Coffee!

[Man-of-the-Wold]

Well, this is quite the runaway topic. I'm glad to have spiced it up. ... Hmmmm? Spices? I should research what herbs & spice do and do not get cited in the books.

Good points. I think Bombur has excellent points that must be given more study. I do believe that 5th century Goth's had stirrups, but it is a reasonable deduction to say that Middle-Earth never did.

There are a lot of good things for new topics. One that I would start is based on my observation that the commonality of Westron would point to a world much better interconnected through commerce and so forth over from the latter Second Age through most of the Third Age. Of course, it is also a bit of a literary convenience not unlike the ubiquitous of English among countless planets in TV/film ... {two words, begin with Star __}

On the question of money, it is quite clear that a number of different coins of gold and silver ("species") were used and recognized across large (rather empty!) areas of Middle-Earth, as the exchanges at Bree indicate, not to mention the wealth that Bilbo and Frodo had. Although they may have rented land, from which was derived income, more would have had to been said if that was a big part of their "wealth".

No, I just wanted to point out that in comparison to, say, even the "Gold Standard" world of one to two centuries ago, much less our modern world, that trade would have been somewhat handicapped by the lack of clearly regular forms of money as media for exchange, or simply from a lack of "liquidity" or readily obtainable credit. Nowhere is much said in the way of bankers or lenders in Middle-Earth.

But just as clearly much commerce could be done, as it was for centuries even in the "dark ages", provided one could inspect the coinage carefully, and certainly Gondor, Rohan, Dale and possibly the Beornings had the economic stability to legally sanction certain forms of money, which can be important even for denominations directly based on precious metals. Hence, the Italians did so well for centuries because they would maintain and protect monetary standards that were then respected and used throughout much of the Western World.

Finally, on the question that Tolkien's reference to rather latter-day goods and inventions is a result of translation and approximation, I think that that is fair. He may have wanted to make references simply so that we could understand. But it does sort of wrap one up in ball, whereas it is just as reasonable to assume that he wrote what he felt conveyed his immediate purpose, and that Hobbits running around with coffee, tabacco and matches was just fine, even in the context of world that in other ways was barely out of the Iron Age.

Remember the Elves, Dwarves and Numenoreans were operating in many ways with an entirely different cultural technological paradigm that could not be readily transferred.