How Advanced are Societies in Middle-earth?

Q: How Advanced are Societies in Middle-earth?

ANSWER: This is a difficult question to answer because Middle-earth is a very complicated world. Middle-earth is a fictional version of our world and so draws upon elements from real history. But we’re still not entirely sure of how sophisticated some historical societies were, because we have lost information about what they knew and how they lived.

The full question I received is given thus: “How advanced are the socities in middle earth (Rohan, Shire, Gondor, Erebor, etc) and how do they compare with each other.”

Since J.R.R. Tolkien did not provide us with a full catalog of their their accomplishments we must infer what their relative degrees of sophistication might be. And right there people will hang you (well, me) for making guesses. No matter how many disclaimers I include I will be castigated for “presenting my opinions as facts”.

Much as I appreciate the thoughtfulness of your question, I allowed it to languish for many months because I don’t relish the idea of being slammed by hateful trolls and liars once again. So I’m NOT going to describe or compare the various societies of Middle-earth. Instead, here are a few suggestions for how you could make your own comparison. I hope this will be okay.

First: What Is Middle-earth?

Just by asking a very broad question you’re inviting debate about canon. There is no established, accepted Middle-earth canon although I generally favor Tolkien’s finished stories and poems over his unfinished and posthumously published works. See these essays for my thoughts on the subject on Middle-earth canon:

• What Is J.R.R. Tolkien’s Legendarium?
• A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Canon
• Is Your Canon on the Loose?

You’ll have to decide WHAT you want to include in your definition of canon. You should explain WHY you include it. For example, if you include The Silmarillion then do you also include The Book of Lost Tales? If so, why? They contradict each other on most points. How do you resolve those contradictions? (If you want to know what I do, I don’t include The Book of Lost Tales in discussions of Middle-earth, which came after Tolkien abandoned the Lost Tales.)

You cannot define a “correct Middle-earth”. Someone will inevitably disagree with your choices. Just define Middle-earth in terms you understand and are comfortable with. But be prepared to explain your choices.

Do They Have Philosophy or Religion in Middle-earth?

This is a trick question because most dedicated Tolkien readers (in my experience) usually point to Tolkien’s own statements about philosophy and religion in The Lord of the Rings. But if you set aside what the author said (especially in private correspondence) and look at what he included in his stories I think you’ll find traces of both philosophy and religion in several societies of Middle-earth.

Although I would include Tolkien’s “Middle-earth poetry” I would not include anything from The Lays of Beleriand (“Lay of Leithian” or “The Lay of the Children of Hurin”), which he never fully revised to be compatible or consistent with The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien did include philosophical passages in his stories. Almost every scene where a character discusses the moral rights and wrongs of the history of the world, or where they debate the consequences of their action, contains expressions of at least personal (character) philosophies. In a few places you’ll find exposition of more formal philosophical ideas. Read Faramir’s discussion with Frodo in Ithilien for an example, where he explains how the Men of Gondor view themselves compared to other men in Middle-earth.

Treebeard shares some philosophical ideas with Merry and Pippin, too.

There are also traces of religion in the stories, although not much. You’ll find a great deal of external commentary from scholars going back decades. Virtually every scholarly consideration I have read looks at philosophy and religion in Middle-earth in terms of Tolkien’s Catholicism. For your question, I think you could be more simplistic.

What Technology Do We Find in Middle-earth?

Technology encompasses everything from Bilbo’s silk handkerchiefs and umbrellas to Saruman’s “blasting powder” to the bells of Minas Tirith. Someone had to make all that stuff. How was it made? When could we have made comparable things in our established history? And what are you willing to assume in terms of what is reasonable for, say, the ancient Romans to have made (by means of comparing Middle-earth’s cultures to historical cultures).

Here are a few examples of Greco-Roman technologies you might not be aware of:

• The Greeks invented what I would consider to be the first mechanical clocks, although they were water-powered.
• The Romans (probably Greeks under Roman rule) invented a complicated gear-based mechanism for calculating astronomical dates (the so-called Antikythera mechanism)
• The Romans had in-door hot and cold running water, sewers, fresh water pipelines, artificial lakes, and other aqua-engineering projects.
• The Romans invented a concrete that lasts for thousands of years (compared to modern varieties that only last decades)
• A Greek philosopher (Heiro or Hero of Alexandria) living under Roman rule invented a steam powered engine (the aeolipile)

I used the Greeks and Romans as examples here but you’ll find that gunpowder was probably invented (in China) prior to the Norman Conquest (1066). Also, indoor plumbing was invented in more than one place and predates the Roman Republic by at least a thousand years. Modern research has also learned that ancient doctors in Egypt, Greece, and Rome were probably better than “modern” doctors at least through the mid-1800s in terms of cleaning wounds and preventing or fighting infections. There is even evidence that they ran very sophisticated experiments to determine the toxicity and medicinal properties of many plants and natural substances. Modern scholars hesitate to say they used “the Scientific Method” but they were very methodical in some of their experiments.

Hence, technology mentioned anywhere in Middle-earth implies a great deal about the sophistication of the societies that used it, but Tolkien did not try to explain how those societies could possess or devise such technologies. He simply used the story-teller’s privilege of saying “this is so” and waving his hand to imply that “whatever was necessary to make it so must also have been so” without being dependent upon his own knowledge of those resources and processes.

The ancient Chinese and Romans had the equivalent of large industries (manufacturing facilities that mass produced a lot of things); how much Tolkien was aware of such facilities is a matter of speculation. Modern scientists have confirmed some of those industrial resources only since Tolkien died. But “industry” did not begin with the Industrial Age by any means.

What Social Classes Do We Find in Middle-earth?

I think here you’ll find the author kept things as simple as possible. Despite the fact that Great Debates have raged over the possibility of “feudalism” in Tolkien’s Middle-earth, he did not replicate the vastly complicated French style of feudalism in any of his stories. You don’t have vassals of vassals and countrysides littered with castles spreading across Middle-earth. There are a few mentions, here and there, of fortresses, towers, and fortified cities. And there are kings and princes but no barons, dukes, counts. viscounts, marquees, or earls. Instead, you have Thanes (clearly evoking memories of Anglo-Saxon thegns) and “knights” but no definitive explanations of how these people became knights.

You have Pippin’s oath to Denethor and Theoden’s deputization of Eowyn as examples of what appear to be feudal contracts. But even if you want to compare Middle-earth’s knights and lords to the knights and lords of medieval romances, you won’t find many clear examples for a point-by-point example.

The Shire-folk are often viewed as rustic (Tolkien even said as much) and yet they enjoy a very comfortable home life, trade with other nations, and they don’t act like hillbillies who just fell off the turnip truck when they encounter new cultures and civilizations. What do you think would lead Tolkien to imply that Gondor was less “rustic” than the Shire? Maybe the elephant in the room there is the fact that Gondor had cities and fleets of ships, whereas the Shire had neither. But what do cities and fleets imply to you in terms of social or cultural organization?

Even the Shire had regional differences between clans. And yet Gondor was comprised of many different peoples. Some families in the Shire were wealthier than others. Some Numenorean families in Gondor were noble, but were all Numenoreans noble and were all Gondorian nobles Numenoreans? The Kin-strife occurred because at least some of Gondor’s families feared a mixing of Numenorean blood with non-Numenorean blood. What does the outcome of that civil war imply to you?

How do you view Gondor’s military? Did they have permanent standing armies? Militia? Feudal bodies of professional warriors? Mercenaries? A mix of all of these and more? Did they require all men to stand to arms or implement a draft? Tolkien did not answer these questions definitively. You’ll have to infer your own answers. Whatever you infer, though, implies things about Gondorian leadership, society, culture, and laws. You can keep many lawyers up late at night discussing the legal implications of just a handful of sentences in Tolkien’s stories.

How Do YOU Define “Advanced”?

This is a question I could never answer for you.  You’ll have to come up with your own scale of advancement for civilizations and cultures.  You’ll have to measure both historical and fictional peoples against that scale.  That’s the only way you’ll be able to decide for yourself how advanced they are.  Clearly even Gondor doesn’t have jet aircraft and spaceships, so they are not as technologically advanced as late 20th century civilization.  But like the Romans, who had taxicabs and fast food, you might find some things in Tolkien’s stories that are reminiscent of modern ideas and amenities.  Maybe they are anachronisms, like umbrellas.  Maybe they are primitive cognates.

You’ll have to decide.  This is what makes exploring Middle-earth fun for a lot of people.  Because there are so many questions and so few definitive answers from the author you’ll find that you can go back and revise your own ideas and arguments for years to come.

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Have you read our other Tolkien and Middle-earth Questions and Answers articles?

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