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Something not mentioned in the article: Middle Earth is depopulated. Without large market, it does not make sense to produce at scale, nor you will have the cap

Something not mentioned in the article: Middle Earth is depopulated. Without large market, it does not make sense to produce at scale, nor you will have the capital to do it. The main characters travel hundreds of kilometers down the biggest river around and they don't encounter other vessels or a populated settlement until they reach Minas Tirith. And I'm not even mentioning the missing cities and villages in the inland part of the travel. We can say that this is due to lower birth rate in the numenorians who obviously have reproductive issues as mentioned in the books. Another reason is the brain, knowledge and capital drain caused by the large elvian immigration going for centuries. Dwarfs have the excuse of a long generation length to explain why they are not multiplying like rabbits for the thousands of years since the last world war, however, Tolkien does not provide a good reason for the other human nations, the orcs or even the hobbits. Possible explanation might be the unstable security situation on the continent, however, most of the societies are not described as being constantly under the risk of a raid from nearby orc. Aragorn is able to defend most of the north with a few hundred irregulars, while the east participated in only one war 60 years ago that was done in a few weeks time. The south is not described, but nothing unusual there as well as far as the books go.

BarryMilo 4y ago
Another explanation: maybe they dont want to bring children into that dangerous world (and are all experts at the pull-out method).
- junofan 4y ago
  It’s kinda implied that Sauron’s rings make individuals of the various races more interested in sticking around longer than in producing offspring. Hobbits were relatively unaffected and had lots of children.
  - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
    But somehow, despite the fecundity of the Rosie Cotton-Gangees, with 13 children, the Shire had a total population of about 100k, the size of a small (edit: but not that small) town (or the UK population in 3000BC). So either pre-reproductive mortality is through the roof, but never mentioned, they haven't been there long[1], or something bad happened recently (before the events in the LoTR)[2]. [1] Except Hobbits settled the Shire about 3000 (edit: 1500, I can't count) years before the books. [2] The idyllic setting, lack of traumatic narrative and their 1500-year settlement somewhat implies they haven't been through some kind of brutal population bottleneck recently.
    - junofan 4y ago
      Well they were all over Eriador. There were plagues and other such disasters.
      - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
        Indeed, though the Great Plague was over 1000 years ago, there was a famine more recently. Maybe Hobbits really just are that resilient and cheerful that they just carry on despite massive depopulation events that would make the Black Death look fairly tame.
    - rob74 4y ago
      Er, in Germany, 100k is the population where a city is allowed to call itself "Großstadt" - so big city, not small town. In medieval times, people had lots of children, but most of them died very young. Of course this doesn't fit into Tolkien's idyllic description of the Shire, so it's not mentioned, but I guess families with 13 children who all survived to adulthood were the lucky exception...
      - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
        Well also Rotherham in the UK is a town with over 100k people, though not US-style "small town", it's certainly not a city, and not even a particularly huge town (there are many 100k+ towns that aren't cities: the largest is Reading with nearly 1/4 million) But that might be just a UK naming thing since "city" means something special (and isn't actually especially related to size: the smallest one is 1600 people). But yes, perhaps it's not really a "small" town but just a town.
    - sdenton4 4y ago
      Two things to consider here: a) Historical populations were much smaller than current population, so 'big' scales similarly. The world population around 1700 was about 10% of current population. b) And maybe the bigger effect, we've had MASSIVE urbanization in the last 100-150 years. In 1500, Europe had urbanization rates well below 10% [https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Europe/Demographics https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Europe/Demograph...], compared with 72% in 2015. So not only were there 90% fewer people, but most of them didn't live in cities. Paris, the largest city in Europe, had a population of around 150k-250k in 1500, depending where you look. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_in_the_Middle_Ages#Population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_in_the_Middle_Ages#Popul...]
- lordnacho 4y ago
  Don't people make more kids in more dangerous places, the logic being that you need to spread your risk of not having descendants?
  - samus 4y ago
    Unless mandated by ideology, people don't think that way about getting children. If a place gets too dangerous, people either die, take countermeasures, or flee.
kqr 4y ago
This is not as big of a problem as it sounds: large swathes of Siberia are depopulated, yet factories abound in China. All it takes is local concentration of population, which Middle-Earth has.
- gostsamo 4y ago
  However, the industrial revolution did not start in Siberia and it is proving only that it can't start in a world with so far removed population centers. Waterways are the cheapest transport option and source of water for the crops, yet nobody lives next to the biggest river around. The only possible reason would be if there is nobody to live there.
  - picsao 4y ago
    War with ents is my most likely explanation, most of middle earth is the frontiers in inter species warfare.
    - b112 4y ago
      Ah yes, the ents seem to dislike mankind and their axes. Maybe so!
    - KineticLensman 4y ago
      I think Tolkien would have mentioned this somewhere. The Ents are notably isolationist.
  - kqr 4y ago
    No, but as someone else pointed out: industrialism was going strong in Mordor and maybe even other places?
    - gostsamo 4y ago
      Mordor was starting an industrial revolution which couldn't have been older than 60 years. Nothing explains the lack of development the previous few millemnia.
dylan604 4y ago
Weren't orcs made by Sauron rather than being a natural species though? So they were never really born in the normal mammalian method.
- junofan 4y ago
  They were made by Sauron’s boss. They breed on their own. Sauron has to convince the orcs to work for him; this was tough when he was in his more angelic form.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- alibrarydweller 4y ago
  You might be thinking of the "genetically enhanced" Uruk Hai orcs created by Saruman.
  - mcv 4y ago
    If I'm not mistaken, Melkor (Morgoth) created orcs by corrupting elves. Saruman created Uruk-Hai by breeding orcs with humans.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    Quite possibly. I was never that deep into it, but have many many friends that are so I had heard them discussing various aspects. Clearly got some wires crossed
yyyk 4y ago
>however, Tolkien does not provide a good reason for the other human nations, the orcs or even the hobbits. Hm.. Orcs are easy to explain. I doubt Sauron or Saruman care at all about their lives. As the animated adaption put it: "When there's a whip there's a way". add in constant external warfare (and possible internal warfare too) and you end up with a low population. Hobbits are implied to have a very different past from their LOTR circumstance (IIRC they conquered the Shire from the Orcs?), though I recall very few details are given. One may also suspect a low reproduction rate judging by lifespan. Perhaps the Shire started from a low base, and only by LOTR had enough for an industrial revolution?
- gostsamo 4y ago
  Internal warfare is caused by competing for the same resources. Orcs must be under external constraints to fight with each other instead of spreading around to occupy/pillage other resources. We can accept that they are constrained to certain habitats and the same could be even said about the dwarfs, however there are many human nations in the books and none of them has created large continues settlement zones. Again, the lack of people and trade on Anduin is a shocker for me.
  - yyyk 4y ago
    >Internal warfare is caused by competing for the same resources. Politics is a sufficient condition. Perhaps Sauron would not tolerate 'independent' Orcs he can't use as canon fodder? >Again, the lack of people and trade on Anduin is a shocker for me. Yeah, it's the humans which are hardest to explain away. Some peasants should have thought 'We're tried of paying taxes to Gondor. We'll just move and no one can or would even bother find us'.
    - gostsamo 4y ago
      Politics is handwaving for the structural reasons for a conflict. No need for fighting each other if there is an easier gain to be found outside. At least not fights that would be significant enough to suppress the population growth.
    - 4y ago
hef19898 4y ago
The author lost me at tge first paragraph: he never read it, and still he wonders why, in medieval fanatsy setting, there are no pump guns.
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  So why are there no pump guns? Indeed, considering Tolkien's otherwise fully-defined universe (and the industrialisation in Mordor indicating that it can be done), it's a fun question, and they rather use the question as as springboard into quite a ranging discussion of the factors behind real Industrial Revolution rather than a comic-book-guy-style tear-down of LoTR specifically.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    Because during the time of the musket there were no pump guns neither. EDIT: It took quite some time between the early days of the industrial revolution and the first semi-automatic guns. Ignoring LOTR for a minute, if in story taking place in the 17th century the question of "why didn't X use a colt .45" is easily answered, because it wasn't invented yet.
    - HelloNurse 4y ago
      But many parties are sparsely but explicitly described as making and using fantastically advanced marvels of somewhat magical technology in ancient times, some of which are still around like Sauron's Rings. Probably the most honest reason to not have guns in Middle-Earth is that only stupid orcs, not the elves and dwarves who could easily develop them as school projects, would be interested in such tasteless weapons.
      - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
        I don't think all the Kingdoms of Men would have turned their noses up at a few cartloads of nice Dwarven culverin, regardless of what the Dwarves themselves (or those snooty elves) thought of them.
xg15 4y ago
> while the east participated in only one war 60 years ago that was done in a few weeks time. Note that when the fellowship passes through Lorien and Gondor, the ring war is already in full force, the fellowship just doesn't notice a lot of it. By the time they travel the Anduin, the river is considered a front line: Everything east of the river is already occupied by Sauron, while the areas directly west of it had been evacuated. The book mentions this as one reason why the land is so deserted. (In addition to the long-term decline of Gondor that of course also happened, illustrated by the deserted lookout posts and ruins around the Argonath)
- gostsamo 4y ago
  The Mordor expansion should've started one-two generations ago. No mentions of recent ruins and the more likely reaction of the population on the best communication pathway in the local part of the continent should've been building walls and armies, no fast desertion of their homes.
  - samus 4y ago
    Maintaining walls and supplying armies requires a fair amount of population though. Middle Earth is very thinly populated. The former Realm of Arnor is so thinly settled that the Northern Kingdom of the Dunedain had to be dissolved, and its people were reduced to a nomadic lifestyle. Sort of what happened to the crvilizations in the Amazonas basin in the 16th century.
    - gostsamo 4y ago
      Yes, the whole thread is trying to find plausible reasons why the population does not recover after disasters. The elves are leaving and gondorians have issue reproducing. Everyone else should've been totally capable of taking those big chunks of land and building new societies there. Orcs should've just made them build more warlike cultures and not just hide, because orcs are raiders, not an well organized force which can deny territory against an determined adversary for long periods of time. People live in Bree for centuries. Why there are no settlements between the shire and it? Why Bree hasn't expanded in the other directions?
alpaca128 4y ago
> lower birth rate in the numenorians who obviously have reproductive issues as mentioned in the books I wonder if Elden Ring's lore took a bit of inspiration from this: > The Numen are a race of beings descended from otherworldly travelers. Long lived and seldom born, Queen Marika the Eternal is the primary member of this race.
- nindalf 4y ago
  George RR Martin wrote the lore for Elden Ring. He is intimately aware of Tolkien’s work. It’s not surprising to see such a homage.
  - cardiffspaceman 4y ago
    Speaking of which, why doesn't any military in any kingdom in A Song of Ice and Fire have jets? That one immense building (pardon my spoiler-avoiding vagueness) with seemingly no interior columns led me to wonder this. But the answer may be that the book building and the show building are nothing alike, and the show exaggerates characteristics that aren't such a big deal or leaves out realistic details that interfere with making the building impressive. I have read part of the books but not the relevant part. And I'm not even referring to the speed of movement that characters seem to mysteriously have.
nindalf 4y ago
“Only one war 60 years ago” underestimates the impact that goblins/orcs have. It’s not wars alone that cause depopulation, it’s the constant raids. The orcs have secure holds in the Misty Mountains that allow them to raid all surrounding areas at will. This keeps these areas thinly populated. The exceptions are places like Lake Town, which are highly defensible. It’s not really possible to attack the orcs in their mountain homes for anyone except Dwarves. And even Dwarves understood their limits. In the War of the Dwarves and Orcs (TA 2793-2799) they sacked every orc stronghold from “Gundabad to the Gladden” but even then did not dare to enter Moria, where orcs remained secure and continued to multiply.
- nosianu 4y ago
  But there were not many orcs and goblins for a long time in many areas, as we learned from the books. They only came back and multiplied with the slow return-growth of Sauron. I would be more interested in the period of when Moria was thriving - when they wrote the password for the back door right above it. Meaning, those must have been one of the most peaceful periods in the wider regions history. How dense was the population at that time?
  - Amezarak 4y ago
    > But there were not many orcs and goblins for a long time in many areas, as we learned from the books. They only came back and multiplied with the slow return-growth of Sauron. Sauron had already returned c1000 TA to Dol Guldur. We're specifically told that evil things, such as Orcs, begin multiplying in number by c1300 TA, which triggers the migration of the Hobbits to the Shire (already we have an example of why there's less people than we expect.) In c1400 the Nazgul begin their long destruction of the disunited (perennially entangled in civil war) kingdoms of Arnor. In c1500, Gondor is embroiled in devastating wars with Harad. In the 1600s a Great Plague depopulates the North and West: "many parts of Eriador become desolate"; not long before, Gondor has had a horrible civil war. During the plague, even the Shire suffers "great loss." In the 1800s Gondor is again involved in a costly war, this time against the Wainriders, and loses its eastern territories. In 1981 TA Moria falls. In the 2400s Gondor is again under a major attack by (though they do not know it) Sauron, and Sauron is able to use the Orcs in the Misty Mountains to effectively cut off Eriador from the rest of the continent. in the 2500s, the Gondorians are bailed out of a major disaster by the appearance of the Rohirrim, but shortly after, the dragons appear and decimate the dwarves. In the 2700s, after centuries of Orc attacks in the region, the Hobbits themselves defeat a band of Orcs; shortly after, Dale and the Iron Mountain fall to Smaug, Rhoah is nearly destroyed, and Gondor is attacked by fleets of Corsairs. In addition, there is a devastating winter that causes "great suffering and loss of life"; in the same century, Smaug annihilates Erebor and Dale, and there's a major, costly war between the dwarves and the Orcs. In the following centuries, there are continual major Orc attacks. In 2900 Men finally abandon Ithilien. In 2911 there is another devastating winter, and the year after, great floods that result in the desertion of Tharbad and Minhiriath. The Hobbit begins in 2941. Orcs have been in force for 1600 years.
wongarsu 4y ago
> Aragorn is able to defend most of the north with a few hundred irregulars, while the east participated in only one war 60 years ago that was done in a few weeks time. Which might be a good reason why the don't have a population boom: long periods of stability with low threat from war, low infant mortality and high food security seem to cause low birth rates (at least in our world). If your children are unlikely to die, people just have fewer of them. Most of our population booms happen after wars or in areas with low life expectancy.
- gostsamo 4y ago
  Middle Earth has no contraception (Tolkien is catholic) and the only way to stop multiplying is to stop doing... math. LOTR is famous for the women missing from social life, so there is no reason that such measures have been taken. So, you are expected to have high birthrate until you occupy all the good lands and then some. After that you either rediscover Malthus or you start innovating to get more out of what you have.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    That assumes homo sapiens levels of childbirth however. As a number of comments touch on, a lot of the lack of technological advance could be hand-waved away as a result of low birthrates and a generally low population. You could also perhaps factor in a general societal distaste for technology although human history suggests that societies which can't or won't create technology are overwhelmed by societies that do.
    - gostsamo 4y ago
      I mean, we can all say "magic" and not think about it, but the fun here is in thinking and the hand-waving is not in the spirit of it.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        I'm not sure it's hand-wavy "magic." The essay is talking about things that are different in Middle Earth that could have led to the lack of an industrial revolution by the Third Age. Lower population growth (and slower population recovery after plagues and wars) seem like a pretty plausible factor. It's also plausible that societal advancement was also just slower than with us when the author seems to assume it would be expected to advance at the same pace. (i.e. it's taken ME longer to reach a medieval level of advancement.) Certainly happened with plenty of areas in our world for geographical determination and other reasons--though, by effectively modeling ME on Europe and giving it horses and AFAIK familiar crops, that's a harder case to make.
jollybean 4y ago
It's not that it 'doesn't make sense' it's that you can't get to economies of scale, which are necessary in some conditions. The other thing is fossil fuels. Industrial Revolution is about harnessing Coal and Oil.
MH15 4y ago
This is covered in the article, comparing population density with several real world cities pre-industrial revolution.
Wildgoose 4y ago
As a real world example consider the North of England. William the Bastard's genocidal "Harrying of the North" in 1069/70 either murdered or drove out over 75% of the population and left large areas severely depopulated for centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrying_of_the_North https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrying_of_the_North

BarryMilo 4y ago

Another explanation: maybe they dont want to bring children into that dangerous world (and are all experts at the pull-out method).

junofan 4y ago
It’s kinda implied that Sauron’s rings make individuals of the various races more interested in sticking around longer than in producing offspring. Hobbits were relatively unaffected and had lots of children.
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  But somehow, despite the fecundity of the Rosie Cotton-Gangees, with 13 children, the Shire had a total population of about 100k, the size of a small (edit: but not that small) town (or the UK population in 3000BC). So either pre-reproductive mortality is through the roof, but never mentioned, they haven't been there long[1], or something bad happened recently (before the events in the LoTR)[2]. [1] Except Hobbits settled the Shire about 3000 (edit: 1500, I can't count) years before the books. [2] The idyllic setting, lack of traumatic narrative and their 1500-year settlement somewhat implies they haven't been through some kind of brutal population bottleneck recently.
  - junofan 4y ago
    Well they were all over Eriador. There were plagues and other such disasters.
    - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
      Indeed, though the Great Plague was over 1000 years ago, there was a famine more recently. Maybe Hobbits really just are that resilient and cheerful that they just carry on despite massive depopulation events that would make the Black Death look fairly tame.
  - rob74 4y ago
    Er, in Germany, 100k is the population where a city is allowed to call itself "Großstadt" - so big city, not small town. In medieval times, people had lots of children, but most of them died very young. Of course this doesn't fit into Tolkien's idyllic description of the Shire, so it's not mentioned, but I guess families with 13 children who all survived to adulthood were the lucky exception...
    - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
      Well also Rotherham in the UK is a town with over 100k people, though not US-style "small town", it's certainly not a city, and not even a particularly huge town (there are many 100k+ towns that aren't cities: the largest is Reading with nearly 1/4 million) But that might be just a UK naming thing since "city" means something special (and isn't actually especially related to size: the smallest one is 1600 people). But yes, perhaps it's not really a "small" town but just a town.
  - sdenton4 4y ago
    Two things to consider here: a) Historical populations were much smaller than current population, so 'big' scales similarly. The world population around 1700 was about 10% of current population. b) And maybe the bigger effect, we've had MASSIVE urbanization in the last 100-150 years. In 1500, Europe had urbanization rates well below 10% [https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Europe/Demographics https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Europe/Demograph...], compared with 72% in 2015. So not only were there 90% fewer people, but most of them didn't live in cities. Paris, the largest city in Europe, had a population of around 150k-250k in 1500, depending where you look. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_in_the_Middle_Ages#Population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_in_the_Middle_Ages#Popul...]
lordnacho 4y ago
Don't people make more kids in more dangerous places, the logic being that you need to spread your risk of not having descendants?
- samus 4y ago
  Unless mandated by ideology, people don't think that way about getting children. If a place gets too dangerous, people either die, take countermeasures, or flee.

kqr 4y ago

This is not as big of a problem as it sounds: large swathes of Siberia are depopulated, yet factories abound in China. All it takes is local concentration of population, which Middle-Earth has.

gostsamo 4y ago
However, the industrial revolution did not start in Siberia and it is proving only that it can't start in a world with so far removed population centers. Waterways are the cheapest transport option and source of water for the crops, yet nobody lives next to the biggest river around. The only possible reason would be if there is nobody to live there.
- picsao 4y ago
  War with ents is my most likely explanation, most of middle earth is the frontiers in inter species warfare.
  - b112 4y ago
    Ah yes, the ents seem to dislike mankind and their axes. Maybe so!
  - KineticLensman 4y ago
    I think Tolkien would have mentioned this somewhere. The Ents are notably isolationist.
- kqr 4y ago
  No, but as someone else pointed out: industrialism was going strong in Mordor and maybe even other places?
  - gostsamo 4y ago
    Mordor was starting an industrial revolution which couldn't have been older than 60 years. Nothing explains the lack of development the previous few millemnia.

dylan604 4y ago

Weren't orcs made by Sauron rather than being a natural species though? So they were never really born in the normal mammalian method.

junofan 4y ago
They were made by Sauron’s boss. They breed on their own. Sauron has to convince the orcs to work for him; this was tough when he was in his more angelic form.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
alibrarydweller 4y ago
You might be thinking of the "genetically enhanced" Uruk Hai orcs created by Saruman.
- mcv 4y ago
  If I'm not mistaken, Melkor (Morgoth) created orcs by corrupting elves. Saruman created Uruk-Hai by breeding orcs with humans.
- dylan604 4y ago
  Quite possibly. I was never that deep into it, but have many many friends that are so I had heard them discussing various aspects. Clearly got some wires crossed

yyyk 4y ago

>however, Tolkien does not provide a good reason for the other human nations, the orcs or even the hobbits. Hm.. Orcs are easy to explain. I doubt Sauron or Saruman care at all about their lives. As the animated adaption put it: "When there's a whip there's a way". add in constant external warfare (and possible internal warfare too) and you end up with a low population. Hobbits are implied to have a very different past from their LOTR circumstance (IIRC they conquered the Shire from the Orcs?), though I recall very few details are given. One may also suspect a low reproduction rate judging by lifespan. Perhaps the Shire started from a low base, and only by LOTR had enough for an industrial revolution?

gostsamo 4y ago
Internal warfare is caused by competing for the same resources. Orcs must be under external constraints to fight with each other instead of spreading around to occupy/pillage other resources. We can accept that they are constrained to certain habitats and the same could be even said about the dwarfs, however there are many human nations in the books and none of them has created large continues settlement zones. Again, the lack of people and trade on Anduin is a shocker for me.
- yyyk 4y ago
  >Internal warfare is caused by competing for the same resources. Politics is a sufficient condition. Perhaps Sauron would not tolerate 'independent' Orcs he can't use as canon fodder? >Again, the lack of people and trade on Anduin is a shocker for me. Yeah, it's the humans which are hardest to explain away. Some peasants should have thought 'We're tried of paying taxes to Gondor. We'll just move and no one can or would even bother find us'.
  - gostsamo 4y ago
    Politics is handwaving for the structural reasons for a conflict. No need for fighting each other if there is an easier gain to be found outside. At least not fights that would be significant enough to suppress the population growth.
  - 4y ago

hef19898 4y ago

The author lost me at tge first paragraph: he never read it, and still he wonders why, in medieval fanatsy setting, there are no pump guns.

adhesive_wombat 4y ago
So why are there no pump guns? Indeed, considering Tolkien's otherwise fully-defined universe (and the industrialisation in Mordor indicating that it can be done), it's a fun question, and they rather use the question as as springboard into quite a ranging discussion of the factors behind real Industrial Revolution rather than a comic-book-guy-style tear-down of LoTR specifically.
- hef19898 4y ago
  Because during the time of the musket there were no pump guns neither. EDIT: It took quite some time between the early days of the industrial revolution and the first semi-automatic guns. Ignoring LOTR for a minute, if in story taking place in the 17th century the question of "why didn't X use a colt .45" is easily answered, because it wasn't invented yet.
  - HelloNurse 4y ago
    But many parties are sparsely but explicitly described as making and using fantastically advanced marvels of somewhat magical technology in ancient times, some of which are still around like Sauron's Rings. Probably the most honest reason to not have guns in Middle-Earth is that only stupid orcs, not the elves and dwarves who could easily develop them as school projects, would be interested in such tasteless weapons.
    - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
      I don't think all the Kingdoms of Men would have turned their noses up at a few cartloads of nice Dwarven culverin, regardless of what the Dwarves themselves (or those snooty elves) thought of them.

xg15 4y ago

> while the east participated in only one war 60 years ago that was done in a few weeks time. Note that when the fellowship passes through Lorien and Gondor, the ring war is already in full force, the fellowship just doesn't notice a lot of it. By the time they travel the Anduin, the river is considered a front line: Everything east of the river is already occupied by Sauron, while the areas directly west of it had been evacuated. The book mentions this as one reason why the land is so deserted. (In addition to the long-term decline of Gondor that of course also happened, illustrated by the deserted lookout posts and ruins around the Argonath)

gostsamo 4y ago
The Mordor expansion should've started one-two generations ago. No mentions of recent ruins and the more likely reaction of the population on the best communication pathway in the local part of the continent should've been building walls and armies, no fast desertion of their homes.
- samus 4y ago
  Maintaining walls and supplying armies requires a fair amount of population though. Middle Earth is very thinly populated. The former Realm of Arnor is so thinly settled that the Northern Kingdom of the Dunedain had to be dissolved, and its people were reduced to a nomadic lifestyle. Sort of what happened to the crvilizations in the Amazonas basin in the 16th century.
  - gostsamo 4y ago
    Yes, the whole thread is trying to find plausible reasons why the population does not recover after disasters. The elves are leaving and gondorians have issue reproducing. Everyone else should've been totally capable of taking those big chunks of land and building new societies there. Orcs should've just made them build more warlike cultures and not just hide, because orcs are raiders, not an well organized force which can deny territory against an determined adversary for long periods of time. People live in Bree for centuries. Why there are no settlements between the shire and it? Why Bree hasn't expanded in the other directions?

alpaca128 4y ago

> lower birth rate in the numenorians who obviously have reproductive issues as mentioned in the books I wonder if Elden Ring's lore took a bit of inspiration from this: > The Numen are a race of beings descended from otherworldly travelers. Long lived and seldom born, Queen Marika the Eternal is the primary member of this race.

nindalf 4y ago
George RR Martin wrote the lore for Elden Ring. He is intimately aware of Tolkien’s work. It’s not surprising to see such a homage.
- cardiffspaceman 4y ago
  Speaking of which, why doesn't any military in any kingdom in A Song of Ice and Fire have jets? That one immense building (pardon my spoiler-avoiding vagueness) with seemingly no interior columns led me to wonder this. But the answer may be that the book building and the show building are nothing alike, and the show exaggerates characteristics that aren't such a big deal or leaves out realistic details that interfere with making the building impressive. I have read part of the books but not the relevant part. And I'm not even referring to the speed of movement that characters seem to mysteriously have.

nindalf 4y ago

“Only one war 60 years ago” underestimates the impact that goblins/orcs have. It’s not wars alone that cause depopulation, it’s the constant raids. The orcs have secure holds in the Misty Mountains that allow them to raid all surrounding areas at will. This keeps these areas thinly populated. The exceptions are places like Lake Town, which are highly defensible. It’s not really possible to attack the orcs in their mountain homes for anyone except Dwarves. And even Dwarves understood their limits. In the War of the Dwarves and Orcs (TA 2793-2799) they sacked every orc stronghold from “Gundabad to the Gladden” but even then did not dare to enter Moria, where orcs remained secure and continued to multiply.

nosianu 4y ago
But there were not many orcs and goblins for a long time in many areas, as we learned from the books. They only came back and multiplied with the slow return-growth of Sauron. I would be more interested in the period of when Moria was thriving - when they wrote the password for the back door right above it. Meaning, those must have been one of the most peaceful periods in the wider regions history. How dense was the population at that time?
- Amezarak 4y ago
  > But there were not many orcs and goblins for a long time in many areas, as we learned from the books. They only came back and multiplied with the slow return-growth of Sauron. Sauron had already returned c1000 TA to Dol Guldur. We're specifically told that evil things, such as Orcs, begin multiplying in number by c1300 TA, which triggers the migration of the Hobbits to the Shire (already we have an example of why there's less people than we expect.) In c1400 the Nazgul begin their long destruction of the disunited (perennially entangled in civil war) kingdoms of Arnor. In c1500, Gondor is embroiled in devastating wars with Harad. In the 1600s a Great Plague depopulates the North and West: "many parts of Eriador become desolate"; not long before, Gondor has had a horrible civil war. During the plague, even the Shire suffers "great loss." In the 1800s Gondor is again involved in a costly war, this time against the Wainriders, and loses its eastern territories. In 1981 TA Moria falls. In the 2400s Gondor is again under a major attack by (though they do not know it) Sauron, and Sauron is able to use the Orcs in the Misty Mountains to effectively cut off Eriador from the rest of the continent. in the 2500s, the Gondorians are bailed out of a major disaster by the appearance of the Rohirrim, but shortly after, the dragons appear and decimate the dwarves. In the 2700s, after centuries of Orc attacks in the region, the Hobbits themselves defeat a band of Orcs; shortly after, Dale and the Iron Mountain fall to Smaug, Rhoah is nearly destroyed, and Gondor is attacked by fleets of Corsairs. In addition, there is a devastating winter that causes "great suffering and loss of life"; in the same century, Smaug annihilates Erebor and Dale, and there's a major, costly war between the dwarves and the Orcs. In the following centuries, there are continual major Orc attacks. In 2900 Men finally abandon Ithilien. In 2911 there is another devastating winter, and the year after, great floods that result in the desertion of Tharbad and Minhiriath. The Hobbit begins in 2941. Orcs have been in force for 1600 years.

wongarsu 4y ago

> Aragorn is able to defend most of the north with a few hundred irregulars, while the east participated in only one war 60 years ago that was done in a few weeks time. Which might be a good reason why the don't have a population boom: long periods of stability with low threat from war, low infant mortality and high food security seem to cause low birth rates (at least in our world). If your children are unlikely to die, people just have fewer of them. Most of our population booms happen after wars or in areas with low life expectancy.

gostsamo 4y ago
Middle Earth has no contraception (Tolkien is catholic) and the only way to stop multiplying is to stop doing... math. LOTR is famous for the women missing from social life, so there is no reason that such measures have been taken. So, you are expected to have high birthrate until you occupy all the good lands and then some. After that you either rediscover Malthus or you start innovating to get more out of what you have.
- ghaff 4y ago
  That assumes homo sapiens levels of childbirth however. As a number of comments touch on, a lot of the lack of technological advance could be hand-waved away as a result of low birthrates and a generally low population. You could also perhaps factor in a general societal distaste for technology although human history suggests that societies which can't or won't create technology are overwhelmed by societies that do.
  - gostsamo 4y ago
    I mean, we can all say "magic" and not think about it, but the fun here is in thinking and the hand-waving is not in the spirit of it.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      I'm not sure it's hand-wavy "magic." The essay is talking about things that are different in Middle Earth that could have led to the lack of an industrial revolution by the Third Age. Lower population growth (and slower population recovery after plagues and wars) seem like a pretty plausible factor. It's also plausible that societal advancement was also just slower than with us when the author seems to assume it would be expected to advance at the same pace. (i.e. it's taken ME longer to reach a medieval level of advancement.) Certainly happened with plenty of areas in our world for geographical determination and other reasons--though, by effectively modeling ME on Europe and giving it horses and AFAIK familiar crops, that's a harder case to make.

jollybean 4y ago

It's not that it 'doesn't make sense' it's that you can't get to economies of scale, which are necessary in some conditions. The other thing is fossil fuels. Industrial Revolution is about harnessing Coal and Oil.

MH15 4y ago

This is covered in the article, comparing population density with several real world cities pre-industrial revolution.

Wildgoose 4y ago

As a real world example consider the North of England. William the Bastard's genocidal "Harrying of the North" in 1069/70 either murdered or drove out over 75% of the population and left large areas severely depopulated for centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrying_of_the_North https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrying_of_the_North