Maybe it's just nonsense but...

[The Might]

Wow...really good posts from everyone
I just wanted to add that the Great Plague that came over Gondor in the middle of the Third Age can be assosiciated with the Great Bubonic Plague of 1347-1353 in Europe that also had a devastating effect.
We can also take into account we are now in the beginning of the Seventh Age, as Tolkien himself said.
And it seems that each Age was ended by a quite important event...
I would say that the end of the Sixth Age was marked by both World Wars, which determined Tolkien to say we're at the beginning of the Seventh Age right now.
And the end of the Fifth would in my opinion be the Industrial Revolution...
But I can't think what the end of the Fourth would be...any ideas?

[Lalwendë]

I'm always a bit shaky with this idea that the ages of Middle-earth can correspond to our own. Mostly as 'ages' must be incredibly short in the modern age! If an age must be thousands of years in length then shouldn't those early Elves and Men have been living in caves and having a hunter-gatherer existence? Oh wait, is that what Menegroth was all about?

Anyway, if we're having a bit of fun speculating, I'll stick me concerns on one side and join in. I'd say the 7th Age began around the time of the Boer War, the first significantly mechanised and 'modern' war, and the world has pretty much never been at peace since then. This broadly corresponds with the dawning of the modern secular age, the age of technological discovery, emancipation, globalisation, the beginning of the end of Empire, mass education etc.

6th age - Maybe the age of 'enlightenment' beginning around the late 1700s, which brought in new ideas on philosophy, the all-important Romantic movement, the expansion of discovery into the age of empire, the industrial revolution, American revolution, French revolution, and the shift from rural life to urban life.

5th age - The Middle ages and into the Reformation and the main era of global exploration.

4th age - The early middle ages (note, NOT Dark Ages) which would include the development of new cultures Norse/Saxon (AKA Rohirric) leading into the cataclysmic Norman Conquest (bah) - that could equate to the return of Sauron or something! Eek!

[The Might]

Tolkien makes a brief allusion to the future of Middle-earth in a letter written in 1958:

"I imagine the gap [between the Fall of Barad-dur and modern times] to be about 6000 years; that is we are now at the end of the Fifth Age, if the Ages were of about the same length as Second Age and Third Age. But they have, I think, quickened; and I imagine we are actually at the end of the Sixth Age, or in the Seventh."

As far as Easterlings and Southrons are concerned I would see them as Arabs or Ottomans, especially since we see Gondor having much in common with the Byzantine Empire. And also it makes sense considering Macalaure's good idea with Charles the Great.
I would however see Charles Martel as a more Aragorn type figure, who comes and saves Western Europe from the Arab invasion through his great victory at Tours. Charles the Great would in my opinion rather be Eldarion.
The only problem here is that Charles Martel wasn't a king, so I admit my theory does have some flaws.

[littlemanpoet]

"I imagine the gap [between the Fall of Barad-dur and modern times] to be about 6000 years; that is we are now at the end of the Fifth Age, if the Ages were of about the same length as Second Age and Third Age. But they have, I think, quickened; and I imagine we are actually at the end of the Sixth Age, or in the Seventh."

So just for the fun of it:
Fourth Age ~~ c. 4000 B.C. - c. 1200 B.C. (Age of Agriculture to Onset of Iron Age)
Fifth Age ~~ c. 1200 B.C. - c. 1400 A.D. (Age of Iron to Renaissance)
Sixth Age ~~ c.1400 A.D. - c. 1900 A.D. (Renaissance to Modern Era)
Seventh Age ~~ c.1900 - present (Modern Era)

Like I said, just for the fun of it.

Lalwendë, your information about a bigger Wales and a Cornwall landmass that stretched much farther, with wonderments about Atlantis myth, is quite fascinating.

I've related it before but the current readers of threads may not have seen it yet: there's an interesting and inconclusive similarity in phonemes between the so-called Milesians who settled in Ireland and, Elvish-like, brought knowledge the humans amongst whom they dwelt, only to go under ground and become the Tuatha de Daanan .... and the Miletians, people from the city-state of Miletus on the coast of the Aegean Sea, said to have been conquered by the Mycenean Greeks the same time as they conquered Troy.

This is therefore a possible link to the Sea Peoples, who migrated immediately after this major political upheaval that saw Greek hegemony and the end of The Lydian/Trojan strongholds, sending a series of people groups fleeing across the Mediterranean in various directions: Achaean Greeks fleeing from Crete before the Dorians, Philistines fleeing from Cyprus at the onset of the Achaeans and winding up in modern day Palestine (notice the similarity between the words "Palestine" and "Philistine").

Getting back to the Milesians/Miletians, it is known that there was sailing along the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea by this time, and perhaps a really desperate peoplegroup might find their way to the Atlantic Ocean, then up and down the coasts of Africa or Europe, and even as far as the British Isles. I've always found the similarity in the names to be quite imagination capturing.

What correspondence this might have to Middle Earth? Who can say? I haven't thought about it yet. Perhaps none. Except that the Tuatha de Daanan are sometimes equated with the Eldar, of whom the Noldor are known to have come from Tol Eressea in ships. Early First Age, that.