Talk:Fourth Age

Article Title
Could the work of fiction issue be addressed by retitling the article "Fourth Age (Middle Earth)"? AusJeb (talk) 17:55, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Earth History and Current Age Speculation
Is this speculation based on comments or thoughts from either J. R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien or anyone else centrally connected to the Lord of the Rings saga? If it is infact so, please quote sources.

This article should be strictly reserved for information on the fourth age in the realm of middle-earth (or more correctly [Arda]) put for forward by J. R. Tolkien and his collaborators. Although some speculation and elaboration is required due to the sketchy nature of details regarding the 4th age, the last 3 paragraphes (as of the 13th January, 2006) require major rewriting or preferably outright removal (possibly to be placed elsewhere) due to 1. appearing to be largely third party speculation and 2. not being directly related to the 4th age of middle-earth.

Which age?
So....that would put us in which age??? Someone should really work with this idea and give us Tolkien fans a little more to work with. So, if the ending of an Age is usually denoted with the downfall of the Tyrant, would we be seeing the beginning of the 7th or 8th Age?--66.243.55.44 19:52, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)Adam Hayden

RE: By the timeline that Tolkien created, we live in the Seventh age, starting a few years after World War 2. The other ages: Speculation concerning later ages While Tolkien originally described Middle-earth as a fictional early history of the real Earth he later adjusted this slightly to describe it as a mythical time within the history of Earth. This 'mythical' distinction served to remove the stories of Middle-earth from any specific time period where they might contradict known details of actual history. Determining the epoch of a Fifth Age is important for those who apply the Tolkien calendar to present dates. For example, Issue 42 of Mallorn, the journal of The Tolkien Society (August 2004), carried a lengthy article analyzing Tolkien's works as well as his possible Theosophist beliefs, concluding that the Years of the Sun began on March 25, 10160 BC, the Second Age on December 26, 9564 BC, the Third Age on December 24, 6123 BC, and the Fourth Age on March 18, 3102 BC. On this scheme the Fifth Age is equivalent to the Anno Domini system of dating.[ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.197.216.217 (talk) 16:39, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Myth and Reality
This is not good. IMO we shouldn't even be discussing which age we are in, as Middle Earth is the stuff of fantasy and shouldn't be allowed to mix with real dates. Besides, it's all speculation, and speculation has no place in a book of facts supported by sources.
 * Well, some people consider this important. One could argue that The Bible is the stuff of fantasy, and thus has the exact same right to be crossed with history as the Lord of the Rings, other holy writings, and as of yet unproven history.

The constitution of the ages
At the end of each age what happens? The Years of the Trees ended with Ungoliant taking the light of the Two Trees. The First Age ended with the destruction of Beleriand and the banishing of Morgoth. The Second Age when Sauron's ring was captured and the destruction of Numenor. The Third Age with the destruction of Sauron's ring.

As for the Second Age, however, Sauron was defeated early on, and was taken prisoner. And in the Third Age, Sauron (the Necromancer) was defeated again in Murkwood.

My concept is that maybe victories on the side of the Elves and their allies the Men do not necessarily constitute a new age. Maybe it's something else. One thing to note is that the Third Age is not finished until the Ring-Bearers travel west. The similar cannot be said of the First and the Second ages, though.

I had an idea that the ages were correspondent to something other than destruction, but perhaps that failed me. But as I said, the changes are not perfectly correspondent to victories, as (if memory serves) Morgoth was defeated at least once before the First Age was finished (certainly Sauron was wounded badly in one battle in that age), but of course Sauron was defeated at least once in the Second Age before the end. Help me out here. -- D. F. Schmidt (talk) 07:41, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
 * The ages each ended when the most significant events/themes of that age came to a close. Morgoth was actually defeated a short time before the end of the First Age... it wasn't until after the victory, relocation of the refugees, Sauron's refusal to go back to Aman for judgement, and the loss of the remaining Silmarils into the earth and ocean that the First Age ended... Morgoth, Beleriand, and the fate of the Silmarils had all come to a concluding point (though not their Final end). Given how important the Silmarils were to events of the First Age the age couldn't really end until their fate had been resolved. Ditto Sauron, the Numenoreans, and the alliance of Elves and Men in the Second and the Ringbearers in the Third. --CBD &#x260E; &#x2709; 11:14, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Moved from article
"The following is mere speculation and unrelated to fantasy works: That implies that maybe the fall of Nazi Germany ended the Sixth Age in 1945, as the other ages also ended with the downfalls of tyrants. The estimation of 6000 years would place the end of the Third Age and the start of the Fourth in the 5th millennium BC. Since Tolkien was a devout Catholic, it is speculated that he would have held the birth of Jesus to be the most important event of the era, and that his sacrifice at the hands of the Romans would be the most likely time for the start of the Fifth Age."

Kosebamse 07:22, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

the problem with this logic, is that, to my understanding, Tolkien's Ages would have to perhaps, pre-date the dinosaurs, if they are to follow a literal historic timeline... If i recall/comprehend from a few sources, including the Encyclopedia of Arda (http://www.glyphweb.com/ARDA/a/arda.html), Arda was a (once flat) perhaps Pangaea-like world. Now, besides that fact that we showed up (in "civilized" form, at least), long after that point, and people are saying that heraps Jesus, and Hitler, respectively, were the 5th and 6th ages, a whole heck of a lot would have happened during that period of time (the 4th age), and where the heck did all the stuff they built end up? What would be a fun explaination, is that they either rebuilt the world a third time, or all the continents got swllowed up by the the tectonic oceanic divide, and gave the earth a clean slate over the course of a few thousand years :p But, we could also look at it as a myth, told by the folks of old, with the likes of various forgotten gods, and king arthur, told before people "knew" how the world worked. Not that we are sure of anything today :) Soylent.Hero 03:01, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

References!!
Some of the material removed as speculation may actually be supported by some of Tolkien's letters. This is, of course, why everything needs to be referenced!!! And we shouldn't be referencing the Encyclopaedia of Arda. All references should be to the original books and writings by Tolkien. I feel that the only references to the Encyclopaedia of Arda should be in the "External links" section, rather than the references section. Carcharoth 08:18, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I think this does indeed need a major rewrite. I'm as big a Tolkien fan as anyone, and get at least some brownie points for having published an article on the influence of the Kalevala on Middle-earth (and not in a fanzine, but a cultural journal). But come on! It's a work of fiction! We're going a little too far with chronological overlay and statements like 'Tolkien's later remarks are of limited use in canonical interpretation of his works.' This is almost farcical!

There's room for analysis of Tolkien's natural theology, views on good and evil, etc., and for descriptive analysis of the actual works. But this is too much!

A good wiki on "The Fourth Age" should actually DESCRIBE the Fourth Age, and sans fan speculation about Hitler, Moses, Abraham, and all the rest. Leave that to Mallorn, if you must! Where's any reference to Eldarion, to Sam's possible voyage to Valdemar, to Elessar's policies, or to the unfinished "The New Shadow," the only Fourth Age story Tolkien pursued to any length? (TexxasFinn)
 * Good points. I've tried to address some of these issues. -- Jordi&middot; ✆ 11:58, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

attacks from Dol Guldur
In the part Elves it is said that after the fall of the Dark Tower and the passing of Sauron at the start of the fourth age the land of Lórien was attacked three times from the fortress of Dol Guldur. But it's not true. The attacks were before the fall of Dark Tower. See Appendices. --Japo 19:10, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Later Ages
"Tolkien said that he thought the time between the end of the Third Age and the 20th century AD was about 6000 years..."

Tolkien did say this at one point (in one of his letters, IIRC), but given Tolkien's propensity for changing his mind and having multiple versions of everything, shouldn't we mention that in his earlier and incomplete work "The Lost Road" (see History of Middle-Earth volume 5) Tolkien set the "Middle-earth period" much earlier, before the Ice Age? Vultur (talk) 03:06, 21 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Furthermore the reference in Letters is not so unambiguous; Tolkien actually says "the gap between the Fall of Barad-dur and our Days" - when I first read this, I took "our Days" to mean "known history", not "the 20th century". (Correlating it with the 'end of the Sixth/beginning of the Seventh' reference does in fact imply 6000 yrs to our time; but the original letter can just as easily imply ~11000 (6000 before the beginning of known history)). Vultur (talk) 21:49, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Hobbits?
There is info about men, elves, dwarves and even ents, but what about the hobbits? Is there any info to be found on that?--84.197.216.217 (talk) 16:44, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Medical
Please, make a disambiguition page, because 4th age is also a medical domain. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:E35:8A8D:FE80:F519:7FF4:8B9B:973C (talk) 11:53, 10 June 2017 (UTC)