It seems, perhaps, dormitat bonum Homerus. Gandalf didn't know anything in particular about the Ring until he found the Isildur scroll at Minas Tirith in 3017, and then questioned Gollum in Mirkwood. Aragorn would have learned what Gandalf knew (or was willing to tell him) in the same time-frame; presumably he went straight from Thranduil's halls to Elrond's. In other words, that old ring of Bilbo's couldn't have caused much of a "disturbance" until roughly a year or so before the Council
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The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it.
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