tolkiens legendarium - In what time period does The Lord of the Rings take place in the real world?

I know that The Lord of the Rings is located in Middle-earth and by the looks of clothes and props, we're looking at well before the 18th century.

What's the best guess at the time period that The Lord of the Rings was set in?

Answer

About 6000 years ago. But I don't think the exact details of when were at all important to Tolkien.

Tolkien had written multiple times that Middle-earth is located on our Earth. He has described it as an imaginary period in earth's past, not only in The Lord of the Rings (see Prologue and Appendices), but also in several correspondence letters, estimating the end of the Third Age to about 6,000 years before his own time, and in N.W. Europe (Hobbiton for example was set in same latitude as Oxford), though at times he would also describe elements of the stories as a kind of "...secondary or sub-creational reality" or "Secondary belief" in replies to letters.

From Middle-earth on Wikipedia

Comments

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