After all the hub-bub surrounding Amazon forking out close to a billion dollars to make its 'Lord of the Rings' TV series a reality, there's now the first bit of official material on it.

It's not much, literally just an unmarked map of Middle-Earth, but if you're a gigantic Tolkien nerd, you can actually tell quite a bit from it. TheOneRing.net gives a pretty thorough explanation on it, but for now, here's the map itself.

LOTR Map

To put it simply, the map's layout tells us that it will be set in the world before 'Lord of the Rings', which backs up previous rumours that the first season would follow the early years of Aragorn, played by Viggo Mortensen.

The entire map of Middle-Earth was redrawn after the events of 'Lord of the Rings', and this map appears to be taken from 'The Hobbit' or thereabouts, so the thinking is that it'll be a prequel series.

Amazon has given the project a five-season commitment, and staked a billion dollars for its production budget - so they're clearly taking this whole thing seriously.

So far, there's been little official information on the series - but this is the first glimmer of it, and enough to get people excited.

You can check out the interactive version of the map for yourself here.