Here Are The Biggest Academy Award Milestones In Oscars History". Hollywood.Com. 3 February 2016 . Retrieved 3 March 2021. Although Sauron was destroyed in the War of the Last Alliance, he remained in the tower of Barad-Dur and supervised Middle-earth from it. When Sauron was finally destroyed, Mordor was no longer a threat to the free peoples of Middle-earth. Mount Doom Bauer, Manuel (10 September 2015). "Minecraft: Spieler haben das komplette Auenland nachgebaut". Computer Bild . Retrieved 9 February 2016. Notable among them is The Silmarillion, which provides a creation story and description of the cosmology which includes Middle-earth. The Silmarillion is the primary source of information about Valinor, Númenor, and other lands. Also notable are Unfinished Tales and the multiple volumes of The History of Middle-earth, which includes many incomplete stories and essays as well as numerous drafts of Tolkien's Middle-earth mythology, from the earliest forms down through the last writings of his life.

Bratman, David (2007). "Studies in English on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien". The Tolkien Estate . Retrieved 29 October 2021.Hammond, Wayne G.; Scull, Christina (2004) [1995]. J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-261-10322-9. Maps prepared by Christopher Tolkien and J.R.R. Tolkien for the world encompassing The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were published as foldouts or illustrations in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. Early conceptions of the maps provided in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings were included in several volumes, including "The First Silmarillion Map" in The Shaping of Middle-earth, "The First Map of the Lord of the Rings" in The Treason of Isengard, "The Second Map (West)" and "The Second Map (East)" in The War of the Ring, and "The Second Map of Middle-earth west of the Blue Mountains" (also known as "The Second Silmarillion Map") in The War of the Jewels. Middle-earth is the main continent of Earth (Arda) in an imaginary period of the Earth's past, ending with Tolkien's Third Age, about 6,000 years ago. [T 1] Tolkien's tales of Middle-earth mostly focus on the north-west of the continent. This part of Middle-earth is suggestive of Europe, the north-west of the Old World, with the environs of the Shire reminiscent of England, but, more specifically, the West Midlands, with the town at its centre, Hobbiton, at the same latitude as Oxford. Carpenter, Humphrey (1977). J.R.R. Tolkien: a biography. G. Allen & Unwin. ISBN 978-0-04-928037-3. OCLC 3046822. a b Bratman, David (2013) [2007]. "History of Middle-earth: Overview". In Drout, Michael D. C. (ed.). J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. Routledge. pp.273–274. ISBN 978-0-415-86511-1.

The Ents, "shepherds of the trees", were created by Ilúvatar at the Vala Yavanna's request to protect trees from the depredations of Elves, Dwarves, and Men. if it were 'history', it would be difficult to fit the lands and events (or 'cultures') into such evidence as we possess, archaeological or geological, concerning the nearer or remoter part of what is now called Europe; though the Shire, for instance, is expressly stated to have been in this region...I hope the, evidently long but undefined gap in time between the Fall of Barad-dûr and our Days is sufficient for 'literary credibility', even for readers acquainted with what is known as 'pre-history'. I have, I suppose, constructed an imaginary time, but kept my feet on my own mother-earth for place. I prefer that to the contemporary mode of seeking remote globes in 'space'. [T 7] In Letter 202 to Christopher Tolkien, Tolkien set out his policy regarding film adaptations of his works: "Art or Cash". He sold the film rights for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to United Artists in 1969 after being faced with a sudden tax bill. The rights are currently in the hands of Middle-earth Enterprises, which has no relation to the Tolkien Estate, which retains film rights to The Silmarillion and other works published since 1969. Tolkien identified Hobbits as an offshoot of the race of Men. Although their origins and ancient history are not known, Tolkien implied that they settled in the Vales of Anduin early in the Third Age, but after a thousand years the Hobbits began migrating west over the Misty Mountains into Eriador. Eventually, many Hobbits settled in the Shire. The history of Middle-earth, as described in The Silmarillion, began when the Ainur entered Arda, following the creation events in the Ainulindalë and long ages of labour throughout Eä, the fictional universe. [T 21] Time from that point was measured using Valian Years, though the subsequent history of Arda was divided into three time periods using different years, known as the Years of the Lamps, the Years of the Trees and the Years of the Sun. [T 22] A separate, overlapping chronology divides the history into 'Ages of the Children of Ilúvatar'. The first such Age began with the Awakening of the Elves during the Years of the Trees (by which time the Ainur had already long inhabited Arda) and continued for the first six centuries of the Years of the Sun. All the subsequent Ages took place during the Years of the Sun. [T 23]

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Eden, Bradford Lee (2013) [2007]. "Elves". In Drout, Michael D. C. (ed.). J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. Routledge. pp.150–152. ISBN 978-0-415-86511-1. In ancient Germanic and mythology, the universe was believed to consist of multiple interconnected physical worlds (in Nordic mythology 9, in West Germanic and English mythology, 8). The world of Men, the Middle-earth, lay in the centre of this universe. The lands of Elves, gods, and Giants lay across an encircling sea. The land of the Dead lay beneath the Middle-earth. A rainbow bridge, Bifrost Bridge, extended from Middle-earth to Asgard across the sea. An outer sea encircled the seven other worlds ( Vanaheim, Asgard, Alfheim, Svartalfheim, Muspellheim, Niflheim, and Jotunheim). In this conception, a "world" was more equivalent to a racial homeland than a physically separate world.