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The fellowship's journey through Middle-Earth mirrors the modernization of the English countryside.
There are tons of theories surrounding J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and, more broadly, the fictional world of Middle-Earth in which the books take place. One of these theories is that Middle-Earth is actually not a fictional world at all, but our own Earth in prehistoric times, before — as historian Dan Carlin recently put it in his podcast Hardcore History — “the so-called Age of Man began.”
This theory has been around for a while, but it’s unclear where it originated from. It’s possible this theory can be traced back to Tolkien himself, who once said he created Middle-Earth to provide England with a mythology that could compare to those of the Greeks or the Icelanders. The theory gained traction after a public lecture at the University of Oxford in 2022, titled “On Hobbits and Hominins.” During the lecture, Victorian literature professor John Holmes, alongside archeologists Rebecca Wragg Sykes and Tom Higham, debated how the various races of Middle-Earth — men, elves, dwarves, orcs, and hobbits — could be taken as analogies for the various hominin species that once coexisted on Earth.
Continued below.
bigthink.com
There are tons of theories surrounding J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and, more broadly, the fictional world of Middle-Earth in which the books take place. One of these theories is that Middle-Earth is actually not a fictional world at all, but our own Earth in prehistoric times, before — as historian Dan Carlin recently put it in his podcast Hardcore History — “the so-called Age of Man began.”
This theory has been around for a while, but it’s unclear where it originated from. It’s possible this theory can be traced back to Tolkien himself, who once said he created Middle-Earth to provide England with a mythology that could compare to those of the Greeks or the Icelanders. The theory gained traction after a public lecture at the University of Oxford in 2022, titled “On Hobbits and Hominins.” During the lecture, Victorian literature professor John Holmes, alongside archeologists Rebecca Wragg Sykes and Tom Higham, debated how the various races of Middle-Earth — men, elves, dwarves, orcs, and hobbits — could be taken as analogies for the various hominin species that once coexisted on Earth.
Continued below.
Tolkien’s Middle-Earth wasn't a place. It was a time in (English) history.
The fellowship's journey through Middle-Earth mirrors the modernization and industrialization of the English countryside.
bigthink.com
