IIRC, this is exactly right, Engywook.
Oh, I’ve read it. No one else really raised the issue again, though you did touch on it. The fact that there are no more elves doesn’t help us in determining whether Middle-Earth is the same as our world, since Tolkein specifically wrote that all the elves had passed on to the west.
Heck, all ya have to read is the first two posts, which include the answer and the question :smack:
Of course, I still found the rest of the thread interesting reading. Once I finish Point Counter Point I’m going to start re-reading the Silmarillion, The Hobbit, etc. for the first time in years, so this is a good warmup :smack:
Middle-Earth wouldn’t have to straddle the equator for the stars to be strange in Harad. To a person familiar with the heavens (as an 80-year old outdoorsman would certainly be), things start looking weird just going from, say, 45 degrees to 40. Sure, most of the same stars are there, but they’re in different places in the sky, and there are new things on the southern horizon. Meanwhile, you get things like the end star of the Sickle of Valinor starting to set on the northern horizon. Weird, all around.
There are numerous cues that Middle-Earth is the same as our own planet. The constellations are the same (at least, the Dipper (Sickle), Orion, and the star Sirius). The ratio of the day to the year is the same, to within a fraction of a second (about which Tolkien comments that although this happened long ago, it was a mere instant, to the Earth). Hobbits are spoken of as still being present, though scarce, and several expressions are said to have their origin with hobbits. Orcs, meanwhile, are said to have invented many of the modern devices of warefare. Finally, when Tolkien is comparing Middle-Earth to our world, he says things like “Even now…”, rather than “even here”.
…from the 1966 Ballantine Books (Houghton Mifflin Co.) edition of The Hobbit, p.16:
" – what is a hobbit? I suppose hobbits need some description nowadays, since they have become rare and shy of the Big People, as they call us. They are (or were) a little people… there is no magic about them, except the ordinary everyday sort which helps them to disappear quietly and quickly when large stupid folk like you and me come blundering along…"
The whole section describing hobbits is about half the page, and the narrator is addressing the reader in a way which leaves no doubt (to me) that this story is set in “our” world.
And Chronos mentions other references like this one.
It’s in The Silmarillion. After the Numenorians attempted to reach the Undying Lands, Illuvater bent the world, presumably making it into today’s sphere. Cirdan’s Elvish ships can sail “the straight path” and still reach the U.L. The ships of Men have to stick to the surface of the sphere and so cannot, no matter what course they take.
DD