If tolkien based middle earth geographically its possible that america is Valinor. what do you all think?

Tolkien said that America was once the Landof the Gates of Morning and on the west coast stood the Rockies. When the world became round, America could be in the far west, or in the far east, whichever way you like. I also got a map of Midle Earth that looks unmistakingly like Weatern Eurassia(Europe) and northern Africa. Click here.
This URL works so do you mind to have a look at it?

I do not believe Middle-earth represents any period that has occured in our history.

America cannot be Aman for the reasons Grondy gave. Aman would lie somewhere far above America in some outer plain like the thermosphere or exosphere (perhaps the equivelent of Ilmen or Vaiya).
America cannot be the Gates of Morning (also called Lands of Sun) either becuase they lie in the furthest East of Arda, not the furthest west.

America would be the 'New lands' that were formed after Valinor was taken away. The lands that took the place of Valinor on Earth but were uninhabited.

Indeed following from that quote it is possible that the history of Arda could have fitted into an unknown part of our past perhaps about 10,000 years ago after the Ice Age. Perhaps Humans evolved to the Middle-earth level but then were almost wiped out back to cave-men stage by some cataclysm a few thousand years ago.

This is not all that impossible. Look what the Ancient Egyptians did 5000 years ago, and the Ancient Greeks. And Stone henge itself is a marvelously complex contruction. Its more than just something to look at. If memory serves it was some kind of device for telling time/date etc. But its very complicated and scientists are amazed how people from 5000 years ago could come up with something like that.

What I am saying is that various People in this world have had there own mini-evolutions (like the Egyptians) and created great things and then disappeared. Perhaps its not so incredible that there could be a slot allocated in our history where Middle-earth could have fitted without dispute and then fell afterwards.

Perhaps our own world began just like Arda 4 billion years or so ago and sinse then the continetal plates have changed many times and since the Elves left Middle-earth (our world as we know it) its so long ago that the stars have changed.

Perhaps I am letting my imagination get the better of me...

And if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to....

Lord of all made a brilliant point that the egyptians made extraordinary things and then dissapeared

are you talking about those big statues in persia that look like a man at first but from the side the have the body of a lion and wings

there is a half lion half man statue outside a pyramid in eygpt called a sphinx said to gaurd the pharoa within

How did the ancients in England and Peru know how to make their giant pictures on the ground that are much more understandable when viewed from the air?

Obviously they had no means of viewing them directly from above but maybe from any nearby cliffs or mountains? Only thing I can think of. Otherwise this is yet another marvel of ancient peoples that we have no answer for.

I won't say its an impossibility but the fossil and archeological evidence to prove this is thus far almost non-existant.

A lot of history was lost during the last Ice Age; whose to say those glaciers didn't grind out an ancient city or two; especially if the ice age was caused by a thermonuclear war over ten thousand years ago. Something to consider anyway.

as in Elves I take it... My idea is that it depended on the "solidity" of the Earth.. or the fullness of the reality of it. In other words, the species is the same but the condition of their perception of the world around them was different... but that should be for another thread.


I think that the Undying Lands are clearly in another Dimension... My impression was that rather than Aman being "taken up" like a flying saucer... That the flat span of the Western Ocean was wrapped around backwards to the Eastern Ocean and the world was made round.... so some kind of large time/space phenomenon apparently took place that altered the geography to a larger degree than before. Did not the Valar lose a bit of their direct influence as well after that?

I remember something about the "Sun Lands" .. maybe that was a fan fiction map.. but it looked remarkably like the Americas.
This map is wonderful
http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/middle-earth.jpg

LOL

I'm astounded with the Northern inversion on the Map that puts a lot of the action around the Scandinavian/Germanic regions which makes sense.

I'm ready to go to Iceland and find the Ruins of Gondolin.

Tolkien does several times does refer to Numenor as 'Numenor-Atlantis'. Beyond any doubt was it based on 'the Lost City'.

This may be a little off from middle "earth" as earth, but the constellations of middle earth (should we call this middle heaven?) described in "three is company" (Chapter Three of Book I of FoTR) could very well parallel our own.



Menelvagor sounds suspiciously like the constellation we call Orion....

I believe the Professor meant us to draw the similarity of his descriptions to those our heavenly bodies; it makes the tie between his world and ours that much more believable.

If you can't tell, I'm reading through FoTR again, and the heavens are catching my attention this time around.

From "the ring goes south" (ch. 3 of book 2 in FotR):
"The Hunter's Moon waxed round in the night sky, and put to flight all the lesser stars. But low in the South one star shone red. Every night, as the Moon waned again, it shone brighter and brighter. Frodo could see it from his window, deep in the heavens, burning like a watchful eye that glared above the trees on the brink of the valley."

Could this be Mars, or Jupiter, or another planet? It is certainly low enough to be in the Zodiac, and bright enough to be seen even with a full moon. If Frodo had been gazing at this from, say, the top of Orthanc, I might credit it as some evil fire of Sauron. (In fact, could this passage mistakenly be the inspiration for PJ's physical depiction of a giant glowing red eye on the top of a high tower in Mordor ?)

In this neck of the woods, Antares in Autumn is a daytime star and thus is invisible behind the Sun. Of course the position of Arda under the Zodiac may be different than that of planet Earth bck then, but I am still leaning towards the planet Mars.

Tolkien was undoubtedly using whatever the red thingy was (whether Mars, a star, or Prince John's India rubber ball) simply to foreshadow Sauron's bloodshot fiery eyeball, which of course was impossible to see from Imladris due to the curvature of the earth and the intervening Misty Mountains.

I think we need to remember that Tolkien always insisted that the LOTR was not an allegory on WWII, and it was certainly not an allegory on his own war, WWI.  However, he also said that while it was not an allegory, applicability was quite another matter - and he certainly drew some of his characters and peoples and speech from his own experience in WWI - his Orcs are so close in some respects to the Tommies, Diggers, Poilus, Landsers etc.  I don't think he necessarily realised that it made them in a way both pitiable and forgiveable.   He was not alone in his evident shock at soldier language and behaviour - many other officers, Wilfred Owen included, reacted similarly (and, incidentally, so did I, to a degree,  just over fifty years later.)

 

However - the geography of Middle Earth.  The fact that Tolkien's maps vaguely resemble France to the South of the Norman coast, and points East,  certainly as far as the Alps and maybe as far as the Balkans, ties in neatly with the legends of Atlantis or Lyonesse, where the map of Western Europe would have been altered forever by their inundation in the Atlantic.   In this way, Middle Earth  might be understood as a pre-inundation France and Europe, whch does beg the question of whether the Southrons came from what we would understand as Spain - and certainly, we can recognise some of Sauron's forces as Africans, both North Africans and sub-Saharan, complete with elephants.

And beyond the Havens, which I imagine as rather like Douarnenez or maybe La Rochelle?   The New World, and when we look at its successor, we can only pity the ultimate fate of the Elves - although I always found something rather Elvish in Joan Baez - don't you?

Well living in The New World ( Australia ) and never having been to Europe I always imagined that the East of Middle Earth was The British Isles and France and North Eastern Europe in very early days when the English channel did not exist and Britain was part of an older main land. I don't know enough regarding the geography of Europe to comment further re middle Earth, however I agree that The Blessed West was once attached to Europe in the North by frozen territory which edged ever closer East as it approached North. The Undying lands of course were removed from our Earth, with Eru turning the previously flat Earth into a globe, which of course we live on now. I agree that the ancient West is part of perhaps a different dimension, which Mortals cannot fathom or find, unless by accident. Of course the bent road can still be found, and travelled on by those Elves and Maia who still linger here. And there is evidence of the accidental finding of this bent road by hapless mortal mariners in the Silmarillion.

True Galin however the new Moon rising as the betrayed Noldor set foot bac on Middle Earh and Men awakened by the first Sun rise is so much more romantic, dramatic and wonderful. And a flat Arda has always fascinated me.

True Galin however the new Moon rising as the betrayed Noldor set foot bac on Middle Earh and Men awakened by the first Sun rise is so much more romantic, dramatic and wonderful. And a flat Arda has always fascinated me.  

 

I like the flat world (and older cosmology) too Brego, and I like to think Tolkien retained the flat world version by making Quenta Silmarillion a largely Mannish affair. Some seem to think Myths Transformed wholly supersedes earlier versions... and maybe these ideas were meant to at first... but I think JRRT ultimately realized the potential answer noted by Christopher Tolkien: alter the authorship and transmission of the work, not certain fundamental concepts...

... while (in my opinion) saving certain texts like the Awakening of the Quendi, for instance, to provide an Elvish perspective.

I should add that I'm not positive that in his later years JRRT necessarily retained every latest detail that can be found in the papers comprising Myths Transformed, but I do feel fairly confident that he re-imagined the Silmarillion as largely Mannish in authorship so that, in part, these notions (the original shape of the world and the creation of the Sun) could be dealt with in a way an older Tolkien felt more comfortable with.

Like your map overlay. I guess any European person 'making up' mythical lands is bound to use his/her own knowledge of maps as a basis. I also think north and mid Wales would 'fit' fairly well on such an overlay.

So far I have found Osgiliath, Minis Tirith, Black Gate, Mordor, Bag End, Bree, Dead Marshes, The eye and Rivendell in this area.

 

Inclusion of Beleriand doesn't push everything more to the east; the Shire stays firmly in England. Hobbiton was inspired by Sarehole near Birmingham, where Tolkien spent his early childhood. There's even the old Mill still there: http://www.bmag.org.uk/sarehole-mill

I suggest all Tolkien fans to read The Atlas of Middle-Earth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atlas_of_Middle-earth

Apart from the excellent maps, it describes the landscape, climate, vegetation, etc. and draws parallels with the known world.