Hobbit and human age equivalences

[rabidsamfan]

Has someone else worked this out? I figure that if you set the "coming of age" years as equivalents, you can pretty much calculate how "old" a hobbit is. You get different numbers if you use a human coming of age as 21 or as 25, of course, but 21 is more likely what Tolkein was thinking, since that's the closer to the age Aragorn is when he gets told about his heritage (he was 20, but he'd been away a while.)

I've got a table (yay Excel) but the quick decade years are

Hobbit//Human (21)////Human (25)
////1///////0.6////////0.8
///10///////6.4////////7.6
///20//////12.7///////15.2
///30//////19.1///////22.7
///40//////25.5///////30.3
///50//////31.8///////37.9
///60//////38.2///////45.5
///70//////44.5///////53.0
///80//////50.9///////60.6
///90//////57.3///////68.2
//100//////63.6///////75.8
//110//////70.0///////83.3
//120//////76.4///////90.9
//130//////82.7///////98.5


I tend to like the first translation when I'm writing Sam and Frodo as youngsters, and the second one when I'm thinking of old Bilbo. (82 isn't old! My Mom's nearly that age!)

Comments

[arwen-baggins.livejournal.com]

Obelia Medusa did the same thing for her "Making of a Ring-bearer". I forget what her system was, though. So far, you two are the only ones I know of who have ever actually mapped it out for all of us.

math math math

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose not everyone is number oriented. But I work with kids, and the age differences really mean a lot in the way that I see the relationships between/among the characters.

[marigoldg.livejournal.com]

Good chart : ) I have seen it posted several places that the accepted ratio is a hobbit ages at just about 2/3 the rate of a human...

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Two thirds converts to Eight Twelfths, which is fairly close to 7/11ths, which is what 21 to 33 actually works out to when you think of it.... 0.667 and 0.636 per year respectively. Yah, that'd work out close enough when they were young, although the error rate would grow over time. Bilbo, for example is "74" when he's 111 if the conversion rate is 2/3 and just a bit over "70" if the rate is 7/11ths.

And all of that means.... Yup! It's past my bedtime!

I hope you don't mind my "friending" you btw. Your recommendations are a wonderful break from trolling through the mire at ff.n. And now that I've got a live journal I've started reviewing the challenge stories. What fun!