The most notable architectural remains from early Mesopotamia are the temple complexes at Uruk from the 4th millennium BC, temples and palaces from the Early Dynastic period sites in the Diyala River valley such as Khafajah and Tell Asmar, the Third Dynasty of Ur remains at Nippur ( Sanctuary of Enlil ) and Ur ( Sanctuary of Nanna ), Middle Bronze Age remains at Syrian-Turkish sites of Ebla, Mari, Alalakh, Aleppo and Kultepe, Late Bronze Age palaces at Bogazkoy ( Hattusha ), Ugarit, Ashur and Nuzi, Iron Age palaces and temples at Assyrian ( Kalhu / Nimrud, Khorsabad, Nineveh ), Babylonian ( Babylon ), Urartian ( Tushpa / Van Kalesi, Cavustepe, Ayanis, Armavir, Erebuni, Bastam ) and Neo-Hittite sites ( Karkamis, Tell Halaf, Karatepe ).

The third millennium BC is generally described as the Early Bronze Age of Mesopotamia, which ends approximately after the demise of the Third Dynasty of Ur in the 21st century BC.

* The 20 highest-grossing films of the decade are ( in order from highest to lowest grossing ): Avatar, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, The Dark Knight, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Shrek 2, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Spider-Man 3, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Finding Nemo, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Shrek the Third.

" The IPCC Third Assessment Report from 2001 summarised research at that time, saying "… current evidence does not support globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this time frame, and the conventional terms of ' Little Ice Age ' and ' Medieval Warm Period ' appear to have limited utility in describing trends in hemispheric or global mean temperature changes in past centuries ".

* The video game Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings has a campaign which follows Fredrick Barbarossa from the period of his struggles in Germany to his death on the Third Crusade.

* Stephenson's short story " The Great Simoleon Caper " which refers to both the Metaverse seen in Snow Crash and the First Distributed Republic seen in The Diamond Age ( another short story which fits in the Diamond Age milieu and even shares a character is " Excerpt from the Third and Last Volume of Tribes of the Pacific Coast ").

Gandalf hid the ring well, and it was not widely known until he left with the other ring-bearers at the end of the Third Age that he, and not Círdan, was the holder of the third of the Elven-rings.

In " Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age " ( in The Silmarillion ) and " The Istari " ( in Unfinished Tales ), Tolkien fleshes out the background and the history briefly tabulated by date in Appendix B of The Lord of the Rings.

He developed at least three with a grammar and a vocabulary: Taliska, Adûnaic, and the Soval Pharë (' Common Speech '), called Westron in English, spoken by Hobbits and Men in the Third Age.

* The many languages of the Orcs of the Third Age, often incorporating debased forms of words from the Black Speech and other languages.

In the latter days of the Third Age, this Kingdom Under the Mountain held one of the largest dwarven treasure hoards in Middle-earth.

In the year 1601 of the Third Age ( year 1 in the Shire Reckoning ), two Fallohide brothers named Marcho and Blanco gained permission from the King of Arnor at Fornost to cross the River Brandywine and settle on the other side.

Many Hobbits followed them, and most of the territory they had settled in the Third Age was abandoned.

Only Bree and a few surrounding villages lasted to the end of the Third Age.

Boromir, as a character, is portrayed as having been born in the year 2978 of the Third Age to Denethor II and Finduilas, daughter of Adrahil of Dol Amroth.

Gondor is a fictional kingdom in J. R. R. Tolkien's writings, described as the greatest realm of Men in the west of Middle-earth by the end of the Third Age.

After an early period of growth, Gondor gradually declined as the Third Age progressed, being continually weakened by the allies of the Dark Lord Sauron, and was only restored in dominance after his final defeat and the crowning of Aragorn.

During the first millennium of the Third Age, Gondor was victorious in war and its wealth and power grew.

It was a fair and prosperous land during the first part of the Third Age, filled with many woods and gardens, but after the fall of Minas Ithil the population gradually migrated across the Anduin to escape the looming threat of the Ringwraith's city.

It never had a large population during the early Third Age due to its remote location, and the Great Plague left the province virtually deserted, with many people migrating eastward during the following centuries.

; South Gondor: The territory between rivers Harnen and Poros, which belonged to Gondor from the time of King Falastur, but became " a debatable and desert land " by the end of the Third Age.

Unfinished Tales explains that Radagast, like the other Wizards, came from Valinor around the year 1000 of the Third Age of Middle-earth and was one of the Maiar.

During the Third Age the Dwarves of Moria continued to prosper until the year 1980, when, in pursuing a vein of mithril, they broke open a chamber containing the last balrog known in the histories of Middle-earth, called Durin's Bane.

He required the ring to effect his conquest of Middle-earth, and spent most of the Third Age attempting to get it back.

As the name implies, the events of the essay are focused around magical artefacts: the Rings of Power, and also the history of the Second and Third Ages of Middle-earth.

Thus the Third Age of Middle-earth begins, with Isildur's fateful decision to keep the Ring of Power, which sets in motions the events that will lead to the War of the Ring.

In J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, Lothlórien is the fairest forest realm of the Elves remaining in Middle-earth during the Third Age.

Sauron was among the mightiest, if not the mightiest of the Maiar who served Aulë and used his knowledge of the metaphysical structure of Arda to great effect as a servant of Morgoth in the First Age of Middle-earth and then was his own master in the Second and Third Ages.

During the Third Age, recognizing that an outright confrontation with Sauron ( Melkor's beloved Maia ) would be disastrous, the Valar sent the Istari to Middle-earth with the intent of giving counsel to Men in their resistance to the growing power of the Dark Lord.

In the earliest versions of Tolkien's mythology ( see: The History of Middle-earth ), the First Kindred of the Eldar were called the Teleri, while the Third Kindred, the elves known as Teleri in the published version of The Silmarillion, were called Solosimpi (' shoreland pipers ').

In the Second and Third Age, Sindarin became known as the Noble Tongue, and became the Elvish tongue used in daily speech throughout Middle-earth ( helped by the decree of Thingol, who forbade the use of the Noldorin language in his realm ).

The Third Age is a time period from J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy writings.

By the end of the Third Age, only mere fragments of the once-grand Elven civilization survived in Middle-earth.

Because most of his fiction concerning Middle-earth deals with earlier ages, there is relatively little material on the ages that followed the Third Age.

Only a small section of East Beleriand remained, and was known after as Lindon, in the Northwest of Middle-earth of the Second and Third Age.

In Tolkien's Middle-earth, Mithril is extremely rare by the end of the Third Age, as it was now found only in Khazad-dûm.

Neglected by the Faithful, Adûnaic ( in various forms and dialects ) remained the language of the common people throughout most of the west of Middle-earth, and by the time of the War of the Ring at the end of the Third Age, it had developed into the various dialects of Westron.

Bree was a very ancient settlement of men in Eriador, long established by the time of the Third Age of Middle-earth.

In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth, Anduin is the Sindarin name for the Great River of Wilderland, the longest river in the Third Age ( the original Sindarin name means Long River ).

The Forest of Fangorn provided an important role in The Lord of the Rings novel as did Mirkwood, Doriath and Lothlórien in the Third Age, a time when Sauron challenged Middle-earth to battle and domination.

Coverage of the Second and Third Divisions dwindled until it was finally dropped in 1986.