Three great lakes?

[Maester of Valyria]

We are given these quotes about the long-gone Silver Sea:

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Sufficient tales survive to convince most maesters of the past existence of the Silver Sea, though because of diminishing rainfall over the centuries, it has shrunk so severely that today only three great lakes remain where once its waters glistened in the sun.

-TWOIAF

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Westeros remembers their conquerors as the Sarnori, for at its height their great kingdom included all the lands watered by the Sarne and its vassals, and the three great lakes that were all that remained of the shrinking Silver Sea.

-TWOIAF

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The Silver Sea was a great inland sea in northern Essos. Because of decreasing rainfall over time, it has been reduced to three large lakes in the grasslands of the northern Dothraki sea.

-Wiki

 

My question is this: What are these three great lakes?

Fairly obviously, we have the one by Sallosh and the one by Gornath. That's two. Where's the third? There seems to be no nearby body of water that could have once been part of the same inland sea. The Womb of the World is the closest lake, but even that's extremely far away. Here's a map if you can't quite remember.

Now it's true, older maps like this one do show three lakes in roughly this area. But these maps are outdated as they contradict the authoratative (and it has to be said excellent) Lands of Ice and Fire collection.

Is this just an author or mapmaker mistake? Or am I missing something obvious?

[Blackfyre Bastard]

This seems like an oversight of the mapmaker.

This is a map of ancient Central Essos, which I took the liberty to extract from @Werthead blog "The Atlas of Ice and Fire" (great source of info and fabulous if you like maps  (link to the thread)).

I would put the missing lake next to Kasath (current ruins called Vojjor Samui) for no other reason that the other two are next to the ruins of other Sarnori cities on the fringes of what once was the great Silver Sea.

[Maester of Valyria]

12 hours ago, Blackfyre Bastard said:

This seems like an oversight of the mapmaker.

This is a map of ancient Central Essos, which I took the liberty to extract from @Werthead blog "The Atlas of Ice and Fire" (great source of info and fabulous if you like maps  (link to the thread)).

I would put the missing lake next to Kasath (current ruins called Vojjor Samui) for no other reason that the other two are next to the ruins of other Sarnori cities on the fringes of what once was the great Silver Sea.

I thought that might be the most likely explanation, although it does seem weird how nobody's picked up on this before, not even on the Wiki.

I really like that map you linked to: it does a very good job of speculating about the world's geography in the Dawn Age. Although am I the only one who thought upon first reading that the Silver Sea would have once spread over a larger area?

[aryagonnakill#2]

The old map is changed so much that the 3 lakes going to 2 is a relatively small change in comparison.

[Dorian Martell's son]

The point of the World book is to show that information becomes less accurate the farther from the citadel you go. Very few westerosi have been farther east than vaes dothrak. So maps are not very accurate and info will change. 

[Werthead]

It's due to a slightly odd problem with GRRM's maps. He gave a map of Essos to HBO ages ago, from which they drew their map. This shows both the three lakes and also the Sarne following a different (and much longer) path.

When Lands of Ice and Fire was created, the Sarne was actually now two rivers and there were only two lakes.

It appears that when George completely redesigned eastern Essos, he redrew his own map to send to the mapmaker but either made a mistake when he redrew that section (leaving off the third lake was simply an oversight, I believe) or did deliberately redesign the Sarne and then forgot about it when he wrote the relevant chapter in WoIaF (if he hadn't written it already at that point).

[Blackfyre Bastard]

That map and the one provided by OP make much more sense when one reads TWoIaF and encounter this description of the cities (current ruins) on the Dothraki Sea:

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Eastward rose Kasath, City of Caravans; Sathar, the Waterfall City, at the juncture of two branches of the Sarne;

With the current map, Sathar (Yalli Qamayi) is on a different river (probably unnamed, idk) which drains on the Bay of Tusks.

On a different note, I was thinking if the Aral Sea was a real life inspiration for the Silver Sea? I mean, the rough dimensions of the Aral Sea pre-shrinkage was around 250x300 km (~150x200 miles) which seem to coincide with the Silver Sea according to the map I linked in a a previous post.

I agree with @Maester of Valyria that I pictured the Silver Sea much larger.

[Maester of Valyria]

22 hours ago, aryagonnakill#2 said:

The old map is changed so much that the 3 lakes going to 2 is a relatively small change in comparison.

I know right: what's up with the Jade Sea? For the record, I actually prefer it in the earlier landlocked form.

18 hours ago, Werthead said:

It appears that when George completely redesigned eastern Essos, he redrew his own map to send to the mapmaker but either made a mistake when he redrew that section (leaving off the third lake was simply an oversight, I believe) or did deliberately redesign the Sarne and then forgot about it when he wrote the relevant chapter in WoIaF (if he hadn't written it already at that point).

Could this maybe also be a mistake on HBO's part (wouldn't be the first time they got the world-building wrong...)?

Given that the Sarne, the Kingdom of Sarnor, etc, haven't appeared in the main series this indicates to me that they were fairly recent additions to the world. That makes me inclined to thing GRRM redesigned the Sarne to better accomodate the TWOIAF chapter about the Sarnori. Perhaps he felt that whole area was unrealistically devoid of civilisations, so he decided to cram a few in there and then redesigned the landscapes to make it all fit together better? Just spitballing.

15 hours ago, Blackfyre Bastard said:

With the current map, Sathar (Yalli Qamayi) is on a different river (probably unnamed, idk) which drains on the Bay of Tusks.

On a different note, I was thinking if the Aral Sea was a real life inspiration for the Silver Sea? I mean, the rough dimensions of the Aral Sea pre-shrinkage was around 250x300 km (~150x200 miles) which seem to coincide with the Silver Sea according to the map I linked in a a previous post.

Good spot there.

That does sound possible. Although the causes of the evaporation are different the effects are much the same.