# What happened to Dwarves after the Hobbit?



## TommyMagic (Jan 8, 2004)

Hi all!

I havent read LOTR for a good few years now and dont have my book with me here (it is at my house at university). But even so, i havent yet read any other tolkien works besides Hobbit and the first few pages of The Sil.

So i just wondered, as far as i remember hearing, Middle Earth is Our Earth but MANY years ago, or was that a lie i read lol?

Even so, Is it not true that eventually only Men were left? So what happened to the other species? Hobbits? Dwarves (didnt they die out in th caves or something?) Ents? Etc?

Like i say i havent read it for a while and dont have much other knowledge on Tolkien (yet!!!) so i was just wondering what happened!

Also, was there any other great wars after War of the Ring? Or was it all peace from then on? Weren't there some Orcs or something that made a last stand but were easilt defeated? I seem to remember hearing that somewhere! Basically, if you can answer these Q's or ANY interesting information what happened in Middle Earth after the War of The Ring, that would be great!

Appreciated!


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## Bombadillo (Jan 8, 2004)

> So i just wondered, as far as i remember hearing, Middle Earth is Our Earth but MANY years ago, or was that a lie i read lol?



it is to be earth in a far far away past



> Even so, Is it not true that eventually only Men were left? So what happened to the other species? Hobbits? Dwarves (didnt they die out in th caves or something?) Ents? Etc?



I remember rteading this somewhere, can't remember where exactly....
hobbits: became shyer and shyer and evaded man totally in the end, ever heard of little nomes etc, maybe thats just them...

ents: became treeish and with the dissappearing of the forests....  

Dwarfs became so interested with their wealth that in the end they locked themselves up.



> Also, was there any other great wars after War of the Ring? Or was it all peace from then on? Weren't there some Orcs or something that made a last stand but were easilt defeated? I seem to remember hearing that somewhere! Basically, if you can answer these Q's or ANY interesting information what happened in Middle Earth after the War of The Ring, that would be great!



tolkien once was planning to write something of the fourth age... maybe this is somewhere in HOME(???)


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## Arvedui (Jan 8, 2004)

Hobbits are still around. From _The Lord of the Rings, Prologue, Concerning Hobbits:_


> Even in ancient days they were, as a rule, shy of 'The Big Folk', as they call us, and now they avoid us with dismay and are becoming hard to find.



As Bombadillo stated, Tolkien once started writing a Fourth Age-story. It can be found in one of the HoME-books and is called _The New Shadow._ I can't find which book right now, but I am sure that others will provide the right one. 

EDIT: Found it! It is in _History of Middle-earth XII, The Peoples of Middle-earth._


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## TommyMagic (Jan 8, 2004)

Ah yes i do remember hearing about that, didnt he run into trouble in that he just couldnt think of a story that worked well etc?

So Hobbits are still around us, lol thats a nice thought i have to say (even though it is fiction lol)

Does anyone know when LoTR is set in terms of how many million years ago from us? Is there ever a mention made?

What happened to the descendants of the Numenor? (ie Aragorn) who were blessed with longer life, did they just phase out throught mating with regular "men" women lol if you understand!


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## jallan (Jan 8, 2004)

Tolkien once said in aletter that imagined the Destruction of the Ring occurred about 6,000 years ago. But in another earlier writing the fall of Númenor is in pre-glacial times.

But Tolkien was not particulary concerned with fitting his tales into exact prehistoric geological period.

As to people of Númenorean descent, Tolkien mentions there were other Númenorean colonies in Middle-earth besides those which gave birth to Gondor and Arnor. I assume he means us to understand that the oldest historical civilizations depend in part on Númenorean culture.

But in his later published writings no explicit links to these cultures appear. Nor does he link any real or legendary genealogies back to Aragorn.

In Tolkien’s earliest writings there are notes about a man named Ingwë who was a contemproary of Eäendil and was driven in some manner in a boat to a region of Middle-earth where he afterwards dwelt and became teacher and chieftains of the ancestors of various Scandinavian peoples.

But this kind of thing disappeared in Tolkien’s later work.

We are supposed to imagine that at least some of the traditional tales about Dwarfs, Elves, Fays, Little Folk and ugly Boggarts and Trolls and so forth are based on encounters of human beings near to our own time with faded and dwindled Elves and with descendants of the Dwarves and Hobbits and Orcs and Trolls of the Third Age.


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## TommyMagic (Jan 8, 2004)

Man i really have got to read more of tolkiens stuff!

Can anyone give a mini history of the Numenors lol i know thats asking a lot but, what did they do, how exactly were they wiped out, how did they build such terrific things etc etc anything lol just want to increase knowledge and cant afford books quite yet lol poor student here!


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## Arvedui (Jan 9, 2004)

TommyMagic said:


> Ah yes i do remember hearing about that, didnt he run into trouble in that he just couldnt think of a story that worked well etc?


He abandoned it after some 40 pages or so, because it becam more of a suspense-story than a work in the line of LotR and the Silmarillion.


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## Gildor (Jan 9, 2004)

TommyMagic said:


> Man i really have got to read more of tolkiens stuff!
> 
> Can anyone give a mini history of the Numenors lol i know thats asking a lot but, what did they do, how exactly were they wiped out, how did they build such terrific things etc etc anything lol just want to increase knowledge and cant afford books quite yet lol poor student here!



Basically, the Numenorians were a line of Men descended from Beren and Luthien, and as such had Elven blood and close friendship with the Elves of Aman (the Undying Lands). As sort of a compensation for having to put up with Morgoth in the First Age, the Valar gave the Numenorians their own kingdom on a large island off the West coast of Middle Earth. 

With help from the Elves, the Numenorians became a greatly advanced and powerful civilization, and began colonizing the Western shores of Middle Earth. But Sauron was still causing trouble there, and eventually the Numenorians sent a great army ashore to fight him. They were so powerful that Sauron surrendered, and he was taken back to Numenor as a prisoner, where he used his fair-seeming form to corrupt them. Many of the Numenorians were jealous of the immortality granted to the Elves, and in their growing pride (and Sauron's lies) they came to mistrust and even curse the Valar for denying the same 'gift' to them. Sauron goaded them on until they massed a huge fleet to sail to the Undying Lands, where mortals were expressly forbidden to go. 

Despite warnings by the Valar, the Numenorian fleet went to Aman. They landed, but were destroyed by the Valar's wrath. Numenor itself was sunk beneath the waves as punishment, and the only ones to survive were those who had remained faithful to the Valar, mainly Elendil and his sons. They fled to the mainland and established kingdoms there which became Arnor and Gondor.

There's lots of info about everything here: http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/default.htm


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## JeffF. (Jan 9, 2004)

*The Dwarves*

ROTK appendices shows that Durin VII was born sometime after the War of the Ring. To me that implies a return to Moria. After the War of the Ring Moria would still have been inhabited by remnants of the orcs and trolls that chased the fellowship out. There would have been at least one more battle to reclaim the Dwarves eldest father's home.

As I've said before I recommend the Silver Call duology by Dennis McKiernan that is a thinly disguised story (that is disguised as a non-Tolkien background) about the dwarves returning.


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## aturina (Jan 9, 2004)

Wow, this thread could not have been posted at a better time for me. I was wondering basically the same thing. Except, more specifically about the Rangers and if they were still functioning the same way as before the return of the King. Because, it would seem to me that their duties would no longer be needed. Or, maybe they went to Gondor to serve the new King?

Thanks, Gildor, for the mini history lesson of the Numenoreans.


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## aturina (Jan 9, 2004)

Guess I found my answer at your website Gildor:

_We're also lacking any definite records of the fate of the Rangers. It's possible that their role came to an end after the War of the Ring, but its equally plausible that Aragorn would have used them to maintain order in the newly-refounded North-kingdom._ 

Loads of information there.


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## Lantarion (Jan 9, 2004)

Gildor said:


> Basically, the Numenorians were a line of Men descended from Beren and Luthien


Actually those were only the Kings of Númenor.. I know you didn't mean that all the poeple of Númenor were one big family!   But it just looked that way, so I felt I should clarify.


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## aulendil (Feb 8, 2004)

With respect to dating tolkien with respect to "real" history.

It is possible to use the "real" Atlantis myth for this.

The Myth of Atlantis comes to the modern world through the Greek, Plato who discovered it in the works of an earlier Greek sage Solon, who reports that he heard the story in Egypt during the 6th Century BC. The Egyptions story positively dated the downfall of Atlantis at 9000 years earlier (i.e. 10000-9000BC).

Cross reference to the downfall of Numenor and the War of the Ring can be dated at around 6000BC. This ties in with the aforementioned Letter.


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## Lantarion (Feb 8, 2004)

jallan said:


> As to people of Númenorean descent, Tolkien mentions there were other Númenorean colonies in Middle-earth besides those which gave birth to Gondor and Arnor. I assume he means us to understand that the oldest historical civilizations depend in part on Númenorean culture.


Yes and that is precisely what Atlantis serves as for those who would believe it.
I actually have a book, written by somebody called W. Scott Elliot, where he details the supposed history of the settlement of Atlantis. I haven't read the whole book, and it strikes my modern half-scientific mind as proposterous at times, but it is a very interesting read so far. 
This author holds that the Atlanteans were a special race. The 'history' of the various races, he claims, is thus:
1. The spiritual beings who lived in the Sun
2. The pseudo-spiritual beings who lived on the Moon (perhaps Tolkien's _selenites_ are a reference to this? Nah probably not )
3. A race of dimwitted giants, who lived on Earth
4. the Atlanteans, who were extremely sophisticated
5. Our own race, which entails all so called 'races' of people living in the world now, and this collective race is called the Aryan race; it used to be a valid theological term I believe, denoting mankind as it exists today. There are no Nazi influences for the word, despite its later misuse.

I'm very interested in everything to do with both Atlantis and Númenor; I should really read this book I have, and Plato's _Republic_, and if any of this Solon's writings were preserved I'd like to read them too..
As a part of my Art class, I am in fact planning a page from a supposed Atlantean manuscript. I have invented a script, the 'Atlantean' script which I call _ataláya_, and I am planning the page at the present time.


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## Inderjit S (Feb 8, 2004)

Lantarion-there were a lot of other (through varying degrees) descendants of Elros apart from the King.

Durin VII was (according to prophecy) to be a descendant of Dáin Ironfoot II (Last Writings; HoMe 12) and thus Dáin’s prophecy that Moria will be populated again after some powerful being kills Durin's bane comes true. 

The rangers returned to the North with Gandalf and co. Why? Because it was their home. Even Aragorn's heart lay in the North, despite patriotic songs aside.


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## jimmyboy (Feb 14, 2004)

> They landed, but were destroyed by the Valar's wrath. Numenor itself was sunk beneath the waves as punishment


Good job on the summary, Gildor. 
I'd only add one comment: it was Eru who destroyed Numenor, not that Valar.


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