sparse

[afro-elf]

It seems that in LOTR that middle-earth is sparely populated.

was this because of a plague that no one fully recoverd from?

when was the plague?

was it caused by sauron?

[Darth Tater]

Middle Earth in LOTR is in a time just before a cultural/technological revolution. There are no swift modes of transport, so going from one place to another takes much longer then it would now (for instance, the treck from Bag End to Frodo's new digs wouldn't have been a few days, more like a few hour car ride.) Because of this, the trecks through wide open spaces are longer, and therefore the spaces seem wider.

Middle Earth is at that time actually built on top of a history of thousands of years, and, during LOTR, the race that dominated that history is leaving the land. That could also account for some of the sparceness you've detected.

[afro-elf]

i found the plague quote its in appendix b the 3rd age

in 1636 the great plague devastates gondor...and many parts of eriador become desolate...

i guess this and the fall of the north kingdom wiped out most settlements


or maybe the prof. didn't go into what cities or towns where left in Eriador

[afro-elf]

The One Ring RPG http://www.cubicle7.co.uk/our-games/the-one-ring/

and

LOTRO

http://signup.lotro.com/lotro.php?ftui=LOTROWeathertopHCvideo&cl=75&hf=1&abrs=811_1368082155&interstitial=true

Seem to have "believably" added towns and villages to the world.

[Draken]

Heck of a bump, a-e!

I always imagine that Tolkien had England in mind, as he stated one of his aims was to create a mythology for the English. At the time of the Domesday book the population density of England was somewhere between 20-40 people per square mile (the uncertainty is because households were recorded but not the number of occupants, so it depends how large your average Saxon family was!). The peak density in medieval England was about 120 per square mile. That compares with 650 per square mile for the UK now.

But those figures are for a country where about 75% of the land was productive, either as farmland or usable woodlands. Those sorts of densities might apply to the Shire, say. But true wilderness with no farming could only support a permanent population of 2-4 people per square mile.