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Evidence that Westeros is a post-apocalyptic world?


Selere

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Generally speaking, fantasy writers will avoid using words that allude to real people/places in their fictional universe. So you don't call your homemade liquor-based bomb a "molotov cocktail" in a world where Viatcheslav Molotov never existed.

However there are many mentions of a drink called "hippocras" in the books, this drink was named after the greek philosopher Hippocrates around 400 B.C. I find it interesting because it implies that Asoiaf happens in our world, possibly after an apocalyptic event, where this is somehow one of the few words that "survived" throughout history.

Or maybe this is an oversight from George and his editors, even though this word appears many times in many books.

Thoughts?

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<dons tinfoil hat> 

Ned and Varys quote the  Psalm 8:2 from the Bible. "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength"

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"Father looked at her strangely. "Gods," he swore softly, "out of the mouth of babes …" He shouted for Septa Mordane"

GOT Sansa III

 

And Varys memory of Sunday School is jogged too...

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Varys said, "A child's faith … such sweet innocence … and yet, they say wisdom oft comes from the mouths of babes."

AGOT Sansa V

How would the Psalms of David end up in Westeros...unless the memory of the Bible remained among the descendants of post Apocalyptic Earth...

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Could be, it would work from a Buddhist perspective. I read that they believe the planet we live on is called Jambudvipa and human lifespans fluctuate between 80,000 years (yep, 80K!) and 10 years. Apparently it takes 8 million years for human lifespan to get to 80,000 and another 8 million to get back to 10 (a change of 1 year per century I think). They say we are currently on our way down to the 10 year lifespan when people would live like beasts because of bad karma. So perhaps the Song of Ice and Fire did happen millions of years ago (perhaps during the last time people's lifespans were around the 100 year mark like it is now) and some karmic echo is communicating the fact to GRRM. 

Dunno, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction  and imagination could just be knowledge of a former life stored deep in the subconscious, or perhaps a premotion of a world to come?

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Post-apocalyptic, but still thousands of years in our past.  I think the blue North Star is Vega, which was the polestar 14,000 years ago. There are many animals in the story that were alive during the Ice Age, but which are now extinct, the Tasmanian Tiger that Syrio mentions, Mammoths, the Aurochs, Direwolves, and the unicorns of Skagos are probably woolly rhinoceros. 

Then within-story it is literally post-apocalyptic, as there are buildings and relics of an advanced world-spanning civilization that has since collapsed: the fused Black Stone buildings, Valyrian steel, the curtain wall of Storm's End, extensive underground networks and vast caverns that are either mining operations or fallout shelters (as in George's Dying of the Light, and In the House of the Worm, and Dark, Dark Were the Tunnels, and Under Siege). 

 

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1 hour ago, Baelor 'Breakspear' said:

Nah I don't think so. There is nothing that actually suggests or even mention that idea. Also hippocras is a drink, so by that standard when wine or beer is mentioned you could say the same

But wine and beer aren't named after a person that lived in our planet.

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8 hours ago, Selere said:

Generally speaking, fantasy writers will avoid using words that allude to real people/places in their fictional universe. So you don't call your homemade liquor-based bomb a "molotov cocktail" in a world where Viatcheslav Molotov never existed.

However there are many mentions of a drink called "hippocras" in the books, this drink was named after the greek philosopher Hippocrates around 400 B.C. I find it interesting because it implies that Asoiaf happens in our world, possibly after an apocalyptic event, where this is somehow one of the few words that "survived" throughout history.

Or maybe this is an oversight from George and his editors, even though this word appears many times in many books.

Thoughts?

Hmm .... if you are basing it merely on hippocras alone, then I'm not convinced, this can just be a coincidence. Also George pays homage to many real world figures when naming houses, tertiary/fringe characters and such (there is a whole thread on this started by Ran).

There is a fantasy trilogy by another author out there that most on the forum I'm sure have read (but to avoid spoiling it for the few that haven't read them, probably best not to mention) that does take place in a post-apocalyptic world, where the clues slowly build up before it becomes completely obvious in the last book. IMO, ASOIAF is not leading up to that, it's just a completely different world like Tolkien's.

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Their world is alien to ours. The existence of hippocras by itself after five books would be an utterly pointless and feeble clue imo. If you are modelling a story based on the nobility of Europe, one thing you have to include is one of their all time favourite drinks; It was very popular. And there isn't any other way of conveying it. Spiced wine would be an understatement. And, hippocras is actually a more ambiguous term than you'd think. There have been a few variations on it's exact ingredients over time. 

As for post-apocalyptic? That gets a big fat YES from me. Several times over, that world has had some terrible calamity befall it. 

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In Fire & Blood there was a moment that threw me, where a series of parties were referred to as "bacchanal". I took it to just be being used as a synonym for festival, and not an actual in-universe reference to the Roman god Bacchus. I'd take the presence of hippocras in a like fashion: used because the reader would understand it.

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In that case there are mentions of ivory and a Great Shepherd and his flock (Jesus anyone?) But I don't think GRRM using phrases he knows is an indication that this is our world in the future. I mean, there's obviously magic, dragons, and other species like children of the forest, the white walkers, giants, and centaurs and clearly don't exist in our world. 

But you are right on the post-apocalyptic part. We are seeing this world after a great calamity that created this whole closed off, uninhabitable land called the Shadow and made the seasons go all crazy. 

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On 6/1/2019 at 6:49 AM, Selere said:

Generally speaking, fantasy writers will avoid using words that allude to real people/places in their fictional universe. So you don't call your homemade liquor-based bomb a "molotov cocktail" in a world where Viatcheslav Molotov never existed.

However there are many mentions of a drink called "hippocras" in the books, this drink was named after the greek philosopher Hippocrates around 400 B.C. I find it interesting because it implies that Asoiaf happens in our world, possibly after an apocalyptic event, where this is somehow one of the few words that "survived" throughout history.

Or maybe this is an oversight from George and his editors, even though this word appears many times in many books.

Thoughts?

I once had an idea that asoiaf takes place in a future world where dragons, white walkers, cotf and all the rest were the descendants of biological warfare developments in our own time. Civilization collapsed, men reverted to a stone age, then redeveloped civilization back to the medieval period we see in the books, except this time dragons etc. are real.

Alas, the fact is that the night sky in the present story has seven wandering stars whereas ours only has five (or maybe six if someone were to travel up to the Land of Always Winter and survive long enough to see another teeny tiny wanderer way off on the horizon). Maybe you could square this with the two moons legend and two large chunks of the destroyed moon are visible to the naked eye, but really, what would be the point? At best it would be some strange vision for Bran looking way back to the creation of the first weirwood or the first greenseer, but I can't imagine it would have any real bearing on the story.

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Nah. I bet that if you dig deeper, you'll find many other words derived from people. It doesn't mean much, it's just language.

For example: in the Slavic languages, the word for "king" is derived from Charlemagne's name. It doesn't imply that every fantasy story with kings and written in / translated into Polish, Russian or Czech is necessarily placed on post-Charlemagne Earth.

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On 6/1/2019 at 4:49 AM, Selere said:

Generally speaking, fantasy writers will avoid using words that allude to real people/places in their fictional universe. So you don't call your homemade liquor-based bomb a "molotov cocktail" in a world where Viatcheslav Molotov never existed.

However there are many mentions of a drink called "hippocras" in the books, this drink was named after the greek philosopher Hippocrates around 400 B.C. I find it interesting because it implies that Asoiaf happens in our world, possibly after an apocalyptic event, where this is somehow one of the few words that "survived" throughout history.

Or maybe this is an oversight from George and his editors, even though this word appears many times in many books.

Thoughts?

No. Consider the word 'gunwale' which is used in every book except AGoT. It is just a matter of Martin using words that we will get instead of "wine that spiced and heated and then is then filtered through a paper cone," or " the top edge of the hull where there is usually some form of stiffening, often in the form of traditional wooden boat construction members called the "inwale" and "outwale". "

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On 6/1/2019 at 10:49 PM, Selere said:

Generally speaking, fantasy writers will avoid using words that allude to real people/places in their fictional universe. So you don't call your homemade liquor-based bomb a "molotov cocktail" in a world where Viatcheslav Molotov never existed.

However there are many mentions of a drink called "hippocras" in the books, this drink was named after the greek philosopher Hippocrates around 400 B.C. I find it interesting because it implies that Asoiaf happens in our world, possibly after an apocalyptic event, where this is somehow one of the few words that "survived" throughout history.

Or maybe this is an oversight from George and his editors, even though this word appears many times in many books.

Thoughts?

Do you think the Westerosi common tongue is English?

"Hippocras" is named so for our benefit, so we understand what this drink is. I have no more idea what the Wesyerosi common tongue word for it is than what the westerosi common word for "snow" would actually be.

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I get your point, but if you were to take it to its ultimate analysis, then the fact that the characters speak English period (and we know they do cause the rhymes, wordplay etc. that they use wouldn't work otherwise) could be taken as proof that it's a post-apocalyptic word.
After all, how could the words "knight" or "king" exist in Planetos unless the Old English word cniht existed first, or the Germanic cyning. And Latin, Proto-Germanic and other languages? After all, the "English" that they speak in Planetos must have evolved somehow. And what about ancient Greek words like philosophy and chaos, that we also see in ASOIAF?
Tolkien got over this by making his own languages from scratch, and explaining in detail the languages in his universe that sound exactly like Old English and Modern English. GRRM is a great author, but he definitely didn't put as much attention to world-building like Tolkien did (and he admits it). I don't often use this phrase, but I wouldn't think too much about it.

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