XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: jerry_friedman@yahoo.com   
      
   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.   
      
   --   
   Jerry Friedman   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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