials” carried with them seriously reduced the population before the like of Cortés, Pizarro and their “descendants” got a chance to indulge in their hobby of genocide (for once, North America lagged far behind; but made up for lost time with better weapons later). In New Guinea, as in all of equatorial Asia (and Africa), it was the “extraterrestrials” that were getting decimated by the local microbes that the locals had acquired at least a limited immunity to. That the western Eurasians (entirely from temperate climates) decided to still hang around these extremely unhealthy areas for so long was helped by advances in western medicine which picked up noticeably in the late 19th century, and by a pig-headedness mostly driven by hydrophobic greed.

[Edited on 01/04/2018 by Gandolorin]
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Cenor
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on: January 04, 2018 12:14
Oh yes, if I were transported in time to the future I would definitely want back in my own era.

What would be your theory on time travel (if there was such a thing) A timeline that you could easily mess up with the smallest mistake or a timeline where you going back in time is part of the timeline?
Image "Every good pirate has an alias" Felix glanced down, looking at contraption around the stump of his wrist. "Hook," he answered. "My name will be Hook."
Gandolorin
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on: January 05, 2018 08:50
My personal theory of time travel is that one can have fun (of whatever sort) with time travel in tales of the fantastic (fantasy, science fiction and whatever else one cares to lump into this category) in whatever media one chooses. But in “real life” (barring “Matrix”, of course ) – ain’t gonna happen. Dear ol’ entropy seems to preclude it very much.
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Cenor
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on: January 05, 2018 12:29
Haha!

We've sort of strayed off subject, but who cares *shrugs* possibly a moderator now that I think about it...

So from previous posts you aren't a fan of virtual reality? My thought is we won't have time travel, but we would have very realistic Virtual Reality.
Image "Every good pirate has an alias" Felix glanced down, looking at contraption around the stump of his wrist. "Hook," he answered. "My name will be Hook."
Gandolorin
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on: January 06, 2018 12:41
As with so much of IT, it probably has its uses. What I’m cynical about is the excessive hype about so much that just goes totally off the deep end. Just because the serious nerds think something is “cool” (a word which has lost all useful meaning for me) does not mean that the wider Internet community will think so too. I used to buy games of all sorts from maybe the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, at a time when almost all of this was off-line, stand-alone stuff. I had to mostly quit (and did so with little regret) because I kept my 1997 AMD K6 / 200 (MHz) tower for a long time, meaning it ended up being hopelessly out-of-date for any newer games whose CPU and graphics requirements just went through the roof. But from this time, I recall the term “vaporware”, meaning games-developing companies announcing release dates for some “fantastic new game” in the hopes of keeping potential customers away from competitors’ products which would just seem so outdated by this “breakthrough” – which sometimes (often?) never materialized (thus vapor).
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tarcolan
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on: January 07, 2018 02:08
At the risk of being labelled a spoilsport may I drag the discussion kicking and screaming back to the subject, i.e. the Ages of the World?

From letter 211:
All I can say is that, if it were 'history', it would be difficult to fit the lands and events (or 'cultures') into such evidence as we possess, Archaeological or geological, concerning the nearer or remoter part of what is now called Europe; though the Shire, for instance, is expressly stated to be in this region (I p.12). I could have fitted things in with greater verisimilitude, if the story had not become too far developed, before the question ever occurred to me. I doubt if there would have been much gain; and I hope the, evidently long but undefined, gap* in time between the Fall of Barad-dûr and our Days is sufficient for 'literary credibility', even for readers acquainted with what is known or surmised of 'pre-history'.

* I imagine the gap to be about 6000 years : that is we are now at the end of the Fifth Age, if the Ages were of about the same length as S.A. and T.A. But they have, I think, quickened; and I imagine we are actually at the end of the Sixth Age, or in the Seventh


The concept of Ages of the World is not Tolkien's, and is a relatively recent one. For thousands of years humans assumed cyclical time because that is what they perceived. It's humbling to realise that the Stone Age lasted a million years or more. Any changes were so slow that nobody noticed. When exactly the appearance of linear time, and specifically of 'progress', began is a moot point. And this forum is a moot point of sorts.

As to the possibility of time travel, it is quite possible to travel into the future; all you need is a spaceship accelerating at a comfortable one gee for a year, and returning in a year, and you would find a hundred years had passed. Or somesuch number. However as Uncle Albert showed us spacetime is relative and immutable. From far enough away you could see earth a hundred years in the past or future simply by moving forward or backward a few metres. Yes, the universe is far stranger than any fantasy story.

Even if you could go back in time it would already have happened that you did so, and nothing you could do would change anything. Light from the past would already be zooming outwards carrying information about it and if you changed something it would be the wrong information. The entire universe would have to be renewed. Anyway the lack of time travellers from the future suggests it's not possible, and there's far more future than there is past.
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Gandolorin
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on: January 07, 2018 03:53
That may be too Eurocentric (we’re not talking currency here, to clear that up ) a view, tarc. Just off the cuff, the Mayan and Hindu “calendars” come to mind. What poorly informed (there are very many more cynical views possible about their motives) people didn’t realize is that our cyclical part, the year, is what the Maya had on a much larger scale (over 5000 years, I believe – and never mind their several sorts of interlocking calendars). One of those 5000 plus year periods came to an end in 2012 – the Maya never implied that the world would also do so; we’re now in the next 5000 plus year cycle. And the Hindu concept of Ages of several hierarchical levels starts getting us into numbers usually reserved for astronomers and astrophysicists – VERY big numbers. So both calendar concepts do have a certain linear aspect to them. Perhaps the Hindu one does end up at a kind of restart at some point, but my gut feeling is that this is a time frame that would encompass several Big Bang – Big Crunch – Big Bang etc. cycles of pre-Dark Energy astrophysics.

One gee, about an increase in velocity of 10 meters per second every second.
So after one hour we reach 36,000 meters per second, or 36 kilometers per second.
After one day we’re doing 864 kilometers per second.
After half a year we’re at 157,785 kilometers per second, more than half the speed of light.
Not bad.
Now of course we have to reverse direction.
Oops. If we’re going in a straight line, we need to decelerate at half-time to be able to reverse direction after half a year!
So maximum velocity would be at a quarter of a year, and would be 78,892 kilometers per second.
Or just over 26% of the speed of light.
Same acceleration / deceleration routine on the way back.
Which means (gaaah, thin ice!) we’ve been moving at 13% of the speed of light on average over that year.
But I’m pretty sure that time dilation does not work on any linear scale, so a dilation factor of 100 to 1 would probably need a massively higher percentage of the speed of light on average to be achieved.
I am NOT volunteering as crew member for a spaceship that needs the likely constant gee-forces involved! Image
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Elthir
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on: January 07, 2018 06:57
A clear case for Elthir.

I usually can't resist threads about Galadriel, Glorfindel, Gil-galad or the use of "goblin". Or the (dreaded) issue of canon... and other things too (like Elvish hair), or people (did I mention Gil-galad), many matters which begin with words or names other than the letter g.

Anyway obviously I had/have nothing of any merit to post here. Which is why I made this post off-topically about Galadriel, Glorfindel, and so on. Including Gil-galad.

Oh... and my apologies for this post.


[Edited on 01/07/2018 by Elthir]
Cenor
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on: January 08, 2018 11:45
My head hurts, but I'll do my best to contribute logically.

Tolkien's Ages were far shorter combined even then your Stone Age, Tarc. So, I would assume that progress for Middle Earth would, though slowly, advance just as quickly as the past couple of centuries for us. I'm curious what we would see first in Middle Earth. A gun age is most likely already in motion. Would we see a printing press? The pirates of Umbar having more powerful ships with engines instead of slaves at oars? Since Middle Earth could be categorized as mythological there would be differences, yes?
Image "Every good pirate has an alias" Felix glanced down, looking at contraption around the stump of his wrist. "Hook," he answered. "My name will be Hook."
tarcolan
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on: January 09, 2018 12:37
Yes, well... my guess at the time dilation was optimistic it seems. After 2 years at one gee only 2.4 years would've passed on earth. You'd have to travel for 14 years in fact. Here's a handy calculator in case you were taking a trip.
Special relativity star ship calculator

Tolkien applied linear time to his world because of the culture he lived in, and probably because of his notion of 'purpose'. I would suggest that linear time began with the rise of surplus, power and dynasty, but mostly with the invention of writing and thus history. It's much too big a subject to tackle here.

As to how a mythological world would evolve we need to understand that a lot of developments are accidents of history, so we have to assume some may never happen in the other world. It has been said that China missed out on a lot of discoveries because they never developed glass technology, for example. Middle Earth did have glass, and steel, so they were well ahead of the real world back then (12,000 years). As for gunpowder, perhaps Saruman's recipe was lost. We can't assume all civilisations would mirror our world. There's plenty of fiction, like steampunk, which explores such ideas. What sort of engines would the pirates have if there's no fossil fuels?
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Cenor
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on: January 12, 2018 02:53
Hmm makes sense, thanks!
Image "Every good pirate has an alias" Felix glanced down, looking at contraption around the stump of his wrist. "Hook," he answered. "My name will be Hook."
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