Middle-earth was a huge continent, and while we are reasonably well informed about it's small northwesternmost Subcontinent, we only have snippets on the lands of the Northern Waste, Harad or Rhûn the Great. This article is intended to be a collection of thoughts, rants, and criticism on problems and common misconceptions when it comes to sub-creation outside the known Westlands.
See also:
A carbon-copy of the Northwest[]
A common trap many sub-creators seem to find hard to avoid is to take a small region somewhere in Middle-earth, and to reproduce pretty much everything that we know from the Westlands. We have our Elves, our Dwarves, our Orcs and Trolls, maybe Giants and Dragons, and we have our one realm of good men, like our local Gondor, and our local evil empire, like our local Mordor. Only maybe this time we paint everything as east-asian, sub-saharan, near eastern, oriental or Eru knows what. Sometimes authors even incorporated their version of the Drúedain - though most still shy away from incorporating some local exotic variant of Hobbits. In a way this is the most harmless mistake, and one of those most easily to forgive, since the Westlands pretty much are the Middle-earth we all know and love. Yet there are some problems now:
- We know we have Elves in the Westlands, but do we know we have Elves in the South? well we know there are the Avari, possibly somewhere in the east, but these are supposedly few and reclusive.
- We know we have Dwarves in the Northwest. Again: we know we have four clans of Dwarves somewhere in the east, possibly two in the Orocarni, and two others halfway between them and the Westlands. Again we don't know anything about dwarves in the South...
- We actually DO know there were other, wild Halfling tribes, somewhere in the North; we believe the Hobbits, like other men, have their origin in Hildorien. Yet Hobbits are a typical phenomenon of the Westlands and even here they are a curiosity. Nobody except their closest neighbours seems to even know of them.
- Orcs and Trolls: we know they exist in the Westlands, and supposedly they did in the East. Again, we do not know anything on such creatures in the south - this doesn't rule out anything of course, I'm just saying... if there are any, one must give a good reason and some internal history for this!
- Giants and Dragons are almost a world-wide phenomenon. Yet, even in the Westlands both are implied to be rare and strange. Smaug was said to have been the last great dragon. If there were any dragons in the faraway lands, these ought to be lesser, and still rare.
- The Drúedain are a kind of enigma. They are reminiscent of the wild woodmen of european myth, yet they are some sort of stone-age, prehistoric human culture or even some sort of Pygmy-folk. It is tempting to use them as a temlate for local pygmy-like cultures, and indeed there are hints that at least some of the Drúedain came from the east and moved to the south. Yet still one has to be very careful with them. They are a rare, dying race, they have their own clouded history with the orcs, and again: even in the westlands they are reclusive and widely unknown.
- The Good Empire: In the Westlands we have... Gondor... and little else. Lindon is just a shadow of its former glory and possibly largely empty; besides Gondor we only have small realms like Rohan, Dale... few others. And even Gondor is waning. It should be very strange if now just somewhere in the wild lands east or south we had a powerful realm of the free peoples! Of course there were some rebels, we know the Blue Wizards and even Saruman did some undercover work here and there... but it would be a weird surprise if any of their rebel factions could even by far come up with anything comparable to Gondor. If in the Westlands freedom and civilization are in the great Realm and darkness and evil lure in the wilderness, then in the East and south it's possibly just the other way around. Sauron holds the big realms and civilization and the few rebels we have exist somewhere reclusive in the wilderness!
- The evil Empire: a common trope is, somewhere still some good realm exists, like an island of resistance against the Dark Lord. Unfortunately little in the books speaks for such a possibility at all! Sauron pretty much owns all the rest of middle-Earth. He owns the local kings, he has his dark idol-worshiping Cult everywhere. He has won. And if we see the Easterlings and Haradrim we see pretty much, quite normal, civilized men, they don't appear very savage or dark or cruel. Possibly great parts of Sauron's dominion are to its inhabitants quite peaceful and civilized - they think they're the good guys, Gondor and the Elves are the evil guys in their minds!
Eternal realms and most powerful Empires[]
A common phenomenon is that authors of sub-creation tend to imagine Middle-earth outside the Westlands as quite static in terms of realms, dynasties, population. In a way this may be understandable, are there after all, lands under the Shadow where Sauron's supposed rule is consolidated and safe. On the other hand JRRT portraits pretty much all human cultures aside of the Númenóreans as quite shortlived. Even the Edain very much existed, at least in the way and under the names we know them, only for close to 300 years! Rohan? A pretty young realm, only 500 years old during the times of the War of the Ring. The Beornings and Bardings? Only 78 years old! Of course there have been predecessor cultures... but this is exactly the point! These tribes had different names, to some extent different cultures, and often a completely different territory! The Eotheod? Existed for a maximum of 683 years! Vidugavia's kingdom? Survived only 608 years! Dale? Was only 180 years old when it was destroyed. So the realms of the "lesser men" are pretty much more susceptible to changes than elvish realms such as Lórien, Lindon, or even the Woodland Realm, and far more shortlived and changing than the Dúnadan Kingdoms.
We have all evidence that this was also true for the Easterlings. The Balchoth pretty much existed only for 447 years, 660 years at maximum if we count their descendants who invaded Rohan 2oo years later. The Wainriders? We do not know when exactly they entered history, they seem to have evolved after Narmacil II ascended to the throne and disappered into oblivion after 1944, existing only 94 years in the official chronicles of the West. The Easterlings who had come before existed between the 5th and the 14th century TA, but we do not know if these were one single uniformed nation or a number of changing tribes, alliances, or dynasties. At least the land of Khand existed under this very name for at least 1075 years, though the Variags, under this name, are not named per se until the time of the War of the Ring.
Little do we know about the Haradrim, their entire organisation is alien to us, but even the realm of Umbar sees at least four dynasties and cultures during the ages. After the Fall of Númenór it is a Black Númenórean state for 627 years, after that it becomes part of Gondor for 505 Years, and after that a Rebel-dynasty for 407 years. During the War of the Ring it had already been a Haradrim state for 1165 years, though we do not know if under the rule of one single people, tribe, or dynasty.
And this precisely seems to be the point: instead of powerful empires like Gondor or Arnor, eternal Realms whose royal lines reign for 3000 years or even 5000 years, we should see the "lesser men" as waves of changing kingdoms, tribal alliances, confederacies, dynasties. Named after famous rulers or cultural heroes, maybe even territories, but seldom static and usually changing name and identity after ca. 500 years (or 100 - 1000 years). Also their territory always looks to have been quite limited. After all even Angmar only existed for 675 years. After it had served its purpose the Dark Lord had little interest in upholding a functional realm there, though after its fall wild tribes may have continued to exist (at least Orc- and Troll-tribes seemingly did).
Elves, Dwarves and Hobbits[]
Without tolkienish Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbits (Or Trolls and Goblins), the Lands of Middle-Earth might resemble a land of pseudo-historic Dark Ages, so many authors tend to portray the unknown lands outside of the known Northwest as generic 1001 nights Oriental Fantasy or medieval Asian settings just plus the known tolkienish races, to give them a, whatever slight, connection to the Legendarium. While we certainly know that there were wild elves and four more Dwarven Houses in the east, we know little about them, except for a few clues we got from the History of Middle-earth. It has also been suggested that Hobbits are more or less a sub-race of mankind and also may have their origins in Hildorien (maybe mesopotamia?).
This however may bring up the problem that tolkien's Mythology is largely based on european myth and folklore, the elves are inspired by germanic elves, british or arthurian fairies and maybe the irish Tuatha de Danaann, the Dwarves on scandinavian and german Dwarves, the hobbits on british rural fairies, gnomes and goblins. Even the Trolls and Orcs have their predecessors in the trolls, ogres and goblins of scandinavian, british, irish and alpine myth and folklore. So if the northwest is pretty much based on europe, simple carbon-copies of these may seem strangely out of place in Harad or Rhûn which are usually thought to resemble prehistoric africa or asia. It thus would seem logical to look out for asian, near eastern and african mythology and folklore and base local fantasy-creatures on these, but that would possibly even further remove such unexplored lands from the Middle-earth we know. This dilemma has been solved by most authors of sub-creation works by trying to find a middle-ground between the two extremes, a solution which did not always satisfy the reader.
Even if one would wish to include some kind of African-ogre, Avari elves, eastern Dwarves or a lost tribe akin to the Hobbits to his scenario, these still always need to be well grounded in Middle-earth's history. There needs to be a plausible background to explain the existence of elves and dwarves in Harad, and the addition of Orcs, goblins, trolls or wild halflings to such a setting, which does by no means say that this could not be achieved, but that any such scenario needs to be well thought-through to avoid the above mentioned controversies. Haradrian or rhûnish Halflings would probably not resemble the Hobbits from the shire, but share traits with the neighbouring human cultures, yet they still must be recognizeable as Hobbit-kin. The Avari possibly would be quite close to the dark- and silvan elves we know from the Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings, and be much like more archaic and primitive versions of the Eldar, however their exact relation to the local men and other cultures still must be explored and fit into the great picture we have of the Easterlings and Haradrim of Sauron's realm. Also the four eastern houses of the Khazad probably are much different from the three houses, Belegost, Nogrod and Moria, we know, yet they still are children of Aule and immediately recognizeable as such. Even if historic details such as the battle of Palisor, the tale about the first temple, Utumno and wicked Dwarves who allied themselves with the dark lord, may give reasons and clues for non-human races in the wild lands and it seems reasonable to think that Orcs and Trolls were known and quite common wherever Sauron ruled it is important to look for ways to flesh out their culture and history in a realistic way, not contradicting the canon and yet still to manage to set them apart from their westland paragons. We probably will never encounter any avar realm that is even close to the High-elven realms of Beleriand, possibly not even close to the high culture of Lórien, Imladris or Lindon. Most likely no eastern dwarven realm will come even close to Moria or Erebor. It is also doubtful at best that between the largely hostile men of darkness and other children of Eru there was much contact at all... so if you are looking for elves, dwarves or halflings in the wild lands, best look in remote areas, the wilds, the mountains and dense forests where there are few men, few or no large settlements, and the Dark lord's influence is scarce. There may be some small enclaves of these old races to be found, but they are dying, fading folk, far from the glory of the west.
Orcs and Trolls on the other hand should be quite well known to men, as allies and Soldiers wherever the dark would be strong, and it is an interesting idea to think these would be more easily integrated and accepted than they are in the westlands. So eastern and southern orcs may hold one or more surprises for the traveling Northerner who is used to know them as savage beasts and hostile barbarians only.
See:
The Númenóreans[]
Religion[]
It can be often observed, when reading through secondary material, that Southern and eastern Middle-earth appear as places full of religion and strange cults, which seems odd because Religion does sort of exist in The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit or the Silmarillion, but it hardly ever does play a large role. There simply are no churches, clerics, grand rituals, or if there are they are either quiet and unobtrusive or they seem to be only remnants or quotes... old stone circles, the mention of heathen idol-worshiping kings, barrows and tombs...
There really is just one place in particular where an organized cult and temple is ever properly mentioned:Númenor.
Also, wherever we encounter religion it is usually either a 1to1 copy of or strongly based on the pantheon of the Silmarillion, that is a family or clan of benevolent deities opposed by one single dark god. Now that is of course what the cosmology of Middle-earth is like, no question. But who does know this except for the Eldar and the Dúnedain? Or maybe the Dwarves, who won't tell anybody what they really know.
When exploring southern Middle-earth it sort of does make sense to base religion on that what ever we know of the Black Númenóreans, wherever they may have once had colonies they would impose their religion on the locals, their religion of course being whatever Sauron told them, not the older theology of the Eldar.
But what about those lands where their influence was small? And while they may have had some colonies, Númenor was always quite small and never had that lot population, so the whole idea of vast Black Númenórean realms bigger than Arnor and Gondor is probably much out of place. Anyway the bulk of the population must have been indigenous and all we do know about them is: they were not taught by the Eldar! So... them having a quasi-pagan religion that mirrors the Valar and Maiar probably is quite unlikely, how could they know of them? Sauron wouldn't tell them, or he would only tell his own twisted version, the Avari cant't have told them much because they themselves knew little (a hunter was once there and stole half their people... that pretty much sums up their knowledge of the Valar, plus maybe a few things the three messengers told after their return, but the refusers were largely those elves who didn't believe these stories or were at least extremely sceptical).
So we pretty much remain with whatever Melkor taught the men at Hildorien and the legacy of his first temple plus whatever Sauron made of all this when he made his comeback, pretending to be the old God returned. There is no doubt Sauron was a monotheist, there was only one true god: himself. He would probably not accept any deities beside or even below him, even if the Wild men of the east and South had invented their own gods or had made some local Maiar or Nature spirits or celestial or other natural phenomena their objects of reverence. Neither Sauron nor Melkor before him would have allowed them to keep these religious thoughts and traditions up.
Of course then we have the Blue Wizards, who canonically are the missionaries and prophets of magical cults. Whatever they had taught men, and depending on which version or text we choose they either had two thousand or nearly four thousand years time to do so, would of course have been valinorian lore. But would they have taught much about the Valar? Its more likely they would have taught eruist religion instead of making their own peers gods. Whatever they at first taught, it certainly wouldn't have been pagan religion. Whatever their shortlived pupils made of it of course is another thing and it is quite possible that a local sect, seeded by one of the Blue religious infiltrators, would start off as a benign group worshiping the Allfather, of couse knowing of the Lords of the West or powers as well, and soon after their teacher has moved on they turned everything upside-down and evolved into a polytheist pagan society. In fact Professor Tolkien briefly does allude to such developements in the Silmarillion, though probably referring to Western and Norse Pagan cults of the later ages.
So it is quite possible that many such traditions and religions did exist somewhere, but if they existed, they would have been wherever the Sauron/Melkor Theocracy was not very strong, the fringes, frontiers, wilds or areas of poor backward tribes uninteresting to them. If Blue Cults ever existed within the Dark lords dominion they would certainly have been one thing: ultra secretive!
Sindarin and Quenya[]
It is a common cliché to model Placenames and names of countries outside the Westlands after the known examples, which are commonly Sindarin.Or even to use Quenya or Quenya-Sindarin mixed-forms. However even in the Westlands many of this sort of Placenames were purely scholary names or names out of History, not used by their inhabitants themselves.The Rohirrim did for example not call themselves Rohirrim or their land Rohan, rather they used their own indigenous terms "Riddermark" or "Eorlingas".Also the Hobbits did not use Sindarin but their native Westron and it is known that the Bardings, Beornings, Dunlendings all used their own languages and not the Sindarin used by Dúnadan or Eldarin Loremasters.
Likewise the Black Númenóreans did not call themselves "Black Númenóreans" and the Easterlings did not call themselves "Easterlings", "Wainriders" or "Balchoth" or the Haradrim did not call themselves "Haradrim".Again two of the only known examples for most likely indigenous names we got are "Khand" and "Variags", and it is to be presumed that other Easterling and Southron peoples used their own indigenous names as well.
Now we still have a few Tolkien-names for lands of peoples outside the Westlands... Harwan, Barangil, Salkinóre, Amrûn, Andesalke, Bablon, Ninvi, Eastern Deserts, Eastern Lands, Red Sea, Orocarni, Turqeler, Ormal, Illuin, Ringil, Ringli, Helcar, Hildorien, Murmenalda, Cuivienen, Palisor, Wind Mountains, Grey Mountains, Yellow Mountains, Iron Mountains, Utumno, Dark Forests of the South, Southern Heat, Northern Heath, Sunlands, Northern Needle Woods, Wild Woods, Last Desert, Sahóra, Oronto, Harns, Walien...
However most of these names are either discarded ones, old names out of the history or myths of the west or general, undefined for unknown semi-mythical, strange lands.They're certainly not indigenous terms.
Even if they represent translated forms , these are not names or forms which would be used by the indigenous tribes themselves or maybe would not even been known to them.
It would be rational to think of indigenous names and conlangs for the wild peoples east and South or at last use Avarin , orcish, black speech or Adûnaic forms where these languages could logically have been in use or may have had some impact on local toponymy. Tolkien himself was never shy to invent new languages by himself, even if they consisted just out of a few single names or terms ( old gondorian names like Bel, Agar or Udul are a good example just like Variag or Khand.)
See:
Historical Cultures and real-world languages[]
While real-world influences are often quite obvious, none of Tolkien's cultures are pure carbon-copies of historical real-world cultures.The Gondorians and Númenóreans have a little in common with the romans, the byzantine empire, the medieval or dark age Britons, the old greek and the old egyptians, but they do not directly resemble any of these cultures.Neither are the Rohirrim Anglo-saxons, Goths, Franks or Gauls, though they share some superficial qualities with all of these.
However when fleshing-out cultures Tolkien did not describe in detail, many authors of secondary sources fall back into bad old D&D habits of copying historical cultures.So often the Hillmen or Dunlendings are represented as likenesses of Picts or scots, the Lossoth as Saami or Inuit, the Easterlings as Huns or Mongols and the Haradrim as Arabs or Persians. While some of these tendencies are understandable, it should be noted that Tolkien himself did always try to avoid too obvious analogies, except for sometimes comical purposes, for example the Hobbits close likeness to cliché rural englishmen (or welsh and cornishmen in case of the Bucklanders and marishfolk).
Likewise he usually avoided real-world languages, with the exception of the Northron dialects, which he based on germanic, and a few welsh and arthurian names he used for Hobbits of stoorish origin (not counting a few latin names he also used for obvious humorous purpose).
So subcreation should , at best avoid both too obvious imitations of real-world cultures, as well as names from real -world languages.Cultures should ideally be a mix from different historical periods and sources as well as mythological or folkloristic elements and languages should ideally be based on (at least the principles or basics of) tolkienian languages, though far enough removed from the known Sindarin and Quenya to be recognizeable as "mannish tongues". Otherwise we will have just yet another D&D-style oriental realm with only a few Middle-Earth names thrown in (or in the worst case an ugly mix of pseudo-chinese and Sinda-Quenyarin or other examples of bad and lazy worldbuilding).
Orcs and Trolls[]
While we are well informed on the Trolls and Orcs as they appear in the Westlands, we hardly know anything about the Orcs and Trolls outside these regions.Maybe for this reason most people assume that Orcs and Trolls are pretty much the same everywhere in Middle-Earth, but is this necessarily true?
In all the regions we get to explore a little closer in the legendarium, Tolkien made quite an effort to create a distinguished local culture, the men of Dale or of the long lake are not simply just generic northmen, they are Bardings and Lake-men and have their very own history and culture which sets them apart from the Rohirrim, Woodmen or Vidugavia's people.The Hobbits are different in every local clan-land, the folk of Hobbiton and the water are quite different from the Tooks, the marish-hobbits and Bucklanders and obviously the Bree-Hobbits.Even more this is true for the various groups of elves of which each seems to have quite a number of distinct tribes and subcultures - just take a look on the peoples of Beleriand in the first Age.
Even in the published books the Orcs of the Westlands seem to be diverse... the Orcs of Mordor, Isengard, Moria and Gundabad we meet are everything but a uniformed culture, they all have their unique dialect and often even quite a distinct appearance.It seems justified to assume the same should be true for the Orcs we would meet in other parts of Sauron's vast empire, and there are good reasons to believe they existed everywhere he ruled, as they served as his most common minions.This however gives us a new problem: what about orcs and men within his Realm?
From what the Mouth of Sauron gives as conditions of surrender to the men of the west, we maybe can assume a bit of how the life in Sauronic domains may have looked like for submitted realms.Also we see many common men, Dunlendings, Easterlings and Haradrim, fighting and marching side by side with Saurons non-human troops, so they probably were better used to see and interact with Orcs and Trolls than the Western men.Quite possibly it was not uncommon in sauronic domains to see orcish or even trollish troops march, or maybe they were even stationed within the settlements and fortresses of men, or lived side to side with these, in any case they probably were not seen as typical enemies per se.
Were the Orcs and Trolls under Sauron's dominion more easygoing and amicable to his mannish servants than we might expect? How did common interaction between men and "monsters" look like? Were they maybe even treated as common or equal citizens under Sauronic rule? Were Orcs maybe even somehow respected or at last accepted as valiant warriors? Or Trolls as useful strong-man workers? Was it all brutal oppression and slavery? Or how did Sauron make his common mannish servants justify to figh alongside with obvious monsters? If one was to explore the lands east and south under Sauronic rule these questions would very quickly come up and need to be solved in a rational and believable way.
Amlach spoke "they have delved in the earth for its secrets and have stirred to wrath the things that dwell beneath it, as they have ever done and ever shall. Let the Orcs have the realm that is theirs" and Túrin Turambar remarked about Broddas folk "They have learned quicker from the Orcs than we learnt from the Fair Folk."
We've only been told one half of the entire story.
Sauron's Dominion[]
- These are the terms,' said the Messenger, and smiled as he eyed them one by one. 'The rabble of Gondor and its deluded allies shall withdraw at once beyond the Anduin, first taking oaths never again to assail Sauron the Great in arms, open or secret. All lands east of Anduin shall be Sauron's for ever, solely. West of the Anduin as far as the Misty Mountains and the Gap of Rohan shall be tributary to Mordor, and men there shall bear no weapons, but shall have leave to govern their own affairs. But they shall help to rebuild Isengard which they have wantonly destroyed, and that shall be Sauron's, and there his lieutenant shall dwell: not Saruman, but one more worthy of trust.
-the Mouth of Sauron
The Mouths speech at the Morannon maybe gives us the most detailed clues on what life of subjugated cultures would have looked like in Sauron's realm. People were restricted to set territories, maybe defined by natural borders such as great rivers, they were forced to take oaths of fealty towards Sauron, they also had to pay tribute to him, possibly in form of goods as well as troops, they would not be allowed to bear weapons, so most likely only Sauron's direct servants and members of his royal army had a monopoly to the right of bearing arms, possibly excluding whatever would count as tools so probably only referring to Swords, lances and armor. But they were allowed to govern their own affairs, so they were still led by their own political figures and could live according to their own traditional laws as long it did not interfere with sauronic rule, and they seemingly were also ruled by a second instance, a sauronic Lieutenant or tyrant who served as the overseer of the local chieftains and subservient petty kings.
Another thing we learn from J. R. R. Tolkiens letters and short allusions on the published books is the existence of some sort of Sauronite clergy, almost like a dark version of the catholic church, though Tolkien himself felt quite uncomfortable with the analogy and tried not to dig too deep into possible historic similarities. Also Men existed pretty much along with creatures such as Orcs and Trolls and were used to fight and possibly even live along these. The latter seems most trubling as it would be hard to explain,,unless we take few clues from the Silmarillion that the people of Uldor the Accursed had been pupils of Orcs and that Amlach regarded Orcs as the natural dwellers beneath the earth. So some men may have accepted Orcs as teachers of some sort and even as natural aboriginals of the world similar to Dwarves or similar to as what the men of the west regarded the elves to be.
A third clue maybe could even beenndrawn from Sarumans activities in the shire,,if he maybe copied sauronic tactics he had learned duringb his visits innthe east, including collecting and redistribution of wealth and crops, social control via local militias controlled by loyal strongmen and the manilulation of indigenous petty lords and major families or leading clans.
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Outdated Maps and geographic Concepts[]
What did Middle-Earth actually look like outside the Westlands? While Professor Tolkien gave us quite a good set of Maps to imagine what he had in mind for the Westlands and Beleriand in the First and late Third Ages he only gave vague hints to the geography of the entire continent. His writings offer us some clues, the Orocarni are mentioned as a great mountain chain in the farthest east, he mentions wild woods in the east (around the Bay of Cuivienen), great pinewoods to the North (north of Helcar and Cuivienen), the Iron Forest in the world's center and the great forests of the south (south of Umbar or Far Harad), the Great Inland Sea of Helcar and Ormal,vast Grass plains in Palisor, implied to stretch between Cuivienen and the later Inland sea of Rhûn, the Lake of Almaren in the center of the World, A mountain chain known as the Mountains of the Wind near to the Murmenalda in the Land of Hildorien (once implied to correspond with mesopotamia) and another unnamed mountain chain (with the place of awakening of the fourth and fifth tribe of the Eastern Dwarves) implied to have been situated half way between the Orocarni and the Iron Hills, the great Iron Mountains and old Utumno in the far North, deserts (The Harad Desert and the last Desert in the east (implied to correspond with the deserts of China) and wooded coastal lands and former Black Númenórean Colonies along the Cragged Coasts of Harad and several island chains in the Belegaer.However aside from brief mentioning these geographic features we don't get map material to illustrate them or give us a better idea about Ambar outside the Northwest.Except for a few rough Sketches and Drawings.
Best known are his raw sketches published in The Shaping of Middle-Earth which give us a clue how he imagined the entire continent (and indeed also Aman, Southernesse and Easternesse, Ambars other three major landmasses) to look like. He drew a very quick Sketch of Beleriand as the northwesternmost tip of a somewhat larger continent which strongly resembled Africa to the south, the Arabian peninsula at the centre, India or Thailand/Myanmar/Cambodia/Vietnam in the southeast and China in the far east. Also his Sketch gives us hints about the Great Mountain chains (Hithaeglir, Ered Engrin,Orocarni, Mountains of the Wind) and mentions two more :the Yellow Mountains and the Grey Mountains , gives us a better idea of the inland sea of Helcar and the Bay of Ormal, Hildorien, Cuivienen, Almaren and the continent known as the Dark Lands or Southernesse, often compared by commentators to Australia, Antarctica, Oceania and Indonesia, as well as Easternesse and Aman, which were sometimes compared to the Americas, Lemuria and Mu.
Two more less known and less frequently acknowledged hints may be Tolkiens early drawing of the "World Ship" and the World of Arda, published in the Book of Lost Tales and a painting by Professor Tolkien , entitled The Man in the Moon, showing the Moon with it's Towers, and faraway, Planet Earth, with the continents Northamerica, Eurasia, Africa and possibly Atlantis and Mu or Lemuria.
While certainly an important source these drawings are also often considered just rough drafts, early processing steps which just represent very early concepts Professor Tolkien never again revisited and never officially published in his lifetime. While many later interpretations tried to stay as close as possible to these Sketches while others have argued that Tolkien certainly would have reworked and revisited his earliest Sketches and would have altered them to avoid a too strong resemblance to modern maps of our modern Earth's Landmasses.On the other hand, the close resemblance of the Professor's Shaping of Middle-Earth Maps to early illustrations of Plate tectonics have inspired several Artists to flesh out the obvious similarities between Ambar and Pangaea or Middle-Earth/Southernesse and Laurasia/Gondwanaland (In fact The Professor's Sketches predated the modern maps and Theories of Plate tectonics).
Karen Wynn Fonstad's The Atlas of Middle-Earth stayed very close to Professor Tokien's early Ambarkanta Sketches, but added the Lord of the Rings maps as a link between the Beleriand map and the continental sketches. "An Artist's Interpretation of Middle Earth, including the wild lands east,south and north" by Pete Fenlon went the other way and, while still loosely based of Tolkien's Ambarkanta Sketches, tried to alter the continent's Shape with the attempt to create a continent that bore as little resemblence to Africa or Asia as the Westlands did to europe (while Pete Fenlon still included some allusions to real-world geographical features).
Both Maps (and many others inspired by them, such as the maps published by David Day in his Tolkien illustrated encyclopedia) were however often criticized as being to small in scale. Professor Tolkien offers a vague hint to the extent of Middle-Earth through the words of Aragorn "...the far countries of Rhûn and Harad where the stars are strange..." and in the Nature of Middle-Earth revealed that he imagined the distance between the awakening place of the Elves in the East and the Westlands to be about 2000 miles. Scientifically speaking, the coasts of Middle-earth should correspond roughly with those of Pangaea (in the Elder Days) or Eurafrasia (in the Succeeding Ages).
Professor Tolkien's earliest sketches however seem to indicate a far smaller continent if the relation of Beleriand to the rest of the continent would be taken as literal and intentional, and indeed both Fonstadt and Fenlon drew maps of comparatively small continents whose southern coasts barely touched the equator and whose eastern coastlines barely went beyond the 80° or 110° degree of longitude.
In the absence of a truly accurate and reliable authorized map, so far all maps depicting Arda, Middle-Earth or Ambar's other continents , especially if set after the First Age, have to be seen as mere interpretations, as imprecise and speculative as antique or medieval maps of our own world before the 18th and 19th century.
The problem of "Undeath"[]
Technology[]
The Bestiary[]
Having to fill Middle-Earth with life can get frustrating.Especially if you are a game master who wants fitting adversaries for a group of aspiring heroes.Tolkien gives us few creatures or beasts.We have Dragons, Vampires, Werewolves the obligatory demon and undead and that pretty much is it. Taking a closer look we maybe get Kraken or Squid and "Great Beasts"- we don't even really get told what exactly they are!
We even only notice that Middle-earth was home to Jackals, Lions and Pards when we dig somewhat deeper into the elvish wordlists and dictionaries.And we have to look into obscure poems to find the Barrow-hound, Dumbledore, Fastitokalon, Gargoyle, Hummerhorn, Mewlip and moor-dog.
Game masters usually then come up with creating varieties.Another sub-kind of dragon (apart from the five or six types the Professor gave us), the Warg under a different name.More Varieties of demon (apart from the five or six varieties the Professor gave us...) more varieties of the Undead (apart from the five or six varieties the Professor...).
The animal world of the Westlands largely seems to be exactly that of Western europe.With the exception that we on and off have mutations of enlarged or even giant growth. We have bigger Badgers, Bats, Bears, Cats, Crickets, Crows, Dogs, Dragonflies, Eagles, Eels, Elephants, Foxes, Hart, Hornets, Kine, Mice, Moths, Otters, rats, Glow worms, Snails, Spiders, Swans, Terrapins, Wild pigs and Wolves.
Well the Giant Spider is not a natural beast of europe, or in fact it actually is, but it is not nearly as giant, but probably the Professor wanted to set records straight, if there is a name "Giant spider" then it must be giant too, and giant means larger than a small hand.(some species must have produced a kind of silk too...or the elves secretly had smuggled silk worms from cuivienen or Aman into their forest homes!)
Some of the other beasts, as the Warg, resemble prehistoric forms, the same could be presumed for some other species.In fact , when Professor Tolkien needed a "winged Steed" for his Nazgul, the "Pegasi" turned out to be giant Pterodactyls - so Dinosaurs are probably a thing too.
The Professor used Mythology, Legend, Fairytale... but he also had a tendency to rationalize. So the Elves turned into a culture of mythical "super pre-humans", goblins and Ogres became tribes of mutated and degenerated pre-humans, the "wild man of the woods" became a sort of pygmy-like neanderthal or Aborigine, the rural Leprichaun, Hob, Puck or Robin Goodfellow became a culture of diminuitive , green-yellow clad, small-humanoid farmers and even the powerful nature-demon or Landscape-spirit became a jolly small man , living in a cottage in the Old Forest.
We only read the vague allusion of Morgoth's "monsters of horn and ivory who dyed the earth with blood". We don't know what exactly they were, only they existed.If we had ever met them in a Tolkien story (or poem) we might however have found out they were not too magical and otherworldly at all but rather believable, living animals.Albeit as far away from the European wolf as the Warg, or "pleistocenic megalupus".
Notes[]
All of these points of course also need to be taken into account when converting or using Elements from non-tolkien related material, for example D&D or GURPS, for middle-earth campaigns or to flesh out non-described wild lands in the east and south by taking inspiration from oriental or east asian source-material.