Is something wrong with time/history in GRRth?

[Piccolo_Snow]

We have two continents and winter has been coming for what 18 freaking years now?

best line ever

[Damon_Tor]

For the record, it annoys me a bit that we call the language of Westeros "Westerosi". Why aren't we calling it "Andlish"? Or at least "Andali" though that would be the word Valyrian-speaking peoples would have for it. Languages are nearly always named after the people who speak it, not the region it's spoken in.

[Bright Blue Eyes]

The point being, its useless to try and make it all fit. How does a house like the Starks survive for 8000 years, which is about the length of human civilization in the real world, and not have a million lesser branches? Or die out completely? The answer is it can't. It's magic.

The answer is shoddy history. Each and every single European (and a very sizeable chunk of everybody else) is descended from Charlemagne. But scarcely anybody knows.

The Japanese Imperial Family claims to be ~2,600 years old - and the evidence for the last ~1,500 years is rock-solid.

The Hettites claimeda ~200,000 years unbroken history, longer than homo sapiens exist.

Oxford hasn't prevented English from changing considerably in just 600 years. Shakespeare is close to the edge of intelligibility. French people can't understand Middle French unless they studied it in school. And so on.

If that explanation works, why don't we ever see the same thing in our world on anywhere near that scale?

So what? It changed everywhere about the same.

We actually do. Aachen Cathedral is ~1,200 years old and continuously in use. Most European cathedrals are at least 700 years old. The colosseum is ~2,000 years old and if not for an Earthquake and the Barberinies, it could still be used today. Many other roman buildings are still usable as well. And that's with a way more violent history.

[falcotron]

For the record, it annoys me a bit that we call the language of Westeros "Westerosi". Why aren't we calling it "Andlish"? Or at least "Andali" though that would be the word Valyrian-speaking peoples would have for it. Languages are nearly always named after the people who speak it, not the region it's spoken in.

Because the people aren't Andals, they're Westerosi. Many of them have some Andal blood. Most of them have some First Men blood. Some of them have Rhoynar blood. And various people have ancestors from the Free Cities or elsewhere. And their culture is a fusion of First Men, Andal, and a bit of Rhoynar and Valyrian. The people of Westeros are not the people of Andalos.

In other words, it's the same reason we call English "English" instead of "Anglo-Saxon".

(Although notice that in the books, GRRM usually calls it "the Common Tongue", which avoids all these problems...)

[falcotron]

The answer is shoddy history. Each and every single European (and a very sizeable chunk of everybody else) is descended from Charlemagne. But scarcely anybody knows.

The Japanese Imperial Family claims to be ~2,600 years old - and the evidence for the last ~1,500 years is rock-solid.

The Hettites claimeda ~200,000 years unbroken history, longer than homo sapiens exist.

The Hittites didn't have 200000 years of written history. The Japanese have over 1500 years of written history. Do you not see the difference?

So what? It changed everywhere about the same.

I don't understand what you're trying to say here.

Are you arguing that languages diverge at a fixed rate? If so, why isn't the Andal language diverging at that rate?

Or are you arguing that languages just evolve without diverging? So, say, Scottish English and American English are identical? Or French and Catalan? Or Pentoshi and Astapori bastard Valyrian? Even in our modern, mass-media environment, completely unlike anything seen before (and certainly unlike anything in Westeros), British, American, Indian, and Israeli English continue to diverge from each other, as do French and Quebecois, or Castillian, Cuban, and Mexican Spanish.

The idea that in a medieval setting, any language could, over 6000 years, diverge only to the point where the trained ear can pick up regional accents is beyond plausibility, and GRRM has given us plenty of evidence to believe that he knows that. So, either it's a very sloppy mistake (which I doubt), or it means something.

We actually do. Aachen Cathedral is ~1,200 years old and continuously in use. Most European cathedrals are at least 700 years old.

And these are off by a factor of 10 from their Westerosi equivalents.

I pointed out at the very start of the thread that "the oldest buildings in daily use anywhere in the medieval world were a few old Roman structures and some equivalently-ancient temples in India, more like 1200 years", as compared to the 12000 years in Westeros. Giving more examples of buildings that are 700 years old (with half of that time in the modern era, where people have begun to consciously preserve history for its own sake...) doesn't change that.

[LordStoneheart]

*Earth. Or Terra.

[Bright Blue Eyes]

The Hittites didn't have 200000 years of written history. The Japanese have over 1500 years of written history. Do you not see the difference?

Sure. Except for King Lear and his ilk, prominent in written English history of the 16th century. Utter BS.

I don't understand what you're trying to say here.

Are you arguing that languages diverge at a fixed rate? If so, why isn't the Andal language diverging at that rate?

Or are you arguing that languages just evolve without diverging? So, say, Scottish English and American English are identical? Or French and Catalan? Or Pentoshi and Astapori bastard Valyrian? Even in our modern, mass-media environment, completely unlike anything seen before (and certainly unlike anything in Westeros), British, American, Indian, and Israeli English continue to diverge from each other, as do French and Quebecois, or Castillian, Cuban, and Mexican Spanish.

The idea that in a medieval setting, any language could, over 6000 years, diverge only to the point where the trained ear can pick up regional accents is beyond plausibility, and GRRM has given us plenty of evidence to believe that he knows that. So, either it's a very sloppy mistake (which I doubt), or it means something.

Close enough to understand each other. Exchange accomplishes that. Well, you could write it that way if you wishes, as GRRM did.

And these are off by a factor of 10 from their Westerosi equivalents.

I pointed out at the very start of the thread that "the oldest buildings in daily use anywhere in the medieval world were a few old Roman structures and some equivalently-ancient temples in India, more like 1200 years", as compared to the 12000 years in Westeros. Giving more examples of buildings that are 700 years old (with half of that time in the modern era, where people have begun to consciously preserve history for its own sake...) doesn't change that.

More like factor four. Assuming you take the Westerosi history for granted, something I dispute. Otherwise, it's about the same timespan.

[Nihlus]

Each and every single European (and a very sizeable chunk of everybody else) is descended from Charlemagne. But scarcely anybody knows.

What?

[Bright Blue Eyes]

What?

Charlemagne. Living 747-814. Got a bunch of kids distributed all over Europe. 1,200 years of spreading the genes around and everybody got them. Considering that the assumption "25 years per generation, two children per person, no incest (of a sort)" would have gotten him about 1,000,000,000,000,000 descendants, that shouldn't be surprising.

Theoretically that's true for most people living at the time, who managed to get a bunch of descendants to last. But he's the archetypical example and rather well-researched.

[Damon_Tor]

In other words, it's the same reason we call English "English" instead of "Anglo-Saxon".

Actually, the word "English" evolved from the word "Anglish" which was the language of the Angles, so you haven't exactly refuted my point. England and English were named after the Angles, not the other way around.

The spread of English to peoples who were not Angles (the Scots and Irish, for example) didn't change the name of the language. Today English is spoken all over the planet, and yet we haven't changed the name.

[Cybvep]

We cannot be certain about many distant historical events. Check the World of the Ice and Fire and see how many gaps there are. Therefore, I would take many so-called "facts" with a grain of salt. It's not a fact unless it has been well established in the setting, taking unreliable narrators into account.

Communication is a different than IRL because of the ravens and AFAIK, the raven network only exists in Westeros. The maesters record events and control the communication network. I bet that at least some of them know more about certain stuff than the majority of other educated people (and maesters tend to be in charge of the education, too, so...). I think we may learn some interesting things about history in the upcoming books

As for the ancient structures, they are special, but we have a bunch of those in our world, too, and there is 0 magic in our world.

Do we REALLY know how big Westeros is or does the information come from non-book sources? I think that we only know about travel length between various places, which is not and should not be constant, anyway. Same about population size. And in a world with possible long winters, population size would vary A LOT between the start and the end of the longer winters.

Also, there is that:

in a world with no regular seasons counting "years" is not that easy.

[BalerionTheCat]

This is fantasy, there are no technological changes and no much language changes in Tolkien's world either, over 10,000 years. And much more if counting the ages before the 1st Age. And no one cares. This is necessary to give the feeling of "a long time ago".

[falcotron]

We cannot be certain about many distant historical events. Check the World of the Ice and Fire and see how many gaps there are. Therefore, I would take many so-called "facts" with a grain of salt. It's not a fact unless it has been well established in the setting, taking unreliable narrators into account.

They have actual historical records, which Sam talks about in-universe, that go back thousands of years.

Outside of Westeros, they may have a lot less information about events in Essos. But I think it's pretty clear that if, e.g., the early Andal records refer to Valyria, Valyria has to be around by that point.

There's always room for doubt in working out the chronology of a civilization from another civilization's records. Until relatively recent developments, it was easy to argue about the start of Mycaenaean Greece in a range of almost 20% (say, 1600 BC +/- 500 years). But 20% is nowhere near 1000%. And in our world, things are much harder--the Middle Kingdom, the Hittite Empire, and others who kept records that mentioned the Mycenaeans do not exist anymore, and we certainly don't have a library of all of their continuous history.

So, if it were to come out that Valyria started only 4200 years ago, I wouldn't be all that surprised; if Valyria didn't exist until 500 years ago, that would be a lot more surprising.

Communication is a different than IRL because of the ravens and AFAIK, the raven network only exists in Westeros. The maesters record events and control the communication network. I bet that at least some of them know more about certain stuff than the majority of other educated people (and maesters tend to be in charge of the education, too, so...). I think we may learn some interesting things about history in the upcoming books

Are you suggesting that the maesters are in effect lying about the history they tell everyone else?

That obviously isn't impossible (at least assuming that the fictional manuscript underlying WoIaF was written for consumption by the nobles, not just internally within the conspiracy). In fact, I even jokingly proposed an equivalent of Fomenko's crackpot New Chronology for ASoIaF. And you could surely come up with much simpler versions of the idea if you were taking it seriously.

As for the ancient structures, they are special, but we have a bunch of those in our world, too, and there is 0 magic in our world.

First, what's special about Moat Caillin, or the various castles that go back to before the arrival of the Andals?

Second, we don't have a bunch of those in our world. There were no structures the medieval Europeans were using that were 6000-12000 years old; there were only a handful that were even over 1000.

Do we REALLY know how big Westeros is or does the information come from non-book sources?

Are you trying to argue that SSMs, supplementary materials like World, etc. aren't canonical?

Same about population size. And in a world with possible long winters, population size would vary A LOT between the start and the end of the longer winters.

Now we're getting into the side issue that I couldn't account for in my theory at all, so dismissing that wouldn't exactly argue against my idea. But still, populations size varying a lot still doesn't do a very good job of explaining why the overall curve seems to be nearly flat instead of growing, why huge swaths of obviously-habitable portions of the world are not inhabited, etc.

Also, there is that:

in a world with no regular seasons counting "years" is not that easy.

It can't be all that hard. I don't know exactly how they do it, but the ages given for every character we meet seem consistent and believable, the dating of more recent historical events like Robert's Rebellion and the War of the Ninepenny Kings fit perfectly with the characters' ages, and so on.

[Rippounet]

It can't be all that hard. I don't know exactly how they do it, but the ages given for every character we meet seem consistent and believable, the dating of more recent historical events like Robert's Rebellion and the War of the Ninepenny Kings fit perfectly with the characters' ages, and so on.

They use the moon. This was in a SSM. Twelve turns of the moon to a year.

[falcotron]

This is fantasy, there are no technological changes and no much language changes in Tolkien's world either, over 10,000 years. And much more if counting the ages before the 1st Age. And no one cares. This is necessary to give the feeling of "a long time ago".

This is fantasy, but it's not Tolkien.

Also, if this were a static, Tolkienesque world, that wouldn't explain why so much has changed over the past 400 years in ASoIaF. Again, Tyroshi bastard Valyrian and Astapori bastard Valyrian are at the edge of mutual intelligibility.

Also, people certainly do care about what happened in those 10000 years. Tolkien wrote extensive notes on them, and stories that took place within them, and there's a 12-volume series that took Christopher decades to organize and that thousands of people have read.

Finally, the reason Tolkien's world was static is pretty clear: the magical beings and even deities that were still present until the end of the Third Age had powers specifically related to preservation (the Elves) or to domination (Sauron); the time of Man had not yet come. Tolkien's aborted story The New Shadow, set barely a century into the Fourth Age, already implied the coming of technology and industry. Tolkien abandoned the story because, in effect, anything set after the Third Age wouldn't be a Middle Earth story; it would be "just a thriller". And if you want to argue that the millennia before the conquest were like the Third Age, and the Valyrians were akin to the Elves and Sauron in one, and had magical rings that perfectly preserved the world for thousands of years... well, that's basically the same thing as my theory in the first place.

[falcotron]

They use the moon. This was in a SSM. Twelve turns of the moon to a year.

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks.

Which makes A Song of Ass and Fire's version of the theory (oversimplifying: the Valyrians didn't tamper with history, they tampered with the moon, and that affected time) seem more thematically compelling than mine.

[Bright Blue Eyes]

Do we REALLY know how big Westeros is or does the information come from non-book sources? I think that we only know about travel length between various places, which is not and should not be constant, anyway. Same about population size. And in a world with possible long winters, population size would vary A LOT between the start and the end of the longer winters.

We've got a map and we know the length of the Wall. Use it as the scale and there you go.

Population sizes hardly vary due to the winters. Each and every child has to survive several before it's old enough to raise children of it's own, therefore the population has to be stable.

This is fantasy, there are no technological changes and no much language changes in Tolkien's world either, over 10,000 years. And much more if counting the ages before the 1st Age. And no one cares. This is necessary to give the feeling of "a long time ago".

GRRM isn't Tolkien. He has shown countless technological and linguistic changes. Stone Age, Bronze Age, square to round towers, ringforts to castles, longships to galleys to galeasses, High Valyrian to nine not-yet-completely separate languages...

[Damon_Tor]

They use the moon. This was in a SSM. Twelve turns of the moon to a year.

How constant is the orbit of the moon anyway? Planetos has an absurdly irregular rotation, who's to say it's moon isn't similarly unpredictable. Maybe periods where many years pass without much actually seeming to happen is because those years are actually passing more quickly: the moon's orbit speeds up during those periods.

[falcotron]

How constant is the orbit of the moon anyway? Planetos has an absurdly irregular rotation, who's to say it's moon isn't similarly unpredictable. Maybe periods where many years pass without much actually seeming to happen is because those years are actually passing more quickly: the moon's orbit speeds up during those periods.

Where does anything either say or imply that it has an irregular rotation? Days (by which I mean the entire 24 hours of day and night, not just the time of sunlight, of course) seem to have the same length.

I'm guessing you meant its revolution around its sun is irregular, not its rotation. Or maybe you meant that the rotation itself is regular, but its axial precession is not? But either way, we know that's not true, because GRRM has explicitly said that the planet has a perfectly normal orbit, and its abnormal seasons are caused by magic. (You can't jump to magic as the explanation for every puzzle, but you can jump to it as the explanation for something GRRM explicitly says it explains; otherwise we do have to figure out dragons' digestive systems and how zombies can walk and so on....)

Also, for this to work, it would have to be true, and common knowledge, that in some centuries everyone lives to 700 years old, while in others they die at 7. While we don't have anything to actually confirm that's not true, it seems like someone would have mentioned it at least once. If you come down to it, what this ultimately comes down to is an argument that there were only 40 generations instead of 400 over the last 6000 years. While that would solve all the problems I raised, it seems like the problems it causes are much bigger.

[Cybvep]

We've got a map and we know the length of the Wall. Use it as the scale and there you go.[

/quote]

You assume that the map we have is perfectly accurate and can be used to measure distances between any two random points on the map accurately. Personally, I'm not so sure about that.

The point is that the length of winter is semi-random. There is a huge difference between 1-year long winter and 5-year long winter. Moreover, winter severity is different in various parts of Westeros, so it doesn't affect everyone equally. No wonder the North is so underpopulated. One very long winter (8-10 years) can easily keep the population down. The more severe winters are probably like giant cataclysms.

http://www.tor.com/2011/05/04/how-seasons-qworkq-in-a-song-of-ice-and-fire/- check it out; there is a link to an interview with Martin in the comments, too. Interesting stuff.

http://www.tor.com/2011/04/27/the-uncommonly-stable-records-of-history-in-a-song-of-ice-and-fire/- this might interest the OP