Using the numbers that Tolkien gave us in the population of Rohan could make finding the population of Gondor easier. During the muster of Rohan we see
Quote:
|
well nigh five and fifty hundreds of Riders fully armed, and many hundreds of other men...
|
Therefore we can guess that Rohan mustered around six thousand men. Seeing as how the next battle would be a very important battle we can guess that the riders at Edoras would make up much of the healthy male population (excluding the people that were too far away to participate in the muster). Next we could guesstimate that most of these men would have wives and a number of children. Remember that an agricultural society usually produces more children because they were useful on the farm (I know it sounds horrible but from what I've learned from history class it is true). We can also add in a number of older relations (mother-in-laws, grandparents, etc.) I'm guessing that the number would be around 35,000 to 45,000 (though I may be way off). Now we know that Gondor had a significantly larger population. All we have to do is guess how many times larger it was. The reason why I am going to these seemingly far lengths to prove the population is that Tolkien disliked allegory and although the assumptions stated above are likely to be true there is no way to prove it. I think it would be more accurate to use information from the book instead of speculating about which historical period Gondor would fit in best. Please excuse the length of this post! [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]