I think it's incredible how Tolkien makes it all seem so real.
Have you seen the Discovery Channel "Behind the Movie" special about The Lord of the Rings?
It talks a little about this on that. I think it's fascinating how they show the relations to our own Earth in that. They talk about our own myths (relating to the line "and Legend became Myth") such as Beowulf. They talk about how it was believed to be just a poem but then they made a discovery of an old ship that is very close to the ship described in Beowulf. So, who's to say that that isn't true.
Many old stories and myths of our own world involve great struggles between good and evil and there are even stories filled with magic and wonderful miracles.
It seems like our own history is not too far from what Tolkien wrote in LOTR. Who's to say that our Earth couldn't have been similar to Middle Earth. There is still a lot that we don't know and probably never will.
|