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Old 05-09-2010, 12:10 PM   #2
The Might
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A dumb question? I actually like it, the best one in some time.

As far as Cirdan's origin is concerned, he may have well come from Cuivienen. We know we was akin to Elwe and Olwe, so this assumption makes sense.
This would indeed make him over 10000 years old and as such probably the oldest Elf in Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age.

As far as facial hair and the third circle are concerned this Wikipedia quotation is useful:
Quote:
Despite Tolkien's statements in The Hobbit that Elves (and Hobbits) have no beards, Círdan in fact has a beard, which appears to be an anomaly and a simple oversight. However, Tolkien later devised at least three "cycles of life" for Elves around 1960; Círdan had a beard because he was in his third cycle of life. (Mahtan, Nerdanel's father, had a beard in his second cycle of life, a rare phenomenon.) It is unclear what these cycles exactly are, since Tolkien left no notes further explaining this. Apparently, beards were the only sign of further natural physical ageing beyond maturity.
Nevertheless, Tolkien may have ultimately changed his mind about whether Elves had facial hair. As Christopher Tolkien states in Unfinished Tales, his father wrote in December 1972 or later that the Elvish strain in Men, such as Aragorn, was "observable in the beardlessness of those who were so descended", since "it was a characteristic of all Elves to be beardless".[19] This would seemingly contradict the information above.
Elves sometimes appear to age under great stress. Círdan appeared to be aged himself, since he is described as looking old, save for the stars in his eyes; this may be due to all the sorrows he had seen and lived through since the First Age. Also, the people of Gwindor of Nargothrond had trouble recognizing him after his time as a prisoner of Morgoth.
Since other old Elves are not mentioned to have beards a good compromise would be to guess that most remain beardless, but that under stress they would also age bodily.

About the fourth circle, I think it would be even more than 20 or 30000 years. It is said that the Elves and even the Ainur will come to envy men for their gift of Death. So I guess they would retain a body for longer. Anyway, they would still remain bound to the physical plain.

Nice question at the end, I guess that with our compromise above they would all have beards. They would grow weary of the world and this stress would cause them to age bodily as well.
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