RD-SL-27:
What I found is not to much but here we go:
The map itself was old. But the Road was put in later. All changes made to the map are recorded, but they are in no way dated (which seems in many instances nearly impossible to do anyway). The only slight evidence that I could find is the name "Duin Dhaer" as a replacment of "Gelion" and "Rathmalad" for "Rathloriel". These changes were at least made in the same period as the similar changes in the
TY Version D (Rathloriel -> Rathmallen). But that does only tell us that the map was still used at that time. It does not provide us with any evidence that the Dwarf-road shown represented Tolkien view at that time or that it was drawn in at that time. But from what can be seen in the Chapter "Maeglin" of HoME XI he still found the representation of the Dwarf-Road east of Gelion fitting, since he didn't change it when he put the way of Eöl from Nogord to Nan Elmoth and beyond in a copy of the map. The “Maeglin” story was worked at very lat in Tolkien’s live about 1970. We are not told if the line of red dots that represented the way of Eöl started in Nogrod, it is just said that, “this red dotted line continues straight on across square G13 to Sarn Athrad, and then coincides with the Dwarf-Road up into the mountains, already present in the primary map.”
Christopher Tolkien does also not give as an good dating for
TY D. He suggested that it was may be contemporary with JRR Tolkiens work on the ‘Turin-Saga’ which would be slightly later then the rest of the
TY which Aiwendil dated correctly in 1951-2. But the change of the battle-place to a ford of Ascar was represented already in
TY C. From
TY B and
TY A I got the impression that even their the Ford was over Ascar, because the battle is “at Rath-loriel”.
Thus we are still no further in our decision.
But the map does provide us with a good reason for Tolkiens change: The distance between the Ford over Gelion and the river Ascar is about 4.75 miles or 7.6 kilometres. That would be a walk of about 1.5 hours on a road, but to make that cross country laden with a heavy burden would take considerably longer. If Beren had (as we assume) only a small number of Greenelves we must ask our self how he transported the Hoard to the river Ascar to drown it.
Posted by Aiwendil:
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I think any ambiguity in the map was quite unintentional - there is no suggestion that the road crosses the Ascar. If it did, it would have to be in the foothills of the mountains and quite close to the sources of Ascar - and this is quite out of keeping with any accounts of the battle.
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I agree that the map does not suggest a crossing of the dwarf-road with Ascar and that if such crossing is to postulated it must be in the foothills and near to the source.
But I don’t see that this would contradict the accounts of the Battle. The only account that is detailed enough to be in anyway contradicted is
TN. But even in that case I don’t see a heavy contradiction. The Pass that the road approached is described as “high pass”. Thus the Ascar could be a river spring-fed by a glacier. Anyway it could be a fast and deep stream already near to its source and a heavy obstacle for any crossing in all times of the year. A Ford build from shingle-isles and with a high and step bank on the one side does not strike me as impossible for a short river (not more then 75 miles) in the mountains that swelled Gelion in a way that it was uncross able south of the confluence.
So I am still for your option 2
Respectfully
Findegil