God's Eye: An Ancient Asteroid Impact Crater?

[sweetsunray]

I think of the maesters as wannabe scientists without the understanding of human capabilities, or better yet pseudoscientists. On the one hand they dismiss magic and existence of other races, but on the other hand they dismiss the abilities of early people, unless they were far superior race with special knowledge that was lost. I really advize on trying to check out the Orkney series of the BBC (3 parts... and btw I'm wondering whether Atlantis legend may be some twisted hearsay tale about the Orkney islands, as the culture was abandoned with the rise of early bronze age, and the islands abandoned because climate changes and partly inundation). One of the documentary team is a female engineer. In the first episode she visits stone masons and asks how the First Orkneys could have got the stone. They show for example how easy a slab can be cut. It almost cuts itself out on its own. All it requires are wooden prisms and a hammer. Then she assembles volunteers of the island with the challenge to try and move a slab across the land for 100 m. And they try out several ideas. Some work better than the other. Then someone mentions the slickness of seaweed, and they pull the slab like a knife through butter by laying a path of seaweed. Was it done that way? No one knows for sure. But what it does show is that a group of people put to task to solve an issue to achieve a goal will come up with some solution and succeed in it. It does not matter if that were a group of people 5500 years ago, or now. And because we 21st century people do not regard moving several slabs weighing tons for several km to a location and set up a stone circle that isn't even a defense or proper protective building, nor a grave, we think it's nuts. It's not knowledge lost in the sense that people cannot do such a thing anymore. It is knowledge lost in the sense that people aren't interested to do such a thing anymore. Meanwhile because of some progress, we consider the people before us as lesser problem solvers and thus incapable of doing genormous efforts. The maesters consider themselves smart and the present day Westeros culture as the advanced culture. Hence they disregard the pre-LN people as capable of anything.  

[Maester of Valyria]

22 hours ago, Turandokht said:

 Well, the islands don't necessarily mean anything except mountains, as I suspect they're all in the shallow water continental shelf of Westeros, and thus aren't of unique origin and at periods of lower sea level were probably attached to the mainland. They would mostly point where mountain ranges continue under the sea. I admit that makes the Iron Islands at least problematic. The plate boundary you describe has a lot of merit; to me Essos looks painfully like it should have been connected to Westeros -- but also connected to Planetos' Arctic continent (which I think we can assume is a continent). A relatively recent rifting event seems almost painfully necessary, so Essos is probably moving southeast at a clip equal to India's on the march north to collision with Asia. If I'm right, there's an R-R-R Triple Junction under the Narrow Sea where it meets the Shivering Sea -- somewhere West Northwest of Braavos--and the divergent plate boundary at the neck is nothing more than an extension of the one which has been forming the Shivering Sea for the last millions of years. 

Because Dragonstone and Driftmark are volcanic they are almost certainly formed by a plate boundary in the Narrow Sea. Now they may well be on the Southern Westeros tectonic plate: inter-plate volcanoes are usually not directly on top of a boundary.

I've put quite a lot of thought into plate boundaries, and so far I've concluded that we have the Southern Westeros plate (Red Mountains to the Neck) moving in a westwards direction, while the Western Essos plate (Free Cities to the Bones, excluding the area around Valyria) is moving east (all relative to each other). Meanwhile we have, as we are agreed upon, the Northern Westeros plate splitting away from its Southern counterpart. If you imagine these boundaries drawn on a map, this leads me to conclude that the Shivering Sea (at least up to Ib from Westeros) is wholly or partly another plate by itself. I'm reserving judgement on the possiblity of an Arctic plate as we don't have any maps of the whole thing yet (and likely never will )

 

22 hours ago, Turandokht said:

 I really think the Gods Eye must be a crater. The shape is too perfect, too characteristic, and the lack of other lakes at all on the map of the Riverlands really argues against serious glaciation having taken place there. The number of lakes you'd expect would be so extensive as to excite considerable comment from those travelling through the area and we don't see any of that. That said, just because I think the origin is must be either an impact or a volcano (and is probably by consensus an impact), doesn't mean I agree with the dating to quasi-historical times. It probably is millions of years old. 

We can agree to disagree then. Personally, I don't want to draw too many judgements about the lake's shape or size given the fallibility of all the different maps we have, and I find the argument of the glacial sheets all having narrowed by the time they reached the Riverlands (partly evidenced by the shape of hills and mountains in the area) convincing. However, I fully appreciate that you can see it from a different perspective, and I'm glad that we agree on its age.

[Turandokht]

13 hours ago, Maester of Valyria said:

Because Dragonstone and Driftmark are volcanic they are almost certainly formed by a plate boundary in the Narrow Sea. Now they may well be on the Southern Westeros tectonic plate: inter-plate volcanoes are usually not directly on top of a boundary.

I've put quite a lot of thought into plate boundaries, and so far I've concluded that we have the Southern Westeros plate (Red Mountains to the Neck) moving in a westwards direction, while the Western Essos plate (Free Cities to the Bones, excluding the area around Valyria) is moving east (all relative to each other). Meanwhile we have, as we are agreed upon, the Northern Westeros plate splitting away from its Southern counterpart. If you imagine these boundaries drawn on a map, this leads me to conclude that the Shivering Sea (at least up to Ib from Westeros) is wholly or partly another plate by itself. I'm reserving judgement on the possiblity of an Arctic plate as we don't have any maps of the whole thing yet (and likely never will )

We can agree to disagree then. Personally, I don't want to draw too many judgements about the lake's shape or size given the fallibility of all the different maps we have, and I find the argument of the glacial sheets all having narrowed by the time they reached the Riverlands (partly evidenced by the shape of hills and mountains in the area) convincing. However, I fully appreciate that you can see it from a different perspective, and I'm glad that we agree on its age.

 Well, you are quite correct about Dragonstone and Driftmark, but that's precisely what I expect; they are on the South Westeros tectonic plate, following a fairly typical pattern. In fact, the only point of disagreement we have is on the Shivering Sea, since the North Westeros/Arctic plate would just be the same thing in my view. The point of disagreement is that I expect a constructive plate boundary to be separating Western Essos and the Arctic down the middle of the Shivering Sea, ala the Atlantic. 

 

On 2/12/2017 at 9:01 PM, LmL said:

The important thing is the size of the blocks. Nowhere in Westeros do we hear of any castles built with cottage-sized blocks, except Moat Cailin. Not only that, but these cottage sized blocks are stacked up 50 feet high, and nowhere in Westeros do the First Men do anything like this. We aren't talking about metal, simply the ability to lift blocks that size and stack them that high. 

You also didn't address the issue of round towers. Pyke, Storm's End, and the First Keep are dated to before the Andals, long before, and they all have round towers. They all also have clues about magical / unique origins. 

 

 I would like to make the single objection that while the Maesters may say round towers are very sophisticated, I already provided links to Nuraghe culture integrated fortresses of multiple round towers built in the 2nd millennium B.C.E. -- round towers pose no technical difficulties, no matter what Maesters may say. And Maesters are clearly not infallible. 

[LmL]

3 minutes ago, Turandokht said:

 I would like to make the single objection that while the Maesters may say round towers are very sophisticated, I already provided links to Nuraghe culture integrated fortresses of multiple round towers built in the 2nd millennium B.C.E. -- round towers pose no technical difficulties, no matter what Maesters may say. And Maesters are clearly not infallible. 

The maesters don't necessarily say that the FM were incapable, just that they didn't. I am not arguing that round towers are this amazing feat of engineering, and the maesters aren;t really saying that here either. In the Storm's End section, they talk about the First Men not being thought of as advanced enough builders to have produced Storm's End, but SE was made with magic anyway, so that's understandable. Jaime calls the round tower thing "builder's wisdom," making it sound like a good idea nobody thought of for a long time:

Drum towers and half-moons held up better against catapults, since thrown stones were more apt to deflect off a curved wall, but Raventree predated that particular bit of builder's wisdom.

The maesters just say that the FM didn't do it:

Some take this to mean it was built by the First Men, but Maester Kennet has definitively proved that it could not have existed before the arrival of the Andals since the First Men and the early Andals raised square towers and keeps.  Round towers came sometime later.

Obviously, the maesters are not infallible - I don't recall making that argument. Their opinion should be considered as a puzzle piece however, and I think George wrote them in a fairly straightforward way - they are the proto-scientists in this medieval world, trying to apply logic and evidence based thinking to Westeros as best they can. Their supposed timeline, to me, is just one piece of evidence to be weighed, and as best as they can determine, all of the round towers in Westeros with the exception of Castle Pyke, which they acknowledge is very old and basically inexplicable, were built by the Andals. And not even the first Andals, but later ones.

The two things that pull against their timeline are Storm's End and the First Keep of Winterfell, both of which seem to be much older than the Andals, with SE being magical and the FK being built above the crypts which are almost surely magical as well. In my opinion they have a blind spot here because they don't believe anyone before the Andals was capable of building advanced structures (though they nowhere address the technical feat of Moat Cailin). I think they are mostly right about this, in that the FM after the LN for the most part didn't build advanced structures, with the possible exception of some of the last heroes having raised a couple of structures with magic after the LN, such as the Wall.  But soon after, it seems we only had FM building ringforts and square towers for thousands of years until the Andals came. 

The important blindspot is basically "before the LN," when the maesters imagine that the people in Westeros could not have been more advanced than the FM were at the time that the Andals arrived. That is the place where we ought to look, because again, the LN was a cultural bottleneck which would have caused worldwide famine and anarchy, toppling all power structures and killing the vast majority of the population. Society could well have been more advanced before this reset button, and of course I think there is ample evidence that this was so, be it more advanced FM in Westeros or people from the GEOTD or even fishy deep ones, in the event they are a builder culture. 

Essentially, I think that everyone left in Westeros after the LN, everyone who survived, became "the First Men." The First Men probably didn't call themselves "the First Men" - they all had clan names and family names. "The First Men" is a general descriptor term, and I'd guess it was applied by the Andals when they got there, because they would have been the first people to need a catch-all term for everyone on the continent - "the First Men" is kind of the simplest name they could use to describe "everyone who was there before us." The fused stone fortress at Oldtown shows that dragon people made contact with Westeros in the ancient past, the purple eyes of the Daynes suggest the same, and the Ironborn clues about the Seastone Chair, Castle Pyke, their uniquely advanced seafaring skill among FM, their uniquely advanced iron-making skill among the FM, and their folklore.  Whoever was here, however many different peoples they were and from where and when, once the Long Night fell, it would have been starvation and desperation, even before the Others invaded.  We've seen how quickly the commoners' lives fall to shit after a couple of short wars and a missed crop; consider no sun for years, and with no warning it was coming.

So... it would have been bad. The only reason anyone survived would have been the help of the children, I would guess, but the point is that the survivors would have likely been small groups that banded together, and after the LN, entirely new (or reformed) power structures would emerge. The survivors would essentially be the new "native Westerosi" at that point, the "First Men" who would live there and develop common culture (by region) and the essentially bronze-age society that the Andals found when they arrived. 

[Maester of Valyria]

On 14/02/2017 at 2:42 AM, Turandokht said:

 Well, you are quite correct about Dragonstone and Driftmark, but that's precisely what I expect; they are on the South Westeros tectonic plate, following a fairly typical pattern. In fact, the only point of disagreement we have is on the Shivering Sea, since the North Westeros/Arctic plate would just be the same thing in my view. The point of disagreement is that I expect a constructive plate boundary to be separating Western Essos and the Arctic down the middle of the Shivering Sea, ala the Atlantic. 

Could you please clarify what you mean by that last sentence? I'm afraid I don't quite see what you're driving at. Once again, I don't feel confident making assumptions about the possibility of an Arctic plate, although there is certainly a convergent boundary at the Frostfangs.

[Turandokht]

1 hour ago, Maester of Valyria said:

Could you please clarify what you mean by that last sentence? I'm afraid I don't quite see what you're driving at. Once again, I don't feel confident making assumptions about the possibility of an Arctic plate, although there is certainly a convergent boundary at the Frostfangs.

Yes. I am saying the Shivering Sea is not its own plate. There is instead a constructive plate boundary i.e. an equivalent to the mid-Atlantic rift which is separating the Arctic and Essos in my vision. Thus why I said there is an R-R-R at the northern limit of the Narrow Sea. Basically part of the Arctic is aggressively rifting away from Essos--and that part includes Northern Westeros and is one continental plate. Let's call it the Northern Westeros Plate. A convergent boundary at the Frostfangs would be the consequence of that plate being driven into the existing Arctic plate, leaving Essos and Southern Westeros behind (which are themselves separating as pinned at the R-R-R at the northern head of the Narrow Sea). This would suggest Essos contains the central craton of what was a supercontinent which is in the middle of breaking up. This explains the geography of Westeros far better than anything else. Essos is in geologic terms the Africa of Planetos' Pangaea. 

[Maester of Valyria]

On 20/02/2017 at 5:37 PM, Turandokht said:

Yes. I am saying the Shivering Sea is not its own plate. There is instead a constructive plate boundary i.e. an equivalent to the mid-Atlantic rift which is separating the Arctic and Essos in my vision. Thus why I said there is an R-R-R at the northern limit of the Narrow Sea. Basically part of the Arctic is aggressively rifting away from Essos--and that part includes Northern Westeros and is one continental plate. Let's call it the Northern Westeros Plate. A convergent boundary at the Frostfangs would be the consequence of that plate being driven into the existing Arctic plate, leaving Essos and Southern Westeros behind (which are themselves separating as pinned at the R-R-R at the northern head of the Narrow Sea). This would suggest Essos contains the central craton of what was a supercontinent which is in the middle of breaking up. This explains the geography of Westeros far better than anything else. Essos is in geologic terms the Africa of Planetos' Pangaea. 

Ah, I understand what you mean: you're saying that the Shivering Sea is actually composed of the Northern, Arctic, and Essosi plates, like the Atlantic is made of the American, Eurasian and African plates?

Yes that's an interesting idea. Of course it's pure speculation given that we don't have a map of the entire arctic region, but speculation is fun!

One thing about your RRR at the Narrow Sea: I suspect it would more likely be a TT? junction instead. The three plate involved are Southern Westeros, Northern Plate, and Western Essosi plate. The plate margins are in the Narrow Sea, along the Neck and Three Sisters, and (presumably) somewhere along the northern coast of Essos, be in in the ocean or on land. Thus the plate margins form a 'T' shape.

However the Northern/Southern Westerosi plate is a divergent boundary (Northern heading north, Southern south) and the Southern Westeros/Western Essos margin is the same (Southern west, Essos east) - all relative to each other. These would both create trenches (T) instead of ridges (R). The reason for the question mark is that I don't think we know enough about the movement or shape and size of the Arctic plate to come to any judgements about it, but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

 

I think you might also find this website interesting:

http://web.stanford.edu/group/anthropocene/cgi-bin/wordpress/game-of-thrones-geology/