...It is a long tale...
The wise will stay here and hope to rebuild our town...
| History of Arda | ||
|---|---|---|
| Music of the Ainur | ||
| Timeline of Arda | ||
| Days before days | ||
| Years of the Trees | ||
| Years of the Sun | ||
| Ages of the Children of Ilúvatar | ||
| First Age (Y.T. 1050 - Y.S. 590) | ||
| Second Age (S.A. 1 - 3441) | ||
| Third Age (T.A. 1 - 3021) | ||
| Fourth Age (Fo.A. 1 - ?) | ||
| Later Ages (up to present day) | ||
| Dagor Dagorath | ||
| Second Music of the Ainur | ||
| See also: Round World version of the legendarium | ||
For not we but those who come after will make the legends of our time.
This article concerns the later Ages, defined for the purposes of this article as the Ages that took place after the ending of the Fourth Age.
According to one of the drafts of the Appendices, it is said of the Fourth Age:
Of Eldarion son of Elessar it was foretold that he should rule a great realm, and that it should endure for a hundred generations of Men after him, that is until a new age brought in again new things; and from him should come the kings of many realms in long days after.
Development
Letter to Rhona Beare (1958)
In the Letter 211 that Tolkien wrote on 14 October 1958 to Rhona Beare, he writes that the time gap between the fall of Barad-dûr (in T.A. 3019) and the present-day (as in 1958, at the time that Tolkien wrote the said letter) was c. 6,000 years.
Therefore, Tolkien concluded that in 1958, the world was nearer to the end of the Fifth Age, if the subsequent Ages were of the same length as the Second and the Third Ages.
However, he ultimately concluded that the Ages have "quickened", and that the world was now (in 1958, that is) at the end of its Sixth Age, or maybe even in the Seventh.[2]
The Awaking of the Quendi (1960)
In a 1960 text called The Awaking of the Quendi, Tolkien explicitly calls the year 1960 AD (the year in which he was writing the text) as the year 1960 of the Seventh Age.
In that text Tolkien connects the beginning of the Seventh Age (i.e. Se.A. 1) with the incarnation of Ilúvatar (that is, the birth of Jesus Christ in 1 AD according to the real-world Anno Domini reckoning of the Catholic Church).[note 1]
Tolkien also goes on to say that the time-gap between the year 1960 of the Seventh Age (i.e. 1960 AD) and the Year of the Sun 310 of the First Age[note 2] was 16,000 years.[3]
This makes it possible to calculate when some of the in-universe Ages happened in relation to the real-world chronology:
- The end of the First Age (F.A. 590) corresponds to the year 13,760 BC
- The end of the Second Age (S.A. 3441) corresponds to the year 10,319 BC
- The end of the Third Age (T.A. 3021) corresponds to the year 7,298 BC
Therefore, the average duration of the Fourth through Sixth Ages would be c. 2,430 years[4] justifying his previous letter to Beare that the Ages must have quickened. On the other hand, while the letter suggested that the Third Age ended in around 4,000 BC, this calculation pushes it further back.
1964 BBC interview
In November 26 1964 Tolkien was interviewed by BBC, and during the more informal part of the interview with Denys Gueroult[5] he offhandedly mentioned that the events of The Lord of the Rings happened around 7-8,000 years before present (1964 at the time), somehow consistent to The Awakening of the Quendi essay:
The moons, I think, finally the moons and the suns have worked out according to what they were in this part of the world in 1942 actually. They must have something where they... I mean one... I couldn’t... I’m not good enough mathematician or astronomer to work out where they might have been seven thousand, eight thousand years ago. But as long as they correspond to some real configuration I thought it was good enough. Moons are much more tricky to deal with than suns of course, but in the whole, I don’t think the moon is full or rises in the wrong place...
Other versions of the legendarium
...there is much else that may be told.
Later in his life, Tolkien wrote about the possibility that during the Changing of the World, the Valar and the Calaquendi left the world spiritually, while the landmass of Aman remained, and became the Americas.[7] (See: New lands)
Inspiration
...there is much else that may be told.
Portrayal in adaptations
2000: Tolkien: The Illustrated Encyclopedia: David Day displays some chronological evolution of Arda, from the "Age of the Lamps" to the Third Age, while in the later Ages the illustrations show how Middle-earth changed geologically to resemble modern Europe, while and a continent resembling the Americas forming west of Belegaer.
Notes
References
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Peoples of Middle-earth, "VIII. The Tale of Years of the Third Age", pp. 244-5
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 211, (dated 14 October 1958), footnote, p. 283
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Carl F. Hostetter (ed.), The Nature of Middle-earth, "Part One. Time and Ageing: VI. The Awaking of the Quendi", p. 39
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Carl F. Hostetter (ed.), The Nature of Middle-earth, "Part One. Time and Ageing: VI. The Awaking of the Quendi", Notes, Note 30, p. 43
- ↑ The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology, p. 625
- ↑ J R R Tolkien 1964 interview
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Carl F. Hostetter (ed.), The Nature of Middle-earth, "Part Three. The World, its Lands, and its Inhabitants: XV. The Númenórean Catastrophe & End of "Physical" Aman"