[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

I'm not an anthropologist either, just a history graduate with an interest in early medieval Europe. My smattering of Sociology is sufficiently long in the tooth to be rusted through, or at least thoroughly blunt. I mainly drew my conclusion from names like Eorl, Eomer and Theoden, which have a distinctly Old English air about them, and from the organisation of Rohan's society. You're right, though: Tolkien was far too sophisticated just to copy history verbatim. His geographical positioning of the heroes and their enemies may be drawn from the past, but there's no direct correlation between Middle-Earth's inhabitants and any real-world races or tribes, whatever may have been borrowed to paint them more convincingly.