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what would possibly exist in the farthest east?
Hello everybody.im new to this forum but i had read most of tolkien creation(through lotr wikia and tolken gateway of course)but none of them give a clue to what live beyond rhun.anybody have guesses?
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Alatar, Pallando, and whatever kingdoms they managed to carve out.
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Yes but maybe there are indigenous people.tribe or kingdom like you says or just a wilderness with strange unknown thing.heck probably a balrog escape there.:D
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Beyond Rhūn? A distant sea, I expect. As far as I was aware Rhūn was essentially everything east of Rhovanion to the far coasts of Middle-earth, beyond the Orocarni perhaps.
Within Rhūn: kingdoms of Men and Dwarves (as has been said), some remnant of the Avari Elves, Orcs I would imagine. We have to imagine a land which had lain deep under the shadow since time immemorial. Professor Tolkien of course never went into any greater detail for, I would argue, two reasons: a) the fictional authors of his narratives knew nothing further about Rhūn b) having parts of Middle-earth which were unknown maintained the sense of mystery and 'unseen vistas' which he thought were important |
Hard to say. It is tempting to think that, as ME is in a certain sense, an earlier form of our own world, that if you went far enough east, you would find other large kingdom's of man, corresponding to the large ancient Asian empires of our own world (Indian, Chinese, Kmer etc.) But as you point out, there is really nothing said one way or the other. If such kingdoms exist, I imagine that one of them is probably similar to Near Harad (if only because the Near Haradrim with thier skills at Oliphaunt riding seem as much Indian in orgin as North African/Middle Eastern) I'd say that there was some influence on the West in that one would assume that the far east would be where gunpowder was discovered (as it was in our world) but evidence seems to lay on the Ishtari discovering gunpower all on thier own (either Saruman figuring it out and letting Gandalf in on the technique back when they were still on speaking terms (or vice versa), or Gandalf discovering it independently.)
Actually, there might be a lot of incentive in later ME to find out what lay to the east. Besides wanting to make sure a new Dark Lord or some sort was not gathering power there wating to swing in and retake lands now rendered masterless by Sauron's defeat, Faramir might want to make a trip. He is still techically steward of Gondor (even if he only excercises that right in cases where the King is away on other matters. He might decide that the line of the Stewards needs a replacement horn (now that the original is broken and buried), and that would mean sending someone traipsing around the east in the hope that somewhere out there there are still Kine of Araw wandering around. |
I've no idea what may be out there. Perhaps some Elves and Men. I'm not sure if all the Men who're descended of the 3 Houses went west nor all of the Elves. Perhaps some lingered at their awakening places and even went the opposite direction.
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For some reason I have always thought of the wainriders and the other 'easterlings' under Sauron's sway, as being inspired by historical near-eastern societies. Therefore I also imagined that there would be other kingdoms further to the east, not under the dominion of Sauron. |
Possibly, I've always thought the Wainriders were sort of the ME equivalent of the Scythians (also noted as horsemen and charioteers). Since the Scythinas were near eastern (their territory was mostly in the Iranian Steppes) That would bear it out.
And I would also like to think a few of the Farther Eastern kingdoms could have been Shadow Free. If they were, it might even be fun to imagine that rumors of these kingdoms were whispered in the west, and there was a belief that, should another menace on the level of Sauron arise, and it be neccecary in the absence of elves and wizards, armies of this shadow free east would ride out and lend their support to this evil force's conquest (sort of a ME version of the legend of Prester John.) |
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I have always seen the Easterlings' use of chariots as evidence that their development was "held back" by their long history as thralls to the Shadow. |
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It is an interesting question, especially since there can be no doubt that the Kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor was the most technological advanced states in ME at their founding. Arnor disintegrated and Gondor entered something that could be called 'dark ages' where their knowledge waned. So while other cultures most likely progressed, the Numenorean's regressed. Would it have been possible for other cultures to overtake them? |
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Frodo himself upon Amon Hen observed the Easterlings as having "swordsmen, spearmen, bowmen upon horses, chariots of chieftains and laden wains" (emphasis mine) which suggests to me that even Easterling chariots were more commonly used for ceremonial purposes and as transportation than as weapons. |
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I think that the divide between military development does not signify more/less military advancement, just different types of advancement. Like the crusades were a clash of the lighter but more brittle Muslim forces against the heavier but stronger Western Europeans. And both had wins and both had losses. I think the two tactics or styles are just so different that they are practically incomparable - you can compare specific weapons, maneouvres, mobility, organization, etc., but when put together they seem like to much of a heterogenous mixture to really compare or predict the outcome based on numbers and strength. It seems like militarily speaking, each one has to play out its strengths to the fullest and hope that they are enough to overcome the enemy's strengths.
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The easterling do have some military advance.for example,the have an effective anti-cavalry techniques,which is why they were feared by rohirrim and gondor.they also had some advance in agricultural,seeing that most of sauron food were made in rhun,due to the ashes of mount doom make fertile land in rhun.they armour is also pretty different from the west.the west had wing-shaped helmet and iron armour,while the easterling had fearsome dragon-shaped helmet and golden armour.considering that the easterling can make gold into a strong armour,i think that they had some advanced metalurgy techniques.
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"Rhūn" just means "east", so it's more-or-less equivalent to saying "over thataway".
Tolkien never mapped nor fully described the region, but we do know some of what's out there. In the original symmetric design there was a range of mountains to the east, mirroring the Blue Mountains in the west; the Red Mountains (Orocarni), and it may be surmised that these are still there (the west recieved far more damage at the end of the First and Second Ages; the east appears to have been relatively unscathed). The Mountains of the Wind were towards the east and slightly south too. According to a wiki page they were destroyed in the War of Wrath, but the only evidence I can find that they may no longer exist is the fact that they appear on Ambarkanta map IV but not on map V (and map V still has Beleriand on it so it pre-dates the War of Wrath, meaning that if they were destroyed it was before then). The Inland Sea of Helcar existed in the east too; according to one theory it shrank (possibly draining into the Bay of Belfalas/Great Gulf) at the end of the First Age, leaving behind Mordor (which by this theory would have been underwater in the First Age!) and the Sea of Rhūn as a remnant. This seems to be based on not much more than a speculation by CT in one of the HoME books (and an attempt to match Ambarkanta map V with the later geography). However, the Cirdan essay in HoME 12 states that the Teleri lived by the Sea of Rhūn for an extended time during the Great Journey, which seems to me to indicate that they're separate seas. Beyond that there's a shore, the east sea (narrower than Belegaer) and an eastern continent mirroring Aman. |
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Well, war-chariots were 'primitive', in that they were an intermediate step on the way to full mounted cavaltry. Some cultures of course skipped right over the step; but it certainly was the case that chariots by classical times had been relegated to parades and races- and a few isolated and, yes, backwards peoples like the Britons.
Basically, chariots were for armies that hadn't yet figured out how to fight from horeseback; decent cav would rip them a new one. |
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http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore...ot_burial.aspx |
Chariots were probably more useful in ME.the only time gondor ever win against balchoth and wainriders was because they had allies.in the balchoth case,the rohirrim ambushes them from the rear,while in the wainriders case,eärnil was ambushing them in their camp,whoch is known as the battle of the camp.but,the chariots were no match for the rohirrim,because chariots are,i think,less agile than horseman.
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There are probably several dwarven kingdoms in the east. We know that all the dwarven houses united to fight the orcs of the misty mountains in the war of the orcs and dwarves. Since the only dwarven states/groups that are mentioned in the west are those in the iron mountains, the blue mountains, erebor and moria the remaining houses must have come from the east. If I remember correctly four of the seven dwarven houses originated in the east. Considering that Sauron couldn't conquer Moria I guess it's likely that these dwarven pockets survived during the second and third ages even though Sauron ruled the surrounding areas.
I always wondered what happened to the Avari. It's possible I guess that they prospered relatively uninterrupted in the first age while Morgoth was locked up in the North during his war with the Noldor. Luckily for the Avari he wasn't in a position to divert much of his attention to the rest of arda during the wars in Beleriand. Maybe the Avari built several great kingdoms, or maybe they lacked the population numbers and necessary culture to built successful states and got annihilated in wars against dwarves, men and morgoths surviving monsters from his days at utumno. At least by the time of the second Age, when Sauron expanded eastwards, the peaceful time for the Avari probably ended and they were either enslaved or hunted down. |
I could swear that in The Hobbit Bilbo mentions that there were "Snake-men" out in the Sandy Deserts to the far-East-of-East.
I think that was just Hobbit-Myth, though (A Fairy-tale in a Fairy-tale). MB |
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And Tolkien in his exploration of Orcs, and where they come from mentions that Morgoth got out East quite a bit, even in the First Age (Probably not personally, unless we count the possible once that he left to go enslave humanity). But the Avari could still have built significant kingdoms out there. There is even some room to look into extra-canonical Peoples out there representing an Idealized East-Asian kingdom, with an associated Elven Kingdom. I heard someone at a convention bring that possibility up, as a group of "Faithful" who fled even further East, rather than West. MB |
They saw the Gates of Morning
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According to Akallabźth, published in The Silmarillion, due to the Ban of the Valar
the voyages of the Dśnedain in those days [most of the Second Age] went ever eastward and not westward, from the darkness of the North to the heats of the South, and beyond the South to the Nether Darkness; and they came even into the inner seas, and sailed about Middle-earth and glimpsed from their high prows the Gates of Morning in the East. If those Gates were anything like how they've been represented by some artists, including Roger Garland, the sight of them must have been well worth the voyage!:D |
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