Serious geek moments here

[ainu_laire]

I did not realize how long this was until I finished it, but I think it's really interesting, and for those who like working with cross-cultural relations in Middle-earth, I think you'll find this of interest... anyways, read on

Comments

[ainu_laire]

I doubt time zones have anything to do with it; modern time zones were not established until the late 19th century, when the long railroads in the US and Canada were having problems with times being off due to the position of the sun in various parts of the countries. Because travel was so slow in pre-railroad days and business was not nearly as industrialized, timezones would not be an issue for Middle-earth.

Besides, the majority of continental Europe is in the same timezone, and Europe's length is about the same as the length from the Shire to MT.

My comment was about the bells in MT keeping track of time, with the zero hour starting at sunrise and the twelfth hour chiming at sundown, as it does in Pippin's first day in Minas Tirith. Bergil specifically calls it the "sunset" bells, not "6 o clock bell". Due to the length of days changing throughout the year, the time the bells were rung would slightly shift every day, making hours of the day shorter in winter months and longer in summer months. If the length of an hour was kept fixed in MT, then the bells would not ring precisely at sunset, but rather at 6 PM. The only days of the year it would ring near or at 6PM would be around the spring and fall equinox, or March 20/21st and September 22/23rd. While Pippin *is* in Minas Tirith a week or so before that date, Bergil's comment and the utter lack of the term "o clock" by anyone except for Hobbits, Dwarves, and Gandalf makes me believe that they have a fluid set of time as opposed to fixed- and before the invention of the pendulum clock, such accurate time keeping of minutes and seconds of an hour was not easily done nor necessarily practical.

I could see this changing with Elessar's reign, though, to make things simpler. Like I mentioned, I can easily see the Dwarves having a pendulum clock.

And, well, since Tolkien was so incredibly complicated with calendars and other units of time, it is easily believable that different cultures developed their own ways of measuring the hours of a day, just like what happened in ancient civilization.