Thank You, I actually agree with you all. I was trying to rebut points often expressed with respect to references in The Hobbit and elsewhere. The gist of these points is that JRRT when he said clocks, coffee, pipe-weed/tabacco and the like was simply using a familiar term, as a matter of translation, for something that while similar was not what these things mean to us.
These arguments by others are put forth to reconcile such references with two propositions: (1) That Middle-Earth should match up technologically and so forth with the Old World of an era analogous to what is potrayed in the Books; and (2) That at least by the late Third Age most places were all but completely cut-off, such that the presence of essentially sub-tropical products needs to be explained away.
I think Maril's points are good, and provide more consideration for refuting number (2) above. Elves before them to some extent, but especially Second-Age Numenorean Faithful settlements in the North and the later Dunedain kingdoms would have established wide areas and long periods over which peaceful interchange happened.
Politically, and in terms of broad national economics, these conditions started to decline by the early part of the second millenium with the rise of Dol Guldor and Angmar, and later the Plague and Wainraiders.
Much of the trade then and later, however, was undertaken by everyday Men, Dwarves, later Hobbits, and earlier-on especially, Elves. So, even as the political/national frameworks deterioriated, the more prosaic commercial patterns could continue on, well enough, for some time.
Still, the time periods are enormous. No Dunedain King ruled for 969 years. I would argue that no modern European country could trace its national history back more than 1,000 years, in terms of really serious continuity. And, though the Stewards encouraged greater cultural/ethnic unity within Gondor, they did not appear to govern with the same authority as a King.
But still, I would concur that the patterns of trade were no doubt a legacy of Numenor and should have been quite enduring, even as they had shrunk to a rather low and sparodic level, and the places of origins for certain goods and news only matters of heresay and rumor.
As for number (1) above, I would also agree that Middle-Earth, while comparable, is not supposed to correspond to our world by way of any place or time. Undenialably, however, one of the great beauties of the Books is twofold
(1) That while there are many fantastic phenomena, people, creatures and so forth, these are all attributed to perceptions and metaphysics which make them simply special but natural features of life for the characters, who otherwise experience the world around them just as we do.
(2) At same time, the baseline for the physical world of Middle-Earth is clearly just like our world. So at once it is fantasy, and yet strangely easy with which to relate.
For these and other reasons, I'd hesitate before using a term like "alternate reality."
I would label it rather something more like "reality in a different but ingenious context."
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The hoes unrecked in the fields were flung, __ and fallen ladders in the long grass lay __ of the lush orchards; every tree there turned __ its tangled head and eyed them secretly, __ and the ears listened of the nodding grasses; __ though noontide glowed on land and leaf, __ their limbs were chilled.
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