Tolkien's final First Age timeline

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Arvegil145

Can you give us an update, @Huinesoron?

The Master wants updateses, yes he does. Nice Master, very kind to poor Huinessssoron.

Originally Posted by Arvegil145

I think the death of the Trees should be VY 887/144, if we follow the timeline faithfully (i.e. 24 VY exact after the Finding - that is VY 863/144, if you adopt the change).

Agreed, after checking the source. Which is only 1 SY off where I already had it.

Originally Posted by Arvegil145

And as the second anchor point you can take the 'First Battle of Beleriand' which occurred around the time that Feanor was getting to Middle-earth: and since that only took 1 solar year in your timeline (incl. Fingolfin and co. over Helcaraxe) - how does the timeline work in this context?

The timeline anchored from the First Battle is shown in the image (twice, once direct, once relative); it's basically identical to anchoring on the Trees. The First Battle would have to take place in 887/144 or 888/1; presumably Sauron had everything ready to go when Melkor started screaming about spiders.

In any event: I have decided to anchor on the birth of Luthien/3 Ages concept. I don't want to use a compressed GA, as I specifically didn't compress the "blocks" in AAm. Anchoring on either end gives problems. And Luthien's birth is the only date which has an internal logic to it (the rest are basically just 50 years apart each time). Obviously Tolkien would have just rewritten the entire thing - but if for some reason he hadn't, I think this is the most likely solution for him to have used.

The Late Timeline is updated to match this conclusion; I've also removed Celeborn to his own little section at the bottom saying that he's not in there.

Originally Posted by Last Writings

Thus he [Círdan] forfeited the fulfilment of his greatest desire: to see the Blessed Realm and find again there Olwë and his own nearest kin.

I think "his own" is deliberately there to avoid implying Olwe's family - "Olwe and his nearest kin" would mean that, so "his own" looks like an attempt to be explicit that it is Cirdan's kin. The fact that the sentence puts Olwe first might imply that Olwe is close kin to Cirdan; presumably he'd be an uncle, since as you rightly say, Cirdan Nowe was born at Cuivienen.

Originally Posted by Arvegil145

However, I'd like to point out that Ingwe conceived children in Aman too.

Source? I'm not doubting it, I just don't remember seeing it. It would make sense - Ingwe seems to have been the most impatient to reach Aman, so he and Ilwen would avoid having more children on the March, and their second was born just before it.

Originally Posted by Arvegil145

First off, I think you have to revise the timeline again, due to "during their long tarrying on the shores of the 'Sea of Rhun'"...

That's in there; they linger by Rhun from 2232 to 2362.

Originally Posted by Arvegil145

Before I make my point about Ents, it occurred to me that maybe you could add certain dates before the First Age (i.e. before VY 850/1) -

1) the creation of the Two Trees (VY 1/1)

2) the creation of the Dwarves by Aule, and other still applicable events (https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Year_of_the_Trees_1000 )

The Trees, yes; that's a nice fixed date. The Dwarves I can't do, for the same reason I've avoided the Council of the Valar; I have no evidence either way on whether Tolkien would keep the actual SY between those events and the Awakening, or the relative dating between the Trees and the Awakening. (Same goes for all the Almaren stuff, which has ends up looking much quicker against the 850 VY between the Trees and the Quendi - there's just no useful data.)

Originally Posted by Arvegil145

How do you make sense of this mess?

Well, obviously Fangorn is Tom Bombadil, as they are both Eldest...

No, all right. If we want to accept both "Ents are the first rational creatures" and "Elves are eldest", then I think we have to say that the Ents consider themselves to have only become rational when they acquired language. Fangorn hints at this, when he says Some of us are still true Ents, and lively enough in our fashion, but many are growing sleepy, going tree-ish, as you might say. Tree-ish Ents are no longer "true Ents" - just as pre-speech Ents weren't.

So the Ents were the first to be incarnated, and Ere iron was found or tree was hewn... it walked the forests long ago. But until Elves began it, of course, waking trees up and teaching them to speak..., they weren't (in their own view) truly Ents.

As for when... the published Silm has Yavanna coming up with the idea for Ents right after Aule creates the Dwarves, but Manwe says they will only come to be after the Children awaken. If we want the Ents to walk before the Quendi awake, then they must have been created at that time. When that would be, I'm not going to try and guess.

hS