Sinking Beleriand

[Amarinth]

wow this is a great thread! i've not read HoME yet, but being a geologist i find myself inclined to agree with the version here as piosenniel detailed in her first post. thanks btw for sharing that, pio!

land-altering events such as the sinking of great landmasses do tend to occur in the long-term, i.e., in geologic time. yeah, one can argue that science may not necessarily be applicable here in this genre, but during the time tolkien wrote the silm, great discoveries about earth's ancient history such as the ice age and drowning of lands as a result of glacial/polar melting were just recently made. the theories of continental drift and dynamic crustal plate movements were also conceived during this time. perhaps it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to think that tolkien derived inspiration from these paradigms [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

One other thing: Does anyone recall where it was that Galadriel foretold that the sunken lands of Beleriand would one day rise again?

off the top of my head, pio, i think she said this when she and her company met up with treebeard on the way home from the war of the rings... something about the chances of meeting each other once more only when the sunken lands are raised again and she could once more walk the plains? of tasarinan?