I'm not sure what the history books say but Middle Earth (I believe) was created as a szeperate world from ours, not sometime in the history of Earth. He includes a lot of things that were not necessarily known or created by the time in history ME resembles. Tolkien (again, I believe) made it this way so he would hav some le-way to create a totally unique world. When you read his books you should not be in the world we live in but in his world of Middle Earth, I believe he wanted it that way, so that it was totally seperate from history so he didn't have the barrier of historical correctness. Just my opinion.
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