According to the newspaper Ziarul (for those who don’t know, that means “Newspaper”, so really dumb, never-choose-this-for-a-name option), the wars described in the well-known book/movie took place on our countries territory about 8,000 years ago. For the Romanian readers, see the story here. For the others, I will try an English summarized version.

The chronicles of the Antiquity called the wars “Titanomachia” and placed them on the territory of Dacia Hyperboreea. According to the article, this theory is based on archeological proof of this first armed conflict on the Romanian theory, old chronicles, some of the names and stories – the war against Titans – resembling the ancient Greek mythology and the fact that the names (used for people and places) or parts of them have a meaning in Romanian, also identified with the Elvish language in the movie.

Mount Doom is identified with the Omu and Varful cu Dor peeks, while the Shire (the hobbits’ home land) is identified with Hobita de Gorj, also birth place of the famous Romanian sculptor, Brancusi.

I don’t know how much of this story is true, but it somehow figures. Maybe this would explain the ongoing crave Empires (Greek, Roman, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Russian) have had to take a piece of this land over the years. Yes, quite a few have longed to have this country’s riches, drawn to it time after time. Maybe it was the very same crave that could have started such a devastating war over 8,000 years ago.