Emil Johansson is the brains behind LOTR Project. His site, you may recall, brought us the Middle-earth family tree.
Now he’s unveiled an extension to the project that collates population statistics from extant Middle-earth resources, and explores various age and life-expectancy trends. Johansson describes it as an exploration of the world of Tolkien through numbers.
EDIT: It seems as though the site is experiencing heavy demand. So please be patient, and maybe try again later?
Johansson told TheOneRing.net that the most time-consuming part was entering the information on 923 different characters into the database — their age at death, gender, and race.
“The most interesting thing is perhaps the graph of the decline of the longevity of Men,” he said.
“There is a clear pattern. What surprised me the most was how long Aragorn lived compared to many of his ancestors. After reading up on Aragorn’s death I learned he was the first Númenórean in a long time who was given the grace to go at his own will.”
He said that he has plans for a collaborative project where people can interact freely with a Middle-Earth map much like Google maps.
“Further integration of a map feature will allow me to tie each character to one or more locations,” he said.
“Much of the beauty of this project is I do not know what I will do next. Things just happen.”
Link: LOTR Project statistics
