Posted: May 05, 2000 at 16:33:52: by Michael Martinez
I think it was probably an oversight. Tolkien knew a lot about history but we can't expect him to know everything about history. He admitted that potatoes and tobacco didn't really belong in the Shire but he made them integral parts of the Shire economy.I would say that we can rationalize the tea away just as we can rationalize the potatoes and tobacco. They were brought to the Old World by Numenor, but sometime after the War of the Ring, in the intervening ages, they vanished from what became Europe until they were reintroduced in the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and/or early Modern period.
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