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Well i know that at the end of the first age it was the Valar who decided its end when they broke the Realm of evil. As for the other ages i do not know. I expect it was a neatral agreement at the end of the second and third ages when Sauron was defeated, but whether the beings of Valinor counted it a new age I do not know.

Well that is incorrect TM.

According to Tolkien the world ends when Melkor comes back and begins the Last battle and the day of doom. After which melkor is destroyed and the second great theme begins without any evil - thus there would be no more wars.

Unless the last battle takes place in ages still to come (8th age plus?)

When the world ends there will be no more wars or death or confrontation of any kind - evil will be erased.

The Might wrote:

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Tolkien wrote in a work that we are know in the seventh and that the sixth age ended with the second world war

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This is what I am replying to. How can we be in the seventh age, the sixth ending with the second world war, when the last battle is meant to end wars??? The only possibility is that the Dagor Dagorath is yet to come.

So according to Tolkien we are just in a normal age of Arda with Melkor outside looking in with Sauron at his right hand side?

Anyway, back to the topic of ages.

TM- You said "Wars were the turning points of an age". So you are saying that it was just taken as a given that a new age would begin when a war ended, no one deciding that a new age begins after the war? 
And what about ages in Hobbit reckoning? Did each of their ages end with a war?

One thing puzzles me TM - if by hobbits reckoning they only began in the year 1600 of the T.A, then why did will Bilbo say to Gandalf "1296, very good year"???

Yeah that makes sense.

Returning to the matter of calendars, how does the Shire Reckoning relate to our modern day character, and knowing this, is it possible to tie in our historical events with those written in LotR?

Tolkien wrote the tales of Arda as a mythology for Britain and it's creation. Obviously the Silmarillion tells of creation and the forming of the land and Lord of the Rings tells of the development of our society today, the history of Monarchy (line of kings - the end of the UK will come with the end of our Monarchy perhaps); therefore if we know how the calendars compare we can relate event in the two histories (the arrival of pirates from Belfalas in Minas Tirth corresponding to 1066 for example), or if we can figure out how events from the two histories coincide we can figure how the two calendars relate... maybe

Well, there's one easy way to try and see if it works. The last war the british people lost was the french invasion of 1066, we have won every war since. So if we work out which war was the last that Gondor lost, that will give the point

then it's a case of looking at how everything else matches up and seeing if it fits

We are trying to work out if we can fit the events of LOTR into the modern calender. Are there comparable events.

I think you may be right kinakinella. I am going to have to research which was the last war that Gondor truelly lost. Do you have any ideas?

umm...Tolkien did indeed have an idea about our world relating to ME, but never really cleared it up...
personally I remember seeing in many places England considered as the Shire
plus...you can't relate England to Gondor, Tolkien never did that...as far as I know
and anyway, he said that we are now already in the seventh age
the destruction of the Third Reich was the end of the Sixth Age.

and another thing...Tolkien clearly hinted that Gondor did not endure forever
it is already shown in one of his only writings about the Fourht Age that the situation in Gondor again declined after the death of king Elessar, and I believe I read somewhere it was told that Gondor would endure for some time, but not forever

no need to bow...
I don't know that much
but I am pretty sure that England was the Shire...
also if you look, they seem to be both about at the same latitude
I am not sure where Arda's Ecuator is, but I believe it was somewhere in Gondor, perhaps South Gondor
we know this because there is a quote about a travel of Aragorn in his youth into Harad, "where the stars were strange".
the only explanation (and it is confirmed by Christopher Tolkien) is that Aragorn had travelled some way into the Southern Hemisphere.
Anyway, I guess there are many maps on the net about that, though I usually doubt their accuracy very much.
On that matter, I would like to remind our moderator team that the posted maps are indeed useful, but still contain some mistakes.
And not that I object on that matter...but I am afraid of the copyright problem.
The first map is clearly taken from the EoA...I hope they won't mind.

and also Harad...Africa (it does slightly resemble it in shape)
and Aman - the N and S Americas...it is clear that in the "future" of Tolkien's world the Elves had found some other place for themselves...
but anyway, Tolkien never really bothered to create a very powerfull link between ME and our world

Okay, IMHO, the age doesn't not end because of a war, but by some event that completely changes the world (in this case Middle Earth). You could say that a meteor (if that is indeed what happened), ended the age of the Dinosaurs, and begott the Ice Age...

In this case, the fall of Sauron, changed the "outlook" of Middle Earth, and in conjunction with the Elves leaving ME, brought about the Age of Men. The War was a means to an end, not the specific ending of the 3rd Age.

Celethil wrote:

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I think you hit the nail on the head, Anduril. Wars did occur at the end of each age, but there were plenty of wars between the beginning and end of each age.

The ages did not officially change until there was some significant change in the world. At the end of the first and second ages there was an actual reshaping of the world. At the end of the Third Age, we find a shift in the nature of the inhabitants of the world. The Firstborn leave en masse, and the Dwarves fade as well, leaving the world to Men.

Wars did end each age but they were not the reason the age changed.

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Celethil,

"The true test of a person's intelligence is how much they agree with you"...you are obviously very intelligent...

wow...really deep words Celethil, I have to remember that one
ok, I agree now...wars only indirectly were at the end of the ages, because usually it was wars that brought a change into the world
but as Glorfindel said it could be that other events could have represented the end of an age

WHEN DID THE SEVERAL AGES BEGIN?

Now that it might be known when the Fourth Age began it should be a simple matter to determine when the earlier ages did. Fortunately, Appendix D contains most of the information needed to calculate the starting dates for the Second and Third Ages. If the beginning of the Fourth Age is March 25, 3021 of the Third Age this would be equivalent to March 16 or April 17, 4006 BC in the Gregorian or Julian calendars, respectively. If the assumption is made that yestare in King's and Stewards' Reckoning is always on the same day as 2 Yule in Shire Reckoning then it is possible to convert any date in these calendars to a modern one given a table of start dates for the various ages.
But which years do the other ages begin? The Year 597 of the First Age of the Sun is the last year of the earliest age. The Sun made its first appearence around the time of the spring equinox and as such the Elven year starts then. However, little is known about how they were adjusted to keep up with the seasons over long periods of time so in the table below I give the start of the First Age in King's Reckoning which begins 3 months earlier, around the time of the winter solstice.
Almost nothing is known about when the later ages took place but conjecture. From an article in Opentopia;

'As other ages began with the cataclysmic fall of tyrants, many Tolkien fans believe that Tolkien considered the Seventh Age to begin with the fall of Nazi Germany, and thus base
Seventh Age dates on 1945. Likewise it is believed that the birth of Jesus Christ may have been the start of the Sixth Age, as Tolkien was a devout Catholic and there are veiled
references to Christ's upcoming birth in philosophical essays such as Atrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth. A possible start date for the Fifth Age may then be based around Abraham or Moses.'

With this some guesses can be made. Using an Ussher-like chronology the Fifth Age can be placed at the time of the death of Noah and birth of Abram in 2000 BC. The Sixth Age would begin at the birth of Jesus while the Seventh Age would start with the end of World War II. An interesting thing is how similiar the calendar systems of Middle-earth are to the modern Gregorian. Both have leap years every fourth year with the exception of century years; the only difference being with the additional adjustments.
But what if the connection was deeper? Suppose that at the start of the Fifth Age a Gregorian system was adopted by descendants of the peoples of Gondor, etc. The years would then line up perfectly with our current one. The days could also be made to match up exactly if it is further supposed that for some reason the omission of leap years at the end of a century ceased in year 1000 of the Fourth Age until the beginning of the Fifth instead of the usual adjustments. Then the modern Gregorian would be in perfect alignment with King's Reckoning!
This is quite a stretch, I know, but stranger things have happened. Maybe Christopher Clavius, designer of the Gregorian, had acquired knowledge of very old calendars. Who knows?
Allowing for all this can give us an unbroken record of time from the First Age of the Sun to the the present day. From that the Elvish calendar can be used to find the start of the various ages before then.
Here is a table of the dates for Yestare or 2 Yule of Year 1 of the several ages in the Gregorian followed by the Julian calendar;


Years of the Valian; Monday, February 13, 731065 BC or February 19, 731050 BC.

Years of the Lamps; Sunday, July 15, 457465 BC or December 8, 457456 BC.

Years of the Trees; Wednesday, November 21, 227065 BC or July 23, 227060 BC.

Years of the Children; Wednesday, February 13, 75864 BC or September 7, 75863 BC.

Years of the Sun; Thursday, March 21 or June 14, 11064 BC.
First Age; Monday, December 24, 11065 BC or March 19, 11065 BC.
Second Age; Sunday, December 24, 10468 BC or March 14, 10467 BC.
Third Age; Wednesday, December 21, 7027 BC or February 14, 7026 BC.
Fourth Age; Wednesday, December 21, 4007 BC or January 22, 4006 BC.
Fifth Age; Monday, December 25, 2001 BC or January 11, 2000 BC.
Sixth Age; Sunday, December 25 or 27, 7 BC.
Seventh Age; Monday, December 25 or 12, 1944 AD.