I think that Tolkien created Middle-earth. It was his world. It spawned from him. He designed every detail in Middle-earth that we know of. He made the stories, the myths in Middle-earth. He made the history of it all. The lands, the peoples, they all were created by him.
He may have used elves, which were thought of as the little creatures that helped Santa before Tolkien came out with his creation. But those elves he made into his own race, very different and separate from those other elves. And so with any other race in ME (dwarves, trolls, to name a few), he may have borrowed the name, but the race inside ME, those were his creations. A perfect example of what I'm trying to say is the goblins. At first, when he first created ME, he published the Hobbit, and one of the creatures in it were goblins. Now goblins were known before Tolkien. They were little monsters or whatever. He just borrowed the name. When he came out with LotR, he changed goblins to orcs, and they were completely his creation, name and all. He crafted goblins to his own race, which are orcs.
ME was never existed before Tolkien. Maybe he did discover it in his mind. But before it was discovered, it was made, and it was made by Tolkien.
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I hope that made sense, since that definitely wasn't one of my top-notch writing samples
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I know how you feel. I don't think this is my writing at its best, it seems very crude and I'm very tired. I'll try explaining further tomorrow. Sorry if I didn't get my point across very well (and that's if I even got it across).
But one more thing. Why do people think that Tolkien discoevered ME? Where was it before?