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Student Publishes Extensive Statistics On the Population of Middle-Earth
First time accepted submitter dsjodin writes "There are only 19% females in Tolkien's works and the life expectancy of a Hobbit is 96.24 years. In January 2012 chemical engineering student Emil Johansson published a website with the hope for it to become a complete Middle-Earth genealogy. Now, ten months later, he has published some interesting numbers derived from the database of 923 characters. The site features a set of unique graphs helping us understand the world Tolkien described. Perhaps the most interesting ones are showing the decrease of the longevity of Men and the change in population of Middle-Earth throughout history. The latter was also recently published in the September edition of Wired Magazine."
Dwarf women often get confused with the men.
I'll come to insult you more - after I go through these numbers and make sure they are correct.
*ehem*
NERD!
(In all seriousness, though, that's actually kind of cool, pretty interesting)
That is better than most circles of geeks around here.
This poor guy will probably soon receive a Cease and Desist letter from Tolken's estate...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
And Bilbo probably skewed Hobbit life expectancy with the life-extension properties of the Ring. There's also the problem that Bilbo and
Frodo will probably live to enormous age (or possibly not die--it's not clear which from the text) once they are welcomed to the
Undying Lands. If the become immortal, then the average life expectancy for Hobbits becomes infinite. I suggest moving to medians.
we'er sorry
Obviously.
See with a wee bit of communication before storys go on the front page, I'm sure administrators of sites like this would be happy to get some help from amazon or whoever to keep up with the increase in load.
The population change chart has men, elves, and hobbits. What about dwarves, orcs, goblins, trolls, etc?
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
This kid is allergic to vagina?
This does in some ways raise serious points: A lot of classical fantasy had a dearth of women as characters. In Tolkien's case even when they are characters they are often far more passive than active. One sees how this conflicts with more modern sensibilities- look at how much screen time was given to Arwen and Eowyn compared to how much time they had in the books. (It is true that The Silmarillion also introduces some females but the overall numbers are low). Worse, when later fantasy did try to have empowered female characters, they were often more male fantasies, the classical "chicks in chainmail" and the like. One sees the extension of this to other variants as well in modern games, where in many videogames and MMOs otherwise equivalent armor is depicted as covering much less on the women and often emphasizing the female figure. And one sees a similar pattern in science fiction. Indeed, much of it doesn't even get close to passing the Bechdel test http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test. Note that in the case of Lord of the Rings, it fails the Bechdel test so badly that no two major female characters even have a conversation. (Interestingly, another major foundation of the work- The Chronicles of Narnia has much more in the way of strong females.)
It shouldn't be that surprising in this sort of context that scifi and fantasy have for a long-time been seen as male-dominated genres. That's obviously not exclusively the case (I first started reading fantasy to some extent because woman who babysat me was a voracious consumer of fantasy novels), but it is a definite problem. There have been some clear changes in the genre in the last few years, especially in the Young Adult area. Thus, one has examples like Garth Nix's Abhorsen series where the main characters are to a large extent strong women, and actually strong not just skimpy-armor-strong. So the genre does seem to be changing, but there will likely always be some influence from what founded the genre.
Flores man is thought to have become small due to island dwarfism. But what sort of environment would select for the traits ascribed to Tolkien's hobbits and especially the apparent population explosion starting around the 26th century T.A. (10th century S.R.) as seen here?
Knowing the "Wonderful Artists of This World That Enjoy The Protection of Glorious Copyright" this won't live long.
What is their rate of Linux adoption on the desktop?
when bilbo states his 111th is a long life its due to the one ring extending it and there usual lifespans are far less....
from the ebooks on the rpg published decades ago one can say what? I'll leave you to finding those after demonoids demise even though they are technically now public domain....
"Four boys for ev - ry - girl!"
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Interesting. Now I'd like to see someone come up with statistics like these for Westeros.
I want to know things like:
- what the population of Westeros needed to be in order to supply enough man-power to populate and guard all of the castles along the Wall?
- and what kind of crime-rate would that imply?
- and why are there only "nine free cities" in Essos? shouldn't there be potentially hundreds of large cities scattered across the continent if this civilization has been around for somethign like 10,000+ years?
I've been thinking about this stuff lately and it kinda seems to me that humanity is on the verge of extinction.
Yep. I honestly don't think ANYONE in the WORLD will survive these books when he finally finishes writing them!
Karma: NaN
Why not just ask them?
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Better than Twilight.
Tolkien was a devout Catholic and as a literary scholar was most likely aware of the work done by people like Issac Newton who calculated lifespans based on genealogies in the bible. They decreased over time from hundreds of years to our own. Classic Greek writing talks about this concept of a greater and longer lived past human race vs the debased people of today. So I wouldn't be surprised if he used this concept or at the very least was influenced by it.
XKCD #657 came to my mind.
I wonder if anybody has done something similar for A Game of Thrones?
1...2...3... and...Slashdotted
It was, is, and shall ever be Epic Pooh as described by Michael Moorcock.
still slashdoted ?
Roses are red, grass is greener.
When I read Slashdot, I play with my weiner.
Why do English speakers unanimously suck at spelling loanwords that contain "ie" or "ei"?
Wiener, referring to a penis, comes from the obvious association with the type of sausage. That sausage is a "Wiener Wurst", which is German for "Vienna Sausage". Wien is the German language name for Vienna. It's also where you get "Wiener Schnitzel" from.
"Wein" on the other hand is the German word for wine and is pronounced similarly.
There's a basic rule in English of "i before e except after c"; so if you're going to get things wrong, I'll accept accidentally writing "ie" instead of "ei" on loanwords, but the other way around like this is just fucked up.
As the creator of LotrProject I can only offer my deepest apologies for the site being down. My host has temporarily shut it down -_-
Being featured on Slashdot is a dream come true.
Best,
Emil
I first thought bad female characterization was a problem with amateur writers such as myself, but even very good professional writers sometimes have issues with it. This can come up even if the writer is not bigoted, or trying not to be.
As a male, I worry about my ability to write female characters. I want to try, but I don’t want to screw up by doing it badly. I don’t want to make well-meaning mistakes. I want to include it without forcing it in. I can and should have good female characters without covering female-specific issues, but I want to try writing that too. I’m not actively trying to fail Bechdel, but I’m not actively trying to pass it either.
Perhaps understanding the group better helps write about them well, whichever comes first.
One woman advised me to make them well-written characters in general and not to overplay stereotypes.
Other differences (sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, social class, et cetera) present similar challenges. Although it’s not as much of a social issue, writers from a nondominant group might have trouble writing characters from the dominant group.
This could be a subset of “write what you know”. Also, people are often inspired by works similar to them.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Tolkien was actively imitating and drawing from older tales and epics, which regularly had very few important female characters. For instance, the only woman with any kind of significant role in Beowulf (a significant inspiration for Tolkein) is Grendel's mother, and she isn't even given a name.
Yes, respecting an inspiration (fictional or real world) can lead to carrying over some of its issues.
I'm reminded of this Jimi Hendrix quote: "I've been imitated so well I've heard people copy my mistakes."
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
There was at least one fantasy novel I read a long time ago that had actually completely reversed the roles of men and women: The women were the tough fighters and leaders and in charge of everything, the men were expected to sit around looking pretty until the women wanted to sleep with them.
This reminds me of White Man's Burden, a movie which reversed the situation of blacks and whites: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Man's_Burden_(film)
Man bites dog, it's interesting because it's the opposite of what you'd expect. That kind of thing is a striking way to make a point about the problem, but it isn’t necessary to go that far. Perhaps some elements of a more-regular setting can be reversed.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
There's a basic rule in English of "i before e except after c"; so if you're going to get things wrong, I'll accept accidentally writing "ie" instead of "ei" on loanwords, but the other way around like this is just fucked up.
Excellent pedantry sir, thank you for the education. Knowing you is just like going to college.
But this "loadwords" idea is a bit of a stretch. English is eclectic, and it borrows nothing, and steals everything.
You may have thought these words were on loan from the German, but, like that moldering library book, you took out when you were in highschool, they are not going to be returned.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
This thread is ridiculous. I just watched WWII in HD, an actual, modern historical account of a war - guess how many of the "characters" were women. I didn't crunch the numbers, but 1 in 5 is not even in the ball park.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There's a basic rule in English of "i before e except after c"
"i before e except after c" turns out to be an incredibly poor mnemonic; it has way too many exceptions to be useful (to the extent that I've seen some analyses that suggest it's wrong more often than it's right)
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
"i before e except after c"
Weird. Let me discuss that with my neighbor. We'll weigh the pros and cons of it.
Completely appropriate that Tom Bombadil (and Goldberry) would be set alone under the heading "anomaly".
Evan - needs to hit preview before submitting
The only way to grow more hobbit pipeweed wuld be to have more hobbits to grow it.
Poppycock. Men grow pipeweed (Nicotiana spp.) all over Modern-earth.
"There are only 19% females in Tolkien's works and the life expectancy of a Hobbit is 96.24 years."
These stats are wrong, since the women are all hiding in the kitchen where they belong, and the old people are out of the way in old folks' homes.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
In my office we used to have two meanings for SWOT and the second was SHEER WASTE OF TIME. OK
This is what happens when a teenager still hasn't seen a vagina.