who di all of this.....

[goodwarlord]

Get started, i mean, how was middle earth created, i;m not an expert at all of this stuff so don't jump down my throat for sayin' something stupid. Tell me if it explains these sort of happenings in any of teh books.

[hobinator]

Middle Earth and all of its creatures, peoples, languages, everything you could think of was created by a genius man, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, he spent his entire life writing many books about the goings on in Middle Earth, and created the most in depth world that spanned thousands of years of history, and even more in depth descriptions and tales of people from many times. He took alot of his inspiration from his own encounters, family and friends, his time in WWI, the unfortunate death of his father and mother at such a young age, and the death of many of his friends in the war. Tolkien had a deep love for language, and he thought, England didnt have a strongly developed mythical background (Such as the ones in Greece and Rome) so he decided to make his own. Tolkien was a brilliant professor, writer, and inspirator. And his books will be loved for many years to come. Thats pretty much all i can think of for now. Hope that helps you .

[BeardofPants]

Originally posted by hobinator
England didnt have a strongly developed mythical background (Such as the ones in Greece and Rome) so he decided to make his own.

He started out with that intention, but he certainly didn't finish it off that way.

[Elfhelm]

Middle Earth is the name of our world in Germanic myth. It is between Valhalla and Nibelheim, which are roughly equivalent to heaven and hell... roughly, I say. When Tolkien turned the Germanic myths into English myth, he kept Valinor and Middle Earth but not Nibelheim. The Nibelungen, however, became the dwarves and they dwell in middle earth with the elves and hobbits and humans. Elves were derived from the sidhe, or the Tuatha de Danaan in Celtic mythology. Orcs come from the term orcneas in the Beowulf Saga. Goblins are the french word for gnome, and gnome is latin for "one who knows" which according to alchemy is the mythical being who knows how to convert lead into gold. Originally he was going to call the elves who did not journey to Valinor the gnomes, I think, but decided not to do that at all.

Then there's the hobbits. Now all great inventions and works of art stand on the shoulders of those who came before, as LotR rests on the shoulders of all those old Sagas, but there has to be something unique, new, and relevant to the writers time in any great work because art is a living thing. So one day, apparently out of the blue, Tolkien made up Hobbits based on your basic English country gentleman. He used modern things like pipesmoking and gardening, added a bit of pub crawling, quirky opinions, and overcooked food (oops sorry)...

He had been inventing languages, and he needed to have a geography where the languages could be affected by movements of people, wars, etc. and he even said once that his version of Middle Earth was invented as a place for the languages to live.

And he had all these stories about the people who spoke those languages that he whittled at for 20 years, sometimes writing massively long epic poems, sometimes colloquial prose pieces, until one day he realized something, we don't know what, and invented the Hobbit. And the rest is history.

[Elf Girl]

Tolkien was merely recording the truth as it happened long ago.

[WallRocker]

Originally posted by Elf Girl
Tolkien was merely recording the truth as it happened long ago.

True, true. Here's my therory: ME existed before the Flood that happened in the Old testement of the bible. It talks about God's children(the Numenorians) being infected by the Cainites, thus the decline of the Numenorians. The men that lived for so long(Noah was over 900 hundred years old) were actually Dwarves. The Elves must have already left, and Hobbits had become an unknown race, just like they were before the WotR. That's what I believe

[Elfhelm]

I see WR, and that's why there aren't any unicorns right?

[WallRocker]

Originally posted by Elfhelm
and that's why there aren't any unicorns right?

Correct

[Elfhelm]

er... should I mention Babylonian clay tablets on this thread? No, no, must resist.

But Middle Earth was taken from the old sagas, seriously.

[Elf Girl]

Originally posted by WallRocker
True, true. Here's my therory: ME existed before the Flood that happened in the Old testement of the bible. It talks about God's children(the Numenorians) being infected by the Cainites, thus the decline of the Numenorians. The men that lived for so long(Noah was over 900 hundred years old) were actually Dwarves. The Elves must have already left, and Hobbits had become an unknown race, just like they were before the WotR. That's what I believe

No, no. ME is still there, I live there. But people don't know about it because if a modern person wanders in, they usually end up getting them selves killed, and if they don't, then they are thought of as insane if they go back. That's what I believe.

[samwiselvr2008]

Originally posted by goodwarlord
Get started, i mean, how was middle earth created, i;m not an expert at all of this stuff so don't jump down my throat for sayin' something stupid. Tell me if it explains these sort of happenings in any of teh books.

I wont jump down your throte, and hopefully no one else will eather. If you mean more like "acording to the books, who made ME" then you should read The Sil. (I'm in the middle of it, well, like page 88 or something like that). I don't know what you ment, Tolkien made it up, but as far as the begining of it, like, oh well, can't find the right words. Sorry, I can't explane myself!

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Yes, that's what it sounded to me like he meant. It's told about in the Ainulindale, at the front of the Silmarillion.

[Dunadan]

Originally posted by Elfhelm
Middle Earth is the name of our world in Germanic myth. It is between Valhalla and Nibelheim, which are roughly equivalent to heaven and hell...

That's just about the most concise summary I've read of where JRRT got his inspiration from. Thanks for that, Elfhelm.

[congressmn]

Originally posted by hobinator
Middle Earth and all of its creatures, peoples, languages, everything you could think of was created by a genius man, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, he spent his entire life writing many books about the goings on in Middle Earth, and created the most in depth world that spanned thousands of years of history, and even more in depth descriptions and tales of people from many times. He took alot of his inspiration from his own encounters, family and friends, his time in WWI, the unfortunate death of his father and mother at such a young age, and the death of many of his friends in the war. Tolkien had a deep love for language, and he thought, England didnt have a strongly developed mythical background (Such as the ones in Greece and Rome) so he decided to make his own. Tolkien was a brilliant professor, writer, and inspirator. And his books will be loved for many years to come. Thats pretty much all i can think of for now. Hope that helps you .

well said hobbinator.

[congressmn]

Originally posted by Elfhelm
Middle Earth is the name of our world in Germanic myth. It is between Valhalla and Nibelheim, which are roughly equivalent to heaven and hell... roughly, I say. When Tolkien turned the Germanic myths into English myth, he kept Valinor and Middle Earth but not Nibelheim. The Nibelungen, however, became the dwarves and they dwell in middle earth with the elves and hobbits and humans. Elves were derived from the sidhe, or the Tuatha de Danaan in Celtic mythology. Orcs come from the term orcneas in the Beowulf Saga. Goblins are the french word for gnome, and gnome is latin for "one who knows" which according to alchemy is the mythical being who knows how to convert lead into gold. Originally he was going to call the elves who did not journey to Valinor the gnomes, I think, but decided not to do that at all.

Then there's the hobbits. Now all great inventions and works of art stand on the shoulders of those who came before, as LotR rests on the shoulders of all those old Sagas, but there has to be something unique, new, and relevant to the writers time in any great work because art is a living thing. So one day, apparently out of the blue, Tolkien made up Hobbits based on your basic English country gentleman. He used modern things like pipesmoking and gardening, added a bit of pub crawling, quirky opinions, and overcooked food (oops sorry)...

He had been inventing languages, and he needed to have a geography where the languages could be affected by movements of people, wars, etc. and he even said once that his version of Middle Earth was invented as a place for the languages to live.

And he had all these stories about the people who spoke those languages that he whittled at for 20 years, sometimes writing massively long epic poems, sometimes colloquial prose pieces, until one day he realized something, we don't know what, and invented the Hobbit. And the rest is history.

And u just wrote ure very own masterpieace.
I would strongly recommend anyone new to Tokien and his work to read this.

[WallRocker]

Originally posted by Elf Girl
No, no. ME is still there, I live there. But people don't know about it because if a modern person wanders in, they usually end up getting them selves killed, and if they don't, then they are thought of as insane if they go back. That's what I believe.

You know, I always believed that. I'm actually a very tall Hobbit named Spool, so is there anyway an Elf like you would let me into Lothlorien? BTW, people do think I'm insane

[Elf Girl]

Originally posted by WallRocker
You know, I always believed that. I'm actually a very tall Hobbit named Spool, so is there anyway an Elf like you would let me into Lothlorien? BTW, people do think I'm insane

Well, it depends on why you want to get in. If you are just "sight-seeing" probably not. I'll have to go ask the Lady Galadriel.

[WallRocker]

Sight Seeing! You insult me! I am a Hobbit much like Samwise Gamgee of the Shire. I love trees and would greatly love to see the fair trees of Lothlorien.

[Elf Girl]

Ahh. Well, in that case you could come, but I can't take you there right now, as I am confined to the US until people believe I'm an elf. *sigh*

[Radagast The Brown]

To the original question, I can just say that the men didn't have any other place to go to live in. (as dwarves, elves, ents etc...). They had to fight.