From: Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Mirkwood's Elf Population ? Barrels. Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 01:36:52 -0400 Organization: MindSpring Enterprises Lines: 24 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: a5.f7.48.33 X-Server-Date: 30 May 2003 05:35:25 GMT X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!newsfeed.freenet.de!newsfeed.news2me.com!newsfeed2.earthlink.net!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!harp.news.atl.earthlink.net!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch rec.arts.books.tolkien:117906 This is just another crazy idea for trying to get a handle on the number of people in various places in middle-earth. Barrels of food. How large is a dwarf? How much food can fit into 13 barrels large enough to accomodate dwarves? And 1 barrel large enough to float Bilbo, of course. How many people can this food feed for however long it takes apples to rot without refridgeration ? (which is a conservative assumtion, since we only assume re-use of barrels when they have been emptied through eating,rather than through storage in a new location). Of course, we don't whether the mirkwood elves have refridgeration, given the coal mining, printing presses, spring driven clocks and so forth in ME. ###### Message-ID: <3ED6EFCE.1A45E12E@aon.at> Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 07:44:46 +0200 From: Georg =?iso-8859-1?Q?Sch=F6negger?= X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [de] (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: de MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien To: pjmcgurk@gate.net Subject: Re: Mirkwood's Elf Population ? Barrels. References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 9 NNTP-Posting-Host: N773P000.adsl.highway.telekom.at X-Trace: 1054273256 newsreader02.highway.telekom.at 43564 62.47.40.128 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!uni-erlangen.de!news-nue1.dfn.de!news-fra1.dfn.de!newsfeed01.univie.ac.at!newsfeed01.highway.telekom.at!newsreader02.highway.telekom.at!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch rec.arts.books.tolkien:118034 > How many people can this food feed for however long it takes apples to rot > without refridgeration ? don't know about the apples from where you come from, but hereabouts you just store them in a moist cellar or, preferably, a cave ;) and they won't rot at least until spring. georg ###### From: "The American" Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Mirkwood's Elf Population ? Barrels. Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 09:57:02 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: References: X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4920.2300 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4920.2300 X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 32 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!cyclone.bc.net!sjc70.webusenet.com!news.webusenet.com!sn-xit-02!sn-xit-06!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch rec.arts.books.tolkien:117890 wrote in message news:bb6qit$cuo$1@slb4.atl.mindspring.net... > > This is just another crazy idea for trying to get a handle on the number of > people in various places in middle-earth. > > Barrels of food. > > How large is a dwarf? > > How much food can fit into 13 barrels large enough to accomodate dwarves? > And 1 barrel large enough to float Bilbo, of course. > I think you're assuming that there were only 14 barrels in total. Although the text never specifically said how many barrels there were there are hints that it was a large amount. Many more than 14, imo. It did say that some were empty and some had dwarves in them. There were several Elves to push the barrels in initially and those Elves sounded like it was going to be a lot of work. Then later on there were enough barrels to group together to form a raft for a few elves. And when the raft got to LakeTown boats, not just a boat, rowed out to help the Elves. T.A. ###### From: jbrock@panix.com (John Brock) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Mirkwood's Elf Population ? Barrels. Date: 30 May 2003 10:20:53 -0400 Organization: PANIX -- Public Access Networks Corp. Lines: 18 Message-ID: References: <3ED6EFCE.1A45E12E@aon.at> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix2.panix.com X-Trace: reader1.panix.com 1054304453 22317 166.84.1.2 (30 May 2003 14:20:53 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 14:20:53 +0000 (UTC) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!newsfeed.vmunix.org!news.stealth.net news.stealth.net!news.stealth.net!panix!panix2.panix.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch rec.arts.books.tolkien:117809 In article <3ED6EFCE.1A45E12E@aon.at>, Georg =?iso-8859-1?Q?Sch=F6negger?= wrote: >> How many people can this food feed for however long it takes apples to rot >> without refridgeration ? >don't know about the apples from where you come from, but hereabouts you >just store them in a moist cellar or, preferably, a cave ;) and they >won't rot at least until spring. When I was a kid in Michigan we would buy a barrel of apples in autumn and put it in the basement, and it would easily last until spring (although towards the end some of the apples would be in pretty questionable condition). -- John Brock jbrock@panix.com ###### From: the softrat Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Mirkwood's Elf Population ? Barrels. Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 15:03:37 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: References: <3ED6EFCE.1A45E12E@aon.at> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.93/32.576 English (American) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 21 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-01!sn-post-01!supernews.com!news.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch rec.arts.books.tolkien:118044 On Fri, 30 May 2003 07:44:46 +0200, Georg Schönegger wrote: > >> How many people can this food feed for however long it takes apples to rot >> without refridgeration ? > >don't know about the apples from where you come from, but hereabouts you >just store them in a moist cellar or, preferably, a cave ;) and they >won't rot at least until spring. > Unless you pack them improperly as my father was wont to do. Each Spring we got to clean the goosh out of the barrels.... What was he doing wrong? I dunno. the softrat ==> Careful! I have a hug and I know how to use it! mailto:softrat@pobox.com -- My karma ran over my dogma. ###### From: Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Mirkwood's Elf Population ? Barrels. Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 23:14:21 -0400 Organization: MindSpring Enterprises Lines: 119 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: cf.45.71.72 X-Server-Date: 31 May 2003 03:12:43 GMT X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!beamish.news.atl.earthlink.net!news.atl.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!harp.news.atl.earthlink.net!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch rec.arts.books.tolkien:117875 There was a terrible earthquake and the sky turned to blood and lo: wrote in message news:bb6qit$cuo$1@slb4.atl.mindspring.net... > > This is just another crazy idea for trying to get a handle on the number of > people in various places in middle-earth. > > Barrels of food. > > How large is a dwarf? > > How much food can fit into 13 barrels large enough to accomodate dwarves? > And 1 barrel large enough to float Bilbo, of course. > > How many people can this food feed for however long it takes apples to rot > without refridgeration ? > (which is a conservative assumtion, since we only assume re-use of barrels > when they have been emptied through eating,rather than through storage in a > new location). Of course, we don't whether the mirkwood elves have > refridgeration, given the coal mining, printing presses, spring driven > clocks and so forth in ME. It occurs to me after rereading some of the material that unless the elves are in the habit of dumping the barrels everyday, it would be quite strange for them to do so on a feast day. And from the text there must be at least 16 barrels and casks. Since no wine casks were use by dwarves, 13 barrels of food is the minimum. 13 barrels of food a day is enough for a pretty large number of people (I think we can assume that elf metabolism is similar to human metabolism). A 4 foot tall dwarf with knees drawn to chin would be perhaps 3' high, and because Bombur is huge we can reasonably assume that the volume each barrel is at least a cubic meter. And since , as some have mentioned, there was difficulty determining which barrels contained dwarves, this supports the idea fairly well that the water displacement weight of the barrels was significantly more than the weigh of the occupants. It also suggests that there were at least twice that number of barrels. 26 cubic meters of food. A web seach suggests that an apple has 80 calories. Apples are about as dense as water and weigh perhaps 6 ounces(180 grams). so .45 calories per gram. multipled by 13 tons (13,000,000 grams), this is 6 million calories. This is enough to easily sustain 3000 people. Of course, butter tubs are also mentioned. But I'm pretty sure the apples generate a conservative estimate. That is just the minimum number of barrels from the palace. Because of the statements about the difficulty of finding barrels with dwarves, we should multiply by at least 2, giving 6000 elves. For an upper bound, we could assume far more calorie dense food, and assume the number of barrels equals however many barrels 3 or four elves can dump over the course of 12 hours. Butter has a density around .85grams/ cm^3. 13 cubic meters of butter ~= 11,000 kilograms. At 8000 calories per kilogram, this gives 88 million calories. Again, multiply by 2. 176 million calories. Enough energy for 88,000 people. Oop,s forgot to assume more barrels. 3 intoxicated people should be able to handle more than 120 barrels in a fairly reasonable time period. Enough energy for almost half a million inhabitants. This number, is of course difficult to rationalize with the elf-king needing to worry about a mere 500 dwarves, even if the dwarves in question are veterens, and the elves only brought a small fraction of thier forces to Erebor.But as I said, I was trying for an upper bound.I don't believe the hunting mentioned would significantly supplement this energy supply. Going back to the 6,000 number:That's just for the palace or hill or whatever it was,and of course it assumes low calories/cubic meter. I suppose it may be the case that the entire Silvan elf population has retreated to this once fortress, but that seems rather unlikely, and they do have elf circles in various place and claim to maintain the road through the woods, though I'm not sure how many elves that woudl take. I would also suggest that Lorien is probably significantly more populous than the silvan colony in mirkwood- otherwise I'd expect that the silvan elves would have delt with the Necromancer's forces themselves.Or at least I'd expect that the elf-kings forces would be involved through the machinations of Gandalf. (To all appearence they weren't, even though the Necromancer represented a very great threat to thier realm.) I guess I'll ramble some more. Presumably the elf-king had heard about the positive reaction Thorin got from the Lakemen, and it even seems likely that the reason he brought and army with him to Erebor in the first place was to intimidate the Lakemen into giving up some considerable share of the treasure after he'd heard of Smaug's demise. So his army was probably larger than what he'd expect the Lakemen to field. Of course he probably wouldn't want to leave his realm significantly weakened by drawing off a large part of his forces, but he might have been willing to. This suggests a 4:3 ratio for elf to human troops at the Battle of 5 Armies.This devised because a quarter of the lake-people died from Smaug destroying the town, and there is no reason to believe that the deaths were biased towards any particular gender or age group. Someone, I don't recall who, once claimed there were 15,000 orcs at the battle, based on some measurements from a scale drawing of the mountain and the description in the text. So the number of men,elves, and dwarves must be less than 15,000 (if this number is correct!-any comments welcome). 14,500 > Men+ Elves. 14,500> 1.75 *(Elves). So Elves < 8200. And really, that's only if they are just barely outnumbered, instead of being rather badly outnumbered. Perhaps half that is appropriate, perhaps less. But that's just what was brought to Erebor. ###### From: mair_fheal@yahoo.com (coyotes morgan mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Mirkwood's Elf Population ? Barrels. Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 20:20:10 -0700 Organization: eden huntersstrand Message-ID: References: X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 2 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-06!sn-post-02!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!c18.ppp.tsoft.com!user Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch rec.arts.books.tolkien:117939 In article , wrote way too much for tolkien ###### From: mair_fheal@yahoo.com (coyotes morgan mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Mirkwood's Elf Population ? Barrels. Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 21:03:36 -0700 Organization: eden huntersstrand Message-ID: References: X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 2 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-06!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!c74.ppp.tsoft.com!user Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch rec.arts.books.tolkien:117951 In article , wrote way too -math- much for tolkien ###### From: "DR" Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien References: Subject: Re: Mirkwood's Elf Population ? Barrels. Lines: 31 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2720.3000 X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Message-ID: Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 14:42:33 -0500 NNTP-Posting-Host: 142.161.11.205 X-Complaints-To: admin@mts.net X-Trace: news1.mts.net 1054669352 142.161.11.205 (Tue, 03 Jun 2003 14:42:32 CDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 14:42:32 CDT Organization: MTS Internet Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!cyclone.bc.net!news-in.mts.net!news1.mts.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch rec.arts.books.tolkien:118247 wrote in message news:bb96jb$2i7$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net... > It occurs to me after rereading some of the material that unless the elves > are in the habit of dumping the barrels > everyday, it would be quite strange for them to do so on a feast day. > And from the text there must be at least 16 barrels and casks. > Since no wine casks were use by dwarves, 13 barrels of food is the minimum. > 13 barrels of food a day is enough for a pretty large number of people (I > think we can assume that elf metabolism is similar to human metabolism). I agree so far. > A 4 foot tall dwarf with knees drawn to chin would be perhaps 3' high, and > because Bombur is huge we can reasonably assume that the > volume each barrel is at least a cubic meter. And since , as some have Problems: I am 5' 10" 190lbs, and can fit into a twenty five gallon barrel uncomfortably(don't ask!!!). The barrel is probably 3.5 ft high. A twenty five gallon barrel has a cubic displacement of about 0.1 cuM. I can fit into a forty gallon barrel reasonably comfortably. This throws the rest of your calculations out badly. DR ###### From: Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Mirkwood's Elf Population ? Barrels. Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2003 21:22:11 -0400 Organization: MindSpring Enterprises Lines: 50 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: cf.45.71.52 X-Server-Date: 7 Jun 2003 01:20:10 GMT X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!cyclone.bc.net!sjc70.webusenet.com!news.webusenet.com!elnk-nf2-pas!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!harp.news.atl.earthlink.net!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch rec.arts.books.tolkien:118486 DR wrote in message news:IS6Da.26363$NC4.121959@news1.mts.net... > > wrote in message > news:bb96jb$2i7$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net... > > It occurs to me after rereading some of the material that unless the elves > > are in the habit of dumping the barrels > > everyday, it would be quite strange for them to do so on a feast day. > > And from the text there must be at least 16 barrels and casks. > > Since no wine casks were use by dwarves, 13 barrels of food is the > minimum. > > 13 barrels of food a day is enough for a pretty large number of people (I > > think we can assume that elf metabolism is similar to human metabolism). > > I agree so far. > > > A 4 foot tall dwarf with knees drawn to chin would be perhaps 3' high, and > > because Bombur is huge we can reasonably assume that the > > volume each barrel is at least a cubic meter. And since , as some have > > Problems: > I am 5' 10" 190lbs, and can fit into a twenty five gallon barrel > uncomfortably(don't ask!!!). Well, I suppose it depends on how large dwarves are, and how much they can fold up. >The barrel is probably 3.5 ft high. A twenty > five gallon barrel has a cubic displacement of about 0.1 cuM. Oops.I knew I was screwing up somewhere. > I can fit into a forty gallon barrel reasonably comfortably. > > This throws the rest of your calculations out badly. Well, I found a quote that the elves had at least a thousand spearmen at Erebor, so now I just need ask what kind of shortbow user to spearman ratio was typical in ME. And then multiply by 2,of course- which assumes the entire adult male population of the elf-kingdom was at the battle (which seems unlikely).