So... Bilbo has soMEOne to import paper for him TO Rivendell FROM the shire? Where... it is so comm8n Hobbits use the material as TP?
Pipeweed is a popular thing with travelling rangers, dwarves, Wizards...
We know the shire and Bree both export it to some extend but... (toilet)paper?
Your sold to the idea of hobbits being the sole and only inventors, producers, suppliers and exporters of TP. I won't argue any longer...
Wherever a culture that has little interest in any technology more complicated than a watermill or forge bellows and which is largely illiterate got that idea, knowledge ,technology or needs for.
It speaks for a limited distinct class, within a specific local, isolated culture which happens to be the distinct group the supposed narrator comes from. It's interesting, but to draw too much from it is still unwarranted assumption. We know hobbits made use of paper.
Parchment | RK-1 | 1- Minas Tirith | Gandalf's room | Narrator | There were candles on the table and rolls of parchment. |
The world of the dwarves in the Hobbit is more akin to the Norse tales their names are drawn from. The Elder Edda dates to roughly 1000 AD.
One place this is shown quite clearly is in the parting words of Bilbo with the dwarves of Erebor after the Quest.
Balin: ""Good-bye and good luck, wherever you fare! If ever you visit us again, when our halls are made fair once more, then the feast shall indeed be splendid!"
Bilbo: "If ever you are passing my way, don't wait to knock! Tea is at four; but any of you are welcome at any time!"
They are saying the same thing to one another, but the language used emphasizes that they come from different cultures. Even so, Thorin certainly writes up a contract and leaves a letter for Bilbo when he visits Bag End at the beginning of the story. There is nothing to suggest that the dwarves are unaware of paper or somehow adverse to or unfamiliar with its use.
It is not that Merry and Pippin come from a different part of the Shire; it's that they are gentry. As are Bilbo and Frodo. The Gaffer's comments about Mr. Bilbo teaching Sam his letters suggests that this is uncommon among hobbits of his own class. There are sharp class distinctions in the Shire, and literacy is expected in the gentry whilst being unexpected among the working class. The post office is thus kept busy by only a portion of the population of the Shire. We are also aware of what types of books hobbits like to read and write - genealogies, and books where information that they already know is recorded.
Faramir is describing the library of Minas Tirith, a city that has been continuously inhabited for 3,000 years. While it is not impossible to have long-lasting paper pages, it is true that if you want a document to last over a thousand years, it would make sense to preserve it on parchment or metal tablets or carved into stone. Númenor was very into preservation - who knows, maybe they had acid-free paper? The materials he is describing can date from the time of the founding of Minas Tirith. That, I think, is the main reason there are so many 'divers' methods in play. No one is going to suggest that Gandalf read the actual first hand account of Isildur concerning the finding of the Ring...off a piece of paper 3,000 years old! Even parchment is unlikely to last more than 1,000 years unless stored in remarkably good conditions... Though what the scroll was made from is not specified, it could have been a carved metal scroll. From the text of the scroll, it is clear that Isildur was writing it with the intention of creating a long-lasting record: "...records of it shall be left in Gondor, where also dwell the heirs of Elendil, lest a time come when the memory of these great matters shall grow dim."
And yet both Gandalf and Faramir name books prominently as what the library of Minas Tirith consists of; assuming that the books are not made with paper pages is an assumption, and one not supported by the text. We know that a copy of the Red Book makes its way to Gondor and is stored in this very library.
So, no, I do not think that hobbits invented paper, nor do I think that the rest of Middle-earth outside the Shire is paperless. One could argue that paper features more prominently in the hobbits' material culture than in other places in Middle-earth (Rohan, for instance, does not have a postal service...), but to make this absolute is probably to take the reading too far and to misunderstand the context of the Shire.
Clear examples of deductive fallacy, a postman being able to deliver a letter right doesn't imply he is literate, neither does Children recognizing a symbol. And of course the gentry is a LOCAL class hence the shire itself is local.
The other examples are classic Faulty generalization, it's insufficient samples and generalization from the particular.
1st depends on how many people write letters, if it is not every household but only three people in each village you only need one person to be sble to read - the guy at the mail sorting.illiterate postmen were by the way nothing uncommon until modern times.
2nd is wrong again. I was well able to write as a young child without being literate, what i wrote just did not make any sense at all, yet i had seen letters and was able to identify many of them.
3rd is not the same since your deductions exclude possibilities while the other logic doesn't.
It took us so long to find a way to justify the sheer existence if paper, it's making being connected to such a terrible amount of environmental problems...
We came up with bark or reedpaper just to be able to lean back and exhale, so we don't have to imagine factories of massive paper production in the shire poisoning it's beautyful landscapes with tons of dangerous chemicals.
Thinking about it i come to the conclusion that Sauron and Saruman most likely are the no1 and 2 in industrial paperdroduction, Sauron clearly needs massive amounts of paper for his massive beaurocracies paperworks, all orcs are literate as we know, they all have personal numbers. No doubt the existence of paper in the shire is due to the Sack-ville bagginses long-time shady dealings with the south and the entire postal-service was a Sarumanic intrigue to corrupt hobbit society...
Maybe no "full-literacy" but some "semi-literacy" is required. And you do not have "semi-literacy" in an illiterate society - it is not needed.One post-sorting in micheldelving should be sufficient, then you only need short symbols, abbreviations and guys with goid memory, no full literacy needed.
Again, i strongly believe that most rohan children would kake out certain runes they know, diesn't mean they're literate.
What's the problem with illiterate doctors and apothecaries? Quite common in pre-industrial societies.
Exactly the fact that I cannot - proves the point that I was making .How can you say Gondor had no ice cream or soda?
There might be the question of whether or not characters find it necessary to read. I think of the Inheritance Cycle where it's mentioned that Eragon's uncle Garrow knows how to read but as a farmer, considered it a skill not worth passing down.
As far as the Shire is concerned, I'm certain that there is an education system of some sort since Sam knows how to read presumably since he writes in the Red Book; only he could have recounted what happened between Frodo's capture and the Tower of Cirith Ungol.
Did Hobbits have it?
Maybe no "full-literacy" but some "semi-literacy" is required. And you do not have "semi-literacy" in an illiterate society - it is not needed.
Doubt it, this would involve keeping to much of them indoors - most were probably much involved outside helping to tend to the horses.
Doctors? - Healers, witch-doctors and herbalists - no doubt hobbits would have those too. But to be a proper doctor even in the Middle Ages one needed Latin and full literacy.
Exactly the fact that I cannot - proves the point that I was making .
1. Surely you have. Everywhere!
2.thats why runes have names, you learn them without proper schools or living in-doors much of the time and mostly without being proper literate.
3.oh you mean the academic grade! Well since they do not have universities in the shire and seemingly no schools.. though... who knows maybe they have, though i doubt it! Maybe in Tuckborough or Micheldeving the great university hole...
Where the wealthy gentry send tjeir kids so they do not stroll around like certain Tooks and Brandybucks.
4. Of course NOT , accepting it on the contrary admits that Gondor and other cultures might as well have paper ☺