Middle Earth

I recently purchased the Atlas Of Middle Earth, and seem often confused when looking at maps. What were the Demographics like on middle Earth? It seems like in the book, the battle at Helms Deep had at least 10,000 warriors battling it out on both sides, but looking through the books there are so few settlements (and the ones that do have city maps show no homes for commoners), that it would be impossible to draw together forces of that many.

There seem to be many towns of hobbits all close together, few mountains with dwarves, a couple of forests filled with elves, and human settlements spread at least 100 miles apart from each other (if not more).

In Mordor there are but 9 (quickly looking through the settlements, number may be wrong) settlements of orcs. Yet there seem to be no housing for common orcs. AND those 9 settlements seem to be too few to draw together forces of any large numbers.

Why so few settlements and so few people in ME?

Since this is less about gaming and more about the world of Middle Earth, we'll move here.

Having done that, much of Middle Earth was severely depopulated during the previous war with Sauron. The Kingdom of Arnor was destroyed, reduced to a few villages and towns and a handful of rangers that used to be the aristocracy. Meanwhile, Gondor and Rohan were reduced in strength. Orcs were hunted to the best ability of elves and men and generally chased into dark corners and underground.

So, yeah. The numbers were generally much reduced from what we'd think of in modern terms.

Edit: I of course defer to people that remember more of the whole thing than I do.

Hmm Im not sure of the numbers at Helms Deep in LoTR, but I have always thoguth that the orcs greatly outnumbered the people of Rohan there since they were pretty well scattered and unorganized at the time of the battle.

As for the demographics, it is hard to judge by what Tolkien says (or rather doesnt say). Tolkien leaves alot of the canvas blank in regards to Rohan so we dont know what the other settlements there were like-if they existed.Given the make up of the kingdom its probably safe to assume most people lived in fairly small villages. Also, (I think) it says in LoTR that Rohan sent something like 7000 men to fight in the Battle of Pelennor Fields. So their population must have been great enough to support that many horse warriors.

At any rate, like Dinkledog said, the populations of many of the kingdoms have been greatly reduced. Wars with Angmar had destroyed Arnor and its successor states, The Great Plague of the 17th century in the Third Age had decimated the populations of Gondor, Rohan, and the west (the Fell Winters didnt help either). Added to this alot of the elves had gone over the sea to Valinor, so their numbers were reduced too.

EDIT: As for orcs, Sauron bred and kept many in Mordor and in the lands of the East, he had them in parts of Mirkwood, and kept many in the hidden places of Moria. Orcs roamed alot of the wild open depopulated expanses of Eriador and had strongholds in what used to be Angmar, Mt Gram and Mount Gundabad. So orcs would be fairly teeming in the world.