How real is Tolkien's world?

[Olmer]

Everybody knows about the recent discovery in South Africa of a hobbit-like humanoid, nicknamed "the Hobbit".

Now it's another discovery of the giant eagles.
Huge eagles dominated NZ skies (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4138147.stm)
Just stop for a minute and visualize the enormous size of the bird.
Such "Thorondors" in american measurement had 10-foot "truncated" wingspan in flight, which is considered an angled span for flight purposes.

Wonder if anything else could come out?
Probably,the discovery of the remnant of "elf" is not in so distant future? ;) :p

[Earniel]

Curious news fact about the giant eagle. With a weight of 10-14kg I'm inclined to believe this extinct eagle still wouldn't be a match for Middle-earth Eagles who could carry dwarves and wizards. Although carrying abilities would probably more determined by wing muscle mass and wing span than weight, but I confess I don't know enough of this. Still, it's interesting, if this Haast's eagle was large enough to dominate his environment, than Tolkien's Eagles should have had a greater impact on their environment as well.

I'm not waiting until they find an Elf, their skeletons should be too similar to humans to see a difference. Even those who believe in the pointy-eared variety of Elves would find nothing as soft tissue doesn't preserve, unless it's a bog body or something. Although I am curious whether they'll ever discover Tengwar writings in some old tomb in England. :D

I could be wrong but I thought the Hobbit-like hominid was found in Asia, not Africa.

[inked]

Would that be an Asian eagle or an African Eagle? Rather like the swallows in MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL, eh? :p

Actually, I'm holding out for an Orc skeleton myself. Though I suppose one could say that all the archeologists have missed the point about the actual origins of what they consider pre-human hominids. ;)

[Olmer]

EärnielI could be wrong but I thought the Hobbit-like hominid was found in Asia, not Africa
No, it discovered in Africa.If you will be interested, here is a part of the text from some scientific journal, which miracluously still remained amongst my old files. One of our oldest ancestors was recently discovered in Central Africa. It goes back to 7 or 6 million years ago and it was named Sahelanthropus tchadensis, nicknamed "toumai"; but very little is known about him. He lived during the Miocene...
You're likely to remember that dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago, which closed the Cretaceous Period. It was then followed by the Tertiary Period, ruled by giant mammals. Nowadays, we're living the Quaternary Period... ruled by Man. The Tertiary Period was divided into smaller epochs: the Paleocene, the Eocene, the Oligocene, the Miocene (from 25 million years to 5 million years ago) and the Pliocene. And it was in the Miocene that hominids started developing. Since the end of the Cretaceous, though, the climate kept changing: first it got colder, killing off much of the tropical forests where dinosaurs had lived; millions of years later it got hot again; and then colder...
Around 3 million years ago, hominids had divided into two different groups: one more sturdily built, possessing strong teeth and jaws, and the other a bit more gracile, possessing smaller teeth and jaws
The Chad discovery reinforces the widely held belief of anthropologists that human evolution was complex and, in a commonly used term in the field, "bushy." This means that, on the way from the common ancestors of chimpanzees and human beings, nature evidently experimented with many kinds of pre-humans and apes. And that, of the two branches that led finally to chimps and humans respectively, many trials failed and disappeared into the mists of time. Quite a while ago I read an interesting (but scientific) book " The Extinct Humans", written by two anthropologists;
according to their researches on the earth at one time existed about 15 types of hominids. (Thanks inked for correction :) )
So, maybe inked is right in his suggestion that archeologists have missed the point about an actual origin of prehistoric men :)

There is "Forbidden Archeology", a very interesting book on this subject written by Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson, where they presented acheological evidence, which is not accepted or ignored by the scientific community since this discoveries are contradicting the dominant views of human origins, suggesting that Homo sapiens existed on earth millions of years ago. Like the discovery of the parts of human skull which shows all characteristics of the skull of contemporary man, but chemical and radiometric analyses astonishingly manifested that ths kind of men had been living 11 millions years ago!!!
Hey,Eärniel it could be your elves! ;) :)

[Earniel]

No, it discovered in Africa.If you will be interested, here is a part of the text from some scientific journal, which miracluously still remained amongst my old files.
Oh, you're talking about Toumai! No wonder, I thought you were refering to the find of the Homo Floresiensis (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4331252.stm) whose recent discovery made it all over the world wide news. It's that find that has been referred to as Hobbits, but I've never seen the word linked to Toumai.

[Olmer]

You absolutely right! I meant Homo Floresiensis from South Pacific, but have got mixed up. It happened sometimes at 3:00 at night ;) Sorry for misleading.

Here is another interesting relic. Remnants of Treebeard?? :)
On a wild Tasmanian mountain there is a magnificent, recently discovered stand of Huon pine trees that has been called the world's 'oldest known living organism'. Newspaper reports have claimed that what looks like hundreds of trees densely covering one hectare (2.5 acres), is all part of the one tree, since all these 'trees' appear to have identical DNA. Over the years, it is believed, ''snow has forced its branches to the ground, where they have taken root''(The Sydney Morning Herald, January 28, 1995, page 1.)
Talking about trees...
I remember some interesting comments about surviving Huorn, made be Jerseydevil. He even posted a picture of the tree with story how people have been caught by the tree.
I think his notes also belong to this topic.

Wonder, if any of mooters can contribute something to this discussion.
Come on, guys! Let's the thread keep going! :)

[Farimir Captain of Gondor]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6346939/

Heres another link about the "hobbit" that i found which talks about their relationship to homo sapiens. I remember seeing something on the Dicovery Channel awhile back that taked about the ancient creatures of New Zealand and it talked about the giant eagles that lived there. I did a google search and even went to the Discovery web site but couldn't find it. :( They were able to pick up humans and even hunted them. The people that lived there would send out one person to get water from a spring why another would watch the sky for this bird. They said it would sometimes swop down and pick up two people at a time and take them back to it's nest to feed its eaglets! :eek: It would be so cool if they found a troll skeleton in an ancient cave. Maybe one of a fell beast in the mountains.

[ElvenLover]

Just wondering :confused: , but...
Where in the world do you get all this information? Do you guys just kinda... pick up this info, hear it around, what?
I find it interesting to see what sort of stuff people know and keep up with, (wierd habit, I know :o ) and this is something pretty interesting.
Do ya mind lettin' me know? :p

[Farimir Captain of Gondor]

Just wondering :confused: , but...
Where in the world do you get all this information? Do you guys just kinda... pick up this info, hear it around, what?
I find it interesting to see what sort of stuff people know and keep up with, (wierd habit, I know :o ) and this is something pretty interesting.
Do ya mind lettin' me know? :p

Welcome to Entmoot ElvenLover. :D I am fairly new myself and everyone is really nice here. I watch far to much t.v. :D I enjoy watching the Discover Channel, Animal Planet, and the History Channel. I learned, from the moot ;) , that google seems to be a pretty good search engine. That and everyone here is very intelligent and have some great views on things from Tolkien to cooking. Hope you enjoy this place as much as I have.

[Lotesse]

Yes, a big welcome to ElvenLover! :)

That bit about the oldest living tree organism reminded me of something I'd read somewhere once, so I looked it up just now on - you guessed it, Google, and got a few things back. Here's some:


King's Holly (Lomatia tasmanica) - found in the rainforests of Tasmania. Scientists estimated the age of the plant using a nearby fossil of an identical plant. It was found to be over 43,000 years old! The plants appear to be sterile - incapable of producing flowers and viable seeds. Lomatia is triploid, that is, it has three sets of chromosomes instead of two. Because of this it is unable to sexually reproduce. The clonal thickets reproduce vegetatively by root suckering. Fossil leaves found in a late Pleistocene deposit may be genetically identical to present-day plants. The plant is a rare freak of nature whose origins and age are as yet unknown.

King's Lomatia is unusual because all of the remaining plants are genetically identical. Because it has three sets of chromosomes (a triploid) and is therefore sterile, reproduction occurs only vegetatively: when a branch falls, that branch grows new roots, establishing a new plant that is genetically identical to its parent.

Although all the plants are technically separate in that each has its own root system, they are collectively considered to be the oldest living plant clone. Each plant's life span is approximately 300 years, but the plant has been cloning itself for at least 43,600 years. This estimate is based on the radiocarbon dating of fossilised leaf fragments that were found 8.5 km away. The fossilised fragments are identical to the contemporary plant in cell structure and shape, which indicates that both plants are triploid and therefore clones due to the extreme rarity of the occurrence of triploidy.
(that's from Wikipedia)


AND...

The Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) is generally considered the largest living organism on earth. The Sequoia is native primarily to the Sierra Nevada Mountains of eastern California. The largest Sequoia is the General Sherman tree with a height of 250 feet and a diameter near the base of 24.75 feet. The trunk of the tree weighs almost 1400 tons or equivalent to 15 adult blue whales. It can be argued, however; that the tree is not the largest living organism since most of the tree consists of dead, not living tissues.


tree trivia 4 all y'all! ;) :D

[Olmer]

That's really interesting piece about King's Holly, Lotesse.
Farimir Captain of Gondor thank you for giving the link of more in deepth report on "Hobbits" account. :)
Actually, I'm holding out for an Orc skeleton myself. Though I suppose one could say that all the archeologists have missed the point about the actual origins of what they consider pre-human hominids. ;)
Inked, as it turns out, your anticipations was not that baseless. :) Here is an antropological discovery, suggesting that along with homo sapiens on the earth were roaming hominids very close to Orcs (http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf083/sf083b08.htm) in description. :)

[Curubethion]

Actually, I'm holding out for an Orc skeleton myself. Though I suppose one could say that all the archeologists have missed the point about the actual origins of what they consider pre-human hominids. ;)
:confused:
I thought that was Piltdown Man?
:p

[Old toby's wicked weed]

You absolutely right! I meant Homo Floresiensis from South Pacific, but have got mixed up. It happened sometimes at 3:00 at night ;) Sorry for misleading.

Here is another interesting relic. Remnants of Treebeard?? :)

Talking about trees...
I remember some interesting comments about surviving Huorn, made be Jerseydevil. He even posted a picture of the tree with story how people have been caught by the tree.
I think his notes also belong to this topic.

Wonder, if any of mooters can contribute something to this discussion.
Come on, guys! Let's the thread keep going! :)



not "Homo Floresiensis" from South park be?

[Sam]

I think that we would all agree that history shows us that as we go further back in years, animals seem to get bigger, but not humans.

This culd be why the mumaks, spiders, and eagles were sooo huge while the humans were the same. But then again, if you go by what I just said, the insects in Tolkien's world are nowere near the size that they should be.

[Earniel]

This could be why the mumaks, spiders, and eagles were sooo huge while the humans were the same. But then again, if you go by what I just said, the insects in Tolkien's world are nowere near the size that they should be.
Somehow I find that a frigthening thought. :eek:

[GreyMouser]

I don't think even the giant New Zealand eagle would be able to carry a human- maybe a toddler- though they probably attacked them.
I do recall reading an essay by Jared Diamond on New Zealand's extinct wildlife (in "The Third Chimpanzee"?) where he pointed out that one of the eagle's main prey was the Moa, an ostrich-size flightless bird- so when the first Maoris started strolling around, the eagles figured, hey, it's tall, it's got two legs...

[Farimir Captain of Gondor]

I don't think even the giant New Zealand eagle would be able to carry a human- maybe a toddler- though they probably attacked them.
I do recall reading an essay by Jared Diamond on New Zealand's extinct wildlife (in "The Third Chimpanzee"?) where he pointed out that one of the eagle's main prey was the Moa, an ostrich-size flightless bird- so when the first Maoris started strolling around, the eagles figured, hey, it's tall, it's got two legs...
I think you're right. Here are a few links about the giant eagle of New Zealand. The first one talks a little about the eagle and it preying on the Moa you were talking about the second gives a list of statistics about the bird.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4138147.stm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/wildfacts/factfiles/3044.shtml

[Olmer]

I don't think even the giant New Zealand eagle would be able to carry a human- maybe a toddler- though they probably attacked them.But if we will talk about more prehistoric birds,then it proved to be not a probability, but a solid evidence. This is from april's " Smithsonian" magazine.

Attack of the Killer Eagle

What killed the Taung child, the celebrated human ancestor who lived two million years ago? A prehistoric eagle, according to a new analysis of the child’s skull, the first hominid fossil ever discovered in Africa, in 1924. Claw and beak marks inside the skull (a cast, right) suggest the bird plunged a talon into the child’s brain through his eye and carried the body to its nest. Researchers had long believed that a large cat killed the young Australopithecus africanus, even though the skull was originally found among monkey and tortoise remains similar to that near nests of today’s African crowned eagle. Lee Berger, a paleoanthropologist at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, says this is the first solid evidence that birds hunted early humans.

[GreyMouser]

But if we will talk about more prehistoric birds,then it proved to be not a probability, but a solid evidence. This is from april's " Smithsonian" magazine.

Wow, great! I remember reading about Dart's discovery of the Taung child and the whole 'killer-ape' controversy, and it being "definitely" decided that the unfortunate infant was killed by a cat. So Bilbo was right to be scared!

To show how many sickos are out there...
The Taung Child Load Limerick contest:

An African species of raptor
To the Taung child said, "I'll be your captor
In small pieces you'd best
Come away to my nest."
And that's how the raptor kidnapped her.

http://archaeology.about.com/cs/justforfun/a/taungair.htm

Surprised that there were no "Holy Grail" references.
Puts on poet's cap....

[gwilwileth]

Wouldn't it be weird if tolkien had made Arda based on what the world could have turned into. Instead of Asia and Africa there was The undying lands and the Easterling, and in the middle was all middle earth. Wouldn't it also be weird to think that right now instead of being on the computer we were caught in the middle of the war of the ring, or after having survived it. It is something interesting to think about. What if tolkien somehow got transported into a parellel universe, and came back to write about the legends and things he had seen?

[Alcuin]

There was a report in the 1970s from the plains of the United States of an enormous bird that picked up a 12- or 14-year old boy and began to lift him. His mother grabbed him, and the bird briefly lifted both of them before sinking under the weight and dropping them several feet from the ground. I have seen an interview of the mother and her son several times, and I recall reading the reports in newspapers and news magazines at the time. (I was roughly the same age as the boy, and the veracity of the reports was discussed over our kitchen table.)

The report recalled to some people American Indian stories of the thunderbird, a mythical bird of enormous size that could lift women and children, at least by some accounts. Many North American tribes have a tradition of this creature.

Hunters and farmers have very occasionally reported birds of enormous size in the United States, and there is from time to time video or photographic material to go with it.

But none of these reports – the boy and his mother, the thunderbird legends, or the incidental sightings of extraordinarily large birds – have ever been accepted by ornithologists, nor have any carcasses been recovered. The largest bird confirmed in North America is the California condor, a smaller cousin to the South American Andean condor. The California condor has a wingspan of about 3 meters and weighs about 10 kilograms. The Andean condor has a slightly larger wingspan and weighs as much as 25-30% more.

Eagles are known to steal sheep on several continents. An adult ewe can easily weight about 160 pounds (about 70 kilograms, or 11 stone).