The Middle of What?

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

In many cultures around the world there is a conception of there being three worlds: the world above (the sky), the world below (under the earth) and the middle-earth where we humans live. Especially in shamanistic cultures around the world this was pretty usual way to see things - and sounds pretty natural as well.

Why shamanistic? Such an idea appeared at almost all cultures in the past in some way, and from the Near-eastern ancient civilisations through Greeks and others the concept of heavens/earth/underworld-sheol-hades-hell became a common view of the world in the hellenistic period, and being adopted this way it remains in the European (and of course through this also American and wherever the white man stuck his feet) subconscious to this time.

I believe Tolkien stated somewhere that Middle-Earth was supposed to refer to the men-inhabited world (exactly in the hellenistic view of "oikoumené", the inhabited world), as opposed to any other "spheres" - like heaven or hell (in our case probably just Valinor, resp. Aman; I am not aware of anything special being on the eastern side, but maybe the Empty Lands are a good thought - at least this is certainly not inhabited world) - so I believe the Midgard idea and what was said here before are on the good track.