Search results

No, that's not my point. First of all, this is fiction. None of it is "supposed to be ... factually correct". Second, I don't believe JRR Tolkien had in mind some other "actual form of the book" departure from which would require any kind of rationalizing. He was just writing a story with a book...

As saint is one of the words I use to describe gods in my D&D games (a translation from JRR Tolkien's Ainu), I would go with hallows or some construction like the hallowed, or if you want to coin a term, holies.

Randy Kehler, the antiwar activist whose speech inspired whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg to release the Pentagon Papers, has died at the age of 80.

Not sure why nobody quotes the book, but assuming these are some of the structures @Ruin Explorer was talking about, can you say more about why these locations would be "trivial" to find if they had once existed? Of course, we know Barad-dûr was destroyed along with the Ring which Sauron used...

I chose backgrounds and other. Other because there isn’t a “happily (or otherwise) sticking with 5E” option, which seems like an oversight on the part of the poll maker.

It's a bit more than a single sentence. If you include the footnote I quoted, it's three sentences. Also, I'm not sure why you say "could have". The statement takes it as given the setting is our world. He acknowledges the difficulty of making the story "fit" and that he "could have fitted...

I'm not looking for the type of "mapping" you're talking about. I don’t look at the LotR as historical fiction, so it’s not about experiencing a "known" historical period. It’s fantasy fiction which is about (among other things) the wonder of the unknown. I don’t think it’s conducive to the...

Perhaps not coincidentally, the novel describes towns and cities. That seems to corroborate that the time-period is not far off. Which structure (or structures) do you mean? It would be helpful to have a description from the book, so we're on the same page. Perhaps, if you look in the right...

Are you making the argument that Tolkien intended to set his stories at a date after AD 1844?

The negative connotation comes from that type of conversation being undesirable, but the disagreement was about the form. You told me the form I used was incorrect for the meaning I wanted to convey, and I conceded, both to make my intended meaning more clear and because I'm not interested in...

From this wikipedia article: Many varying scientific and alternative hypotheses attempt to explain the exact construction techniques, but, as is the case for other such structures, there is no definite consensus. But if you think that's wrong, I'm sure you can tell me on which hypothesis all the...

I don't think anyone can dispute this and would go as far as to state an equivalency between Númenor and Atlantis in Tolkien's legendarium. I think of Doggerland as the northern part of Eriador surrounding the Icebay of Forochel, which I'd equate with the Norwegian trench. Beleriand I would...

I'm asking @Paul Farquhar to substantiate the claim he seems to be making that the "great many times" "Smelting is mentioned" are somehow a refutation of the dates I set out in my OP for the time-period of the LotR.

How long after you post a reply to me am I allowed to reply to you? It sounds like you don't plan on providing any examples of these descriptions of material culture you say are so prevalent. A secondary world can be a fictional Earth as it is in the case of the setting of the LotR. This is...

Not to open a semantic debate, but I think you're wrong about the meaning of the word semantics which doesn't imply the meaning of something is uncertain, just that the meaning is the focus of the conversation, rather than any issue of substance.

Well, since there's no definite consensus about how the pyramids of the Giza complex were exactly built, I think it's difficult for anyone to say with any authority whether or not their construction was beyond the abilities of the High Medieval Period or Renaissance. You certainly didn't see...

Apologies, I had shifted to using the phrase standard of living with the intention of imparting the same meaning as living conditions had been used to mean in my exchange with @briggart just up-thread, rather than in the socio-economic sense. I.e. relative "level" of material culture with...

Great! Let's get into the details: Where? Can you provide references/page numbers/quotations of what is actually said in the book? What are they smelting? This is important if you're trying to establish a particular level of human technology has been attained. Who is doing the smelting? Are...

Well, it's not like Germanic and Celtic is some mutually exclusive dichotomy, and I disagree with regard to Gandalf's odinic qualities. Specifically his exhortations to fight against overwhelming odds are at least reminiscent of the gods last stand at Ragnarök and the, to my mind, germanic ideal...

Then it should be quite easy for you to provide actual examples of these descriptions of material culture showing the events of the story couldn't have occurred before 4,000 BC.