XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: fwbrown@bellsouth.net   
      
   In alt.fan.tolkien Jerry Friedman  wrote:   
   > On 8/12/15 5:06 PM, Paul S. Person wrote:   
   >> As it happens, I am re-reading /THOTH/ and, on page 447/448 (first   
   >> volume), Rateliff discusses JRRT's plans for /The Lost Road/.   
   >>   
   >> As I think is consistent with the parts he completed, he planned to   
   >> start in the present and then move backwards through time. This, then,   
   >> should not be controversial.   
   >>   
   >> What is interesting is that (p 448) JRRT planned to include episodes   
   >> from "periods known to archaeology but for which all legends and   
   >> stories have been lost the Ice Age, the era of Paleolithic   
   >> cave-paintings). and finally beyond, into his own imagined prehistory   
   >> (Beleriand and finally Numinor)".   
   >>   
   >> Which would seem to imply that the Fourth Age /preceded the   
   >> Paleolothic/ (that is, the Old Stone Age). Since the culture of /LOTR/   
   >> is, surely, far past that of any Stone Age, a considerable decline   
   >> must have occurred from the Fourth Age to the Paleolithic.   
   >>   
   >> It looks like my suggestion, that the Fourth Age was ended by a Giant   
   >> Space Rock that changed /everything/, may not have been so completely   
   >> off-base as may have appeared when I proposed it.   
   >   
   > It looked completely on-base to me.  I think it was always clear that   
   > technology had collapsed sometime after /LotR/.  Paul Kocher suggested   
   > in /Master of Middle-Earth/ that /TH/ and /LOTR/ might have taken place   
   > in an interglacial period, with the cold lingering at Forochel, but your   
   > quotation suggests it was even older.   
      
   I've always believed, ever since I read LOTR somewhere around 1969,   
   that the events in Middle-Earth took place so far in the past that   
   all traces of those civilizations had vanished.  At the very least   
   the idea of silverware must have been lost and reinvented, since I   
   seriously doubt that those spoons that Bilbo and Lobelia fought over   
   were inspired by anything Marco Polo brought back from China.  :-)   
      
   --   
   F. Wayne Brown    
      
         ur sag9-ga ur-tur-še3 ba-an-kur9   
   "A dog that is played with turns into a puppy." (Sumerian proverb)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)