The Biggest Problem With Tolkien's Worldbuilding

[@Clyde-S-Wilcox]

Belief: If Tolkien had lived ten more years all of the unfinished stories would have been wrapped up and all the characters would have been firmly established Reality: If Tolkien had lived another ten years we'd have a whole bunch more unfinished stories and the characters would be even more complicated.

[@jamaigar]

But maybe we may have at least one whole extra completed story to develop some obscure part of the legendarium. Like one consistent Galadriel story, or some novel actually set in the second age, a la the bug tales of the first age. We'll never know

[@viktormadzov5286]

​@@jamaigar Its an interesting thing to hope for.....but I severally doubt any substantial addition to his legendarium would have been made in that time. Tolkien was a perfectionist to a fault, constantly rewriting, changing his mind, reworking and tweaking his grand mythos, particularly in his later years. If he had more time, its very likely that he would have just spent it perfecting the Silmarilian, along with fleshing out, tweaking, or outright changing things that we've all already read in the works of Christopher Tolkein. If Tolkein had to spend any serious though to filling out any major gaps in his worldbuilding by the age of 81, then I dont think he would have miraculously done so in the twilight of his life

[@sbeaber]

Reality: yet another 5 origin stories for Galadriel

[@coreyander286]

J. R. R. Tolkien and George R. R. Martin are more similar on this matter than a lot of GRRM detractors would like to believe.

[@istari0]

@@viktormadzov5286 Tolkien was outlining a massive revision to the Legendarium that would have Arda be a sphere in its beginning and the Sun and the Moon being created at the same time as Arda. So, if he had lived another 10 years, he almost certainly would have been working on that.

[@aigodlord]

Stuff like this is why it drives me up a wall when ignorant people (usually non-authors) contend that fantasy is the easiest genre to write because "you can do anything." No. Authors like Tolkien have to build their worlds from the unformed magma, usually with "real" history, science, theology, etc. as a guide, but ultimately, the legwork they have to do is significantly greater than writing into a world that's already fully formed. Fantasy exists where the world we know collides with the world of our beliefs/imagination; thus, as I see it, the rule for good fantasy is that, in order for the profound to be believable, the mundane has to be relatable. It's hard, as you said. But I think Tolkien did all right, all things considered.

[@videocrowsnest5251]

Yea, basically the "you can do anything" is balanced by needing to think about implications, consequences, what it means for the story and world, etc etc. And then balancing all these elements around, in reference to, or otherwise to the benefit of the story being told. Introducing thing A then means thing A is a thing and must be accounted for unless reasons/circumstances exist to say why not. If thing A is handy and useful, would not everyone use thing A in situations where thing A applies then? Which includes the antagonistic forces. Handy thing A will also logically bring forth points B, C, D. It is also one thing to have all these elements in/figured out/thought on, and another in how they get implemented. Ergo - how are they written to be a part of the tale? Implementation is after all a pretty important part of the formula and where much of the heavy lifting of actually writing them in comes from. Fantasy is a very fluid and flexible genre, but does best when balancing the mundane and the magical.

[@pavelslama5543]

Yeah. It´s extremely hard to create a world with a story that is both interesting and internally consistent (doesnt break its own lore). Right now Im also trying to write such a story. My world is of course inspired by others, such as Middle Earth, or Witcher, or Song of ice and fire. But also contains my own "legend", theology, and even some altered laws of physics and boundaries of reality. And its extremely difficult to keep all of that in mind during the creation of every plot point, or history of that world and the races and nations in it. And whatever stayed the same as in real life also has to behave roughly like in real life (while taking into consideration other changes that may affect it). Tolkien brought himself into a lot of troubles by, lets say, first building a house and then adding its foundations. Im not a writer, I write for fun only, and plan to publish my stories for free, but writing like Tolkien did would be a major pain in the rear end for me. I would not like to generalize, as I do not know how professionals feel about it, but I am convinced that its easier to first set up laws, principles and boundaries, and then build a story on top of them.

[@kaihiggins725]

I’m finding that myself when I’m trying to build my own world for my book series. It burns your brain filling in the gaps to make the world feel real and not have blank pages never mind thousands of years of history, names, wars, peoples whom are now extinct

[@coreyander286]

"You can do anything" would be more appropriate for fantasy of the Alice in Wonderland or Willy Wonka type. I don't think anyone is supposed to be asking if the logistics of Willy Wonka's candy production makes sense. I never was really bothered by Harry Potter questions like "How many students are there supposed to be at Hogwarts?" because even if the latter half of the series gets more serious, the early half of the series has that Willy Wonka whimsy. Hm. I remember reading that Tolkien considered rewriting _The Hobbit_ to match more tonally with _The Lord of the Rings._ But imagine instead if _Lord of the Rings_ and _Silmarillion_ were rewritten to be more like _The Hobbit._ The cave troll in Moria speaking in a Cockney accent. Luthien having a leprechaun brother named Tinfang Warble.

[@istari0]

Agreed. Well done fantasy has to be about as difficult as anything to write.

[@gagaplex]

I actually got that demographics problem with A Song of Ice and Fire even more. It always seemed like places and peoples get utterly devasted and yet somehow new armies keep showing up without any logistics or explanation behind them. I can see it for LOTR as well, but in ASOIAF it bothered me far more.

[@Lonaticus]

Yep. The Riverlands and The North should be desolated wastelands by now, yet they somehow keep churning armies.

[@pavelslama5543]

Yeah, and not just demographics. All the noble houses supposedly lived and shared that world for eons, while it constantly feels like that they would all massacre each other in a single year. And each conflict is settled though war, with many cities put to the sword all across the land. And each defeated army is massacred, each weakened house almost eradicated, etc. When you look at real history, its hard to find a house that was eradicated through war. Most came to extinction by having no legitimate heir (although most extinct houses also had a lot of illegitimate heirs). And when an army lost 10% of its men in a battle, it was considered to be crushing defeat (like for example France in the battle of Crécy, where about 2-8% of French army was lost). Westeros is absolutely drenched with blood even in comparison to the real medieval Europe, yet it still has means to recruit huge armies for another huge 3-way (technically 5-way) war.

[@TheRealRealMClovin]

I would say the show more ruins that

[@kaihiggins725]

Could you give me some examples please? I didn’t really notice that issue with Game of Thrones (well apart from the tv show)

[@kaihiggins725]

@@pavelslama5543see we get told this though, we see houses get totally wiped out but we also see houses move, we see the Starks constantly let house Bolton live on. GRRM has said though he regrets having house stark be 8,000 years old

[@LeHobbitFan]

As for the strange expansion of Dale, I think it is likely that other tribes of Northmen who would be glad to join a kingdom ruled by the guy who killed Smaug. After all, the peoples of the Éothéod (and later Rohan) kept the exploits of their lord Fram against the worm Scatha in memory for millennia. They seem like the type who would follow a dragon-slayer in a heartbeat.

[@alanpennie]

Dragon slayer and ring giver. Well maybe not the latter. But Bard became very rich from the treasure of Erebor and was also generous.

[@DarthGandalfYT]

I just wish we more about the Northmen north of the Celduin. Seems like they had an interesting history given they survived whereas the Northmen south of the Celduin were conquered.

[@alanpennie]

@@DarthGandalfYT They seem to have been the most friendly to dwarves of all the men we know about.

[@fantasywind3923]

I mean it is clearly said there were many other peoples out there, and obviously there would be many more descendants of the original inhabitants of Dale when they fled! Smaug have not destroyed them all, we know that some people survived escaping, some fled to Esgaroth (like Girion's wife and child) others could have spread across the region, and join other communities of the men living along the Celduin river...in The Hobbit we have said straight there were men down south along the river! Bard rebuilding Dale meant that a lot of these people became his subjects, many came to him from the south and west, so also probably parts of the Woodmen (who also formed the Beornings etc.) and nearly 80 years till the War of the Ring or peace and prosperity meant probably explosive ppoulation boom :); the Northmen tribes of the lands between Celduin and Carnen rivers are mentioned also in appendices...as those who became strong thanks to the dwarven weapons and driving away the enemies from the east, in the time of Thrór rule under the Mountain! Even long centuries before that there were folk of Dale...even befor the CITY of Dale was founded heheh. The Dale-men were also given influx of the Vidugavia's kingdom who fled from Wainriders!

[@zimriel]

@@alanpennie everyone agrees that dwarves are bros

[@rosscowlard9476]

I cant recall the source, but I believe Tolkien mentioned that Eriadors climate changed after the fall of Numenor. In effect, the fall of Numenor caused a change in some form of gulf stream meaning Eriador slowly become colder and wetter. So Eriador slowly lost the ability to provide sufficient agriculture for major population centres. Lots of small villages but nothing resembling a nation state.

[@fantasywind3923]

I mean the climate change is also one of the factors in hobbit migration pattern: "...of the wars, and the dread of Angmar, and because the land and clime of Eriador, especially in the east, worsened and became unfriendly." Those factors caused the hobbits of the Angle to leave further west. The lands of the eastern parts of Eriador was rougher anyway, the closer to Misty Mountains were the harsh highlands and moors etc. forested hills it was more rocky and less fertile, and a bit of plains in between Weather Hills and Mountains, the lands further west in the great valleys of the major rivers were otherwise.

[@v1e1r1g1e1]

Mushrooms. They ate f*ckin' mushrooms.

[@elagabalusrex390]

Probably the biggest gripe I have about Tolkien's worldbuilding is simply that there are huge swaths of time in his chronology the events of which we know almost nothing about. For example, in the south we're told that Isildur turned over the administration of Gondor to his nephew Meneldil, then went and got killed at the Gladden Fields almost immediately afterward. And then that is literally the last occurrence we know about for certain concerning Gondor until the invasion of the Easterlings nearly five hundred years later (with a few tiny exceptions, such as the death years of the various kings). No personal details about Meneldil or his successors, no insight about their reigns, no minutia, nothing. They just ruled in peace, and that's it. Real life, real history aren't like that - things happen constantly, even in militarily tranquil times. History may slow down its pace from time to time, but it doesn't stand still or go backwards. Surely there were social developments, artistic movements, economic phenomena, great adventures/love stories? It sounds like a petty thing to bring up, and I guess it is, especially since Tolkien did build an immense universe to set his stories in, and didn't have limitless time on his hands to flesh out each and every nook and cranny of Middle-Earth's history. I just wish he had had endless time, because I would have loved to have read about a lot of these places and people in more detail.

[@p.st.6272]

The Lord of the Rings is metafiction. Tolkien presented himself as a translator of a red book he found. This, in turn, was written from the perspective of hobbits, who had limited knowledge of many events. Or contained embellished tales of the elves. This is an aspect that many critics do not see.

[@bb1111116]

Agreed. There are other transmission tales written by Tolkien in his very large 12 volume History of Middle-earth series. It’s a mythology and not a science text book. But even with that, the world building by Tolkien was outstanding on every level.

[@bb1111116]

PS. Some more about your mention of the Hobbits as the source material for the entire Tolkien mythology. Tolkien settled on this Hobbit source with the publication of The Lord of the Rings. - Below is more discussion of that with my basic point being that the Tolkien mythology in; The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and the Silmarillion histories; is grounded on a mythology (God, gods/angels, myths) which are intertwined with real world logic (languages, geography, weather) which are blended together. - Tolkien’s myth is not science fiction. The Hobbit writers were not scientists. They were story tellers of ancient tales. * My long answer; In Fellowship of the Ring; Prologue/Note On The Shire Records; not only did the Shire Hobbits write down their own traditions, many of the Hobbits had studied its “ancient histories and legends”. By the Fourth Age the Shire had several libraries “that contained many historical books and records”. * The origin of much of this was the Red Book of Westmarch written by Bilbo. Many copies of the Red Book were made including one in Gondor. The copy in Gondor was edited by those in the Minas Tirith which added sections such as The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen (part of the Lord of the Rings Appendix). * Bilbo’s Red Book had “translations from the Elvish” from “the sources available to him in Rivendell” which were “almost entirely concerned with the Elder Days”. That would be the First and Second Age Silmarillion materials. * The Tale of Years was probably put together at Great Smials. * The Appendix A of Lord of the Rings states that Bilbo’s chief interest was in the ancient legends of the First Age. - The Appendix section about Durin’s Folk came from Gimli who remained friends with Merry and Pippin meeting with them in Rohan and Gondor.

[@intergalactic92]

And thus we have the unreliable narrator excuse for anything that doesn’t make sense….. fortunately there isn’t much of that

[@bb1111116]

​@@intergalactic92 ; a mythology makes sense based on it founding principals. The first chapters of The Silmarillion establish that. It is up to the reader to accept Tolkien’s word that he was writing a mythology as he stated in the Preface of the Silmarillion (in his letter to Milton Waldman). A lot of confusion could be avoided if the reader recognizes this.

[@Freedmoon44]

​@@intergalactic92we are talking about a legit fictionnal universe with so much damn lore we are still debating to this day about it, i dont expect anyone remotely human to be able to make an entire universe of tens of thousands of years of History since the creation of the litteral world to not have stuff that doesnt make sense, its an excuse but given that litteraly NO other fiction got as far as Tolkien did on the buildup of Lore. Thus that criticism falls into the category of "complaining because its not perfect" even though it quite litteraly cant be perfect because dude spent most of his life fleshing out a fictionnal world with thousands of years of history and countless cultures and people

[@brucealanwilson4121]

There were other population centers in Eriador besides the Shire and Bree. The trolls in HOBBIT talked about "eating a village and half", which implies that there were scattered settlements. And in HOME Gandalf talked about there being fishing villages along the coasts. JRRT never talked about them in detail because they were not important to the story.

[@zachwalker9420]

This is the stuff I find most frustrating in his world building. The map often looks and feels empty because we don't actually go to most of it. But from very obscure references we know that most or all of it is populated.

[@MrChickennugget360]

@@zachwalker9420 its possible the map is flawed as it was drawn by Bilbo in Rivendell. Elves may have helped him draw up the geology, but he only drew western settlements since thats all he personally knew about. Thats why we know more about Bree and the Shire but not much about elsewhere. Likewise Gondor and Rohan are well understood as Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippen spent time there and had access to records in Minas Tirith. Basically, the regions that are understood are the Shire, Rohan, and Gondor, and Certain Elvan Lands that are encountered.

[@DarthGandalfYT]

I'm conflicted about the "village and a half" statement. The troll does imply that there are people around, but 70 years later, Aragorn says that Men haven't lived in the Trollshaws for a long time. But there are plenty of obscure references that suggest that southern Eriador (Enedwaith and Minhiriath) aren't as empty as they seem.

[@АнтонОрлов-я1ъ]

@@DarthGandalfYT As I commented under one of your previous video, Aragorn probably didn't want to tell (wounded) Frodo "Yeah, a bunch of villages were there about 70 years ago, but they all were eaten by trolls or enslaved by goblins, which also killed my father and my grandfather", so he changed topic and started talking about ancient history.

[@ajsimo2677]

@@MrChickennugget360 Yes, that would make a lot of sense. Just as the ancient Greeks, Romans & other civilisations of antiquity had vague knowledge of what lay beyond their borders.

[@baconsinatra8837]

Gondors military decline could also be due to powerful land owners buying up the smaller plots that supported the gondorian soldier class, similar to the late roman republic. The population is the same after 300 years... but the number of men who can afford arms and armor is much smaller.

[@eng20h]

"'Strider' I am to one fat man who lives within a day's march of foes that would freeze his heart, or lay his little town in ruin, if he were not guarded ceaselessly. Yet we would not have it otherwise. If simple folk are free from care and fear, simple they will be, and we must be secret to keep them so." I think you are underestimating the dangers present in Eriador after the fall of Angmar, the Shire AND Bree were peaceful because of the vigilante of the Rangers who being few in number wouldnt be able to protect much More.

[@gabrielmiller4176]

19 silver pennies was a dear blow to mr, butterbur and he was accounted well off in BREE

[@ByrdWhiteMovie]

"Hey, so far I'm loving our idea to homestead in the North Downs away from noisy city life! Perhaps our children will flourish and expand the population outside of Bree." KNOCK KNOCK "Who's there?" "TROLLS."

[@alphax4785]

TBF, Tolkien lived in the pre decimal, pre massive inflation UK where a 'silver penny' was probably like a $20/50/100 bill.

[@frankvandorp9732]

The problem with this argument is that Butterbur clearly does not even know of the existence of these enemies. If these enemies are the reason why the Breelanders couldn't expand, they would have been a widely known threat to all the people living there. Either everyone would have family members who tried to settle new lands and got slaughtered by them, or they would be living in so much fear they wouldn't try to expand in the first place. But instead, no one even knows of these threats. Meaning they can't be the reason they didn't expand.

[@derfret1365]

also, over the course of centuries, surely they'd learn to deal with those threats at some point. if not, ask the dwarves how to swing an axe. Even the hobbits were able to fightback against the orcs when their valor was needed

[@Raycheetah]

Some of this could, at least in part, be explained by metaphysical influences. Tolkien wrote often about lingering curses and other bad magic (such as the corpse candles in the Dead Marshes). It might be possible that, in spite of a period of time relatively free from negative pressures, a population might not spring back as expected, simply because of a spiritual blight left over from prior disaster. It might not be explicitly noted, but enough "bad juju" could persist after some terrible war or plague that human and also agricultural fertility might lag for generations or even centuries. ='[.]'=

[@alanpennie]

Eriador does look like a cursed land, except for The Shire which was one of the nicest places in all of ME.

[@Raycheetah]

@@alanpennie I wonder if that quietly speaks to the nature of the Hobbits, themselves? =^[.]^=

[@alanpennie]

@@Raycheetah The power of wholesomeness.

[@DarthGandalfYT]

This is a possibility given how big a role spirituality does play in Tolkien's world. And we know lands (like the Brown Lands) remained desolate far longer than they should've, possibly due to magic.

[@marieroberts5664]

​@@DarthGandalfYT or residual poisons...the slag mounds before the Black Gates would take a millennium or more to become fertile or at least less toxic, same as Minas Morgul. Toxic debris, even a type of radiation (there is naturally occurring radiation) as well as mercury and other poisonous byproducts of mass mining and weapons production, will take centuries to clear under normal circumstances and enough of that stuff and the land is ruined until the Valar return.

[@anti-liberalismo]

The thing about the watchful peace is that Gondor might have recovered their economy and army, but their population would still have declined, just like it happened with the Roman Empire to lose people but recover the economy and military

[@serillen1904]

Could be that, but even if their population had recovered 400 years of peace would of made their armies lose any real knowledge of how to actually fight a battle. On top of that they probably wouldn't of been wasting money on a large standing army so the surprise attack would of wiped out a good chunk of their forces and left them scrambling to recruit and train new troops. Going by your roman example fresh legions were generally seen as ineffective until they had earned some experience and so they were usually given the easier jobs during their first campaign.

[@fantasywind3923]

The 400 years is too short for proper recovery, even though the Gondor's demographics ultimately meant not a lot of pure blood Numenoreans survived into the late Third Age, though there were plenty still of numenorean ethnicity during War of the Ring, yet they still would remain the longer lived people meaning gondorian folk lived longer than normal men...and so had the problem of slower birth rate and population growth...Numenoreans being longlived just breed slower than normal populations :). It takes a while for them to get going and truly increase their population size, they marry off late and have few children the exchange rate would be barely keeping up ;). And please 400 years of Watchful Peace....it doesn't mean that there was totally nothing at all happening: But during the Watchful Peace the forts along the Anduin, especially on the west shore of the Undeeps, had been unmanned and neglected. After that time Gondor was assailed both by orcs out of Mordor (which had long been unguarded) and by the Corsairs of Umbar, and had neither men nor opportunity for manning the line of Anduin north of the Emyn Muil. Unfinished Tales, Part 3, Ch 2, Cirion and Eorl and the Friendship of Gondor and Rohan: The Ride of Eorl But during the Watchful Peace (from 2063 to 2460) the people of Calenardhon dwindled: the more vigorous, year by year, went eastward to hold the line of the Anduin; those that remained became rustic and far removed from the concerns of Minas Tirith. The garrisons of the forts were not renewed, and were left to the care of local hereditary chieftains whose subjects were of more and more mixed blood. For the Dunlendings drifted steadily and unchecked over the Isen. Thus it was, when the attacks on Gondor from the East were renewed, and Orcs and Easterlings overran Calenardhon and besieged the forts, which would not have long held out. Unfinished Tales, Part 3, Ch 5, The Battles of the Fords of Isen: Appendix

[@SniartekilI]

@@serillen1904 Please note that it's not "would of" or "should of", but "would have" and "should have"

[@blitcut9712]

@@fantasywind3923 Not really. It took Europe around 200 years to recover from the Black Death and that was with war and temperature drops following the end of the medieval warm period. And yes, the Dúnedain did live longer, but by the time of the watchful peace their lifespans had decreased severely with even noble houses like the House of the Stewards struggling to reach 150. Regular Gondorians likely in turn had barely higher lifespans than your average human.

[@fantasywind3923]

@@blitcut9712 at the end of the Third Age sure...as we're told specifically in the book: “The leechcraft of Gondor was still wise, and skilled in the healing of wound and hurt, and all such sickness as east of the Sea mortal men were subject to. Save old age only. For that they had found no cure; and indeed the span of their lives had now waned to little more than that of other men, and those among them who passed the tale of five score years with vigour were grown few, save in some houses of purer blood.” This is specifically times of the War of the Ring...this process though took many, many centuries...Great Plague happened some time after the great civil war in Gondor which heavily drained the 'pure bloods' but not yet to such a level and the process of the Waning of the Dunedain was progressing 'little by little' across the entire timeline. The numenoreans longer life also is often correlated with the slow birth rate as the numenorean folk married late, had little kids and so on.

[@Antipius]

I like fanfiction that fills Eriador with small fiefdoms and settlements, which still makes it an impoverished waste, but one with life and intrigue! DaC is pretty good at that, I find

[@jamaigar]

What is dac? I'd live to read some good Tolkien fan fiction

[@Tom-dm5od]

That a mod for a old total war game ​@@jamaigar

[@jorikrouwenhorst7220]

@@jamaigar Divide and Conquer. a mod for medieval 2 total war.

[@MrChickennugget360]

its not impossible that there are more people living in Eriador than we realize- There are some references to settlements in Eriador in LotR like "the forsaken inn" Its possible that both Breelanders and Dunlendings were trying to colonize the wastes of Eriador but orcs and Trolls were attacking settlements that got anywhere near the Misty Mountains.

[@DarthGandalfYT]

I do love some Divide and Conquer.

[@Byenie0912]

It's confusing that from the First Age, Men have shown to be able to drastically populate uninhabited forests, plains, desserts, and islands in just a span of a few years with a group of people, and without much aid. This was shown by the Edain's Beor, Haladin, and Hador. They entered Beleriand and easily thrived there for 500 years before Morgoth massacred most of them. Even the Easterlings managed to create a long lasting empire despite having their homeland turn from a vast fresh water lake into a dessert. And yet, these same Edains managed to cross the sea, enter an island and flourish again as the Numenorians after a few hundred years. Again, these Numenorians were cast away from their island, landed on Eriador and Gondor, and managed to build grand cities and realms in just a few hundred years before fighting the full might of Mordor but somehow, after a few decades of invasion, these same people can't repopulate and rebuilt Arnor... while Gondor, after thousands of years of uninterrupted rule, hasn't developed the rest of their realm into powerhouses. By the time of the Lord of the Rings, Mordor shouldn't even be a threat. Rhun and Harad should have been the main force.

[@nehukybis]

If anything, this analysis understates the problem. War affects population density, but not in the way Tolkien uses it. Long conflicts create buffer zones where no useful agriculture happens. That will reduce the population density in proportion to the amount of territory that's left fallow. But human populations recover from wars ridiculously quickly, in the absence of modern birth control. Same with diseases. Your population density is going to depend on how good your farmland is, what crops you have, and what technologies you have. Full stop. There's a strangely specific detail that breaks the worldbuilding here. And it's potatoes, of all things. In reality, Europe didn't have potatoes until they were introduced from the Americas. When they were, they caused a population explosion. Potatoes turn otherwise marginal land into calorie factories. Even without potatoes, the human population density should be orders of magnitude higher than it is. But Tolkien wants stone age population densities with 18th century crops and technologies, and no amount of war or disease can make that work. Weirdly, Hobbits appear to have a more realistic population density, but no interest in expansion. The couple of times we saw them fight pitched battles as a community, they proved that they were capable fighters. So, the real question is why they haven't conquered middle earth with their 100 to 1 advantage in population per acre.

[@ingold1470]

Lack of ambition (a defining cultural trait), and possibly Tolkien not realizing how technologically advanced even non-industrial English agriculture was by the 19th century. Every other race is vaguely in the Viking age technologically speaking.

[@АнтонОрлов-я1ъ]

Did Gondorians and Rohirrim grow potatoes? I don't think so. Only the Hobbits of the Shire knew about that plant, if I am not mistaken (even Smeagol didn't know what "taters" are. And Hobbits (presumably) start with pretty low population and suffere from several disasteds during their history - and they were expanding, they settled all the Shire till they reach agriculturally unusable lands to the north and to the south, they colonized Buckland, they hd enough population to settle Westmarch and so on.

[@nehukybis]

@@АнтонОрлов-я1ъ That's a good point about the potatoes, except the timeline and the implied history argue against it. Hobbits presumably got potatoes through the same "Columbian exchange" analogue that brought pipeweed to Middle Earth. Which means the Numenoreans had potatoes, and by the time of LOTR, they had been in Middle Earth for at least 3500 years. In our world, there was some cultural resistance to potato cultivation in Europe because it's hard to change people's staple diet. But that only lasted a generation or two because potatoes can mean the difference between prosperity and starvation. On the other hand, if you assume potatoes weren't brought over by the Numenoreans, but were domesticated locally from a native plant, that just makes it all the more inexplicable that the technology never diffused in the thousands of years domestication would have taken. In any case, it's not just potatoes. Potatoes are just a symptom of the broader issue. Tolkien lovingly developed the linguistics and geography of Middle Earth to a degree unrivaled in any other "subcreation" before or since, but the economy and demography were thrown in ad hoc to match whatever mood he wanted to create in the moment. How communities get their food is at the core of everything else they do, and to treat that as an afterthought is not the best way to go about worldbuilding.

[@АнтонОрлов-я1ъ]

@@nehukybis I won't say that I know for sure how potatoes appear in the Middle-Earth. There are some mentions of edible roots (earth bread) that dwarf Mim gathered in Beleriand (and Elves didn't know about it). Those may be proto-potatoes and Hobbits might learn about them from Dwarves or discover them themselves. Otherwize, if we assume that Numenoreans brought potatoes from the west, they might consider them flowers and not edible plants (as they considered pipeweed flowers but didn't use it for smoking). I don't think that economy and demography were thrown ad-hoc. Tolkien had a very good understanding of medieval economy and demography (compared to most regular people, at least), and so was able to create pretty realistic setting without thinking a lot about it. Of course, it is not ideal, but it is still better than most, if not all, other fantasy worlds.

[@concept5631]

Likely because they have no incentive to expand or go out and pick fights. Aragorn gave them a lot of land to the west after he became High King which the Hobbits will no doubt be busy expanding into for centuries.

[@allenmarston1015]

Great video. I discovered the size of this challenge when I created a big multi-player boardgame of the entire Third Age. In 200 year turns. It's quite amazing. There were towns and cities, migrations, and yes, simple population. Each player was one of the major Free Peoples -- who were ultimately all fighting against the rise of Sauron and positioning themselves for the final showdown -- the War of the Ring. There was a lot of playtesting. Trying to keep the human Free People population under control was tricky. In the end I had a 300 card set of events full of "historical" and "historically inspired" catastrophes and invasions (with a lot of special stuff skewed against the realm of Arnor). In one of the first playtests, the Men of the North turned into a real population and economic powerhouse. So, a lot of work was done to "keep them down"... like really reducing the productivity of their lands. Getting the rough Tolkien story to happen by using a set of consistent rules was tough. Sometimes successful. I will never forget the other players clapping when the (non-player) Hobbits migrated across the Misty Mountains and put down roots in the Shire (there was no pre-defined "track"). There was great interest from a publisher... but the Tolkien boardgame license holder ultimately said no as he seemed to me to want more shallow, fast playing games (a whole game of Third Age with all three milennia scenarios added together could take a whole weekend). It was (is) a great game that still needs some work to polish. I am porting it to Table Top Simulator for perhaps a resubmission one day. If anyone is interested in discussing or perhaps helping with further development, drop a comment.

[@tevildo7718]

I and my friends would love to play that game on Tabletop sim.

[@generalgrievous2202]

This sounds awesome, I really hope you put it on tabletop sim

[@vinvic1578]

This sounds absolutely fantastic

[@allenmarston1015]

@@vinvic1578 Hi. I have to say, when we started on a Friday evening and finished on Sunday evening after a whole weekend of play, it felt like you had lived the Third Age. I thought the end "mini-game" that was the "War of the Ring" with an interesting special card deck to resolve it, was quite cool. It's been about 12 years since then. But as I said I am considering dusting it off and have started to move it into Table Top Simulator. But the game still needs work. Perhaps a whole new turn structure.

[@allenmarston1015]

@@tevildo7718 Hi. I have to say, when we started on a Friday evening and finished on Sunday evening after a whole weekend of play, it felt like you had lived the Third Age. I thought the end "mini-game" that was the "War of the Ring" with an interesting special card deck to resolve it, was quite cool. It's been about 12 years since then. But as I said I am considering dusting it off and have started to move it into Table Top Simulator. But the game still needs work. Perhaps a whole new turn structure.

[@radekhomola7658]

Great video and very good points, I have to agree, but I just want to point out a possible explanation for sudden population growth or decline. This being "magic". From LOTR we know, that even small amount of dust from Galadriel had very large impact on the birthrate and number of crops/food in the Shire. "The children, and there wer many of them, could bathe in strawberries" or something like that. With this in mind, maybe the Valar and Saruon were much more active than we think. If small box of dust from Galadriel, very powerful elf no doubt, could do all that it did, why couldnt Ulmo bless the water or Sauron poison the crops... Maybe the Witch king influenced Arnor from the very end of the War of the Last Alliance. But this is pure speculation.

[@dllps]

Element Morgoth, basically the power of Melkor within Arda, which Sauron began to use after creating the One. The degradation of the Shire was done in mundane ways. It is always emphasized how weak Saruman was, he only had the power of his voice and even that was weakened. The degradation of Sauron and Morgoth was metaphysical. Furthermore, Galadriel is THE gardener among the elves, as Fëanor was THE artificer. She was probably the only one capable of reversing the Morgoth Element in the Lórien area, but she needed Nenya to do so in such an area and potency. That's why Lórien was so different from the rest. Galadriel managed to expel the Element Morgoth itself from that region, but this only lasted a little over a millennium.

[@fairytalejediftj7041]

The biggest problem with Tolkien's world-building is my favorite part: the elven languages. Languages evolve generationally, and Arwen is only six generations removed from Finwë. The language that Arwen speaks should still be almost identical to the language that the first elves spoke at Cuiviénen. It should be like the difference between my English and George Washington's English - some slight differences, but definitely mutually intelligible. But Tolkien just enjoyed experimenting with his languages, so he squeezed in an impossible amount of evolution and divergence into only a handful of generations.

[@dlxmarks]

That issue is magnified by there being some elves of those previous generations still around so that's not only divergence between generations but within generations as well.

[@fairytalejediftj7041]

@@dlxmarks Yeah. With the Noldor and Sindar it's like if you and your friend grew up speaking Latin. He moves away, then some years later you bump into his teenage kids who are speaking Latin, but your own language has evolved into medieval Norman French during that time. It would make more sense if Sindarin was the language of Cuiviénen. The Noldor go off to Aman and invent Quenya just because they love inventing things. The Vanyar meanwhile are still speaking Sindarin and writing poetry about how cool the Valar are, because they're huge Valar stans. 😊

[@kacpi1600]

The elves lived for thousands of years at a time, with an infinite lifespan. Language naturally evolves even in our lifetimes, just how accents develop when you move country. It makes complete sense for the language to evolve like that with new terms being constantly introduced for new concepts the elves discover and create, and they too have their own ‘slang’ which over time would evolve the language. We sometimes forget how long the elves actually exist for in the world.

[@sanctionh2993]

"Languages evolve generationally" among humans with our lifespan, in our world. Even leaving different worlds aside, what body of knowledge allows you to apply it to Elves as well?

[@fairytalejediftj7041]

@@sanctionh2993 The way the brain works. Tolkien said elves and humans are basically the same species (hence they can interbreed) even though their metaphysical destinies are different. So the linguistic patterns imprinted early in life will carry on throughout life, especially with so few other languages to interact with. With the exception of a few borrowed words from dwarvish which the Sindar had before the Noldor, their languages would've still been identical when the Noldor came into exile with only two new generations having come along since they parted ways.

[@federicaesu8580]

Tolkien was a philologist and a scholar who had a deep knowledge of ancient and medieval sources , particularly historical ones. Medieval historians were very inaccurate when numbers and quantities were taken into account. Often they used ten or twenty thousand just to mean a great quantity. My idea is that Tolkien followed the example of ancient sources when he mentioned demographics

[@Paul77374]

For me, one thing that keeps the magic and wonder alive as I read and reread Tolkien is the fact that Tolkien as the writer describes himself as a compiler and editor of ancient histories of middle earth. So, when contradictory data is brought up, a reader can adopt a hermeneutical lens to analyze why this might be the case if these were actual historical accounts that were written about. For example, in talking about the small/persecuted numbers of humans in Beleriand who would become the massive population of Numenorians, a reader can question where Tolkien got this seemingly contradictory demographic data from. Did the Numenorians write about their own histories? Did they see themselves as an underdog and perhaps that’s why Tolkien’s account of them pre-Numenor paints them as few…but then after the defeat of Morgoth, there are suddenly so many of them? Were these population numbers themselves exaggerated by Numenorian historians to bolster the ego of their own people and make them think of themselves as an originally small but chosen civiliation of people who were ever growing and unstoppable as they began their manifest-destiny conquest of middle earth? Similarly, I think that lack of data can also be attributed to (a lack of) historical accounts, such as the case of Arnor’s long and seemingly unexplained decline. Could there have been famines and plagues? Could the historical documents been lost or intentionally destroyed, such as during the tumultuous times of the civil wars? What were the motives of such people who may have intentionally destroyed their own history? I think all such possibilities are fun to consider and, for me, make the contradictions/errors/missing pieces of Tolkien’s (fictive) world add to the magic and mystery-which makes middle earth, for me, feel more real

[@ShawnHCorey]

The expansion of Dale could be partly explain with some of the Dalemen fleeing Smaug would find Laketown too uncomfortably close and would move farther away. But once Smaug was dead, their descendants would be favourably incline to accept the king of Dale as their overlord, mainly because of the trade possibilities. PS: IMO the biggest problem with Tolkien's works is that it reads like an English professor wrote it. :)

[@zachwalker9420]

That last part is hilarious. I'd expand on your point further though. The men of lake town were prolific traders in The Hobbit so they'd have social and commercial connections at least as far as Dowrinion, which we generally believe to be by the sea of Rhun. Assuming that vaguely North man related peoples live in the general areas between Esgaroth and Rhun there are plenty of people either willing to follow a literal Dragon slayer (and slayer of the most fearsome dragon in quite some time if gandalf is to be believed) or who would love his protection and quite likely his money (Bard was exceptionally wealthy at the end of The Hobbit). He'd be able to buy mercenaries too, if he really needed to conquer another small neighbor. Not to mention his connection to the dwarves and probably a near monopoly on long beard made goods.

[@fantasywind3923]

I don't get that particular problem. I mean it is clearly said there were many other peoples out there, and obviously there would be many more descendants of the original inhabitants of Dale when they fled! Smaug have not destroyed them all, we know that some people survived escaping, some fled to Esgaroth (like Girion's wife and child) others could have spread across the region, and join other communities of the men living along the Celduin river...in The Hobbit we have said straight there were men down south along the river! Bard rebuilding Dale meant that a lot of these people became his subjects, many came to him from the south and west, so also probably parts of the Woodmen (who also formed the Beornings etc.) and nearly 80 years till the War of the Ring or peace and prosperity meant probably explosive ppoulation boom :); the Northmen tribes of the lands between Celduin and Carnen rivers are mentioned also in appendices...as those who became strong thanks to the dwarven weapons and driving away the enemies from the east, in the time of Thrór rule under the Mountain! Even long centuries before that there were folk of Dale...even befor the CITY of Dale was founded heheh. The Dale-men were also given influx of the Vidugavia's kingdom who fled from Wainriders!

[@Sionnach1601]

One population explosion which always baffled me was that of the orcs. All of the possible answers as to WHY and HOW they reproduced so quickly, just never stood up to scrutiny in my humble opinion.

[@TyrionLannister83]

There was very little population growth in pre-industrial times. 50% of babys died - in a good year. Often there were plagues, famines, climate disasters and wars. In the early mediaval period population was lower than during the height of the roman empire. In Spain and Portugal the population droped from 9 million in the year 1000 to 5 million in 1350.

[@zimriel]

It's politically impolite to mention nowadays but back then, Spain and Portugal had orcs. Unmarried young men whom the Moravids and Muwahhids brought over from Morocco, to raid and pillage Catholic settlements.

[@TheTolkienCurmudgeon]

Leave it to a Lannister to point this kind of thing out. But you're right!

[@MrRenanHappy]

What happened in those 350 years though. Were those years of peace and prosperity like in Gondor?

[@punkykenickie2408]

@@MrRenanHappy 1350 is about when the Black Death hit Spain 💀

[@punkykenickie2408]

1000 isn't early medieval though, it's bang in the middle. And 1350's an anomaly in demographic terms, because Plague.

[@simontaylor2143]

For me, the biggest issue in Tolkien's histories, which also causes some of the demographic problems you mention, is just how long everything takes. Over 1800 years pass between Sauron forging the ring and his defeat by the last alliance. I get that the lifespans of elves and Sauron himself make that feasible but you would have thought the elves would act with a little urgency. Especially compared to the events of the war of the ring which only took 1 year

[@gareth3035]

to be fair right after the forging of the ring sauron burned half of middle earth, and destroyed a major elven nation (Erigion), thus putting the elves in cleanup mode for a time. Also even after Sauron's defeat by the Numenorians at Tharbad, and the complete destruction of his forces in the west, he still had men in the east, and a constant supply of orcs. I assume this helped hinder their advancement on Barad-Dur

[@thomasquayle2517]

I agree that the timelines could flow better. I realise that’s not how history works and Tolkien wanted to build in cultural development and historical context but there are centuries when nothing of note happens (2600’s) then compare that with 3018-19. Or the First Age of the Sun when everything happens over 600’ish years but second and third age drag for over 3000 years. Possibly controversial opinion but in my mind the War of the Ring would make more sense happening after the Watchful Peace. 500 years of no King in Gondor or Arnor and enough time for people to get complacent then bam, Saurons back, no longer content to lie in the shadows. This would obviously need events of the Hobbit being brought forward as well. Seems a bit weird that he leaves Dol Guldur only to return there for a few centuries, especially since the wise suspected it was him already.

[@romaliop]

Demographics is extremely tricky when we don't have nearly enough context for almost anything. Historically human population sizes have been linked to available resources and could rise and fall very rapidly to get back to sustenance levels. This pattern was only broken a few hundred years ago by the industrial revolution in our world and that more or less never happened in Middle Earth. I think the best explanation for the issues with Tolkien's demographics would be to just take the numbers as some sort of guesstimates made by the people (elves?) who wrote and compiled the historical accounts. The overarching decline in Middle Earth throughout the ages is not really explicable without magical factors so there isn't much point trying to figure out the missing context from a real world perspective. Maybe an acre of farmland sustained 10 people in the second age and 8 people in the third age or whatever. There's nothing fundamentally wrong or right about any of the numbers when we don't know half the fundaments.

[@skatemetrix]

Here's a major plot hole: Angband, the great underground fortress of Morgoth, is a great rocky mass yet it must have contained hundreds of thousands of orcs and other creatures. So there is no farmland nor any pasture lands. So how did Morgoth feed them all if they were besieged on most sides and facing a vast mountainous icy waste in the north? How did Morgoth import food to Angband and, if so, how did he manage to keep his supply lines of food hidden from the Elves and from the watchful presence of the siege?

[@poTato_777]

That's utumno, angband was a name for melkors kingdom

[@KING-ly9ed]

A pretty decent explanation I can give. is that Morgoth, used his own power to sustain his armies. Just as he used it to “create” them, pretty much removing the need for food or water by giving them his own energy. Which could be another reason how Morgoth went from a being on par with all the other Valar combined to being weaker then Sauron

[@oudviola]

@@poTato_777 Actually, Utumno and Angband are two separate fortresses, both in the north. Presumably Utumno was much further east, and was destroyed in the wars following the destruction of the Lamps. But either way, the issue of how the orcs bred so quickly and how they were fed is indeed unexplained. Also how they avoided severe vitamin D deficiency and weak bones. Although since the Eldar awoke under the stars, and there was no sunlight for a long time, they and the Orcs must have had some other source for vitamin D. How the earliest Men got their vitamin D is a problem.

[@AdDewaard-hu3xk]

Overanalysis.

[@MrChickennugget360]

@@oudviola considering that orcs hate the sunlight and avoid it, they probably don't have the same Vitamin D requirement as men do.

[@lexington476]

This is what I love about Tolkien, the man wrote so much stuff that people can go into this absolute nerd level of detail and do videos like this 🙂.

[@mimovres9300]

400 hundred years of peace is beyond enough. Just for context, the longest peaceful periods in our history were under 300 years (Edo period, Pax romana)

[@brianj.841]

"The Black Death was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Europe from 1346 to 1353. It was one of the most fatal pandemics in human history..." Add 400 years is 1746 to 1753. Just think of all the European wars, etc that happened in those 400 years and immediately after-wards.

[@mimovres9300]

@@brianj.841 okay, but what are you trying to say by that?

[@brianj.841]

@@mimovres9300 That given enough time and resources (food, females, etc) a human population will recover. Gondor should have recovered from the Kin-strife, to name one example.

[@hazzmati]

England had a population of roughly 4.5 million before the advent of the famines and plague in the 14th century. After that the population plummeted and it would take them close to 3 centuries to recover to the previous high point. Same counts for France.

[@mimovres9300]

@@brianj.841 i see, thanks

[@J_n..]

The worldbuilding was done for a single ( or two ) story, even that from a Storyteller point like the old norse sagas or the Edda. I've never heard people complain that the Vinlandsaga wasn't precise navigation data

[@oudviola]

Thanks, this was a very enjoyable and thought-provoking discussion. You didn't mention it specifically, but in The Nature of Middle Earth there are several chapters describing very extensive calculations Tolkien made on the increase in numbers of the Eldar between the Awakening and the beginning of the great march west to Valinor. He tried hard to come up with a reasonable scheme to have enough but not too many Elves, given their long lifespans and fairly low mortality rates (even with losses due to accidents or Morgoth kidnapping them). Presumably he might have gotten to do similar calculations for Men and Dwarves, given more time. Or perhaps he just was more interested in the Elves!

[@iceomistar4302]

Can I just say, as a friend of Chance Thomas and a LOTRO player I appreciate you using his music in the background.

[@cathaldunne1124]

I think an explanation of the lack of people in Eriador could be explained in a similar way to Irelands demographics. Ireland has not recovered its population to what it was over 200 years ago. A big problem for it is that the people that are most ambitious and educated leave the country to England and the US. I think that the ambitious men in Bree, like in Ireland, would have moved away to better opportunities like Gondor. People have been migrating for as long as we have been around. An explanation for the difference in time of 200 to over 1000 years is the fact that Ireland hasn’t recovered its population in an industrial age whereas middle earth is in a more medieval age. Idk tho it’s just fun to think bout these things.

[@fantasywind3923]

Eriador state is pretty simple.....Eriador is post apocalyptic wasteland! :) There were only brief overal periods of peace there and with the total collapse of civilization the people turned into simpler more rural and scattered communities. There many dark creatures that also aided in depopulation, countless invasions of Orcs! Invasions of Orcs into Eriador are noted as significant event in the timeline: “c. 2480 Orcs begin to make secret strongholds in the Misty Mountains so as to bar all the passes into Eriador. Sauron begins to people Moria with his creatures.” … 2740 Orcs renew their invasions of Eriador. 2747 Bandobras Took defeats an Orc-band in the Northfarthing. 2758 Rohan attacked from west and east and overrun. Gondor attacked by fleets of the Corsairs. Helm of Rohan takes refuge in Helm’s Deep. Wulf seizes Edoras. 2758-9: The Long Winter follows. Great suffering and loss of life in Eriador and Rohan. Gandalf comes to the aid of the Shire-folk. … 2911 The Fell Winter. The Baranduin and other rivers are frozen. White Wolves invade Eriador from the North. 2912 Great floods devastate Enedwaith and Minhiriath. Tharbad is ruined and deserted.” So…we have a lot of events across different periods, Rangers and their Chieftains also almost regularly died to fight dark creatures, Arador was slain by Trolls, so their raiding is not so rare, and we know that Trolls can roam fairly wide. These lands have been raiding grounds for countless centuries it;s a miracle that people survive there at all :). If not for the Rangers there would be even worse situation probably hehe.

[@DoakFelix-qr8uw]

To begin let me thank you for your video. I appreciate your research and your thoughts and the time and effort it took to make the video. I appreciate you going into these topics and sharing them. While some find the topic engaging, I really don’t. Certain areas of middle earth are populous at times and depopulated at others. Some places remain bereft of population. For me that’s just so Tolkien can tell a story. It doesn’t have to make sense, it has to serve his narrative goal. And I’m OK with that. On a side note, a major turn in fantasy has been the development of the systematizing of magic. Using a system means an explanation… Explicable action means science… therefore most current fantasy is actually science fiction. If I pick up a fantasy novel, I have already suspended my disbelief in magic. Tolkien didn’t explain magic and I am fine with that. Also, not everything is notable nor provable. When I was in school, we didn’t study the bronze age collapse. But now it is a recognized major event in world history and yet we can’t explain it. War, famine, disease, pestilence, etc. we don’t know all the factors involved. Sometimes we just don’t know. And I have to be OK with that. More than demographics, my bigger problem with Tolkien is the lack of technological advancement in middle earth. This is the first of your videos that I’ve seen so if you have addressed this in another video, that I apologize for bringing it up here. In middle earth, it has been less than 7000 years since the rising of the sun and the moon. Yet there have been a few technological advancements in that time. In the numberless years before the rising of the sun, the Ainur and the Quendi developed language, writing, smithing, architecture, horticulture, agriculture, fishing, the loom, fashion, domestication of numerous animals, and shipbuilding. The wheel, medicine, irrigation, and all other basic facets of society. I do not remember if Feanor’sfirst arms were of iron or steel, but in the at least 7000 years since humanity has not really advanced in weaponry. I would argue that the two greatest advancements were the fire of orthanc by Sarumanand the domestication of the mumakil by the Haradrim. The greatest technological advances of the Edain were in shipbuilding, embalming, and then masonry. The advances by the Eldar were in the creation of writing only visible by moonlight, in hidden doors, and in magic rings. I think there were two advances in horticulture; the uses kingsfoil and pipe weed. And I think all of this is intentional by Tolkien. The only advancements in war were made by the enemy. Tolkien needs the world to stay static in technology. This provides him a familiar place in which to tell his stories. It allows for his heroic and romantic characters to be courageous and honorable. It is not because there is a limit on the intelligence quotient for the Quendi, the Atani, the children of Aule, the Ents, and the orcs. The peoples of middle earth are not limited in creativity. It is not because they are limited in resources and are forced to live in the Stone Age as certain peoples are in the rainforest of the Amazon or in the Andaman islands. What good are the shards of Narsil when the current technology uses drone warfare and nuclear submarines? Who needs a sapling of the white tree when we have DNA testing? Tolkien wrote to tell his views on theology, culture, morality, ecology, romance, friendship, etc. in his own personalized setting. I’m OK with that. Again, thank you for your video. Thank you for your thoughts.

[@intergalactic92]

I am firmly of the opinion that we should not shy away from being critical of even the most beloved pieces of work. This is a healthy attitude to have. I am not always fond of how Tolkien and Lord of the Rings get put on this pedestal as this perfect story that is beyond criticism, and it does sometimes drag the fandom down as a result. Too many treat it like a personal attack when you say that certain points in the story drag, or that you prefer how aspect x was handled in the films over the books. So I am pleased to see someone rightly point out a flaw. Even if it is something that I personally do not think matters.

[@gagaplex]

Did Tolkien ever talk about emigration during peace times? Like, would Bree and Gondor men leave their homes to settle in a new place like Dale? Maybe the large available plots of land of a suddenly reconstituted Dale attracted people to move there, kind of like how colonials would expand and take land for their own?

[@alanpennie]

We know of The Woodmen of Mirkwood, and it's easy to imagine a large population of humans throughout Rhovanion. Certainly we aren't told that the land is desolate and empty as we Eriador is shown to be.

[@DarthGandalfYT]

We know about Northmen migrating to Gondor, but we don't hear anything about the reverse.

[@fantasywind3923]

@@alanpennie the Woodmen were known for colonizing new areas...in The Hobbit we learn of their settlers expanding into the Vale of Anduin: "In spite of the dangers of this far land bold men had of late been making their way back into it from the South, cutting down trees, and building themselves places to live in among the more pleasant woods in the valleys and along the river-shores. There were many of them, and they were brave and well-armed, and even the Wargs dared not attack them if there were many together, or in the bright day. But now they had planned with the goblins’ help to come by night upon some of the villages nearest the mountains. If their plan had been carried out, there would have been none left there next day; all would have been killed except the few the goblins kept from the wolves and carried back as prisoners to their caves." The northern area of Rhovanion as once abandoned due to the fear of dragons: "...and he [Gandalf] knew how evil and danger had grown and thriven in the Wild, since the dragons had driven men from the lands, and the goblins had spread ..." The Eotheod centuries earlie were seeking for 'more room' and so drove off the remnants of Angmar folk in the upper vale of Anduin and near the sources of Anduin, then later these same Eotheod migrated south to found Rohan. The other case of migration is when the refugees of the south arrive in Bree-land, though it's hadly any normal circumstances they were fleeing the danger of war and so on. The Map of Wilderland from The Hobbit has marked some of the villages of the Woodmen in Mirkwood.

[@fantasywind3923]

Another case the migration within the realm: But during the Watchful Peace (from 2063 to 2460) the people of Calenardhon dwindled: the more vigorous, year by year, went eastward to hold the line of the Anduin; those that remained became rustic and far removed from the concerns of Minas Tirith. The garrisons of the forts were not renewed, and were left to the care of local hereditary chieftains whose subjects were of more and more mixed blood. For the Dunlendings drifted steadily and unchecked over the Isen. Thus it was, when the attacks on Gondor from the East were renewed, and Orcs and Easterlings overran Calenardhon and besieged the forts, which would not have long held out. Unfinished Tales, Part 3, Ch 5, The Battles of the Fords of Isen: Appendix

[@ajsimo2677]

@@DarthGandalfYT A band of refugees headed north to Bree in the autumn of 3018. One of them was the 'squint-eyed southerner' encountered by Frodo & Strider at the Prancing Pony. He was obviously an enemy spy, but the rest of his party seemed genuinely to be fleeing trouble in the "south". Of course, this is a small-scale example, and we don't know which land or lands it referred to, but it does show that migration of some kind also occurred from south to north (and possibly between different cultures of Men).

[@geminicricket4975]

I think the important thing to take away here is that nobody is perfect. Our Good Professor was just as human as the rest of us. What matters is that, unlike others, to find Tolkien's mistakes, you have to dig deeper under the surface. This is to his credit. Now, compare this to the likes of Star Wars where some of them are obvious on the surface or, I dunno... the Rings of Power, where those mistakes are slapping us in the face. ;)

[@Sionnach1601]

Great work in fairness. And as you say "No one should be placed on a pedestal and beyond criticism" so it's "Eh-riador", the emphasis on the first syllable, but only slightly. Cheers and you're welcome 👍😁

[@darthstigater6642]

It's the same with everything in life. Not long after I started playing music I started analyzing every song I heard and can't turn it off. Now I get kicks out of complicated music that I can't figure out while I'm listening to it heheh

[@skatemetrix]

The issue is that Tolkien created several different worlds in his Legendarium: Book of Lost Tales, 1930 Silmarillion, The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings and his post LOTR world which tried and failed to reconcile the Silmarillion world with the LOTR world.

[@jayt9608]

I believe that there are numerous reasons that Bree would have been a more isolated hamlet of negligible population. Being a rural and isolated village, it likely suffered incredibly during the harsher years, even if times were peaceful. The Hobbit recounts the year that the wolves invaded during the winter and how everyone in the Shire struggled to survive. Bree, being far more isolated could have been severely devestated. With accidents, illnesses, trolls, orcs, and other evil things creeping out from the shadows of the Misty Mountains from time to time, Bree could easily have suffered continual population collapses, much as many small communities in medieval Europe did. Worse still, Bree was the only community of size outside of the very peaceful Shire. 99% of Arnor was destroyed, which would allow for the lands between Bree, Rivendell, and the sea to be a population vacuum. I also have never had a problem with Gondor's population difficulty following 400 years of peace. The time was prosperous and easy, this leads to healthy children living into adulthood, which means families become smaller after a couple generations. The smaller families lead to slower population growth, which means that "recovered strength" does not mean that it has restored its prior condition, but only that the current condition may be maintained. The new mean is worse than the former, but is improved over the latter. Likely the border communities lost population as families either moved out of the kingdom to wilderness communities similar to the Beornings or reteated into the better defended interior of Gondor. Worse, such a peace leads to laxity and the military quality declined as veteran commanders and soldiers were replaced by inexperienced replacements. In less than 50 years, the military of Gondor would be ill-equipped for a major confrontation; after 100, a major war; and after 400, even a series of minor conflicts. Thus, after 400 years of peace, Gondor is not militarily prepared for conflict and needed the aid of the battle tested soldiers of nacent Rohan. Granting Erol the Young the land of Rohan strengthened Gondor on a military front it could no longer defend. Dale is a different case altogether. While the surrounding lands were wild, the threat of Smaug would have kept most major threats, such as most orcs, far from the area, and the Battle of Five Armies broke the strength of the Misty Mountain orcs for nearly 100 years. With roughly 58% of Laketown's population surviving thanks to Dain and Thranduil, the population would likely undergo a tremendous baby boom over the next 100 years as the territory is open to easy resettlement. This time also sees an increase in commerce between the Blue Mountains, Mirkwood, Gondor, and the Shire, which would lead men into the regions of Dale and eventually giving it a sprawling kingdom. It is likely that Sauron's final rise and fall occurred just as the lands between Gondor and the Misty Mountains were preparing for an era of rapacscious economic and commercial prosperity. A protion of this would have been abbetted by Saruman's long tenure of 260 years in Orthanc. It is just after this that Gondor returns to territorial control over lands that had been lost from before the lone of Stewards began. This would also have marked a change in the fortunes of Eriador as fall of Saruman and the Balrog would open Gap of Rohan allowing men to spill into the old territory of Arnor, which was promoted by Aragorn as High King.

[@istari0]

Bree was a significant population center on the main road leading from the Grey Havens all the across the Misty Mountains and was also guarded by the Dúnedain Rangers. While some disasters, such as the Long Winter and the Fell Winter, certainly did happen, I don't think that's enough to explain why in an extended period of relative peace the population wouldn't have grown more. Bree was pretty prosperous so I think there would have been larger families plus some level of immigration. As far as Gondor goes, I think peace and prosperity would be good for population growth, because, as you say, more children survive to adulthood, meaning they have children of their own. Children who die at a young age don't contribute to overall population growth. And I don't see why the inhabitants of border communities would move away when things are going well.

[@TheUtopianHuman]

I think the answer for most if not all questions would be that LOTR is first and foremost is an epos ("epic poetry" how they call it in english) of XX century, that concentrates itself on the story, ethics and philosophy behind it rather than an extended explanation on "basic", "down to earth" questions like "what was Aragorn's tax policy". And I should add that other fantasy settings, more modern ones have a lot more inconsistencies, plot holes than in LOTR despite it being written basically by two people (the other one would obviously be Christopher Tolkien). But great video anyway.

[@morgoth615]

One of my biggest gripes with the world-building is the sheer emptiness of the land, even when we know there were supposed to be populations. It irks me that we really only have like 3 and a half settlements named in the Kingdom of Arnor, like two or three for Rohan, and one for Lindon. Just feels like there's a lot of missing in general when you include the lack of identites for the Nazgul, lack of what happened to each Balrog, lack of anything for Rhun and Harad, and etc.

[@zafran20]

If you read the account of western travellers and monks going from Europe to the Mongol empire lands back in 1300s, you’ll realise why LOTR is built the way it is by Tolkien. The Mongol Empire was the largest to ever exist, however, it collapsed within a span of 20 years (I don’t remember the details exactly anymore). So when people travelled to Europe telling tales of the grandiosity of the mongol empire that then inspired other Europeans to go and visit for trade or whatever, they literally came across nothing.. the empire collapsed so quickly, and news took so long to reach Europe and for people to come back to those lands, that the empire had vanished and only stories were left of it. That’s how Rhun can be explained too. I think it was in the council of Elrond that Aragorn says he had travelled as far as Rhun and that it is a strange land. This makes perfect sense to me when you actually read pre modern history and rise and fall of empires.

[@marieroberts5664]

I love this very respectful look at the places that Tolkien could have worked more on...but the thing that needs to be considered Doylest or Watsonian, is time. Tolkien was a perfectionist procrastinator, and someone who kept tying up loose ends, who kept straightening out plot holes (which is why there aren't many, if any) someone who kept working on the world until his dying day. In reality, given enough time (or a canny letter writer to politely pose the question, and force the man to concentrate and find the answer - the population in the North recovered fitfully because the women were not having large families and were either dying in childbirth or were rendered infertile from the Great Plague), Tolkien would have addressed everything in greater detail, and as it is, we have the H.O.M.E. Series and the latest two books, People/Nature of M-E, because he was working out the kinks, great and small, to make the world real. They were never published in his lifetime, because he was still exploring the nooks and crannies, shaping and reshaping the Tree of Tales, and finding still more vistas and forgotten knowledge. At the end of the day, we are getting the bonus for free, when we got our monies worth with the basic package. The other guys and gals often have less of an excuse, and just throw things at us, hoping we won't question why we have six holes, seven bolts and five nuts.

[@dataexpunged2779]

World of the Lord of The Rings is super large with very cool lore behind it. But it just feels empty when you delve into it. There is too much lore and too few books taking place in that rich world. With only three novels, them being LoTR Hobbit and Childeren of Hurin. Besides these books there is not much life in the universe. Kinda feels sad. Makes me feel like reading the history of a bygone civilization.

[@EubulusKane3259]

Literally re-watched LOTR last week for the first time in a while and totally agree with you. You can really see how the consequences of Tolkien's 'population problem' translate onto the screen. For an epic story about a war for the end of the world as we know it, the stakes are undermined by how sparsely populated, small and and provincial Middle Earth can feel at times. I know there's book lore I'm not privy to (I've not read beyond the trilogy and the Tolkien Bestiary) but Gondor seems to have just two cities, Rohan's capital is a nice barn, a 'huge army' is 10,000 men (10% the size of some ancient battles), Theoden only musters about 3000 Rohirrim for Pelennor yet still routs the Orcs implying there was only about 10,000 of them as well - a force which visually dwarfs the city meaning the population of Minas Tirith can't be much more than 50,000 max which is nothing compared to some ancient/medieval cities. I mean the Helm's Deep fight is 10,00 Uruks vs 300 Rohirrim which is smaller than the capacity for League Two football stadiums. As a kid, I even remember having this weird belief that battles from history had never had more than 10,000 participants directly because of LOTR which goes to show how, despite Tolkien's limitless imagination for language, lore, history, he didn't think very big when it came to scale. It's actually probably the only thing the Hobbit films did right; they fleshed out the world more and just made Middle Earth feel a bit busier which I think was needed. In LOTR, the most thriving world seems to be the Shire and it somewhat contradicts the narrative that the Hobbits are leaving their backwater to entire the big wide world beyond. Anyway, a minor but interesting gripe

[@ryanabcdef12345]

That intro was so perfect. I was even more hooked than I already was

[@NathanS__]

Was the Edain numbers of 5000, 15000, etc population size or army sizes? Like when the romans discussed having hundreds of thousands of Germans invading Gaul, that was the men, women, children and slaves. The actual fighters were in the more manageable tens of thousands.

[@Tar-Elenion]

"The *Folk of Bëor* were the first Men to enter Beleriand...They were a small people, having no more, it is said, than *two thousand full-grown men;* and they were poor and ill-equipped... Not long after the first of the *three hosts of the Folk of Hador* came up from southward, *and two others of much the same strength followed* before the fall of the year. They were a more numerous people; *each host was as great as all the Folk of Bëor,* and they were better armed and equipped... Some years later, when the other folk were settled, *the third folk of the Atani* entered Beleriand. They *were probably more numerous than the Folk of Bëor,* but no certain count of them was ever made; for they came secretly in small parties and hid in the woods of Ossiriand...". PoMe, Dwarves and Men

[@bundayeti]

Not sure where they got these numbers for the Edain. Tolkien gateway says the folk of Hador arrived in 3 hosts each around 2000 men strong. So that's ~6000 men, considering they are the most militarised, possibly just the soldiers. 15K is possible as a whole, but where did the number come from. Weren't the folk of Beor just a tribe small enough to live in a single location, when Finrod encountered them. That should make the tribe a few hundred members, unless it was some special conclave. A tribe of several thousand on the move would consume a lot of countryside, much like how medieval armies couldn't stay in one place or else they overhunted the nearby viscinity and began starving. As for the Haladin, they barricaded themselves behind a wooden fortification, ending up on the verge of extinction when Haleth took command and the noldor drove the orcs off. The math definitely ain't mathing

[@Hlaford29]

Well, I've been thinking about it for a long time now. You are the first to actually acknowledge that Tolkien has problems )) I think he should have developed Eriador and Rhovanion much more carefully. And I think the geography of those lands is just too much for the story. "The Hobbit" could have fit into Eriador completely (with the companions travelling to Imladris and back - somewhere in the Blue Mountains, where he could have situated the Lonely Mountain). Mirkwood could have been placed in the north of Eriador, which would explain why that part wasn't populated by people. And I honestly think it was just a geographical mistake for him to create such a gap between Arnor and GOndor. One way out would have been to place a real desert in the south of Eriador, which would be too inhospitable for humans. But it woudl have undermined Tolkien's anglocentric point of view. With the advance of years I become more and more aware of his narrow views of the world (with all due respect to his philosophy of good and evil, mind you). I have always lived in a big and multicultural country (and my region especially so), and it nags me to see so little variety of people's cultures, languages, and even climates. I am far from all the modern agenda, but it still would have done us good to have this world broadened culturally and otherwise. I've been thinking over reshaping the map of Middlearth (just as a thought experiment, of course) to place the Harnen on the equator and the area of Forochel at the latitude of about 70. Thus we could legitimately have a desert in the south of Eriador, a forest in the north, and most human settlements would be somewhere in between. In this scernario, we could imagine that the Numenorians who came to settle the land at the end of 2 AGe were not very numerous and mostly settled near the sea, building (or rather rebuilding) cities on the coast and on big rivers. It is quite plausable that such cities could have been destroyed or abandoned for different reasons, and the population, already being scarce, just moved to the neighboring lands. We would still have to populate the region a little, which is partly canon as we can see that "some southerners" came to Bree in "LotR" (where from, I wonder). ANd we could place all the men's kingdoms near the Shire, so Bilbo's journey would have been just "there (to Imladris) and back again (to the area near the Shire)". As for what people could live there, we have some in "the Hobbit": the Beornings, for one, can't have appeared from nowhere, so we could place them there. All this region - from Bree to the ford of Bruinen could have been populated, though sparsely, by such people, and it wouldn't break any plot lines. Remember, the companions were in the marshes and in the forest, so, even with the country being generally populated, they could have still travelled in the wild. Climatically, all Rhovanion would be a desert, practically, which will explain why people don't really live there. However, Rohan will also be a desert, which opens up interesting opportunities for cultural diversification. It is worth mentioning that Tolkien didn't really describe Rohirrim properly (they were nomads, obviously, and he didn't like the idea of including something so non-European). In the case of a desert (and a very hot one) we will have to describe these people as pure nomads, who then could realistically have come from the North (which then would be a desert too). The only problem I'm trying to solve now is the position of Fangorn and Lothlorien (so the plot of LotR wouldn't have to be changed 100%). It's quite possible to make Lorien an oasis, which would add meaning to Galadriel's wielding Nenya, the ring of air. But Fangorn could be a problem, climatically, as it would be in the rain shadow of the Misty Mountains. It is possible to make the mountains really wide and less tall, so the forest would be in the mountains. I also wanted to say a couple of words about Numenor. In my opinion, it was a little strange of Tolkien to claim that only 3 houses of Edain were chosen. Probably, there were more people in Beleriand (in Taur-im - Duinath, e.g) who could have been taken just for demographic reasons. And I personally think that it would be great to include the house of Bor (we know that all MEN from the house were slaughtered, but their valor in fighting their own kin for the sake of honor must have been rewarded). So women from that house (which was more numerous perhaps than the Edain) could have been taken to Numenor too. Moreover, those who lived in Hithlum must have been intermarried with the Easterlings, so they could have been quite numerous too (but, to Tolkien's grief, of a mixed descent).

[@istari0]

Tolkien wrote a mythology mostly derived from European, particularly northern and western European, myths, legends, and tales. His Anglocentric view was intentional and I see nothing wrong with that anymore than I would if other authors did so for other cultures and ignored those of Europe.

[@Hlaford29]

@@istari0 I understand your view, and it's that of the majority. I said it's MY view that I shared. I don't insist on it, and all I wrote was just a thought experiment. Every time I start speaking about this on forums, people say Tolkien had reasons to do what he did and I shouldn't interfere with his ideas. There are a lot of "What ifs" on YT and elswhere, I am just doing the same but more consistently. There is no point trying to change one thing in the plot and see how it all would evolve if the author himself used a lot of plot convenience everywhere (and people are trying not to notice that). If we write a "what if" scenario, we will have to deal with those moments and first make the original plot more realistic, consistent. It is not just patching plot holes, but also trying to optimise plot lines which were redundant or to subjective. It's our right to speculate as long as we stay clear of imposing our views on the broader audience (which is the case with different screen versions). I'm aware that all responses will be somebody's opinions, which is fine with me. I'm just trying to clarify that I'm not trying to impose my opinion - just sharing it.

[@e.j.leonard2379]

What was the total population of Bree, Archet, Combe, and Staddle? Were their Bjornling villages? How long did it take forests and farm land to recover from Numernoreans trashing the land around Vinyalondë? How many Dunlending were there and are we sure there weren't other population centres that just didnt get a specific mention? Like, the naratives in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings do specifically say that the adventurers in both parties actively tried to avoid human centres of population when they could. Just because the Professor didnt specifically mention every historical event that could explain different population growth/decline/stability levels doesn't mean there weren't any. He described so so much!

[@shlomomarkman6374]

The demographics of LOTR are not that unrealistic. Pre-modern populations could explode historically fast - a mostly rural population without food problems, pandemics or wars could double in a 100 years. On the contrary a "civilised" population could decline even without famines or major wars if it was too urbanised, that happened to the Roman empire. Army sizes could some times be very large like the early middle-ages, especially if nomads or semi-nomads were involved. Eastern Europe was half-empty until the modern era while it's wars involved very large amounts of combatants.

[@柯禮安G]

Very interesting analysis. In the past I had some questions about this topic.

[@АнтонОрлов-я1ъ]

So, some general comments to begin with. While there was a rapid population growth in the last centuries of the real-world history, it was not always the case. In medieval period, while the birth rates were pretty high, due to child mortality, diseases, wars, deaths during childbirth, famines and so on, population growth was pretty slow, with some periods of decline when conditions were especially bad. On the other hand, in a period of peace and prosperity population could grow very rapidly. It seems that in the Middle-Earth situation is generally pretty similar. Addition of monsters like goblins, trolls and wargs means that population grows even slower if there is no organized force defending it. And Numenoreans definitely had lower birth rates, which also means that their population didn't grow very fast even during peaceful periods. Also, when we analyze Tolkien's writings, we often had to make assumptions about population sizes based on the size and strength of armies gathered by different polities. But that means that we see only the part of population that is controlled by the polities we are dealing with. If there are peasants who live in small hidden villages in hills and forests, who do not pay taxes or serve in the army, those peasants are completely invisible to us unless they are directly mentioned. Since Middle-Earth polities do not have a lot of capacities to control such population, this makes the Middle-Earth look significantly more empty than it actually is (this is especially true for Eriador, there polities are almost non-existent). Another problem that the chronology is obviously not complete. There are a periods of tens or even hundreds of years without any events. But that doesn't mean that nothing happened. Only major and important wars and invasions are mentioned in the chronology. Minor border wars and raids definitely are not. This is especially true if we are speaking about early Third Age (before 2500 or so). Now, to specific cases in chronological order: 1. Edain and Numenor. It seems that the numbers of 200 to 300 thousands is a mistake. In HoME 12 'The Peoples of Middle Earth' Tolkien states that the first fleet of refugees lead by Elros numbered about 200 ships carrying "between five thousand or at the most ten thousand" people, but also that there was a smaller steady migration of people over the next 50 years. So 20 to 30 thousands seems like a much more reasonable number, better corresponding both with the number of surviving Edain of Beleriand and the later Numenorean demography. 2. Arnor. There were way less Numenoreans in Arnor than in Gondor to begin with, and they suffered great losses both during the War of the Last Alliance and the Disaster of the Gladden Fields. So early kings of Arnor didn't have enough loyal subjects and the population of Dunedain recovered very slowly. Sure, there probably were a lot of Middle Men in Eriador at the end of that period, but not all of them were under authority of the kings, and many of those that were died during feuds between the three kingdoms and later in wars against Angmar. 3. Gondor during the Watchful Peace. As far as I understand, the Watchful Peace was not completely peaceful - there were corsairs in Umbar, nazgul in Minas Morgul, easterlings on the eastern borders, dunlendings to the west and so on. It is called so because it was not a period of constant war. Another reason why Gondor become weaker was the decline of central authority - the Stewards definitely lack the authority of the Kings, and since in the period of (relative) peace there was no need for centralized efforts to defend the realm, it is reasonable to assume that the lords of fiefs become almost independent from the Minas Tirith. It seems that the Stewards had to re-establish their authority over the seashores and the vales of the White Mountains. 4. Eriador. As I said in several comments earlier, the depopulation of Eriador is significantly overestimated. There were quite a lot of people, but they lacked political unity, so we hear about them only occasionally. The population of the Shire, despite several catastrophes, was clearly growing. Northern and southern borders of the Shire were natural - there were lands not suitable for agriculture ("from northern moors to the marshes in the south"), so it was impossible to expand further. And of course the Buckland was established as a colony. Breeland and the area around Tharbad probably had stable or slowly declining population, due to constant attacks of evil creatures and other problems (diseases, famines and so on), and were unable to expand. 5. Dale. This is the easiest case. Bard was a glorious dragon-slayer, had a lot of gold and was able equip his army with good weapons and armor made by Dwarves, so it was not hard for him to attract followers. It is directly stated in the text of "The Hobbit": "men had gathered to him from the Lake and from South and West". And with those followers it was easy for Bard and his descendants to expand their kingdom. There clearly were other human settlements south and east from the Lonely Mountain (the people of Esgarot traded with them), so this was the expansion of the Kingdom of Dale as a polity, not the colonization of completely empty lands by the people of Dale.

[@klhaldane]

Maybe the land around Bree was not as fertile as the land near Dale, or the weather was less favourable to growing crops. Some places are already at their carrying capacity, and population shifts very little over time.

[@romanograsnick]

Thanks for the insight. I do hope no one like you will analyze my flawed worldbuilding within the world of Edegard, as I am working since some years on it. I have to excuse for the fact that most work is only in German, yet. Stay curious!

[@daniels7907]

Forget Men, the biggest mystery is the Dwarves, followed by the Elves. The "seven fathers of the Dwarves" includes no reference to "mothers". Presumably, Aule must have made some and Eru gave them fea. But it's hard to make that line up with Dwarves establishing large underground kingdoms throughout Middle-earth. Then there are the Elves, most especially the Noldor, who started fighting at the First Kinslaying and hadn't stopped until the early Fourth Age. How were they replenishing their ranks? The Valar only sent Glorfindel back as a special exception. Otherwise, Elves reembodied in Valinor stayed in Valinor.

[@oldylad]

Tolkien was writing as though he was only translating a text written by the hobbits. A lot of the holes people point to remind me of similar things happening in ancient texts, whether it be someone lying about an event, the author embellishing it or the author repeating someone else’s false writings, I think the worldbuilding holes, if they even are holes, are actually a good thing. From the perspective of someone who reads a lot of ancient texts, LoTR emulates them very well albeit in a modern way

[@50ULL355]

First time viewer, really liked the video! Criticism was well thought out and clearly came from a place of care for the source material. Here’s my like, sub and comment

[@agustingomez1575]

This video was great, even to the standards of this channel. Lot of stuff I never thought of, or wasn't aware of to begin with. Cheers to you and whoever suggested this topic to you.

[@tsaralexis9459]

Can you do a video on the druedain? I was surprised you haven't made a video on them yet.

[@AdDewaard-hu3xk]

Well, spell it right, to begin with.

[@uncletomalex]

I have to agree, this is why I enjoy the small villages and the culture invented in LOTRO for Eriador. They really filled these places with History.

[@Sandnan_der_gruene_Pilger]

Can you do a video on all the Information we have what happend in eriador and further east in the first age? I know it´s not much, but it would be interisting nonetheless to puzzle a picture on the bits of information we have. As allways great video btw :)

[@spacejunk2186]

The issue with Numenorian demographics is that at the end of the War of Wrath, "Edain" just doesn't mean much anymore. As you stated, the original Edain were conquered by morgoths allies. There is a good reason to think that they was lots of ethnic mixing going on in the decades afterwards, and that most "Edain" were actually decendant from saurons human allies. What decided that you were "Edain" or not was the side you fought on during the War of Wrath.

[@khayreeluqman]

Every video is amazing! This has to be the best so far!

[@rursus8354]

The population problem you refer to can be resolved by the age-theory: in age 1-3 it wasn't that easy for humans to multiply like it was in age 4 the age of humans. The world was kind of not designed for humans in the 3:rd age, there were trolls, orcs, creepy wights, and other anti-human souls, for the rest the humans competed with elves and dwarves for space. In the age 4 there was no hard pressure from other races, perhaps even they started to become more fertile for a more friendly nature. And Dale's uncanny expansion could be explained by some kind of libido-inducing magic stones that the Dwarves split and polished in gratitude to the peoples of Dale, something that they had tried to apply to themselves before in vain, because of the natural immunity of Dwarves against magic. The Catholic Tolkien didn't dare to write this of course, he erroneously believed that his reputation would be diminished by clarifying this.

[@josephthomasjr.6551]

Extremely impressive artwork, Darth! I am also mightily in awe of your research. It must have taken you quite a while to assemble all of this information. I admire your work ethic. Keep it up, my friend. Keep bringing Middle Earth to mere mortals such as myself!

[@TheMarcHicks]

With Arnor's initial decline, if they had the largest losses in men of reproductive age during the War of the Last Alliance then that might partly explain it. I also recall from a previous video of yours that the climate and lands of Eriador limited population growth too. This latter factor, coupled with the dangers posed by evil creatures populating the wilderness of Eriador, might also explain the lack of growth in places like Bree and Tharbad. Also, there was the matter of the Long Winter which occurred during Bilbo's lifetime. IIRC, that event caused a massive famine and almost certainly a lot of deaths.

[@Jotari]

1:15 Eagles flying to Mount Doom is a plothole. Don't @ me.

[@heavenlytacoslayer8202]

First off, great video. I think you make great points on all fronts and are very fair and balanced in your criticism, and the video itself is produced very well and was easy and enjoyable to watch and digest. In relation to most lore we have on histories and background info on peoples, I.e. the meat and potatoes of world building are not technically cannon but we’re still works in progress, though I’m sure you know that and making videos context may get lost. That meaning that the rules were not as frequently ignored as you say, but we’re yet to be fully applied for a final version. And as far as in cannon I agree largely with your points on Gondor and Eriador but I think you being too broad with your assumptions. The north was largely inhospitable because of some natural (total economic and social isolation, enough criminal elements to keep the rangers to busy to grow, no government at all, largely unusable land in all directions except northward, and at least initially and extremely traumatized population that most likely were just the few people who didn’t move to Gondor after the war) and more supernatural reasons(murderous trees, barrow weights, orc and wolf raids, an endemic troll population nearby, ect) but they still expanded enough to establish 3 separate settlements in their local vicinity to create a isolated economy and society that was not given any reason to improve its status. And I think Gondor’s general decline is not outrageous as it is similar to the eastern Roman’s, where they were still up and swinging but at any point where they weren’t dominating everything around them they were deteriorating at ridiculous rates due to the chaos of poor and illegitimate rulers and not exactly super dedicated vassals, as they were less concerned with the empire and more with their own domains, so would support wars less often even if there was a recovery period overall. Anyways that’s my rant for today. I hope it comes off good natured and that everyone enjoys stimulating food for thought.

[@IarwainBen-adar]

I think Bree staying relatively small makes sense. We know they’re a very mixed population of men (as well as some dwarves and hobbits). Mixed races of people tend to procreate less often so it would make sense that enough children are being born to maintain status quo but not enough to expand beyond their borders. Not to mention we all know that Bree was a sort of traveling town, lots of people coming in and going out but more than likely not a whole lot staying permanently. We also know about such things as the Goblin Wars the Bullroarer Took was a part of. Perhaps people of Bree were involved/used as back up and thus their population took a hit.

[@3Kis4K]

Yes there are writings of Northmen outside Dale's and Esgaroth's control living around the Celduin. The Dwarves of the Iron Hills likely also traded for food with humans living on/around the Carnen. Dorwinion also traded with Thranduil's people and with how Laketown helped transport the goods, I wouldn't be surprised if there were more settlements further south to help facilitate the trade up and down that long river, especially in the wild lands of eastern Rhovanion where boats could easily get intercepted without protection. Besides, as moderately strong and prosperous the Bardings' realm seemed in the beginning of the War of the Ring, let's not forget how quickly the Easterlings overpowered them from the Carnen all the way to Dale, taking Dale and driving the surviving Bardings to seek shelter with Durin's Folk in Erebor. the Dale-Lands kingdom really does seem more of a confederation of Northmen who just thought they'd fare best with Bard's successors but hadn't really quite consolidated.

[@mikolajtrzeciecki1188]

7:50 Europe enters population decline as we speak even despite being at the longest period of peace since times immemorial. Nothing bad with Arnor's peaceful decline. For me personally, the biggest problem with Tolkien's worldbuilding is the mountains. He created them as if they were walls impassable for both armies (which is realistic to some extent) and even single infiltrators.

[@Chrissnessable]

My head canon is that in Tolkien’s world strong leadership influences population growth. The stewards of Gondor and kings of Rohan were strong enough to keep things stable, or grow a little, but there’s something magical about the blood of Isildur in the line of kings that motivates the population they rule

[@-keios8170]

Very nice material, I enjoyed the show, but I have to add some criticism. This is a bit unfair towards Tolkien. Analyzing the realism of the world created by Tolkien makes as much sense as analyzing the world created by Homer. That's not the point. The world of LOTR is as realistic as that of Nordic myths or the legends of King Arthur, it is mythical-realistic. You can play with demographic analysis in the case of R. R. Marin's works, he wanted to create a world that worked the same as ours. Tolkien wanted to create a new mythology and with this in mind he practiced worldbuilding.

[@Hero_Of_Old]

That's what a lot of people don't get. Its a mythological tale, its not some Marvel movie.

[@reactiondavant-garde3391]

@@Hero_Of_Old Not as if Marvel abide anything relistic either.

[@NoName-dr8wt]

🎯❤

[@petrovepryk3786]

I remember trying to create my own fan-fiction on the 4th Age when I was 14-18 y.o.. I took the average population growth number of the modern humanity, which is basically 1% per year, and applied it to the Middle-Earth. Also, I took the average army size of the War of the Ring, which is 10-15k (Isengard 10k, Gondor 15-20k (in total at the Pellennor fields, garrison+Aragorn's host), Rohan 12k) and tried to add 1% per year for 120 years. I ended up with the smallest armies being at 30-40k in average. So, the overall population tripled in 120 years of peace. Also, during the Medieval times usually 10% of men were called to the army during big war. So, we can see, that most kingdoms of Men had up to 400k population each and didn't reach even 1 million even when Aragorn II died. But total human population of the Middle-Earh could be probably around 2-3 million. Maybe 3+ million, if I wanna be optimistic. And ir we also count Rhun, Harad, Umbar, and also assume that dwarves remained in power and also had 1% population growth per year (I agree, it's a stretch here).

[@stephenpickering8063]

Very interesting thanks. Agree with many of the points made and also some of the recent comments I've read. A few ideas of my own. a) Agree with the revival of Dale that there are probably a lot of related Northmen outside Rivertown especially since it seems that Smaug was relatively inactive after the sack of Dale and Erebor until the group arrived and roused him by stealing some of his treasure. Also as stated Bard as a dragon slayer and a wealth man could easily attract many smaller settlements to his rule, under his protection while the wealth of the core of the kingdom would attract many into its key settlements. b) Also agree with concerns about the initial populating of Numenor. The battered state of the Edain when the Valar finally raise themselves to intervene was pretty bad and then they were among those that rallied to the Valar's call in the War of Wrath which is supposed to have lasted ~50 years and was so destructive it destroyed a sub-continent. I can't really see their numbers being boosted by other Edain from east of mountains as it mentions in the Silmarillion that the Edain that came west were fleeing the influence of Melkor in those lands and the latter men who did arrive were mostly corrupted by his evil and hostile to the enemies of Melkor. As such I can't really see any significant additional Edain coming from further east. c) The failure of both Arnor and Gondor to grow/recover in periods of peace, demographically if not militarily does seem odd in the cases you mention. Especially with Arnor that should be a fertile and prosperous land in times of peace. d) As others have point out one huge demographic problem is with the orcs who seem to swell into huge forces despite frequent massive losses and often a lack of any facility to sustain them. Then at other times they largely disappear until another rising of dark forces occurs. Its suggested they are corrupted elves because its claimed that Melkor can't generate living things himself although that seems to be contradicted by the latter presence of trolls and dragons, both stated as having been 'made' by Melkor. Some people have suggested magic in some form and given the situation in a number of cases that seems to be the only practical cause, although orcs do seen to be very common in locations such as the Misty Mts even when no dark lords are active. Force evolution under Melkor might make them far more fertile/capable of increasing numbers rapidly but you do have the problem that this corruption seems a permanent issue. e) For me the biggest single logical flaw in Tolkien's universe is the decision of the Valar when they have the world to shape as they initially came to Middle Earth to do, which they rejected, both after their initial capture on Melkor on the awakening of the elves and then again twice more at the start and finish of the 1st Age. Of course if they had been more active then you would never have had the stories of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd ages which would overall have been far more peaceful and prosperous.

[@thomads3890]

@minute 8 ; I personally always attributed the decline of the kingdoms of man specifically to the influence of the rings. Whenever human kings found a ring, outwardly, their reign might seem strong, the realm secure, but actually its very much a corrosive thing to all rulers. The big wars of the downfall with Angmar are essentially just the final brick to be laid on the tomb. The Elves, even protected by their rings in a kind of stasis, were in significant decline. Humanity was essentially spent after the wars, and the Rings which had posessed the Kings of Men were still in circulation, their dark spirits still hauntig their former peoples. it seemed always obvious to me, that the Nine specifically were the cause for humanities downfall.

[@robertbromley5230]

The bit about the demographics at the end of the hobbit is interesting. I just read the book to my six year old for the first time. For him that is. It struck me on rereading that the discussion of the growth and prosperity of both Dale and Laketown, doesn’t really match the lore in the subsequent trilogy. Especially the stuff about Beorn and his ilk. I think you made the point well that when he wrote the hobbit, there was nothing very concrete yet to connect it to.

[@lordsnot9540]

I found this fascinating, and you touched on several things I'd never considered before, or never thought about too deeply. OK - not sure if you read all the comments or not, but just on the offchance you do would you consider answering a question that has always bugged me. Did the nine Ringwraiths actually wear their nine Rings of Power? i.e. When the Witch King met his fate at the hands of Eowyn, did he have one of the rings on his finger? Did it fall to the ground after his passing? Or, as some people seem to believe, did 'Sauron reclaim them all' and the Ringwraiths no longer needed to physically wear their rings?

[@dlevi67]

Tolkien is pretty clear on the matter in his letters - the rings were with Sauron. There is a brief paragraph in History of Middle Earth where a ring is returned to the Witch King to increase his power, but Tolkien seems to have discarded the idea.

[@TrangDB9]

About Dale, the only explanation that it rapidly grew within 3 generations, was that people from other places joined the laketowners as well.

[@arijitpramanik]

What is the starting population of Arnor and Gondor? How many faithful Numenoreans really came in just 9 ships? I know that the regions already had some faithfuls and middle men but still, How did they even build so many cities (Minas Anor, Minas Ithil, Osgiliath, Isengard, Tharbad, Annuminas) in just 100 odd years? If they were so good at city building then how come the expansionist Numenoreans didn't build nothing but Umbar in previous 1000 years

[@ricardoandre7049]

The initial populations were large. Larger in Gondor than Arnor, but still large. Numenor had multiple colonies, many south of Umbar, but north of Umbar Pelargir, Belfalas and the heartlands of gondor were already populated, mainly by faithfull in constrast to the kingmen southern colonies. So when Isildur and Anarion arrived, they arrived to a settled land who had ties to the faithfull of numenor and by consequence their house, for they had always been the leaders amongst the faithfull in numenor, even when they were under persecution by the kings. Arnor had colonies, lesser than pelargir for they were out of favour with the kings of numenor since they turned to the shadows but still had, and eriador was large and populated by many middle men. Elendil arrived to a lesser colonial state, made up of fief all around Arnor water ways, and he consolidated the realm under him. In Arnor the dunedain were much less in comparison than those in gondor. So the populations were large, and with this new leadership intent of rebuilding what they lost, such mighty works could be done.

[@oudviola]

I've worried about this point also. Elendil and his Faithful survived the destruction of Numenor with seven (not nine I believe) ships, which at best could only include a few hundred people. It's not stated anywhere that I know, exactly how many Numenoreans were living in Middle Earth colonies by that time. But they managed to build new cities (Minas Tirith and Ithil, Osgiliath, Annuminas, after the Fall of Numenor, in pretty short order. Not at all clear where all the huge armies of the Last Alliance came from.

[@istari0]

Númenor had established colonies in Middle-Earth over a 1000 years before the destruction of the island. That's plenty of time, even allowing for the relatively slow reproduction rates of the Númenoreans, for a sizeable population to develop. Umbar was not the only major city; Pelargir and Tharbad already existed before the founding of Gondor and Arnor. There could have been settlements at Osgiliath and Annuminas before they were turned into capitols. Minas Anor and Minas Ithil were originally built as fortresses to protect Osgiliath before developing into cities in their own right. There may well have been other sizeable settlements as well; they just didn't get mentioned in the stories.

[@fantasywind3923]

There were other colonies along the coasts obviously, the Pelargir was a major one in the area of Gondor, but there were also colonies on the coast the Belfalas and so on, Umbar was one of many. Other settlements are not named. I mean there were many colonies that were forgotten in the histories and not named. Umbar, Pelargir and Lond Daer were only the major ones...we know there were more and smaller ones and in time entire colonial realms. The princes of Belfalas are supposedly a Faithful who settled in the area even before Elendil and his sons landing. In the area of Lond Daer and Tharbad we hear of the local growth and fortresses and so on: "They were in awe of the Númenóreans, but they did not become hostile until the tree-felling became devastating. Then they attacked and ambushed the Númenóreans when they could, and the Númenóreans treated them as enemies, and became ruthless in their fellings, giving no thought to husbandry or replanting. The fellings had at first been along both banks of the Gwathló, and timber had been floated down to the haven (Lond Daer); but now the Númenóreans drove great tracks and roads into the forests northwards and southwards from the Gwathló, and the native folk that survived fled from Minhiriath into the dark woods of the great Cape of Eryn Vorn, south of the mouth of the Baranduin, which they dared not cross, even if they could, for fear of the Elvenfolk. From Enedwaith they took refuge in the eastern mountains where afterwards was Dunland; they did not cross the Isen nor take refuge in the great promontory between Isen and Lefnui that formed the north arm of the Bay of Belfalas [Ras Morthil or Andrast: see p. 224, note 6, because of the "Púkel-men"...." ... "Sauron knew of the importance to his enemies of the Great Haven and its ship-yards. and he used these haters of Númenor as spies and guides for his raiders. He had not enough force to spare for any assault upon the forts at the Haven or along the banks of the Gwathló. but his raiders made much havoc on the fringe of the forests, setting fire in the woods and burning many of the great wood-stores of the Númenóreans." So there were other fortresses, and possible settlements and if this is true of Eriador coast then the other lands also. Along the shores of Harad there were many other colonies besides Umbar and going further south.

[@D2attemp]

I was told by the KZbinr Civilization Ex that the reason why Eriador remained depleted of people even during the Watchful Peace was because it was still full of roaming orc bands and enemies. And although they did not become a such a major issue that history would deem it a crisis, it was still enough to keep the scattered and weakened Dúnedain of the North from rebuilding its forces.

[@Aiwendill]

i believe that strange expansion of Dale in such short time was quite explainable. They controlled that territory and control doesnt mean automatically population. They may started some villages there and some outposts, which could be considered as control of teritory. But later, during the War of the Ring they retreated even into the Erebor, because they were unable to hold their own city. That means that their population wasnt actually that big and the teritory of their kingdom up to river Carnen was not that populated as we think.

[@neorsb]

If there's one thing Tolkien gets right is the demographics. His books have excellent demographics. The best.

[@jonystyles9473]

hope u do more of these bro, loved it, keep it up!! ;)

[@PraetexDesign]

My biggest issue with Tolkien is his system of good and evil being so ingrained. It’s all well and good for a story like the Hobbit to have a bunch of evil orcs who are eternally the baddies, but for the LotR and Silmarillion it just doesn’t seem thorough enough. You get no real feeling for how anything functions. Likewise, characters often feel stagnant as they’re simple heroic from the get go. There’s not as much room for growth or fall. There are a few notable exceptions such as Feanor and his kin, but others like Frodo and Aragorn are more static.

[@seanb.6793]

The thing that bothered me when reading the books as a kid was the map - the perfect u-shaped walls of mountains around Mordor looked too unrealistic. But, since Sauron and Morgoth had so much power, maybe they shaped the mountains themselves.

[@DarthGandalfYT]

We know Morgoth created Mount Doom, but we're unsure about the other mountains. The mountains are vaguely shaped like the Carpathians though.

[@ShadyCrypt]

I think there is one more major factor in the population growth - law enforcement. At least in the case of Bree I consider it to be the deciding one. As far as my understanding goes, Bree is protected by walls and town guards, making it relatively safe. However, it doesn't have any real army and governing power to protect the surrounding territories. Therefore, nearby settlements suffer greatly from bandit raids, limiting both economic and population grows in the region, due to lack of food and overpopulation of the Bree itself.

[@sbeaber]

Don't mix up life expectancy at birth for life expectancy of an adult. Death in childbirth or before the age of 5 was very high but not for like a 30 year old

[@ilari90]

When you look at the Middle Earth map, and realize the scale, it would need more people and towns, some places seem like there's only one village in 100 miles marked and the land kind of feels like it too, outside of Shire at least and the Shire itself is also huge.

[@derfret1365]

what's even more confusing than the lack of population in Eriador and the region to the west of the Misty Mountains as a whole is that there's seemingly a power vacuum in the whole region. After all, the whole region was by no means undesirable; Hobbits lived their happy peaceful lives, dwarves from the Ered Luin would make good trading partners and together with the elves of Rivendell would be potential allies to keep the region safe and peaceful. Gondor would have an interest to keep those lands secure in the hands of trusted allies, so they couldn't be invaded from multiple angles. In the late third age, refugees from the south came to Bree, most likely through Enedwaith, but why didn't those migrations happen earlier? After the ethnic cleansing of Calenardhon for example, if Dunland wasn't also completely empty this should have caused a lot of migrating. Yet nobody had ambitions to rule over the land other than Saruman after getting kicked out of Isengard, just so the whole land conveniently accepted Aragorn as it's new king. Even though they didn't want strangers in their wide land earlier

[@Jotari]

Bard's fledgling kingdom could have rapidly expanded because they had a portion of Smaug's gold, encouraging mass migration due to a sudden high potential for industry (they did get a portion of the gold in the end, didn't they?).

[@evanlacagnina3963]

Love it when creators use images/music from LOTRO in their videos!

[@revanofkorriban1505]

I think with the initial nucleus of Men who settled in Numenor, we can count also the faithful among the Easterlings. Not enough perhaps to pump the numbers up to 300,000, but it is something.

[@LeHobbitFan]

You make a great point. I suppose Tollers was not as concerned with geography, economics and demographics as he was with the thematic and metaphysical consistency of his work. Which is defensible if you need to choose what to focus time on, but still leaves something to be desired, especially in such an otherwise complex and immersive world.

[@pavelslama5543]

I´d say that his story is ultimately anti-materialistic. Its then expectable that he won´t focus on material side of things more than its needed (like in case of comparison of the army sizes and realization of the main characters that they cannot realistically defeat them in a conventional way). Its a purely character-driven story and the world adheres to the needs of the characters.

[@whyukraine]

please make a playlist with _all_ your videos together.

[@ssl3546]

Plenty of prosperous countries go into decline for reasons that can be understood only after deep study. France was losing population in the 1990s and this was a huge crisis until they decided the solution was immigration. Japan has famously been losing population for decades. I don't think it's necessary for Tolkien to explain why every demographic shift happened. He was surely aware of many other declines in history and took it as a given that it could happen and did not need explanation.

[@ashaide]

I explained this in Quora but the TLDR is it's not just about demographics and their bounce backs during times of peace, or at least calm. There's also infrastructure. And one implication of both Dunedain Realms in Exile and the lands they bestride was one of a decline in infrastructure, both the ability to properly maintain them and nevermind make new advanced Numenorean tech. Arnor was in a more problematic location because its core was land laid waste by forces of the Shadow. There is only half a millennium of the War of the Jewels but the Sil talks about how Morgoth's forces would quickly befoul locales. After all, that was Morgoth's true aim: the staining of all the works of his Ainur siblings. I don't know how much the Numenoreans recovered by the time of Arnor's founding. But based on how the Dunedain of the North continued declining in every way, I'd assume the land itself was never... repaired enough to allow Arnor to bounce back in terms of population AND the infrastructure needed to re-strengthen a realm. We're talking agriculture, trade, industry. Those are influenced by demographics and conditions. I'm saying that maybe Arnor couldn't recover because the land itself made it difficult to do so. And with the losses Arnor sustained in the War of the Last Alliance, maybe they lost that critical mass in capability to arrest this decline, much less grow again. And look at Gondor. It lost its major southern lands, including its greatest port, to rebellion. It lost its most fertile farmlands to invasion and never really recovered them due to the existence of Minas Morgul. And it had to give up Rhovanion, another region that could have given Gondor resources and manpower. By the time of the major invasions during the time of the Stewards, what really was Gondor proper except Anorien? How fertile was it? How populated? How developed its industry? And now I wonder how it would be different if Gondor pursued a policy of importation from its natural allies. Food and trained archers from the Elves of Mirkwood. Knowledge from Rivendell and Lindon. Heavy weapons and war engineering from the Dwarves.

[@Gaucfotbal]

The collapse of Arnor is also due to the fact that even though Agmar was defeated, there were still orcs and ogres there and that is why people didn't restore the kingdom and maybe even moved to Gondor for a better life. Tolkien explains the bad situation of Gondor in peacetime by saying that the great houses were looking more to the past than thinking about the future. They had few children and late, like the elves. And the origins of Numenor may also stem from the freed prisoners and slaves of Morgoth. There's a chance they bred and grew in numbers there.

[@rickardjarvinen]

Great video as always! I have a question about Durin's door. When did the elves start calling Khazad-Dûm Moria? Since on the door they call it "Durin, Lord of Moria," it seems a bit odd to me.

[@glorfindel4625]

That didn’t make sense to me either, but I’ve heard a possible explanation that Gandalf is reading it and saying Moria instead of Khazad-Dum to make it more understandable to the hobbits, which I can agree with. It still leaves the plot hole of it actually saying Moria on the door.

[@АнтонОрлов-я1ъ]

Elves always called Khazad-Dûm Moria, as far as I know, since there are no other common elvish names of this settlement. It may be a local Sindarin or Nandorin name before the Noldor came to Eregion, probably. It seems that Sindar and Nandor were not friendly with Dwarves, so such an unpleasant name make sense. Also there is a Primitive Elvish form of that name, Mornyā. If that is not a backwards reconstruction, that means that the name is extremely old

[@hrishikeshmahindrakar6205]

Can you do the video on Mountains of the east or the Orocarni mountains, eastern dwarvish kingdoms, and the elves that lives or remained in the east

[@anonymous-hz2un]

The biggest problem is that the franchise is never gonna progress beyond what Tolkien had already written. We know a bit about Harad and Rhun but next to nothing about what's beyond them. Culture, politics, population - nothing. Middle Earth is just a spot on the map of Arda when taken as whole.