I know this probably sounds rediculous but could ther have been a existant races like hobits or what have you like out of lord of the rings? I'm not talking about walking , Talking trees and crap like that . But creatures like orcs and an early race of humans. I think it might be possible as old as the world is, And i don't think that we could have been the first intelligent civilization on earth .

I have been playing LOTRO myself, and wonder if you have been doing the same

I saw recently some type of 'hobbit' like race was found on an island. Didn't look into it myself, not that interested in this topic. I do believe it was on this site however, so if you do some digging you may find it. Or one of the super finders may post it for you.

On topic though, I would think that there would be some sort of remains of these civilizations. Of course if the hobbit race thing I mentioned is true, then there is some remains right there! As for me, imagining Huge Hairy Trolls roaming the countryside, seems a little far-fetched.

**EDIT**
Sorry to make clear the hobbit race was long since dead (if I remember correctly)

Well before us (Homo sapiens sapiens) you get several other species of hominid.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/species.html

If you click through the site there are pictures of some of the bones. I have seen some of the species at museums - they look a bit strange!

Nope. I'm not really all that into the lord of the rings stuff. I think the movies were pretty awesome . I'm just curious as to where some of this stuff came from. But if there were another intelligent race of humans or what have you that could explain some of the talk of a hollow earth.

We have found prehistory nuclear power station, prehistory batteries and spaceman-like carved figures. But some of these discoveries date back to not a long time before, compared to the long span of Earth. If we check the timetable, we may find that ancient spacemen were space-walking while Homo sapiens first used fires. What can it be possible?

I have heard of some of that stuff but not a pre-historic nuclear power station. I think it might be possible that there could have been a race of hobbits and possibly orcs and creatures of that nature. Hell, The legend of elves and other creatures had to have come from somewhere. But you have to take some of this stuff with a grain of salt. Like it was said before if there was another civilization before us there would be some pre-historic buildings among other things turning up But discoveries like those do happen. I was watching something on the discovery channel a long time ago and some divers found a pyramid under water with some kind of crystal ball inside. So i really wouldn't rule it out.

The original elves were actually tiny woodland creatures...more gnome-like than anything. The modern more elegant, graceful, priest-like Elf was Tolkien's creation that other authors picked up on.

The earth hasn't bred any other intelligent life other than humans, by the way. There'd be evidence of it.

And it would have been an interesting time to live in around 20 thousand years ago when modern humans, cro-magnons and neanderthals co-existed...imagine the tribal battles that went on.

Tolkien based his middle earth on the imagined world of ignorant Anglo Saxons warriors of the dark ages, though virtually the only literary evidence of this world is Beowulf, obviously written down by a literate Chrisi.tian missionary for we see hints of Christianity in the work.

These people believed in Dwarves, because they had actually seen dwarves during their rape and pillage of civilized people. But they didn't understand this was only a birth defect because they left all of their own malformed and weak infants on the dung heaps for the wolves.

They believed in trolls and ogres for the similar reason of birth defects, only full grown humans with frightening appearances. The "elephant man" for example would probably be considered an ogre.

They believed in elves becasue they were exposed to superior technologies of more advanced races such as the Celts and Roman during the iron age when they were virtual cavemen. They thought that surely anyone who built houses from stone and made beautiful metal objects possessed magical powers. Ancient Germans never understood the concept of building with stone. All of their structures seem to have been hovels of sticks, logs, mud and cow dung.

As for dragons, well everybody in those days believed in dragons. The interesting thing though is that in civlized lands the dragons brought wisdom and technologies and carried gods on their backs or were the gods themselves. But in Germanic culture that were terrifying predators of humans.

If we can assign any truth to the universal belief in dragons, a logical inference then is that although dragons apparently "behaved themselves" in places like China, Mesopotamia and MesoAmerica, where they were thought of as gods, or servants to the gods, being carnivores, they still had to eat someplace, so went to Germany were the fat warriors would be easy pickings in their perpetually drunken state, crowded in their cowdung hovels singing songs of their great heros, just as the Beowulf author describes it, with some monster devouring 30 men in one night. Apparently the survivors were too drunk to realize it was a large dragon that crashed their party, so blamed the attack an a poor deformed guy they called Grendel, who probably could consume only a few pounds of flesh at a single sitting.

And since these people were entirely illiterate for thousands of years, the dragons knew nobody would know how badly they treated the barbarians, that is, until a Christian missionary wrote down the Beowulf poem for them, and thus, the world of Middle Earth believed in by the Germanic Barbarians was exposed to the civilized world.

Of course, the whole motive of Tolkien writing this trash was that he was a rampant Germanophile who wanted to cast a better light on his Anglo Saxon ancestors, making them appear like an advanced civilization instead of bands of primitive, perpetually drunk, illiterate, warlike thugs, just as Beowulf so perfectly describes them.

Also no bones have been found of any ogres, dwarves, elves, etc, that were not Homo Sapiens, indicating these creatures were only Germanic perceptions of other humans. Perhaps no dragon bones have been found becasue in most of the world legends of the time, they are Gods or servants of gods, and therefore may not die like normal creatures. That being the case, we can dismiss Germanic barbarian tales of dragon slaying to nothing more than drunken boasts of the barbarians the dragons left behind, perhaps because they had fouled themselves in their intoxicated state.

Oh, and Tolkien stole the term "Orc" from a medieval legend where it was the name of a Sea Serpent.

There is an amusing irony to the tragic story of the so called hobbits of real anthropology. The bones were found on a cave on the Island of Flores. So here we have tiny humans on an island inhabited by 12 foot long Komodo Dragons. These people probably came by sea, to find an Island Paradise devoid of larger humans they could not compete with. Unfortunately, the island they found was probably the worst place in the world for "small humans" to be, trapped on an island full of giant meat eating lizards. Needless to say, save for a few bones, the Hobbits have vanshed, and quite appropriately (since scientists have named them hobbits), undoubtedly due to enormous lizards called "dragons".

Poor lil pecks didn't stand a chance



I do aswell...it's becoming increasingly popular.

Er.... no we haven't.

fool

Geez. The only reason why there isn't any proof of that. Is because we haven't found any. There's a TON of stuff to be discovered & it's taking time!

Who knows. If they existed. That'll be kinda cool if something like that existed. I'm interested in anything like this/that.

Actually, the Elves of the Scandanavians were not little people, they were as big as everyone else, they just had different attributes. I just read it because I always liked the little people and wondered why Tolkien had made them human size.

Tolkien wrote the stories about middle eath during the WWI. He was a soldier and he while not taking cover from shelling he was writing. Many passages of the lord of the rings, ressambles the WWI. Like the dead marshs which when you read, you can think of no man's land. Tolkien wrote to void shellshock according the site below.

If you wish to know more about Tokien and his writing during the war, please visit the link below:

http://www.greatwar.nl/frames/default-tolkiene.html

Priceless...

As Middle Earth is the literary product of one man's mind, I'd say no, Middle Earth never really existed.



There's a good quantity of /actual/ Anglo-Saxon poetry other than Beowulf out there, a great deal of which centres on warriors' lives (but not all of it does).
Besides, Beowulf itself isn't about any English peoples or places. It's set in Sweden and about Swedish tribes.
But as a professor of pre-modern English lit and a linguist, Tolkien knew all those poems.



So you're saying the reason we have no proof is because we haven't found any proof.
That's either astoundingly circular logic or amazingly tautological.

--Jaylemurph

There are skulls of Hobbits but there more like the size of the toddler. Have you ever head of the midget elephant? well apparently there are sightings of midget elephants in Congo.
Hobbits were like ape-human type animals like tribesman but smaller.

Yes, it does sound "rediculous", there wasn't anything resembling "Middle Earth" on Earth. Tolkien wrote the book as "fantasy", for the entertainment of the readers. Not as any attempt to explain past "civilizations" on Earth. There were "hobbit - like" creatures found, but those people were just a offshoot of human ancestry, and obviously didn't survive. No, these beings had no civilization, as civilization wasn't developed until roughly 7,000 - 8,000 years ago. The first civilization being that of the Sumerians. Also civilization is not possible without the domestication of plants and animals as humans are required to specialize in things other than food-getting in order for a civilization to develop. In other words a steady source of food is required for civilization.

Civilization - "an advanced state of human society, in which a high level of culture, science, industry, and government has been reached."
Courtesy of dictionary.com

Hope this was helpful, - Bokonon

That's the biggest load of crap i've ever read, and you've obviously never read Beowulf.

and i thinks i found that race of humans that use the bedrock as their homes not building out of rock but carving the bedrock as they go and over generations were left with something unbeilevable just a myth a tale is all that is left of these people and they were in the atlantic.

now that the artic is melting faster and faster maybe somthing will show itself sooner rather than later.

i do know that cape breton was once in a warm climate and all that veg that grew than we burn now in the coal.

it just people can't get over the vast amount of time it takes for things to take place from then till now.

http://www.theuniversityconcourse.com/III,...-1998/Healy.htm


http://www.usnews.com/usnews/culture/artic...108/8fossil.htm





and then the Dropa's...

http://members.aol.com/pgrsel2/dropas/us.htm

Jackoff

I agree partly, there is no need to make fun of the question is there? After all a question is intended for learning, not taunting. At least that is what my impressions of questions are.

So while I may not agree that there was a 'Middle Earth' as described in the respective books/movies, I have no right to taunt and belittle those who (either believe, or are unsure). All that does is create drama, and if you like drama check out the US Soap Operas, they are chalked full of it.

I play LotRO too! And no hobbits I am afraid, too bad for the world we missed out.

Every picture I've seen of elves before Tolkien's time have them portrayed as peaceful tiny forest peoples...like thumb-sized versions of Tolkien's.

http://www.mystoftheoracle.com/

http://www.google.com/search?q=elves+lepre...art=40&sa=N

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/folklore/7649

Elf tools....discovered...
http://istina.rin.ru/eng/ufo/text/339.html

You know, for someone with such a railroad opinion as yourself, i do wonder why you bother reading this site.

As (i assume) you are not 10,000 years old, and are able to objectively state what the world looked like in prehistory, then i surmise you are basing this on current historical assumptions.

Historical assumptions that are based upon evidence found to date that is only valid until further evidence contradicts it. In our current climate, at most we can say is that there is no conclusive evidence of any prehistoric civilisations.

I guess a few hundred years ago, you would have been in the "Earth is Flat" brigade.

You sort of shot yourself in the foot on this one. Other intelligent man like creatures certainly DID evolve and you named two of them, cro magnons and neanderthals. As for other possible variations, remember the fossile record is spotty. Everyone that dies doesn't become a fossil. There certainly could have been other variations on the theme of homo sapiens sapiens that either have yet to be found, or existed in relatively small populations in areas that were detroyed or are inaccessable for some reason. Some of the legends that have come down to us can have possible explanations. Perhaps a core truth that that was, with time and imagination, morphed into these fantastic creatures.

In many proto human species scientist have found distinct variations in different populations. You can have a base species that has members that are robust (shorter, stronger, thicker boned) and gracile (taller, thinner boned, more graceful). I'm not about to argue the theory of evolution, its the best explanation I have come across, but scientists cannot yet say with certainty that "this begat that and that begat this", etc.). So you have the possiblibility that you had more than one sort of humanoid creatures roaming earth at the same time. Some might be direct evolutionary desendants, others could have been offshoots, cousins if you like, that sort of branched off the family tree and for whatever reason didn't make it.

Remember in Africa we can find human populations that range from the shortness of the Pygmys to the height of the Watusi. I don't see why the same thing couldn't be true for ancient Europe and Asia. Lets say you are of a people where an adult male is 5'5" to 5'7' in height and robust. In your wanderings you come into contact with a people where the average adult male is 6'11"to 7'2" and gracile. Even if the two groups are the same species (and remember there could have been a number of humaniod species sharing the Earth simultaneously), depending upon their culture, level of technology, dress, and customs, BOOM you have the birth of the elf legend. Plug in various differences and species into this equation and you could come up with a wide variety of legendary creatures. There was also a humanoid that existed, I may have the name incorrect, Gigantopithicus. Assumed to be very hairy it was an extremely robust creature and large, on the order of eight feet tall if I recollect correctly. Might make a mighty fine ogre, troll, orc or whatever. Some believe the legends of Bigfoot, Yeti and the like may be based on surviving small populations of such a creature.

Regarding the Flores Island "hobbits". Islands are funny things and do funny thing to species. It seems to encourage both dwarfism and giganticism. While the "hobbits" of Flores Island may have had to dodge Komodo dragons or some other large reptile, they hunted both pygmy elephants and giant rats! There is a lot of speculation as to when they died out or if they have completely. There are storys and legends of these "hobbits" existing into modern times long before the remains were officially discovered. Also a few that indicate that there might still be a small population in a more remote section of the area. As far as we know the pygmy elephants are long gone but could you imagine their reaction were they to see a full sized African Elephant? What legends might that produce?

I haven't even touched on the possibilities of hybrids among various humanoid races and the hybrid vigor phenomenon. That could open a whole other set of possibilities.

I am new here as far as posting is concerned. I hope I haven't posted too much. I am familiar with many of the technologies that the ancients knew about and were only rediscovered much more recently in Europe. For example the "Bhagdad Battery". But a nuclear power plant? Can anyone point me towards information on that?

Cheers,
RWB64

It does create drama. But i'm not saying i believe in those kind of creatures to begin with, I would say i'm more unsure than anything else. The way i look at it is that the world is very old and i believe there could there could have been another intelligent civilization before humans. I don't see why there couldn't have been but like it was said before there would be some evidence , But who's to say that we won't ever find solid evidence of such a civilization. I suppose debating this compares to debating to whether or not atlantis ever existed or as just made up.

all i'm saying is that if you are looking for that earth that is in the middel then cape breton is the place from a geoligical piont of veiw.

on a nother note ,today i saw that kids in sydney n.s. are sing old galic songs to keep the spirit alive,bless it be beye least someone is singing the right song.

Aye, as I thought you were (unsure that is) I'm not going to flaunt my thoughts on it at you. I would say that I don't 100% discount it, like was stated earlier Im not 10,000 years old. But as things are now (evidence wise) It seems to be supportive of a non-middle earth. Of course I saw something about a month ago here about an Atlantian Power Grid. Maybe if I can find this map the fellow speaks of it would shed some light on this question as well.

Spikeman, you keep asking these questions. Don't let the small minded remarks cause you to stray from the path. Knowledge is power, and questions are the path to knowledge. Thats it for my philosphicalness. Back to being immature for me

If somehow Middle -Earth did exist i would be very interested in finding the ruins of Valinor. Or Tol_Eressea now sunken beneath the hidden sea's beyond the walls of the world. Maybe even traces of Numenor can be found. Tolkien based the Numenorian myth on the Isle of Atlantis. Above all maybe even a Silmarillion.

I jest. But that would be so awesome.

I think it would be awesome. But i doubt any evidence will be found to prove another civilization existed. But then again who knows. Only time will tell.

The reason I saw this should be obvious to you. The definition of civilization includes specialization of jobs, an organized government, religion perhaps, writing, and art. Think about it, before the Neolithic Revolution, approx. 12,000 years ago, people hadn't domesticated plants or animals to a point where they could stay in one place because they were not all trying to find food. This is why there is no evidence of these "Civilizations" before 7,000 - 8,000 years ago, because they DID NOT EXIST. Sorry to burst your bubble, but how can a civilization form when all the people forming it are preoccupied with finding their own food to stay alive? It can't.

Regards, - Bokonon

*cough*

But did Jericho exemplify all the characteristics of a civilization? Perhaps, I should have said before 12,000 years ago. Before the neolithic revolution. My mistake.

- Regards, Bokonon

Hmmm,

I had an interesting thought on this on one of the other threads here.

We are measuring prehistoric civilisations on what we have done and where we are now. What if that was not the case? The example i stated was the possible applications of nanotechnology, the possibility of providing any and all means of sustenance (heat, clothing, food water) for the human race. At this point, our civilisation fundamentally changes, no need for cities, crops, jobs.

At that point, what structual legacy would we leave in the event of our civilisations demise?

I just feel that until we find evidence of a past civilisation, or invent time travel, we can never definitely say we have a correct understanding on prehistory.

Sure I have, and I am sure I know a lot more about it than you.

Well, to be fair, your description of its characters wasn't very generous.

--Jaylemurph

Wrong guy. The Grendel episode takes place on the Jutland penninsula of Denmark, which was essentially part of "Germany". Most scholars believe the dragon episode in Sweeden was written by a different author, and may have been an entirely different story hobbled together by some unknown bard.

We have plenty of proof these people were perpetually drunken brawlers fighting neighboring tribes. Beowulf's tribe was supposedly destroyed by neighbors after the dragon killed Beowulf and they had no powerful leader to replace him.

The reason there are Anglo Saxons in England is becasue they raided, raped and pillaged Britain before the Vikings did. But Tolkien loved his Germanic heritage so much that he was part of a clique that tried to ban latin based words from the English language to keep it "purely" Germanic JUST LIKE THE NAZIS would do in Germany. The Men of Rohan are based on Tolkien's beloved Anglo Saxon ancestors. Tolkien's father was a native German from Saxony.

His dream was to make his proto-nazi crap the "National Myth of Great Britain", but in his lifetime nobody took that seriously. The English already had a national myth. This is King Arthur, defender of latinized, civilized, Roman Britain against the pagan Germanic barbarians that Tolkien adored.

Of course a later generation of fantasy geeks hail Tolkien as their messiah, blissfully ignorant of Tolkien's Germanophile agenda.

Do your care to list the redeeming qualities of the barbarians that destroyed Western civilization and sent Europe into the Dark Ages? Of course, Tolkien, and the Nazis, would say that was a "good thing". Ever notice that the Nordic races are the good guys in his stories, and the bad guys are untermensch from the South and East?

Well, I can't help but notice you're using English, so at least one element of their culture you readily accept.
And I think Tolkien and his writing is pap, so please control your desire to use him to accuse me of Nazism.

Unless you want this to descend to making ad hominem remarks.

--Jaylemurph

PS: The Wikipedia article on Beowulf mentions at least to places in Sweden associated with the poem; and according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle at least, the Angles were /invited/ into Britain by King Vortigern. It's not as if the only version of the Angles is that they attacked and invaded Britain.

I don't believe I accused you of being a neo-nazi/germanophile. I was merely correcting your claim that the whole story and the characters in Beowulf were all Swedish. But yes, I use English, for it is my native language, but if Tolkien had his way, English spoken in the British Isles would have been virtually German, with all of the French and Latin elements removed from it.

And yes, leaders of Britain sometimes sought the help of foreign invaders to assist in their political aims. But the Angle and Saxons were definately invaders from the beginning.

Well, you sure seem to have gripes about Tolkien. And you make a lot of assumptions. I prefer to enjoy the novels I read as they essentially are: entertainment. Well, novels can be very educating too. Admitted, I don't know about this subject enough to really discuss it, which is why I won't make any claims about Tolkien's aspirations. But I kinda doubt he was a nazi. And he did managed to come up with quite a chronicle.

I had been taught by English Professors here in the US that Tolkien was mainly influenced by the Finnish mythos and his love of alphabets. He supposedly partly created the elvish script during WWI and latter wrote stories to fill in the history of the various languages and letter schemes he made up. He found he could not publish the Silmarillion, which is the first book he wrote and also the same with the, at that time, one huge volume called the Lord of the Rings. His first success was with a book called the Hobbit.

DC I think you are reading stuff into a story that isn't there. If anything, the Germans are represented by the Orcs and Sauron/Morgoth and the men of the West and the Elves represent England. I don't see any Gemanophile leanings here.

Of course the English are going to look on the Angles and Saxons with some favoritism as most people in England are decended from them.

On the little people of Flores, I think there still could be a few of them running around. I've read stories where some of them were caught and held in villages as short a time ago as WWII. There are komodo dragons on Flores? It is the first I've heard of that. I'll check into it.

Edit: Yep. Flores is one of the few other places in the world where there are komodo dragon. Cool!

Yep , Dragons and Hobbits on the same island but seemingly incompatible species. If you are only four feet high there probably isn't a worst place to be than an island inhabited by gigantic carnivorous lizards. But maybe this was the only place they could go where there wasn't normal size people for them to compete with, for I think normal people there is a relatively recent development.

Tolkien DID hate the nazis, but he did love the ancient and dark age Germans, and yes, the men of Rohan speak old english/anglo-saxon dialect. It is a fact he wanted the English language purged of everything non Germanic, and Tolkien's ancient Germans are far more technologically advanced than the real ancient Germans ever were.

Actually, most Brits seem to root for Arthur and the Romano-Celts, than the Anglo-Saxon Germanic invaders. No one today connects the Tolkien stuff with the Anglo Saxons as Tolkien had wished. Now they are all just fantasy races despite Tolkien's desire to glorify the Anglo-Saxons with these stories.

I cant help wondering if something like "Racial Memory" if such a thing exists, memory passed down through genes.... might have something to do with these beliefs. What do you think Captain Scuttle_

That's the British version. Don't make me go and get my mythology books out! LOL! I was urprised to read that, too. I much prefer the little guys, myself.

Ok, here is some info for you:

Although the concept itself is never clearly defined in the extant sources, the elves appear to have been conceived as powerful and beautiful human-sized beings. Full-sized famous men could be elevated to the rank of elves after death, such as the petty king Olaf Geirstad-Elf, whereas the smith hero Wayland Smith was titled as "ruler of elves" while alive, in the Völundarkviða. In the Þiðrekssaga a human queen is surprised to learn that the lover who has made her pregnant is an elf and not a man. In Hrólfs saga kraka a king named Helgi rapes and impregnates an elf-woman clad in silk who is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen

elf link