Demographic Features of ME

[Man-of-the-Wold]

The reality is that even by the standards of the early middle ages in Europe, Middle-Earth contained next to nobody.

All the Free People combined in the area shown in the LotR map probably amounted to little more than half of a million. The Orcs and other inherent baddies probably come out to a 100,000 more, but they tended to be very concentrated. So, concentrated in fact, that they should not have been able to feed themselves, while the scarcity of population elsewhere defies the ability for any commerce or civilization to have been maintained. But, of course, they weren't all like us or our ancestors.

In the Second Age, there were certainly still many more Elves, and relatively even more Dwarves, about, and in Rhovanian and Eriador, even more Men probably, than one finds toward the end of the Third Age.

At the End of the Third Age, Eriador has been seriously depopulated (except for the Shire, Bree-land and Rivendell) by Wars, Plague, and extreme weather events. The same holds true of Rhovanion, and Gondor to a much lesser degree.

Bree & environs are a regular metropolis at 15,000 tops, but there are perhaps more Men about elsewhere than meets the eye. In addition to the Elves of Lindon, and more generally the Dwarves of Ered Luin, and those traversing there and back, the Hobbits have contact with "Big People," and not just from Bree, with which direct contact is rare, though it be only a day's ride away.

I imagine that Eriador has scattered networks of hamlets and micro-villages of people who made themselves not easy to find; they interacted with one another, and they traded foodstuff with the Hobbits, and like them, with Elves, Rangers and Dwarves. They were protected by the Rangers and so forth, too. Remember the Trolls of The Hobbit had had settlements to prey on, and the Elves of Rivendell don't seem to have farmed themselves or have regularly transacted as far away as Bree. Some of these may have been lower-class Dunedain or remnants of Edain-derived Northmen from the Second Age.

Elsewhere, the scattered populations would have been of more Dunlendish extraction, like the Breelanders, and some may be thought to have survived Northwest of or South of the Shire, along the coasts, or in the valleys of the Isen and Adorn, or areas west from there toward Tharbad, from which the fugitives in Bree likely came as a result of Saruman's expanding local hegemony.

In the time of Thorin & Co., East-West trade had otherwise ground to a halt, but one might assume that then and for sometime longer, Tharbad remained significant, like Bree, and that North-South commerce continued, and was the source of Bilbo's more exotic pantry.

By the time of the War of the Rings, East-West trade by the Dwarves and others was going decently, but Saruman and Mordor had caused North-South economies and communities whether in Eriador or along the Anduin (per Boromir) to wither.

But across all of Eriador, including Dunland & western Enedwaith, probably fewer than 30,000 lesser Men lived in an area the size of France and Britain. The Lossoth, the Dunedain, and the Elves of Rivendell & Lindon, each, would not likely have filled a large American High School, and were possibly numbered only in the hundreds.

The Shire with as many as 40,000 or more was far and away the most populous single community, followed by Bree and by the Dwarves of the Ered Luin (south, traditionally, and north, Thorin's old mines) with a few thousand.

The upper vales of the Anduin and the River Running had thousands of Northmen. At times in the 2nd and 3rd Ages these Men had been substantially more numerous, to be sure, but were increasing again by the end of the Third Age, in large part do to Gandalf's and Bilbo's efforts.

Wilderland also contained several thousand Elves (Lorien/Mirkwood) and Dwarves (Erebor/Iron Hills...) and thousands more of mountain, forest and swamp orcs

Around Rhun were realms of Men (some good, many though corrupted and much more numerous than their Northmen adversaries to the west), and nearer to Mordor in Nurnen, Khand and Near Harad, were enslaved or allied peoples in the 10,000s. Sauron's ultimate strength were the human realms near and far with populations in the 100,000s or millions that he could bring to bear, along with 10,000s of less useful common orcs in Mordor, whose sustenance is at least explained by the forced production out of Nurnen.

The Rohirrim proper amounted to a good 50,000. Gondor itself was the only real bulwark of population available to the West, with probably a good 200,000 or more. These had relatively little Dunedain ancestory, except around Minas Tirith, elsewhere along the (west side of the) Anduin, and in special places such as Dol Amroth.

These Gondorians were largely of Southman (Dunlendish/Dunharrow-like) extraction, perhaps distantly related to the Halethrim. They also tended to live simple lives in their own communities, and were not easily marshalled for centralized purposes. The Stewards had knitted together a stronger society without the caste-like divide between Dunedain and other men. They were now more or less all Men of Gondor, even if the lords and others tended to have truly nobler ancestory.

So, even if Gondor was a more stable and strong society in many ways, it was not as militarily potent, having become a loose confederation of feudal-like fiefs, without the strong unifying force of a Dunedain King or large Dunedain upper-class (or largely Dunedain population in the eastern lowlands of Gondor) that could shoulder much of the military burden and organzation. Strategically, Gondor could thus be effectively divided by threats of maritime invasions, however, readily they might be countered. Clearly, Prince of Amroth found a way to bring his best land forces to Minas Tirith.

One is thus left wondering what it was that Denethor is said to have achieved in terms of preparations for the big war, aside from forays in Ithilien and organization around Pelennor. His failure to have arranged for more resources to be deployed eastward, while better gauging and more rationally defending against the inevitable danger from Umbar, leaves one a little more willing to accept the interpretation of him in the Films.

Finally, although Fonstad may fail to show the Lossoth on most maps, she does represent areas of Dunlenders along the coast between Gwathlo and Isen, which could have been shown here or there or anywhere, as well. She also shades some areas south of the Adorn/Isen as being Druedain. And in the Battle of the Fords of Isen it is indicated that some such cave dwellers helped rout certain Orc parties, and there might have been a few thousand in the area of Andrast and the far western White Mountains, in addtion to what should only be several hundred of Ghan-Buri-Ghan's people in Druadan Forest to the east.