Mythic-Neolithic (or, Middle-Earth wasn't Medieval)

[Udwin]

Disclaimer: Please excuse the overly-long, rambling, and probably disconnected nature of what follows. This is collected from over a year’s worth of random notions and thought-experiments.

When I first began this project, I approached it using the analogy of “this would be for Tolkien, what Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead was for Beowulf”: in others words, deconstructed or distilled to its original Primary World elements, to get a better idea of "What really happened?"

I started with the question When was Middle-Earth? (When people have posed that question to me in prior years I usually reckoned ‘sometime before the last Ice Age (let’s say 40kya)’, which would allow ample time for European glaciations to wipe away Minas Tirith and other such traces of a lost previous culture.)

However, I recently stumbled upon this passage from Letters:
“…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.” (No. 211).

In other words, if we stick the War of the Ring on a Primary World timeline at 4,000 BCE (6kya), for most of North and Western Europe we set the Third Age in a firmly Epipaleolithic—shifting towards Neolithic and early Chalcolithic—period.

So, if LotR takes place during the Old European Neolithic, what to make of all the swords and other (way-too-early) metallurgy? I think the Elvish/Numenorean influence can explain some of the more fantastic weapons (Narsil and the rest of the named swords, &c; not sure on things like chain-mail or lesser weapons), but as the Red Book was passed down through hobbits, is it possible that they ‘updated’ certain elements to keep up-to-date with the present audience (a la Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet—replacing swords with pistols)? The most ‘recent’ source we have for the Legendarium is the ‘Ælfwine/Eriol’ 11th-century frame story, who conceivably could have brought everything up-to-date with the early medieval tech he would be familiar with?
I’m sure the toughest thing for most folks to wrap their heads around is: were non-Elvish ‘swords’ really fancy flint blades? Was Frodo's 'small axe for splitting firewood' a Mondsee copper axe?

Honestly, the one thing keeping M-E history from fitting in fairly neatly with established Primary World history are the Elves. And I’m hesitant (but almost willing) to rationalize them as Advanced Aliens (it’s soooo tempting in these ‘primitive’ settings—see: everything spooky in the Old Testament).

Of course, Numenor as Atlantis is the key to this understanding*, as that's really the cross-over point tying myth and history together.
Here we have a significantly-advanced (due to Elvish influence) mother-culture that seeds colonies all over coastlines (allowing for proto-Minoans, Egyptians, Phoenicians &c. who don’t appear in the legendarium), and pass on their knowledge to lesser (‘Middle’) men (who naturally at first revere the Numenoreans as gods, (a la modern ‘cargo cults’).
Using our timeline in which TA 3019 = 6kya, the Downfall can be dated to 7,125 BCE or a little over 9kya), making the much later (~1600 BCE) eruption of Thera not the source of the Atlantis myth as usually held, but instead simply the destruction of a major Numenorean colony (which was likely one of the last vestiges of that culture).
Just for fun, there’s even a Basque (far western Europe, so likely site of first contact with Numenoreans) legend of ‘Basajaun’—a sort of helpful Yeti/woodwose figure—who taught ancestors agriculture & ironworking. Could this be a folk-memory of tall (remember, Elendil was almost eight feet!), bearded Numenorean seafaring colonizers? Methinks so.
*…Tolkien's solution, posited in The Notion Club Papers, was: '... that a change could come, so drastic that it changed not only the present and of course the future from that point on but even the past as well, so that the present now derived from a different past and the original past had no longer ever happened, being transformed from history -- the things that actually happened -- into myth; the things we remember that exist now only in legend and memory.” - John D Rateliff, “And All The Days Of Her Life Are Forgotten: The Lord of the Rings as Mythic Prehistory”

Assuming our late Paleolithic setting, the Drúedain/Woses/Pukel-men are clearly a relict population of Neanderthals (witness their simplistic but still comprehensible language; Minas Tirith = “stone-house”, Rohirrim = “horse-lords”, &c.).
This would suggest that hobbit-culture fits quite well into Marija Gimbutas’ idea of Old Europe— marked as it is by a strong line of prominent matriarchs (Belladonna Took, Lobelia S-B, Smeagol's grandmother), while being agricultural yet fairly peaceful, and egalitarian. Of course the flip side of this is—under the Kurgan theory—that from the late TA/early FA on, Proto-Indo-European horse-cultures will be sweeping westward from the eastern steppes (Rhûn?), laying foundations for many of our current cultural hallmarks. (In fact, the invasion of the wainriders around TA 1900 could be a sort of ‘Kurgan Wave Zero’).
Extrapolating further, this would make Westron (Adûni) the common language of Old Europe (early forms appearing on artifacts as ‘Vinka symbols’). Obviously, in this Neolithic M-E, our hobbit (‘kuduk’) heroes Frodo & Bilbo, Sam, Pippin, and Merry do not travel from the Shire to Rivendell, but instead Maura & Bilba Labingi, Banazîr Galbasi, Razanur Tûk, and Kalimac Brandagamba journey to Karningul from Sûzat.
Under this stripped-down interpretation, Theoden’s charge of 6,000 horse at Minas Tirith (now a large hill-fort) was instead more like a few hundred, versus the Witch-King (now an enemy shaman)’s force of perhaps a couple thousand of diverse south- and eastern-based tribes. (note to self: must. reconstruct. this!)

Whew. Hope that made sense to somebody. Don’t know where this is going anymore. Unfortunately, the best evidence for my ‘pre/non-medieval-level-of-technology theory’ is a single reference in Book VI where Frodo is said to be wearing a ‘leather shirt’. That made me think of buckskin.

[Greg]

Fun read! I'll dissect a bit more later...but at first cursory glance, that's some fun stuff!

[caedmon]

Hmmm, ok... I can go with this. I would point out that Numenor is not the first drowned land or the Last. Westernesse itself was lost in the War of Wrath at the end of the first age. Westernesse would have been extended the continental shelf to about the Azores. Also Mordor and Gondor seem to be the natural location of the Mediterranean.

I would place the explosion of Thera, not as Atlantis/Numenor, but as the final end of Atlantis/Gondor at the middle of the Fifth Age. (Mediterranean fills flooding Gondor & Mordor, Minist Tirith moves up the mountain at the end of the Fourth Age.)

Of course with a smaller, neolithic setting we could always look at the filling of the Black Sea and the Red Sea as ancestral memories of those events.

[caedmon]

Also, are there any actual references to human smiths in the books? I definitely remember Elvish and Dwarven smiths, but no human ones come to mind.

[Ringulf]

"These look like good blades," said the wizard, half drawing them and looking at them curiously. "They were not made by any troll, nor by any smith among men in these parts and days; but when we can read the runes on them, we shall know more about them." The Hobbit, P53, Roast Mutton.

They do exist!

[Greg]

I believe that was in reference to the blades later identified as Glamdring and Orcrist, which were not human-made...

Caedmon...I'll do some digging. Certainly none of the finer blades of lineage were made by anyone but Dwarves or Elves, but I'm sure, for the sake of outfitting their armies/riders, that Rohan and Gondor had weaponsmiths. They just weren't worth writing about as compared to Telchar and his peers.

[Peter Remling]

So in layman's terms, orcs are Neanderthals and the humans are Cromagnon. Oliphants are mastodons. Wargs are dire wolves. The elves are Alien invaders, seeding life on the planet.

That would leave baboons for dwarves ?


Waiting for the thunk of Scott's axe in the back of my head !



Udwin, I'll have to review your actual intent later, so far interesting !!

[Beornmann]

You had me up until the aliens-Elves.

[caedmon]

So in layman's terms, orcs are Neanderthals and the humans are Cromagnon. Oliphants are mastodons. Wargs are dire wolves. The elves are Alien invaders, seeding life on the planet.

That would leave baboons for dwarves ?


Waiting for the thunk of Scott's axe in the back of my head !



Udwin, I'll have to review your actual intent later, so far interesting !!

Nah, Dwarves are Denisovans, Hobbits are homo floresiensis, elves are just another as yet undiscovered human relative. Trolls could be Parantropus (proposed scientific name for Yeti/Sasquach)

But what about Dragons?

[Peter Remling]

Being that dragon mythology exists in all the societies of man and so do the petrified remains of "flying" dinosaurs, I always thought that a likely cause.

[Mirimaran]

What a great article! I think that Tolkien used a mixture of history and myth for the basis of Middle-earth; he even described the history of Gondor as more akin to the Eqyptians than what we would consider medieval. In fact, I think it is more related in those terms because of the swords and armor definitions. He is referring to a lost age, and the world has changed since those times, so who knows how many times technology had raised up and was lost. He was a translator of the Red Book, and being a professor of Anglo-Saxon studies, related those events as best he could in terms that he understood. As for smiths of Men:

For each of the hobbits he chose a dagger, long, leaf-shaped, and keen,
of marvellous workmanship, damasked with serpent-forms in red and gold.
They gleamed as he drew them from their black sheaths, wrought of some strange
metal, light and strong, and set with many fiery stones. Whether by some
virtue in these sheaths or because of the spell that lay on the mound, the
blades seemed untouched by time, unrusted, sharp, glittering in the sun.
'Old knives are long enough as swords for hobbit-people,' he said.
'Sharp blades are good to have, if Shire-folk go walking, east, south, or
far away into dark and danger.' Then he told them that these blades were
forged many long years ago by Men of Westernesse: they were foes of the
Dark Lord, but they were overcome by the evil king of Carn Dum in the Land of
Angmar.

'Few now remember them,' Tom murmured, 'yet still some go wandering,
sons of forgotten kings walking in loneliness, guarding from evil things
folk that are heedless.'

Fellowship of the Ring

So passed the sword of the Barrow-downs, work of Westernesse. But glad would
he have been to know its fate who wrought it slowly long ago in the North-kingdom
when the Dunedain were young, and chief among their foes was the dread realm
of Angmar and its sorcerer king. No other blade, not though mightier hands had
wielded it, would have dealt that foe a wound so bitter, cleaving the undead flesh,
breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will.

The Return of the King

Ken

[Gondian]

What a great article! I think that Tolkien used a mixture of history and myth for the basis of Middle-earth; he even described the history of Gondor as more akin to the Eqyptians than what we would consider medieval. In fact, I think it is more related in those terms because of the swords and armor definitions. He is referring to a lost age, and the world has changed since those times, so who knows how many times technology had raised up and was lost. He was a translator of the Red Book, and being a professor of Anglo-Saxon studies, related those events as best he could in terms that he understood.

Ken

I am with Ken on this; " Myth is the Mystery behind History"

[Ringulf]

Finally a voice of reason crying in the wilderness!
Thank you Mirimaran...Baboons indeed!
I believe that was an attempt to throw us off your own questionable mannish origins Laddy! And as for my axe, perhaps the flat applied a bit lower! After all I would not want to be accused of cruelty to animals! (hee hee)

[Fox]

"These look like good blades," said the wizard, half drawing them and looking at them curiously. "They were not made by any troll, nor by any smith among men in these parts and days; but when we can read the runes on them, we shall know more about them." The Hobbit, P53, Roast Mutton.

They do exist!

I believe that was in reference to the blades later identified as Glamdring and Orcrist, which were not human-made...

Just a small point of logic, when Galdalf says "nor by any smith among men in these parts", it logically follows that smiths among men exist, even if the blades in question were not made by them, thus Ringulf's point is valid. Carry on.

[Ringulf]

That was the point...alas.