this must be asked a lot, but which age are we in now?

I heard one person say that a new age began when a dark lord was overthrown... so would that mean that we are in the 6th age or somethin?

[hobbitlass]

Good point, but whom were overthrown in the 4th and 5th ages?

[Noxomanus]

maybe the Romans and the Spanish empire.....but i really dunno

[Narya]

The shapes of the world in the 4th time age are diffrent from those in our time.
And first of all the realm of Gondor and Arnor had to disappere or develop and change so that it would be like any realm in our real history.
Maybe this fictionall historical period of Middle Earth takes place in between two "real" periods in our history and we have to find out between which two this could be.

[Bruce MacCulloch]

Professor Tolkien reckoned that we were in the Sixth or the Seventh Age. In a footnote to a letter to Rhone Beare, he wrote concerning the "gap" between the events of his mythology and our current era:

I imagine the gap to be about 6000 years : that is we are now at the end of the Fifth Age, if the Ages were of about the same length as S.A. and T.A. But they have, I think, quickened; and I imagine we are actually at the end of the Sixth Age, or in the Seventh.

The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien, letter 211

[ April 05, 2003: Message edited by: Bruce MacCulloch ]

Possibly the seventh, eh?

sorry to cross the streams, but I couldn't help but notice that there are seven Ages in Robert Jordan's bookseries... maybe if we are in the 7th there might be a largescale end to our age, another breaking, and it will all start over.

[Child of the 7th Age]

Comes creeping in the back door. As you can see for my moniker, I vote for the 7th age.

I took this name after I read that footnote in Tolkien's Letters.

sharon