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Old 05-18-2022, 03:31 PM   #1
Urwen
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Originally Posted by Huinesoron View Post
Tolkien didn't have a final First Age timeline. Or rather, he had several: the Annals of Aman and associated Tale of Years (HoME X: Morgoth's Ring) seem to be his latest thoughts on the period before the Awakening of the Elves and the period after their arrival in Aman, but with the publication of The Nature of Middle-earth, we now have his later thoughts on the Great March (NoME 1.VII "The March of the Quendi"), and his even later thoughts on the period between the Awakening and the March (NoME 1.XIII "Key Dates", text 1). Throw in a smattering of later notes, such as a birthdate for Galadriel (NoME 1.XVIII "Elvish Ages & Numenorean") and a mention of the March crossing Caradhras (NoME 3.XVII "Silvan Elves & Silvan Elvish"), and what we have is a complex picture that Tolkien never put together.

But the pieces are there. It's taken a lot of calculating, cross-referencing, and tearing my hair out over Tolkien's entirely unreasonable habit of, um, not taking his 1960s thoughts into account in the 1950s (that monster), but I've pulled together what I think is a fair rendering of what Tolkien's "Final Timeline" would have looked like.*

The First Age of Middle-earth

*It wouldn't have. If he'd written it, he would have come up with a whole new set of dates, added several characters, and accidentally made Finwe the son of Maglor somehow. But I can dream.

I've not bothered to include the Beleriand years, because there's no change to them: they span about 600 years at the end of the very long First Age, just as they always have.

Notes on what in the world I was thinking at every stage are at the end, along with the parts where my common sense got the better of me. I'm happy to explain, discuss, or defend any points people want to pull out, though if it involves too much of Tolkien's inability to count in 144s I won't have any hair left to tear out.

Anyway so that's what I've been up to since NoME appeared.

hS

I can't access it.
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Old 05-19-2022, 12:14 AM   #2
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I can't access it.
Bother. I'll see if I have a backup copy when I get a chance.

EDIT: Yeah, this has been eaten by Google. I have an early draft, and with that + the notes in this thread I may be able to reconstruct it, but it'll be a bit of work. I'll post when I've assembled it again.

hS
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Old 05-19-2022, 07:36 AM   #3
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Old 05-25-2022, 09:39 AM   #4
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So I'm working on reconstructing this, and with Aiwendil's Sequence of Composition to hand it's almost trivially easy. If you've got a copy of NoME, you can replicate my work as follows:
  • Based on XVIII, treat Elves as growing to maturity at a 3:1 rate. This agrees with the other late document, XIX (which says they grow "as swiftly as Men", but Tolkien often meant "in their own terms" rather than "in Sun-years").
  • Directly copy the timeline in XIII.1. This is the final Timeline Tolkien wrote.
  • Add details from XVII.3(7), the final generation scheme. The gap from conception to birth is wrong, but as general dates these generations work fine.
  • Dip into XVII.3(1) to pull out the rest of Ingwe's family tree. Adjust his wife's birth-date to be 3 Growth-Years after his, instead of three sun-years.
  • Look at XIII.3 and VI.B for Tolkien's latest thoughts on the war around Angband. It was invested (= besieged) while the Ambassadors were in Valinor, and defeated midway between their return and the start of the March.
  • Go to VII for Tolkien's final full timeline of the March. The length matches the length given in XIII.3, so simply translate all the dates into the adjusted calendar from XIII.1.

That's what I'm in the middle of. The justification for the Elves' long pauses on the March vanishes - they were calculated on a 9-year pregnancy and 108-year childhood, while the latest model uses 3 and 72 years - but people aren't computers anyway, so a bit of leeway is acceptable. The sources above have already given me a date for the death of the Trees (VY 888/1), and that it's 600 years from there to the end of the Age, so the only troublesome section ahead is tying Galadriel's youth (XVIII) to her hair as the inspiration for the Silmarils (Shibboleth of Feanor, same approximate date), while staying true to the spirit of the Annals of Aman (which predate most of NoME and serve as the latest timeline of the Valinor years).

hS
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Old 06-21-2022, 04:21 AM   #5
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The timeline is restored! Making use of the now-accepted order of the NoME part 1 texts, I've constructed it from the latest sources back.

A lot of it fits together really nicely - the founding of Tirion (from the Annals of Aman) falls naturally at the beginning of a yen, and things like Melkor's release and the making of the Silmarils can be made to do so too. There are three main things I've missed off entirely:

- The Awakening of Men. Tolkien wanted this to be both well before the fall of the Trees, and at least 50 (long) Valian Years after the Awakening of the Quendi. But he also wanted only 38 VY between Elves awakening and the Trees going dark. It doesn't fit; I'd have to invent a date.

- The birth of Galadriel. With the timelines we have, she cannot simultaneously be pre-adult at the Darkening, and older than the Silmarils, but that's what the two latest sources tell us. If Tolkien wanted to reconcile them, he would have needed to dramatically reduce the timeline between those two events, and he never indicated such a change.

- The birth of Aredhel. I'm annoyed by this, because it's actually one of the last dates Tolkien added to the Annals of Aman. But the Annals make the Aman years about 1.5x the length they are in later timelines, and I just can't fit her in before the Silmarils are created without pretty much inventing dates for all Finwe's descendents. So she has been excluded.

I also see from this thread that there's a mention of the March crossing Caradhras somewhere in NoME 3. I'm... just gonna hope that's earlier than the timelines that say otherwise.

hS
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Old 06-22-2022, 08:09 AM   #6
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Thank you.
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Old 11-23-2023, 07:07 AM   #7
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Originally Posted by Huinesoron View Post
The timeline is restored! Making use of the now-accepted order of the NoME part 1 texts, I've constructed it from the latest sources back.

A lot of it fits together really nicely - the founding of Tirion (from the Annals of Aman) falls naturally at the beginning of a yen, and things like Melkor's release and the making of the Silmarils can be made to do so too. There are three main things I've missed off entirely:

- The Awakening of Men. Tolkien wanted this to be both well before the fall of the Trees, and at least 50 (long) Valian Years after the Awakening of the Quendi. But he also wanted only 38 VY between Elves awakening and the Trees going dark. It doesn't fit; I'd have to invent a date.

- The birth of Galadriel. With the timelines we have, she cannot simultaneously be pre-adult at the Darkening, and older than the Silmarils, but that's what the two latest sources tell us. If Tolkien wanted to reconcile them, he would have needed to dramatically reduce the timeline between those two events, and he never indicated such a change.

- The birth of Aredhel. I'm annoyed by this, because it's actually one of the last dates Tolkien added to the Annals of Aman. But the Annals make the Aman years about 1.5x the length they are in later timelines, and I just can't fit her in before the Silmarils are created without pretty much inventing dates for all Finwe's descendents. So she has been excluded.

I also see from this thread that there's a mention of the March crossing Caradhras somewhere in NoME 3. I'm... just gonna hope that's earlier than the timelines that say otherwise.

hS
Out of sheer curiosity, what would that same timeline you posted look like when translated into the 'Annals of Aman' tradition (i.e. YT 1050 - YT 1500) with the Valian year lasting for 9.582 solar years?
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Old 11-24-2023, 05:45 AM   #8
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Out of sheer curiosity, what would that same timeline you posted look like when translated into the 'Annals of Aman' tradition (i.e. YT 1050 - YT 1500) with the Valian year lasting for 9.582 solar years?
Okay, let's do a quick rundown, converting "Final Timeline" dates into "AAm YT" dates:

YT 1050: Awakening of the Quendi.
YT 1110: Melkor discovers the Quendi and builds Angband.
YT 1260 (AAm 1085): Orome discovers the Quendi.
YT 1265 (AAm 1090): Valar decide to attack Melkor.
YT 1280 (AAm 1102): Ambassadors travel to Valinor.
YT 1281 (AAm 1104): Great Debate.
YT 1282 (AAm 1105): Great March begins.
YT 1303: March reaches Greenwood.
YT 1304 (AAm 1115): March reaches Anduin.
YT 1333 (AAm 1125): March reaches Beleriand.
YT 1334 (AAm 1128): Teleri reach Beleriand.
YT 1349 (AAm 1130): Elwe lost.
YT 1350 (AAm 1133): Noldor and Vanyar land in Aman.

Most of the events in Aman are dated in my timeline from the Annals anyway, so I'll just end with:

YT 1615 (AAm 1495): Death of the Two Trees.

The biggest difference is that the later timelines add almost 200 "YT" between the Awakening and the Finding. That was, ultimately, the reason Tolkien made all these changes: to give the Quendi time to grow a big enough population for all the trials he needed to put them through. The later timeline also extends the stay by Anduin, and the stay in Beleriand; but then chops the years in Aman down by about 100 YT.

Put another way: if Imin went with the March and reached Valinor, then by the time the Trees died he would have spent 5/6 of his life living under them by the Annals - but only 1/2 of it under the "Final Timeline".

hS
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