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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.
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.
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.
If I were a gambling man, my bet would be on the other way around.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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?
we'er sorry
Yeah, you're sorry. Now the poor admin and his friends need to walk and walk and walk, now not including Tom Bombadil, and walk and walk all the way to the data center, which now closely resembles a volcano due to the /. effect, to reboot the server, because no one can explain why the eagles can't just fly there and take care of it, because (insert a whole bunch of mumbo jumbo).
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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.
I'd imagine that he certainly got the idea from the Bible or similar stories. Of course, there are a lot of ancient stories that posit that humans used to live longer, like the Greeks.
Of course, in Tolkien, it is important to separate the normal Men from the Númenóreans who were the men who stood with the Elves in the Wars of Morgoth and were rewarded by the Valar. Those Men obtained their long lives from the favor of the Valar, intermarriage with some elves, and their own presumed virtue. Their lives eventually shortened as they lost their virtue and their relationship with the Valar and the elves soured. Eventually, some Númenóreans ended up in Middle Earth and were the initial population of Gondor.
However, it is not clear that the ancestors of the Númenóreans are any different than normal men. Their first King, Elros, was half-elven and was actually the brother of Elrond of Rivendell. Unlike Elrond, he chose to be human, and not elven, but he still managed to live a few hundred years. Most of the Men of Númenóreans that did have the longest lives seem to have been nobles or Kings who might well have had elven ancestry, so it is even possible that the Númenóreans or High Men of Gondor were not entirely human either.
Adding to that, Tolkien makes us aware of the Men of the East, who generally work for Sauron in the War of the Ring, and who seem pretty numerous. It is quite possible that those people never had any decrease in their lifespan, as it probably never was longer than normal to begin with. So, Tolkien does suggest a Golden Age for at least some men, but I think it is clear that he did not imply that humans as a race were more perfect the farther back you went.
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.