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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.

I'm not sure where this question is coming from. You're asking if I believe he believed what now? Here's a quote from the beginning of the same paragraph I quote in the OP from Letter #211 which may include an answer to your question (bold text added): May I say that all this is...

I guess I'm failing to express that I'm looking for more than mere assertion, like, do you have a particular passage in mind? I'm not doubting that there could be such a passage, but I'm interested in what language is being used and keeping in mind that meteoric iron is a thing.

I think JRR Tolkien probably had the Genesis flood narrative in mind for the end of the Fourth Age. For the end of the Fifth, I personally imagine the Late Bronze Age collapse. So I'm mostly in agreement, except I don't see a need to reconfigure the continents if Christopher Tolkien's map is not...

You're quibbling with me about the meaning of the word neolithic. That's semantics. You are, of course, correct, and I considered not (mis)using it in my OP (which was copy/pasted from the other thread which used the term) and in my thread title but had difficulty finding another convenient...

Eddie Canales, a tireless advocate for immigrants’ rights and founder of the South Texas Human Rights Center, died in Texas this week at 76 after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Ismail Haniyeh, senior Hamas political leader, was assassinated near Tehran by an alleged Israeli strike.

See @Reynard, JRR Tolkien would not agree about the Celtic vibe. :)

That's a matter of opinion. My opinion is he was more concerned with story elements like plot and character than describing people's standard of living.

What does this have to do with what I posted, and what's your evidence for what he believed or didn't believe?

This shows a lack of familiarity with archaeology. There was indeed working of gold, silver, copper, meteoric iron, and perhaps other native metals in the Stone Age. What marks the end of the Stone Age is the smelting of copper ore, but metals had been worked and beaten into beautiful and useful...

My question is what is he actually describing that makes the story incompatible with being set on planet Earth (specifically in Western Europe, the Mediterranean, and Northwest Africa) sometime between 6,500 and 4,000 BC? How does he describe the things you mentioned in a way that conflicts with...

Ah, yes, I was misremembering this passage from Letter #19 (p. 26): Your reader's comment affords me delight. I am sorry the names split his eyes -- personally I believe (and here believe I am a good judge) they are good, and a large part of the effect. They are coherent and consistent and made...

This is all a semantic distinction. I think it's clear in my OP I'm using Neolithic to refer to the time-period of the Neolithic period, not any particular stratum of material culture. I even used scare quotes around the word Neolithic.

So are the Great Pyramids, so is a lot of megalithic architecture. And they're built by literal Atlanteans who've been gifted by the gods with superiority of mind, body, and longevity. That's the fantastical element. The Neolithic lasted for thousands of years, so it's quite possible for it to...

JRR Tolkien for the most part didn't describe much in the way of material culture, so I don't think there's a lot of evidence either way, but I have to disagree with you when it comes to megalithic architecture. I think there was a deliberate effort on the author's part to tie the Númenóreans...