Tolkien's final First Age timeline

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Arvegil145

I think we're talking past each other - the rate of 'ageing' and the time at which Elves have their first children prior to the March is absolutely, completely inseparable from the 'Scheme 7' (the basis for XIII.1).

I agree we're talking past each other. The rate of aging & the time Elves have their first children prior to the March is absolutely, completely irrelevant to the "Late Timeline". It's not mentioned! "72 years" comes up precisely once before the birth of Feanor: with Celeborn. "3 year gestation" has additionally been used once, with Indis. That's it. There is no problem to answer here, unless the problem is "sources which differ can never be combined", in which case the whole concept of this timeline has to be discarded.

Originally Posted by Arvegil145

I mean, try constructing the 20-30 generations of Elves via '72 years as adulthood + 3 years of gestation', and see where you end up.

(I did in fact try this at one point, it was a niiiightmare.)

Originally Posted by Arvegil145

The problem is that, if it's adopted, the whole 'Idril v Maeglin' storyline loses much of its weight.

Timelines care nothing for narrative weight!

Originally Posted by Arvegil145

Is it though? Again, depending on when this note dates from, I could easily imagine Tolkien divorcing himself from the 'ages of the chaining of Melkor' idea.

Regardless, it's an explicit addition to the AAm, so I think it should be regarded as such, and adopted into your revised AAm timeline.

I'm confused. It seems clear to me that at some point, Tolkien noted [some of the] dates from the Grey Annals onto the Annals of Aman. That doesn't make them a new, more recent source for those dates - it just means he made some notes. The source for 1200 Luthien remains the Grey Annals, which state it's an estimate based on the Captivity of Melkor.

~

Adopting the 2016 Finding has immediately messed up the Finwean dates something awful. Since the 5018 date for Galadriel and Aredhel is counting backwards from 888/1, it remains fixed, while Finrod's birth jumps back 153 SY. That messes up the "standard gap between children" - Finwe's remains 192 SY, Finarfin's is now 245 SY, and Fingolfin's children are spaced 383 and 736 SY.

I think the best approach is to recalculate based on an approach I rejected before: using Feanor's AAm birth year (360 SY after Finwe reached Aman), and keeping Fingolfin's birthdate in AAm 1190 despite moving his parents' marriage back about 50 SY. That version of the timeline puts Finrod's birth in 4423, 595 SY before Galadriel - which means an even gap between the four children of Finarfin is 198 SY, and means I can keep the calculations pretty much as they are.

As a bonus, this method on the new timeline means that "AAm 1362" falls in 5017 - only one year out from our "Galadriel at 20" date for Aredhel and Galadriel. I'm more than happy to take that as evidence!

hS