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Originally Posted by littlemanpoet
Actually, just one piece of rubbish..... other than the rundown ruins themselves.....  the ruins are Numenorean, not Gondorian. I imagine that this distinction might not be lost on the Dwarf. |
No, the ruins are Gondorian.
And the distinction would most certainly not be lost on Náin.
Númenoreans started settling in Middle-Earth in the mid-Second Century, but it is quite clear from the Appendices and extra-LotR writings that they didn't settle much beyond the Anduin delta, around Pelargir, and in Eriador, near the realm of Gil-galad.
Neither area includes Calenardhon.
It is only after the fall of Númenor, and the establishment of the realms of Gondor and Arnor under Elendil and his sons that the Dúnedain settle further inland. The hundred years or so under Isildur and Anárion is a time of great expansion and fortress-building in Gondor. (The Argonath, Minas Anor, Minas Ithil, Osgiliath, the Stone of Erech-- for sure.) Undoubtedly, these earliest architectural structures would have been as Númenorean in style and design as any ediface lining the streets of Andúnië or Arminelos, but they were constructed under Gondorian rule.
Furthermore, Gondor continued to rule over Calenardhon for another 2500 years, until the arrival of the Éotheod half a millennium before the War of the Ring. And as Kath's castle examples from England will show, five hundred years is plenty of time for impressive stone edifices to become forlorn ruins. Thus, any time between the arrival of the Dúnedain (and the founding of the Kingdom of Gondor) and the arrival of the Eorlings (and the ceding of Calenardhon by the Gondorians) would be a candidate for the construction of any "ruins".
Additionally, since Calenardhon was never densely populated, a time somewhere in the middle of that time period (well past when "Númenorean" would have been an applicable term), after Gondor's population had reached its zenith, but before it began to wane, would be a sensible time for some moderately-sized ruins in the Edoras region to have been first planted. Let's give it an approximate date of... 1000 T.A., a full 1100 years after the fall of Númenor.
So it is Gondorian. Not rubbish at all.
And um... yeah... I should go direct my energy to something useful. Like a post. Or maybe a PM reply. Anyway, no personal animosity is intended or felt... I just haven't let my picky side out in a while.