Seventh Age

"... so small a thing. Such a little thing!" This article is a stub; please expand it if you can.

History of Arda
Ainulindalë Valian Years Days before days Years of the Trees Years of the Sun Ages of Awakening First Age Second Age Third Age Fourth Age Fifth Age Sixth Age Seventh Age Dagor Dagorath
Timeline of Arda

The Seventh Age is one of the later Ages of Awakening and is referred to in a 1960 posthumous publication by J.R.R. Tolkien called The Awaking of the Quendi (part of The Nature of Middle-earth) as beginning roughly 1960 years earlier.

In that context, Tolkien thus connected the beginning of the Seventh Age with the incarnation of Ilúvatar as the birth of Jesus Christ in 1 AD, according to the real-world Anno Domini reckoning of the Catholic Church and both Julian and Gregorian calendars. Tolkien also went on to say that the gap between the year 1960 of the Seventh Age and YS 310 of the First Age was 16,000 years, so the average duration of the Fourth through Sixth Ages would be approximately 2,430 solar years.

In other versions

On October 14 of 1958, Tolkien wrote a letter to Rhona Beare saying that he believed that the time between the Downfall of Barad-dûr in Third Age 3019 and the present-day year 1958 was around 6,000 years, concluding that the world was closer to the end of the Fifth Age or the Sixth Age and that later ages after the Fourth would get progressively shorter.

Ultimately however, he quickly suggested that the Ages have "quickened", and that the world was now at the end of the Sixth Age or maybe in the Seventh Age.