Why is the world so empty?

[falcotron]

In another thread, as an aside to the chronological scale of Westerosi history, I brought up the geographical scale of Westeros and especially Essos. Many people seem more interested in discussing that instead of my original topic, so, rather than let that thread go way off on a tangent, I'm starting this thread.

I'll focus on western Essos, because that's where things are most obviously wrong (but Westeros, central Essos, and, from what we know of it, eastern Essos have similar problems). We have an area roughly equivalent to Europe, with a total of 9 cities, and a few colonies of those cities, and large areas of nothing. Try to picture what that would look like in medieval Europe. Imagine Aalborg, Copenhagen, Berlin, Poznan, Nantes, three cities clustered around Portugal, Marseilles, and a few colonies of Marseilles being the only cities in medieval Europe.

(Obviously those aren't meant to be a perfect geographical, historical, or political parallel to the Free Cities, but there's clearly no way to place only 9 cities around Europe that isn't just as ridiculous.)

First, let me dismiss a few possible explanations or objections:

• Just because there are empty spaces on the map doesn't mean no one lives there. Sure, but we have a lengthy travelogue during which we never find out where whores go, but we do find out that across large stretches of the continent there are nothing but 1000-year-old ruins and completely empty lands.
• The inland areas are mostly uninhabitable wasteland, like Australia. No, again, from Tyrion's travelogue, and also from the descriptions in the World book and app and off-hand references throughout the book, it's pretty clear that much of this is fertile land with temperate and subtropical climates. Not to mention that, 1000 years ago, people did live along the Rhoyne, enough people to raise the largest army ever seen.
• The Dothraki did it. No, they didn't. The mystery predates them (e.g., the ruins on the Rhoyne are from 600 years before the Dothraki appeared). Plus, they didn't get past Qohor; this would be like France being empty because the Mongols attacked Breslau.
• The Doom is responsible. No, it isn't. The mystery predates the Doom as well. But see below...
• Everyone lives on the coasts, because naval technology is so far ahead of land transport. This one sounds compelling, until you look at how far inland Norvos and Qohor are. And then read that Norvos and Qohor wrested control of the Rhoyne from Volantis a few centuries ago, but haven't bothered to set up any colonies closer to that all-important naval transportation.
• Frequent repeated cataclysms would reduce people to a few cities, just like in the Wheel of Time. First, we don't have any such evidence; there's over 7000 years between the Long Night and the Doom. Second, although I haven't read WoT, my understanding is that the repeated cataclysms don't actually concentrate people into a handful of great cities that persevere for thousands of years; rather, they build up new cities, reach the equivalent of medieval Europe, and get blasted back to the stone age every millennium. Third, if look at how humans recovered from natural or man-made cataclysms in real-life history, there's no examples where a few great cities survived and everything between them was left empty.
• GRRM just screwed up and didn't notice or doesn't care, so it doesn't mean anything. Or, GRRM is just copying Tolkien. While that's certainly possible, it doesn't fit with what we know about GRRM, or the series. He's put a great deal of work into building a world that's believable in many details. He's criticized other fantasy novels for just copying Tolkien and even trying to be realistic. He's deliberately called our attention to these facts about his world. Most of all, he's not a hack who slaps out a generic novel every 6 months. So, I don't think this is a mistake, or meaningless.

So, here's my half-tinfoil-hat theory:

The Curse of the Rhoynar is real. The rumors that Garin the Great became the Shrouded Lord, etc. are of course just myth and legend, but there is true magic there, and anyone who tries to resettle the Rhoyne will fail, for magical reasons. And it's permanent. And there are similar curses lying over much of Essos. Old Ghis is cursed, the Axe is cursed, Sarnor is cursed. Valyria, of course, is a smoking wasteland, and Hyrkoon is a great desert; those, too, are curses. As history marches on, there will be less and less inhabitable land for humanity, unless someone eventually finds a way to destroy the hold of these magical curses.

The problem is that, while this fits in with the general style of the world GRRM is building, and with the facts we've been told, it's hard to see how it would fit into the story of ASoIaF. In which case, why bring it up?

[Burning down the House]

Maybe they had a couple of bad harvests before a 4 year long winter. You might be looking a little too deep into this.

[The Gallows Knight]

I've always felt that the whole world in this story seemed oddly empty and sparsely populated both Essos and Westeros. Hell, Westeros is what, supposed to be the size of South America and there are a grand total of like 5 cities on the continent, only two of them of notable size?

[falcotron]

Maybe they had a couple of bad harvests before a 4 year long winter. You might be looking a little too deep into this.

How do a couple bad harvests even begin to explain 95% of the world being left empty, while the parts that are populated are thriving better than real-life equivalents?

[Burning down the House]

How do a couple bad harvests even begin to explain 95% of the world being left empty, while the parts that are populated are thriving better than real-life equivalents?

First off a couple of bad harvests followed by a 4 year winter would thin out a population quite a bit.

Secondly that was just an example. The point I was trying to make was there are other possibilities besides a "curse"

[falcotron]

First off a couple of bad harvests followed by a 4 year winter would thin out a population quite a bit.

Secondly that was just an example. The point I was trying to make was there are other possibilities besides a "curse"

It's very hard to imagine a famine that would reduce, say, all of interior France and most of the coasts to an empty wasteland in a few short years, but leave Marseilles and Nantes as booming cities that eclipse London.

It's even harder to imagine that, 1000 years later, nobody would have resettled any of that land. In the real world, even if you return Baghdad to the desert, or burn Carthage to the ground and salt it so nothing can ever grow again, or do whatever the Sea Peoples did in Greece, within usually a couple generations, or at most a couple centuries, it's heavily populated again. (Unless there are no surrounding civilizations to move in, like central America after the Mayans, or Easter Island.)

There may well be other possibilities, but it pretty much has to be something dramatic and strange.

[EastTymor]

Large cities were relatively rare for most of history. For instance, Wikipedia tells me that the largest city in 1400 Europe was Paris at 275,000 and the 5th largest was Genoa at 100,000. Judged by that standard, the question is why do Westeros and Essos have so many massive cities?

[Warrewal Halfaxe]

I tend to lean towards the idea that GRRM just... didn't feel like putting anything there.

[A Man Has Said]

For the region adjacent to the Royne, how about an ancient plague of greyscale left the region uninhabited for centuries?

Or worse, inhabited by Stone Men, wandering everywhere like a Zombie Apocalypse?

Even long after the Stone Men had largely vanished, and were limited to a few areas on the river itself, persistent superstition and fear of another plague of greyscale kept people from resettling the area. The people of Essos are demonstrably a superstitious lot, and with good reason considering the magic we've seen since the birth of Dany's dragons - and all of it 'dark' magic as far as I have noticed.

[falcotron]

Large cities were relatively rare for most of history. For instance, Wikipedia tells me that the largest city in 1400 Europe was Paris at 275,000 and the 5th largest was Genoa at 100,000. Judged by that standard, the question is why do Westeros and Essos have so many massive cities?

Agreed, that's a good question. The city sizes seem to fit the 1750s better than the 1400s.

I think the questions may be related. Amsterdam, Xin'an/Shenzhen, New York, and Bahrain all had periods when they grew much faster than you'd normally expect, partly because the only way to live near them is to actually live in the city, unless you want to be underwater (or, worse, in New Jersey). Is there a way that could be true for almost every city on GRRth, so it's the norm instead of only happening in special cases, so people don't even think of expanding outward, building secondary cities, etc.?

My curse explanation doesn't quite work for that, but maybe something else does.

[RoamingRonin]

GRRM just screwed up and didn't notice or doesn't care, so it doesn't mean anything. Or, GRRM is just copying Tolkien. While that's certainly possible, it doesn't fit with what we know about GRRM, or the series. He's put a great deal of work into building a world that's believable in many details. He's criticized other fantasy novels for just copying Tolkien and even trying to be realistic. He's deliberately called our attention to these facts about his world. Most of all, he's not a hack who slaps out a generic novel every 6 months. So, I don't think this is a mistake, or meaningless.

None of this makes him infallible.

[falcotron]

For the region adjacent to the Royne, how about an ancient plague of greyscale left the region uninhabited for centuries?

Or worse, inhabited by Stone Men, wandering everywhere like a Zombie Apocalypse?

That plague covers the area around Sorrow Lake. That's like leaving half of Germany uninhabited because people are afraid of Lake Constance.

And even if you accept that, that's still just a small fraction of the area left uninhabited.

And it's not just a couple centuries; the Rhoynelands have been empty for 10 centuries, and other areas for, as far as we can tell, 60.

Maybe each area has its own similar "dark magic" reason not to settle it. But if so, how is that different, except in wording, from my suggestion?

[falcotron]

None of this makes him infallible.

Of course, but it does mean that "George screwed up" shouldn't be the default assumption whenever he leaves us a mystery. Some of them turn out to be mistakes (e.g., he admitted that the Baratheon-dominant-hair genetics bit was a mistake, and that he's gotten a few dates off by a few months because his notes are mostly by year, and so on), but most of them don't. Especially when they're huge, and he's gone out of his way to point them out to us in-story.

[Dire Dawg]

What is the climate? It seems fairly dry in Essos. Maybe it only rains along the coast.

Politics, what city/state is going to let another big city rise up and possibly compete and become enemies? Any city getting uppity is going to get crushed.

It does seem like there are small habitations around the some of the cities, I mean someone has to farm and such and transportation is slow so people aren't commuting from the city every day to go work the farm. We get a very limited view (even with the travelogues) of the countryside of Essos, so there are probably small villages outside the big cities.

[RoamingRonin]

Of course, but it does mean that "George screwed up" shouldn't be the default assumption whenever he leaves us a mystery. Some of them turn out to be mistakes (e.g., he admitted that the Baratheon-dominant-hair genetics bit was a mistake, and that he's gotten a few dates off by a few months because his notes are mostly by year, and so on), but most of them don't. Especially when they're huge, and he's gone out of his way to point them out to us in-story.

I don't think it's just "George screwed up". As you said, he's done his best to create a fully realized world. But it's still a fictional universe and Martin isn't perfect. So there will be errors and inconsistencies like how the army sizes are scaled down to more realistic numbers as the series progresses. In regards to the world building, I think he's made some errors and he's also left things open and empty just so he could fill the blanks in later.

Frequent repeated cataclysms would reduce people to a few cities, just like in the Wheel of Time.

The world book confirms this. Valyria wasn't the only great civilization to rise and crash.

It's difficult to argue "This must mean something!" in a lot of the cases. I think Martin has made it clear when and where there are mysteries to debate and when he's just establishing broad strokes of his story.

[EastTymor]

Agreed, that's a good question. The city sizes seem to fit the 1750s better than the 1400s.

I think the questions may be related. Amsterdam, Xin'an/Shenzhen, New York, and Bahrain all had periods when they grew much faster than you'd normally expect, partly because the only way to live near them is to actually live in the city, unless you want to be underwater (or, worse, in New Jersey). Is there a way that could be true for almost every city on GRRth, so it's the norm instead of only happening in special cases, so people don't even think of expanding outward, building secondary cities, etc.?

My curse explanation doesn't quite work for that, but maybe something else does.

Some of the Free Cities are geographically constrained like the cities you describe, which could be a contributing factor.

That plague covers the area around Sorrow Lake. That's like leaving half of Germany uninhabited because people are afraid of Lake Constance.

And even if you accept that, that's still just a small fraction of the area left uninhabited.

And it's not just a couple centuries; the Rhoynelands have been empty for 10 centuries, and other areas for, as far as we can tell, 60.

Maybe each area has its own similar "dark magic" reason not to settle it. But if so, how is that different, except in wording, from my suggestion?

There are more mundane plagues as well- flooding, bandits, pirates, Dothraki, unemployed mercenaries, employed mercenaries, Free City-ites, etc that might suffice to keep the area immediately around the Rhoyne scarcely populated. Plenty of areas of Europe have been depopulated in similar circumstances. See Italy after the Gothic Wars for instance.

[falcotron]

The world book confirms this. Valyria wasn't the only great civilization to rise and crash.

That doesn't confirming the WoT explanation. The Doom of Valyria did not set all of humanity back to the stone ages, requiring 1000 years to recover. And there's no evidence that any of the previous crashes did either.

Meanwhile, what the World book (and Lands and the World app, to a lesser extent) shows us is that every one of those great civilizations left behind a vast uninhabited area. And I'm sure the Maesters of Westeros don't know about every such civilization to rise and crash (since many of them go back before the dawn of recorded history). But let's look at what they do know:

• Valyria: It's pretty obvious why no one has resettled the area, and that the reason is at least partly magical.
• Ghiscar: The Valyrians salted the ground, and 5000 years later, still nothing grows there.
• Rhoynar: Garin the Great cursed those who attacked them, and there are legends that he returned as the Shrouded Lord.
• Hyrkoon: No information, except that their lands turned into a desert.
• Sarnor: Recent, and mundane explanation (Dothraki did it).
• Yeen and Zamettar: People believe the land is cursed, and every settlement anyone has attempted failed.

[Lady Blizzardborn]

The areas in question were damaged after the Doom of Valyria, due to the doom's supervolcano event producing its own winds, and shifting radioactive ash in specific patterns that ended up poisoning the groundwater in the areas which remain uninhabited.

<removing B.S. hat>

How did I do? Does it work?

[falcotron]

What is the climate? It seems fairly dry in Essos. Maybe it only rains along the coast.

Please read the whole thing before replying. No theory that's based on everyone living along the cost makes sense given how far inland Norvos and Qohor are.

It does seem like there are small habitations around the some of the cities, I mean someone has to farm and such and transportation is slow so people aren't commuting from the city every day to go work the farm. We get a very limited view (even with the travelogues) of the countryside of Essos, so there are probably small villages outside the big cities.

Sure, we know there are small villages for a short distance outside Pentos, we can assume there are some within the Braavosi coastline, and within the disputed lands, and we know Volantis actually has a handful of colonies that a Westerosi would call a large town if not a city. But that still covers a tiny percentage of the land in western Essos.

[sootfish]

The world book confirms this. Valyria wasn't the only great civilization to rise and crash.

Yes, true. But the fall of a civilization =/= a catastrophic event that kills all of the people (Doom, the plague as real life example). In most cases, what we see is just a change of regime, even with wars and so forth, population should remain stable to some extent and exhibit growth as soon as things settle down. I don't see how that accounts for the state of Planetos. Even considering the global "drying up" we can see in the loss of the Silver Sea etc, I don't see how environmentally there could be so many barriers to a larger population.

One thing that really troubles me is how the Dothraki function.

- how large of a population can subsist mainly on horse meat? horses are much less cost efficient to raise then sheep or cattle, livestock that real life steppe nomads rely on.

- why didn't they ever coagulate into a more centralized political entity in 400 years? Does that have to do with their limited population?

- we know from real life examples that raiding and even extorting tribute is hardly the most profitable for nomadic culture. Active control of trade routes is the usual end goal of steppe empires, who then engage in diplomatic negotiation with surrounding political entities including trade agreements, marriage, religious exchange etc, none of which seem to happen a lot in Dothraki history, which brings us to the next point

- nomadic peoples are usually very culturally flexible to surrounding influences, but the Dothraki as far as we know are pretty conservative in that sense. or is it the weird time scale making things strange again?