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Findegil wrote.
AK-SL-30: gondowe, I see your point. But this last paragraph of the Akallabęth is in all its parts ‘prophetic’ or ‘anachronistic’, looking into a far future from the time of the Downfall. Neither the discovery of the new lands in the west that did know death as well as the old lands nor the discovery of the fact that the earth was round were ever mentioned in any narrative of the Third Age. Therefore all these events could have been still in the future at the time of Bilbo and Frodo or Saelon of The New Shadow for that matter. So a development of aircrafts (as is clearly described in this passage) is possibly as well in the future. And that flight pioneers, when they came down amid ‘wild people’ where not always unhappy to be held in awe is for sure witnessed in our own real history and used as a motive in many tales (e.g. C-3PO and his friends among the Ewoks in ‘The Return of the Jedi’).
Yes, I also can see your point, and is something I thought when I faced this paragraph at first time.
But, although this could be again a misunderstanding from me of the English text, I thought and I think that, at least as the text is presented, that point of view is erroneous.
In the later Akallabeth is stated that the Númenoreans knew of the new round world (I suppose simply by the conventional sailing).
In the LOTR is implicit this round world (not said with all the words but implicit), The Eldar and the Dunedain knew it.
The "Númenoreans of old" in my opinion shouldn't be Númenoreans of the fifth or later ages, to say.
But (again with no certain security cause I have not my texts with me, I beg you pardon if I'm mistaken) I think the later Akallabeth have many passages taken directly of this version, and possibly is a fact that the same professor didn't liked this flying ships and rejected them. I don't know.
Greetings
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