Heresy 195 and the Mists of Time

[JNR]

1 hour ago, hiemal said:

I think the idea of any single family maintaining an unbroken line, let alone power, for thousands of years- and that being seemingly the norm (even the names and lineages of many extinct lines are well-remembered!) stretches credulity past its breaking point.

Yes, it does.  And I side with all the people who find it improbable that these cultures would progress so little technologically in such a world, over such a long period of time.

It's hard to know how much of this is a mystery we're meant to solve, and how much is just GRRM trying to create atmosphere by... as he's admitted in interviews... scaling everything up -- in geography (Westeros is a continent, not an island), architecture (Hadrian's Wall vs. the Wall), and yes, chronology too (families hold power for thousands of years, not hundreds).

12 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

Now given the fact that GRRM usually subverts the material he is referencing, I doubt that Rhaegar's motivation for awarding the crown to Lyanna was a romantic one

Wisely said.

[JNR]

Another way we might tackle the timeline issue is to consider Bran's weirwood vision.  We actually see a sequence of visions, and we know they are covering thousands of years.

How do we know?  A little walkthrough...

Quote

A dark-eyed youth, pale and fierce, sliced three branches off the weirwood and shaped them into arrows. The tree itself was shrinking, growing smaller with each vision, whilst the lesser trees dwindled into saplings and vanished, only to be replaced by other trees that would dwindle and vanish in their turn.

Now that is a most interesting passage to me.  Trees in the godswood are really ancient, according to GOT:

Quote

This was a wood of stubborn sentinel trees armored in grey-green needles, of mighty oaks, of ironwoods as old as the realm itself.

...and yet we see their entire life spans flicker by swiftly, as they get smaller going backwards in time and vanish altogether.

Even the heart tree itself is growing smaller, meaning the perspective Bran has from its face is getting closer to the ground.  Well, weirwoods live forever, we're told, and so they grow very slowly (if they grew quickly, just imagine how big the tree at Whitetree would be).  Yet so much time has gone by in Bran's visions that even this super-ancient weirwood is still getting obviously smaller.

 

And of course we have:

Quote

a bearded man forced a captive down onto his knees before the heart tree. A white-haired woman stepped toward them through a drift of dark red leaves, a bronze sickle in her hand

Bronze.  We are now so far back in time that iron apparently isn't available for cutting people's throats. 

We are thus further back in time than the Andal invasion that brought steel (which is a more advanced version of iron with carbon added to it).  When was the Andal invasion?  Thousands of years before the time of the tale.  So we are in fact probably looking right at the Age of Heroes.

But despite all this vast span of time Bran has seen, all these thousands of years, there are still obviously people in Westeros, even in this very oldest vision.  Seems like the myths weren't very far off.

[Black Crow]

4 hours ago, hiemal said:

I think the idea of any single family maintaining an unbroken line, let alone power, for thousands of years- and that being seemingly the norm (even the names and lineages of many extinct lines are well-remembered!) stretches credulity past its breaking point.

The many clashes between different levels of technology- wood versus bronze versus iron versus steel versus magic being detailed again and again with purpose and intent (I suspect) require explaination.

So do the many anachronistic and fantastic beasts including mammoths, dinosaurs, and a menagerie of wyverns, basilisks, and maticores (oh my!).

Something is, indeed, going on here.

How heretical or how tinfoily we go from there is up to inclination and mood.

This is why I rounded off the OP essay by questioning whether the history we have been fed is false. After all, as Sam says in that curious passage which GRRM presented twice, there are some maesters in the Citadel who question all of it.

[Black Crow]

2 hours ago, JNR said:

And of course we have:

Bronze.  We are now so far back in time that iron apparently isn't available for cutting people's throats. 

We are thus further back in time than the Andal invasion that brought steel (which is a more advanced version of iron with carbon added to it).  When was the Andal invasion?  Thousands of years before the time of the tale.  So we are in fact probably looking right at the Age of Heroes.

But despite all this vast span of time Bran has seen, all these thousands of years, there are still obviously people in Westeros, even in this very oldest vision.  Seems like the myths weren't very far off.

Bronze isn't necessarily significant given that the murder was clearly a ritual one and the use of bronze very likely a matter of choice rather than necessity, although that being said I think that there is a clear intent in that passage to depict the First Men at work.

As to steel, however, you raise an interesting point. I have no problem with iron weapons making their way to Westeros ahead of the Andals and would argue that there is a difference between using steel weapons and making steel weapons. The Valyrian steel swords of Westeros provide a good example. They can't be made in Westeros and probably never were made in Westeros, yet the families who have them appear to have acquired them by trade long before Aegon tooled up. Similarly I wouldn't have a problem with the kings of the first men possessing steel swords before the Andals arrived, although clearly we'd be talking about not long before they arrived. 

The Andals as now revealed to us only came to Westeros 2,000 years ago tops, rather than the 6,000 years ago in the Vale which we were once told.

Then there's Sam again at Castle Black:

“The armor of the Others is proof against most ordinary blades, if the tales can be believed,” said Sam, “and their own swords are so cold they shatter steel. Fire will dismay them, though, and they are vulnerable to obsidian” ... “I found one account of the Long Night that spoke of the last hero slaying Others with a blade of dragonsteel. Supposedly they could not stand against it.”

So their swords shatter steel and whether dragonsteel is another name for Valyrian steel or something else we are still talking about steel being used in a conflict which supposedly took place long before the Andals came - or at the very least that the blue eyed lot didn't disappear completely at the end of it.

[Frey family reunion]

5 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Bronze isn't necessarily significant given that the murder was clearly a ritual one and the use of bronze very likely a matter of choice rather than necessity, although that being said I think that there is a clear intent in that passage to depict the First Men at work.

As to steel, however, you raise an interesting point. I have no problem with iron weapons making their way to Westeros ahead of the Andals and would argue that there is a difference between using steel weapons and making steel weapons. The Valyrian steel swords of Westeros provide a good example. They can't be made in Westeros and probably never were made in Westeros, yet the families who have them appear to have acquired them by trade long before Aegon tooled up. Similarly I wouldn't have a problem with the kings of the first men possessing steel swords before the Andals arrived, although clearly we'd be talking about not long before they arrived. 

The Andals as now revealed to us only came to Westeros 2,000 years ago tops, rather than the 6,000 years ago in the Vale which we were once told.

Then there's Sam again at Castle Black:

“The armor of the Others is proof against most ordinary blades, if the tales can be believed,” said Sam, “and their own swords are so cold they shatter steel. Fire will dismay them, though, and they are vulnerable to obsidian” ... “I found one account of the Long Night that spoke of the last hero slaying Others with a blade of dragonsteel. Supposedly they could not stand against it.”

So their swords shatter steel and whether dragonsteel is another name for Valyrian steel or something else we are still talking about steel being used in a conflict which supposedly took place long before the Andals came - or at the very least that the blue eyed lot didn't disappear completely at the end of it.

Or else these tales can't be believed.  And the septons were merely putting to papers tales that had been orally passed down over the generations, and subsequently got altered in the telling.  Which goes back to my thought that the White Walkers we see now, are golems created to mirror the folk tales (and written account of these folktales) that form everyone's impression of what a White Walker looks like.

[hiemal]

9 hours ago, Mace Cooterian said:

@hiemal sounds as if you have been following the HBO series Westworld, with your alternative timeline theory.  You may very well be true and if so, might tie in with @Feather Crystal theory on the ebbing and flowing of time.

I still haven't seen Westworld. It's on my list- and alternate timelines certainly help!

[hiemal]

10 hours ago, JNR said:

Yes, it does.  And I side with all the people who find it improbable that these cultures would progress so little technologically in such a world, over such a long period of time.

It's hard to know how much of this is a mystery we're meant to solve, and how much is just GRRM trying to create atmosphere by... as he's admitted in interviews... scaling everything up -- in geography (Westeros is a continent, not an island), architecture (Hadrian's Wall vs. the Wall), and yes, chronology too (families hold power for thousands of years, not hundreds).

 

I think some of the gaps may be  based on using phrases "a thousand leagues" to represent any great difference and perhaps "a thousand years" to represent a great span of time- which was perhaps taken at face value when the maesters started setting down a (supposedly) definitive timeline.

[Brad Stark]

We may have something with tying dragons to The Long Night.   Ghis has written records of The Long Night,  so it would have been after their empire was created but before their wars with Valyria.  Dragons would have come into use about the same time. 

[JNR]

9 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Bronze isn't necessarily significant given that the murder was clearly a ritual one and the use of bronze very likely a matter of choice rather than necessity, although that being said I think that there is a clear intent in that passage to depict the First Men at work.

It's possible, but that was a bronze sickle.  A sickle is a farming tool.

I recall this coming up before; the individual involved (Apple Martini) was convinced it was a ritual dagger, and I had to point out to her that it was not in fact a dagger at all, but a sickle -- something used to cut plants like wheat and a clumsy thing for ritual purposes.

10 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Similarly I wouldn't have a problem with the kings of the first men possessing steel swords before the Andals arrived, although clearly we'd be talking about not long before they arrived.

It's conceivable, and I would also add that the crown of the kings of winter (which is ancient) did have iron as well as bronze.  So at some point, probably not long prior to the arrival of Andals and steel, they did likely have iron.

But what's not conceivable to me is that people who had access to either iron or steel would instead choose to use bronze for an agricultural implement. 

It's a soft metal and poorly suited to that purpose... which is why at the present time of the story nobody anywhere uses bronze for that purpose.   So if we see a bronze sickle, as we do, I think we can conclude they had no better option than bronze at that time.

We can also conclude with some confidence it was well before the coming of the Andals, and therefore in the Age of Heroes or even Dawn Age (if we can imagine human beings had made it so far north as the Winterfell godswood, which seems questionable to me).

3 hours ago, hiemal said:

I think some of the gaps may be  based on using phrases "a thousand leagues" to represent any great difference and perhaps "a thousand years" to represent a great span of time- which was perhaps taken at face value when the maesters started setting down a (supposedly) definitive timeline.

There's no doubt that there's been distortion as tales have been handed down across generations... but I think there's quite a bit of evidence of a long timeline as opposed to a short one.   How long exactly is very hard to establish.

[Brad Stark]

The sickle is a ritual object,  and material is not poorly suited at all.  Stonger, sharper metal would not work any better.  Wood or stone would work just as well.  I also keep thinking it is connected to the way GRRM described the moon in this chapter and the previous Bran chapter. 

In real life, 1 culture defeating another in battle due to the metal they used actually did happen.  However good Bronze was superior to inferior iron at many points in history.  The art of alloying steel really didn't become science until near modern times.   I can't help thinking this was GRRM's inspiration for Valyrian steel and Dawn being forged from a meteorite.   Good steel could be found,  used and reforged by people who didn't know how to make it , and meteorites could have been a real source of it.

 

[Black Crow]

28 minutes ago, JNR said:

It's possible, but that was a bronze sickle.  A sickle is a farming tool.

I recall this coming up before; the individual involved (Apple Martini) was convinced it was a ritual dagger, and I had to point out to her that it was not in fact a dagger at all, but a sickle -- something used to cut plants like wheat and a clumsy thing for ritual purposes.

It's conceivable, and I would also add that the crown of the kings of winter (which is ancient) did have iron as well as bronze.  So at some point, probably not long prior to the arrival of Andals and steel, they did likely have iron.

But what's not conceivable to me is that people who had access to either iron or steel would instead choose to use bronze for an agricultural implement. 

It's a soft metal and poorly suited to that purpose... which is why at the present time of the story nobody anywhere uses bronze for that purpose.   So if we see a bronze sickle, as we do, I think we can conclude they had no better option than bronze at that time.

We can also conclude with some confidence it was well before the coming of the Andals, and therefore in the Age of Heroes or even Dawn Age (if we can imagine human beings had made it so far north as the Winterfell godswood, which seems questionable to me).

There's no doubt that there's been distortion as tales have been handed down across generations... but I think there's quite a bit of evidence of a long timeline as opposed to a short one.   How long exactly is very hard to establish.

As  it happens the bronze sickle is spot on. Traditionally bronze sickles were indeed used by the Druids for cutting mistletoe and for other ritual purposes.

By way of an easy reference I direct you to the exploits of a Gallic warrior named Asterix and his colleague a druid named Getafix who can frequently be seen employing a bronze sickle. His more warlike companions by contrast do indeed use iron and steel for both agricultural and anti-social purposes. Or if you want a more academic reference both Pliny and Tacitus speak of bronze or gilded bronze sickles being used.

[Melifeather]

With iron's use as a warding material, it would seem that the Kings of Winter crown with iron swords surrounding a bronze circlet indicates that some group with iron came in and defeated a group that used bronze, and the crown is commemorating that event.

[Frey family reunion]

3 hours ago, Black Crow said:

As  it happens the bronze sickle is spot on. Traditionally bronze sickles were indeed used by the Druids for cutting mistletoe and for other ritual purposes.

By way of an easy reference I direct you to the exploits of a Gallic warrior named Asterix and his colleague a druid named Getafix who can frequently be seen employing a bronze sickle. His more warlike companions by contrast do indeed use iron and steel for both agricultural and anti-social purposes. Or if you want a more academic reference both Pliny and Tacitus speak of bronze or gilded bronze sickles being used.

To back this up, Mirri used a bronze knife during the blood-horse ritual with Drogo:

Quote

Mirri Maz Duur chanted words in a tongue that Dany did not know, and a knife appeared in her hand.  Dany never saw where it came from.  It looked old; hammered red bronze, leaf shaped, it's blade covered with ancient glyphs.  The maegi drew it across the stallion's throat,...

 

[hiemal]

20 hours ago, Black Crow said:

This is why I rounded off the OP essay by questioning whether the history we have been fed is false. After all, as Sam says in that curious passage which GRRM presented twice, there are some maesters in the Citadel who question all of it.

It's a possibility we can't ignore. For example; one of my theory-of-everything tinfoils is that all of Planetos represents an artificial world that contained at its inception separate continents that stood in for worlds elsewhere; which were duly harvested by our "scientists" and a sampling of their inhabitants placed on their own continents. Perhaps humans on Essos, the CotF forebears on Westeros, and the mysterious Deep Ones on Sothoryos? An artificial history could be fed to the sentients over time.

That's obviously a pretty extreme example (particularly since the only players I could find to fill the role of "scientists" are quasi-deities who frankly don't seem to act the part at all) but I can definitely imagine scenarios from all of it being gospel to all of it being hogwash and everything in between- which is where I suspect the truth is likely to lie. This is why I may seem to be shotgunning ideas at times- I have a lot of theories and real loyalty to none of them.

[hiemal]

Bronze was , as far as I know, makind's first useful alloy- copper and tin in the right "magical" proportions and something stronger than either is produced. In ASoIaF I think that the alloys (bronze, steel, Valyrian steel, whatever Lightbringer is made out of) are also symbolic of cultural mingling/progression as well as a level of magic/spirituality and so when we see bronze it is often associated with "ancient" runes and glyphs. It represents a culture frozen in time, a single step above obsidian and shamanism. If bronze is "druidism", then steel would be the Seven, Valyrian steel atheism, and LB an attempt to seize godhead? Just spitballing.

And don't forget the sexual/generative symbolism of alloys.

[Lord Wraith]

22 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Bronze isn't necessarily significant given that the murder was clearly a ritual one and the use of bronze very likely a matter of choice rather than necessity, although that being said I think that there is a clear intent in that passage to depict the First Men at work.

As to steel, however, you raise an interesting point. I have no problem with iron weapons making their way to Westeros ahead of the Andals and would argue that there is a difference between using steel weapons and making steel weapons. The Valyrian steel swords of Westeros provide a good example. They can't be made in Westeros and probably never were made in Westeros, yet the families who have them appear to have acquired them by trade long before Aegon tooled up. Similarly I wouldn't have a problem with the kings of the first men possessing steel swords before the Andals arrived, although clearly we'd be talking about not long before they arrived. 

The Andals as now revealed to us only came to Westeros 2,000 years ago tops, rather than the 6,000 years ago in the Vale which we were once told.

Then there's Sam again at Castle Black:

“The armor of the Others is proof against most ordinary blades, if the tales can be believed,” said Sam, “and their own swords are so cold they shatter steel. Fire will dismay them, though, and they are vulnerable to obsidian” ... “I found one account of the Long Night that spoke of the last hero slaying Others with a blade of dragonsteel. Supposedly they could not stand against it.”

So their swords shatter steel and whether dragonsteel is another name for Valyrian steel or something else we are still talking about steel being used in a conflict which supposedly took place long before the Andals came - or at the very least that the blue eyed lot didn't disappear completely at the end of it.

The Iron Islands had Iron weapons. It was the primary reason they were so strong fighting iron against bronze of the first men.  That  and there superior shipbuilding.  That changed whenever  the Andals arrived. 

[Black Crow]

3 hours ago, Lord Wraith said:

The Iron Islands had Iron weapons. It was the primary reason they were so strong fighting iron against bronze of the first men.  That  and there superior shipbuilding.  That changed whenever  the Andals arrived. 

This isn't necessarily so and one of the problems with the timelines and chronologies is that we really don't know how the calendar works and whether GRRM as the writer of the story is using a universal one covering the globe from Westeros to Asshai, or whether its as chaotic as our own world and half the trouble is reconciling the equivalents of the Christian and Muslim calendars, let alone the Chinese or the ancient Egytian. On obvious example in our story although I don't recall it being mentioned is that in Westeros dates are being expressed in terms of years before the Conquest and years after the Conquest. They certainly aren't using that numbering across the water in say Pentos or Braavos.

[Melifeather]

14 hours ago, Lord Wraith said:

The Iron Islands had Iron weapons. It was the primary reason they were so strong fighting iron against bronze of the first men.  That  and there superior shipbuilding.  That changed whenever  the Andals arrived. 

I theorize that the Ironborn got their name from the manner of their rebirth. Earlier upthread I mentioned my explanation for the crown of the King of Winter as being symbolic of iron warding bronze. IMO the First Men that became the Ironborn were warded from the mainland by severing the islands from the mainland via the hammer of waters. That separation kept them warded like iron wards bronze until they built boats and began raiding the mainland. They became raiders and thus "reborn" since they were able to breach the ward. 

[Black Crow]

14 hours ago, Lord Wraith said:

The Iron Islands had Iron weapons. It was the primary reason they were so strong fighting iron against bronze of the first men.  That  and there superior shipbuilding.  That changed whenever  the Andals arrived. 

I'm not sure why I answered this with a point which had nothing to do with the Ironborn 

Anyway... I'm not convinced of this at all. While the appearance of iron weapons and ultimately steel weapons in Westeros is as hazy as the rest of its early history, I do think that its far too simplistic to read it in terms of First Men = Bronze; Andals = Iron and Steel. The First Men certainly came to Westeros with bronze weapons, but time goes on and I see no reason why some/many/most shouldn't have been using iron when the Andals tooled up, and some of them even carrying steel blades. Whatever the timescales involved we seem to be looking at ironmongery spreading westwards and it would be a bit odd if its use flew across to the Iron Islands missing out the Westerosi mainland in the process. The Ironborn do have an advantage in that there are mined iron deposits on the islands, which presumably give them their name but I'd be very wary  of assuming that their motto was "Whatever happens we have got; Iron weapons and they have not." 

[JNR]

 

On 1/27/2017 at 0:35 PM, Black Crow said:

As  it happens the bronze sickle is spot on. Traditionally bronze sickles were indeed used by the Druids for cutting mistletoe and for other ritual purposes.

If I understand you, your premise is that the people in the vision (1) used to have bronze... but (2) then they got iron and steel... making this (3) a relatively modern, not ancient vision... and yet (4) they continued to use antique bronze sickles for hypothetical rituals not mentioned in canon, (5) of which Bran's vision is an example of said rituals involving bronze sickles (6) instead of the more plausible and typical bronze knives such as the one that MMD uses.  And therefore, based on these six assumptions, we're supposed to believe that the timeline is short.  

This all seems a tad complicated compared to the simple idea that Sam is right: "thousands of years" went by between the Long Night and the coming of the Andals, at which time myths about the Long Night were set down.

If Sam is right, he's clearly pointing to a long timeline, such as the traditional one, in which roughly two thousand years went by between those events alone, followed by more thousands of years until the present day.  Which I can't say would surprise me, because Sam also seems to think the six hundred seventy-four LCs on his oldest list are worth thinking and calculating about instead of dismissing outright (as he did the notion that Craster's babies became the Popsicles).  He's a bright kid and likely to go far.