Is Sothoryos the other edge of Westeros?

[Quorra]

What do you think? Could they be one continent? No known written history has explained what happens down south or far north. Maybe they connect.

[Mrs.Grumpy]

No.

[Knight Of Winter]

That's original thinking. I've not seen this one proposed before.

I don't think it will have any impact in the books, but hypothetically: we know that Sothoryos is huuuuge. TWOIAF tells us that :Jaenara Belaerys flew her dragon Terrax farther south than any person ever and found only jungle, deserts, and mountains. After three years she returned to the Freehold to report the continent was as large as Essos, a "land without end." . So, three year on dragonback weren't enough to encompass it, and it features climatic opposites (jungle and desert). So, your theory would mean that's it's even larger and also has ice area.

And it also opens of other sets of questions: e.g. do Sothoryosi know of Others? I doubt Sothoryos will ever have more than "off-hand mentioned" role in the books, but it's an interesting discussion.

[aryagonnakill#2]

I'm pretty sure that GRRM has said that none of the continents are connected. As far as the Valyrian finding deserts, that makes perfect sense. In our own world rainforests are in the tropics and deserts the sub tropics, so basically sothoros, Yiti, Summer Islands, Jade Sea are around the equator and south of there would be deserts again just like Dorne, Slavers Bay, Red Waste.

[Quorra]

Assuming the world of ice and fire is a globe like earth - which we don't have to assume, I guess - but if we did, then it should have opposite poles of ice and a hot equator, right? But if that were true, and if Summer Isles are around the equator, then the southern polar ice cap would be equidistant from the summer isles as the northern ice cap. But the northern part of Westeros, with its constant winter, is closer to the Summer Isles than that, because the Dragons kept flying south and never encountered an ice cap. (Or did they? Was it a frozen desert beyond the jungles?)

Of course, perhaps this is not a globe and it does not rotate on an axis much like earth, tilting more or less gradually, equally toward a heat-giving sun. Although I imagine the daily rotation is much like our 24-hour rotation on earth. Perhaps the southern hemisphere, if it is in fact a globe, is constantly tilted toward the sun, so that the hottest part of the planet, not really the equator, would be much lower than the Summer Isles.

But we must also consider the unequal length in seasons and consider that the annual orbit is longer than our year - which seems highly likely, and also that even if the orbit itself does not change, then the earth perhaps does change as far as heating and warming - for whatever reasons.

Perhaps Dragons with their heat destroyed the ozone layer and heated the planet resulting in a long summer but that also exposed the ice caps to the sun and caused them to melt, resulting in a long winter on the way!

[roryclague]

I like the idea that the dry deep is a dried oceanic sea similar to the Caspian Sea. Long ago, the Mediterranean dried out almost completely. When you have dry land five to ten thousand feet below sea level, the air pressure and temperature combine to form hellish conditions. Temperatures at the bottom could reach 80°C (175°F). Surrounding highlands could be reduced to desert. I like to think something like this may affect the seasons on Planetos. It certainly affected Earth's climate 5 million years ago. Google the Messinian salinity crisis. Perhaps Sothoryos has a similar dried oceanic inland sea. I like to think such places are associated with fire.

[joluoto2]

No.

My thoughts exactly.

[LmL]

I like the idea that the dry deep is a dried oceanic sea similar to the Caspian Sea. Long ago, the Mediterranean dried out almost completely. When you have dry land five to ten thousand feet below sea level, the air pressure and temperature combine to form hellish conditions. Temperatures at the bottom could reach 80°C (175°F). Surrounding highlands could be reduced to desert. I like to think something like this may affect the seasons on Planetos. It certainly affected Earth's climate 5 million years ago. Google the Messinian salinity crisis. Perhaps Sothoryos has a similar dried oceanic inland sea. I like to think such places are associated with fire.

We've got signs of this all over eastern Essos: the Great Sand Sea which used to be Hyrkoon, which is so hot water boils away. That sounds like what your talking about. The. We have the Shrinking Sea and the The Dry Deep further east, looks like a lot of evaporation going on over there.

As for the OP, George has said that Planetos goes around the sun once a year, similar to earth. It's a globe, perhaps a bit bigger he said. So nothing super wacky is going on in that regard. Sothoryos would have to whoa around the South Pole and come up the entire other side of the planet, both hemispheres, and back over the North Pole in order to connect to Wetseros. I'd say that's fairly implausible. The story of the Jaenara is supposed to tell us that beyond Sothoryos is literally off the map - it's not going to be relevant, I would think. The only hints we given of anything connected to anything "off the map" is the idea that you can sail west from Westeros and get... somewhere. Or that someone may have come from the west by sea. I don't think they did; I think they came from Asshai and the Great Empire of the Dawn, before the the Arm of Dorne was broken. They left their fingerprints all over Oldtown and Battle Isle... But that's another story.

[Quorra]

Thanks Lucifer I had no idea this information was out there. I didn't even know it was called Planetos. Of course it is. It's obviously in the galaxos, in the universos. It's all made up of atomos.

[RumHam]

I didn't even know it was called Planetos.

We don't have an official name for the planet. The characters in the books call it Earth. Planetos is just a fan term.

[LmL]

yes, "Planetos" is a working title, a bit tongue-in-cheek I would say.

sometimes I say "George RR Martinverse" just to mix it up but that's a bit wordy ;)

[John Suburbs]

I see the map as our planet about half a million years into the future. The sea levels are higher and there has been some continental drift. The westernmost edge of Europe has broken off and joined with the UK, and there is a land bridge connecting that mass to the Arctic. Sothoryos is obviously Africa, perhaps connected to the Antarctic.

I also like to think that dragons, children, Others, giants, etc are all the products of our own military/industrial complex after, say, another 500 years of chemical and biological research. When the intervening ice age wiped out all traces of our civilization, these creatures went native while man was sent back to a prehistoric state.

Then the ice receded and mankind went through the same socio/cultural development as before, from hunter/gather to early farmer to metal worker, right back to the feudal period we see now, except this time the dragons are real.

[LmL]

^^ Terry Brooks on the ASOIAF board? Hey Terry, love your books!

[Mrs.Grumpy]

I agree that something is wrong about Essos. It's drying up. Waters are rising and stuff.

[JonCon's Red Beard]

It's Earthos.

[TimJames]

I'm pretty sure that GRRM has said that none of the continents are connected.

Not true. He stated that in the Dawn Age Essos and Westeos were connected via a land bridge (the step stones being the only remainder of it).

[Skinner]

Not true. He stated that in the Dawn Age Essos and Westeos were connected via a land bridge (the step stones being the only remainder of it).

http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Category/C91/P60

Currently, there is no land bridge between Essos and Westeros. I wouldn't see the point in connecting Sothoryos and Westeros.

What I really I really want to know about is Northryos, what I call the freaking continent beyond the Wall. Does it extend past the poles? Who lives there?

[Mrs.Grumpy]

http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Category/C91/P60

Currently, there is no land bridge between Essos and Westeros. I wouldn't see the point in connecting Sothoryos and Westeros.

What I really I really want to know about is Northryos, what I call the freaking continent beyond the Wall. Does it extend past the poles? Who lives there?

White Waste. But I believe it's just polar ice cap.

[Ziester]

Africa used to be connected to Antarctica in the past as Pangea. And GRRM does like to look at real maps when coming up with fantasy maps. It makes sense that he might look at how things were in the Early Triassic.

[RuRo]

Implausible I think. Even ignoring that there's nothing suggesting it or no real reqaon to think it'd be interesting for the narrative, just think about the size of the continent that would exist on the other side off the world. Assuming the northern parts of Sothoryos are equatorial, then even to reach the south pole it would need to be larger than Westeros plus the lands of always winter. But while Sothoryos is not exactly the same longitude as Westeros, it certainly isn't far enough away to be the other side of the globe from it... which would mean there must be even more land on roughly the other side of the globe, extending from the south pole (where it connects with Sothoryos) to the north (where it connects with Westeros / land of always winter. And this stretch of land would have to be bigger (at least in north-south terms) than both Westeros and Sothoryos combnined. It seems unlikely (and fairly pointless) that such a big land could go completely unheard of, particularly when it appears that Easos extends pretty far around the globe (far enough that no one knows where it ends).