# When did M.E. time begin?



## Eledhwen (Mar 16, 2003)

"_And there was evening, and there was morning - the first day._" is how 'time' began in the Creation story; but at what point did time begin in Middle Earth?

Did the cycle of the light of the Two Trees denote days, or the launching of the Sun and Moon?

Time begins when history begins. History begins when things change. Was it, then, when the great music was begun? When did the vision become reality, and when did reality become time?

Answers on a postcard, please....


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## Thorin (Mar 16, 2003)

WHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! FINALLY! My 1000th post! (*Fireworks, bombs, bells and whistles*) After all this time and after all the Moderators erasing threads and my posts, I've reached my milestone! 

Anyway, to the task at hand...


Time (at least in Valian years) began when the Valar came into Arda and the world was shaped. There are appx. 10 sun years to 1 Valian year. After 35000 sun years, the Two trees came to be. From here, time was reckoned anew (Still in Valian years). In 1050 VY, the Elves awoke. So from the beginning of time reckoning to the elves was 4050 VY or 40500 sun years. In the year 1500 TT or 5000 VY, the Sun and Moon began the time reckoning and the First Age officially began and lasted for another 500 years.


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## Eledhwen (Mar 16, 2003)

Thanks Thorin! Did you figure all that out by yourself?

Congratulations on the 4-figure post count, by the way!


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## Thorin (Mar 16, 2003)

Well...Sort of. I did the math but the facts are all in History of Middle Earth Volume X, "Morgoth's Ring". The next book to read after the Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, IMO.


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## Eledhwen (Mar 17, 2003)

I haven't read that; I went straight to the Book of Lost Tales 1 and 2 after UT, because I wanted to read The Fall of Gondolin.


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## I KNOW KUNG-FU (Mar 28, 2003)

*here's a piece of useless info.......*

Although there is evidence in Tolkien's works of how it all began, did you know that it Middle-earth is based (if only loosely) on Europe? We, meaning Europeans, used to call Europe 'Middel Erthe' and that is where he got his idea from. If you look at maps of Middle-earth, you can see that West of The Shire is the sea - which in real life would be the Atlantic Ocean.


**i read it in a book you know!**

Well there you go - just a piece of trivia if you were bored or curious!


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## Eledhwen (Mar 28, 2003)

I once found a grid map of Middle Earth overlaid on a map of Europe, but I didn't save the url and I can't get it to appear on any search engines. If anyone sees it anywhere, please let me know.


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## Beleg (Mar 29, 2003)

Is this the Link?


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## Eledhwen (Mar 29, 2003)

That looks very much like it, yes. Mordor in the Balkan states. There was another map on the same website with the grid map overlaid on it, also in greytone and red, which helped identify cities more closely. It also pointed out that the ME geography did not exactly fit Europe where Tolkien imagined it, probably because having a good clear map of Middle Earth was more important than matching it to a map of Europe (also, didn't Christopher Tolkien draw the maps of ME?).


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## Beleg (Mar 29, 2003)

Humm, actually there are two maps on the website. The fact is that they are two small to be viewed too clearly. I haven't yet studied the article accompanied by the maps but i assumed that the maps of HOME, if any would surely be made by Chris or would he employ a professional cartographer in their making? I'll try to do some digging tonight. Here is another link which might be of some assistance. But the fact that it is only grid alligned and does not disclose its location on Europe map is still there. 

Here is the artical written by Lilath at http://rover.wiesbaden.netsurf.de/~lalaith/M-earth.html



> When I browsed L, I accidentally stumbled upon this passage:
> 
> "If Hobbiton and Rivendell are taken (as intended) to be at about the latitude of Oxford, then Minas Tirith, 600 miles south, is at about the latitude of Florence. The Mouths of Anduin and the ancient city of Pelargir are at about the latitude of ancient Troy." (L294)
> This sounded a bit unlikely to me, and a check in an atlas quickly showed that this statement was extremely vague, to say the least: actually, the North-South distance of the latitudes of Florence and Troy is twice as large as that of Minas Tirith and Pelargir (the scale of the large LR foldout map being verified against that of TR). However, if the latitude of Hobbiton was accepted to be correct, this provoked the idea to apply a meridional grid on the Middle-Earth map, allowing to project it on a globe (which Karen Fonstad thought impossible, cf. TAMe).
> ...


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