Untangling Prehistory II: Timeline and speculation

[Alester Florent]

Several years ago I posted a thread trying to make sense of Westerosi prehistory (i.e. before the Conquest) and see if I could work out any rough timescales or dates. Therein, I came to the conclusion that the Andals probably arrived in Westeros in around 1700-2000 BC. I also concluded that trying to work out anything before that was probably a waste of time.

 

I don't know if anyone has done any more work on this since but a quick glance through the forum suggested not. If anyone has, please feel free to point me in the direction of it.

 

Re-reading the World of Ice and Fire recently, I realised that there were some factors I had not taken into account in my earlier work. I also came to feel that maybe an estimate of the Long Night’s date was less impossible than I had first thought. To do this, though, we have to look at information I almost completely neglected in my first thread. We have to look… at Essos.

 

I’m not going to repeat the sources and conclusions from the earlier thread, which you can check here. I’m happy to discuss those here, though.

 

I’ve followed roughly the same principles as in that thread. I’ve ignored the vaguest of estimates (“many thousands of years” etc.) Where “centuries” are specified I take that to mean more than 200 but less than 1000 years. Where they say something like “over a thousand years” I take that to mean more than 1000 but less than 1500 years.

 

On occasion I have extrapolated dates by taking known number of rulers and multiplying by an average reign length. This average is derived from reality (with some rounding in some cases) but as I noted in the previous thread, this is fairly close to the Westerosi average post-conquest, so I think it’s safe to do so.

 

As before all of this is highly speculative so feel free to disagree with my conclusions. In any event I thought it might be a helpful resource to collate all of this information in one place (well, two places, including the other thread).

 

Source information (all page numbers from The World of Ice and Fire)

 

• The Long Night lasted a “generation” in Westeros and a “lifetime” in Yi Ti -p.1
• The Long Night ended six or eight thousand years ago when the Wall was built. -p12
• Old Ghis reigned supreme for “centuries” before the rise of Valyria. -13
• There were five wars fought between Old Ghis and Valyria and the Sarnori took part in the Fourth War. - pp 13, .289
• The Valyrians began to expand northwards and found the Free Cities after the Fifth Ghiscari War - p.15
• Braavos remained secret for “centuries” before revealing its existence. -p.15
• The Andals probably migrated out of Essos to escape Valyrian conquest. -p.18
• The Andal migration took place before the conquest of the Rhoynar and probably not long after the foundation of Volantis. -p.18
• Wars between the Rhoynar and the Valyrians lasted for the best part of 250 years. -p.22
• The Second Spice War between Volantis and Sarhoy took place a thousand years ago. -p.22
• The final defeat of the Rhoynar took place not long after the Second Spice War -p.22-23
• Nymeria and her host travelled for over four years before arriving in Dorne -p.24-5
• Dragonstone was founded 200 years before the Doom. -p.26
• The Doom of Valyria took place in 114 BC. 
• The Doom of Valyria was followed by the Century of Blood. 
• The Free Cities were established by Valyrian colonists “thousands or hundreds of years ago” - p.253
• “Centuries have passed” since the founding of Braavos - p.253
• Lorath’s rule used to extend to the Axe but its power has dwindled over the centuries - p.253
• Andals displaced the “Ibbenese” in Lorath and ruled for a thousand years before being destroyed by the Valyrian Freehold and Norvos. - 254-5
• More than a century passed before Lorath was resettled. It was resettled 1322 years before the Doom. -255
• The Cult of the Blind God in Lorath died out more than a thousand years ago. - p.256
• The original (Ibbenese) settlers of Norvos were driven out by the Rhoynar - p.257
• The Dothraki attack on Qohor and the stand of the Three Thousand took place 400 years ago - p.260
• Myr was an Andal city before being conquered by the Valyrians - p.262
• Braavos is the youngest of the Free Cities. Volantis is the oldest. - p.267
• Even the newest parts of Volantis are centuries old. - p.268
• Braavos was founded by renegade slaves from a Valyrian expedition to Sothorys. - p.271
• After its foundation, Braavos kept its location secret for 111 years. - p.271
• The Summer Isles made first contact with Valyria less than 50 years after being first visited by ships of Old Ghis. -p.278
• The “Years of Shame” in the Summer Isles lasted for the better part of two centuries. - p.279
• Gorgai (Gorgossos) was founded by Old Ghis and endured for between 2-400 years before being conquered by Valyria in the Third Ghiscari War. - p.283
• Gorgossos was afflicted by the Red Death 77 years after the Doom. - p.283
• The Qartheen pirate Xandarro Xhore settled the Basilisk Islands roughly a century after the Red Death. - p.283
• Yeen has been abandoned for “thousands of years” - p.286
• The first true towns emerged on the grasslands at least 10,000 years ago - p.287
• The Qaathi civilisation was mostly conquered by the Sarnori. - p.287
• Sarnor was one of the world’s great civilisations for “more than two thousand years” - p.288
• The Dothraki attacked Sarnor during the Century of Blood. - p.288-9
• Sathar was the first of the Sarnori cities to fall to the Dothraki. Kasath was destroyed six years later and Gornath twelve years after that. - p.289
• Khal Horro was killed three years after the destruction of Gornath, and his khalasar broke up. - p.290
• Mardosh held out for six years against the Dothraki. -p.290
• The battle of the Field of Crows took place relatively soon after the fall of Mardosh. Sarnath was sacked a fortnight after the battle. - p.291
• Sarys was the last Sarnori city to fall, before the end of the Century of Blood. -p.291
• A hundred God-Kings ruled in Ib. The last God-King was overthrown after the Doom. - p.296
• Ibbish was destroyed around 200 years ago. -p.297
• The Jhogwin giants disappeared “a thousand years ago”. -p.299
• Legend claims that Gharak Squint-Eye of the Jhogos Nai killed the last of the Jhogwin - p.304
• The Jhogos Nai ended the Scarlet dynasty.
• The God-On-Earth ruled for ten thousand years. His son the Pearl King ruled for a thousand years. Seven emperors followed, each ruling for a successively shorter time, before the Long Night. -p.301
• Eleven dynasties have held sway in Yi Ti since the Long Night (Grey, Indigo, Jade-Green, Scarlet, Pearl-White, Sea-Green, Yellow, Purple, Azure, Maroon, and possibly Orange) -p.302-3
• The longest-lasting of these dynasties ruled for 700 years, the shortest for less than 50. -p.302
• There were fifteen grey emperors, at least three jade-green emperors, nine pearl-white emperors (at least nine, and probably no more), at least eight sea-green emperors. -p.302
• The seventeenth azure emperor and the first orange emperor rule at the time of writing -p.303
• The yellow emperors have been fallen for a thousand years but their descendants still claim the title. The current “yellow emperor” claims to be the 69th. 
• The Jhogos Nhai have been raiding Yi Ti for around two thousand years. -p.304
• There were 43 scarlet emperors. -p.304
• Leng was conquered by Jar Har, the sixth sea-green emperor, and has been free of Yi Ti for 400 years. -p.306-7

 

The Valyrian Freehold

Western Essos gives us two of our few confirmed dates: the Doom in 114 BC and the resettling of Lorath 1322 years before that. 

 

This gives us a remarkably precise date for the new foundation of Lorath: 1426 BC. The Andals were driven out (of Lorath) over a century before that, i.e. in around 1526 BC. 

The foundation of the Free Cities appears to have taken place after the last of the Ghiscari wars, and Lorath was not the first founded. It seems likely that the destruction of Andal Lorath also happened after the fifth war. 

 

The Sarnori history gives us around 2,000 years for the Kingdom of Sarnor, which ended during the Century of Blood. That conquest took no less than 21 years and probably closer to thirty, if not more. Since the stand of the Three Thousand at Qohor was around 400 years ago (i.e. around 100BC) and this presumably took place towards the end of or after the conquest of Sarnor, we can probably assume that the Sarnori destruction happened relatively early in the Century of Blood, say before 40 BC. 

 

Sarnor was one of the world’s great civilisations for “over two thousand years”. We can assume that this is under 2,500 years, since if closer to 3,000 it would be “the best part of 3,000 years” or the like. So Sarnor was a great power by 2,500 BC. We know that the Sarnori fought in the Fourth Ghiscari War, and presumably by this point they were already a great power

At maximum, then, the Fourth Ghiscari War cannot have taken place before approx. 2,500 BC, which also means that Volantis cannot have been founded before this date. 

 

The expansion of the Freehold northwards (after 2,500 BC) is what drives first the Andals and then the Rhoynar out of Essos. 

 

The Andals

The Andals were driven out of Lorath some time, but not long, before 1526 BC. Before that they had ruled in Lorath for about a thousand years, which takes us back to 2526 BC for a minimum founding date for Lorath. 

 

We also know that Andalos, qua Andalos, was still a going concern at the time of the second foundation of Lorath. Doubtless Andal civilisation in Essos was in terminal decline by this point, so the migration may well have been underway. At any rate, the destruction of Lorath didn’t happen after the Andal exodus. 

 

The Andal exodus seems therefore to have not begun in earnest before the mid-16th century BC and was not yet complete by 1426 BC.

 

Comparing this with Westeros dates (see the other thread) this roughly accords with the conclusion I reached therein, in which the Andals began arriving in Westeros not earlier than around 1700 BC. 

 

The Night’s Watch

Average reign length for a hereditary ruler is around 18 years which I have rounded up for our purposes to 20. Elected rulers though tend to have shorter reigns, since it is rare for a child to be elected. This is relevant to the Night’s Watch, which gives a supposedly precise number of Lords Commander (998) to Jon Snow. 

 

The better points of comparison for the Night’s Watch are probably the Popes in Rome and the Doge of Venice, particularly the latter. These two institutions have an average reign length of about 8 years. Applying that to the Night’s Watch, we end up with a period of just under 8,000 years since the Long Night, meaning the Long Night ended in around 7,700 BC. 

However, we are given a suggestion in the novels that this number is not accurate: Sam tells Jon that the largest number he’s been able to verify is 674. Using the same average, that brings us forward to about 5,100 BC. 

 

Yi Ti: Counting the emperors

Perhaps surprisingly, some of our best information dating the Long Night comes from the Yi Ti section. Unlike Westeros, they use a different reckoning system for before and after the Long Night, with the pre-LN emperors being known individually by the names of gemstones while the subsequent emperors are associated with dynasties.

 

Throughout I’m using the same measure I did for Westeros - average reign length multiplied up. I am treating this as 20 years for ease of maths, but it should probably be a little shorter. 

 

We are told that there have been eleven dynasties and we are given the names of eleven dynasties. It is not wholly clear whether the Orange Dynasty, which is a recent creation and overlaps entirely with the Azure Dynasty, should be included in the eleven, but I’m going to assume it is.

 

We are given precise numbers of emperors for three dynasties (grey, scarlet and azure). The text implies (strongly, to me) that the pearl-white dynasty had only nine emperors. For two of the others, we know a minimum number, as we are told about the “third jade-green emperor” and “the eighth sea-green emperor”. 

 

The current “Yellow emperor” claims to be the 69th, but his dynasty was ousted roughly a thousand years ago. 69 emperors would produce 1380 years, so the yellow dynasty would have been in effective power for about 380.

 

We are not given any information about the indigo, purple or maroon dynasties except their names, but we do know that only one dynasty lasted more than 700 years (which we can identify as the scarlet dynasty) and none lasted less than 50. 

 

Grey - 300
Indigo - between 50 and 700
Jade green - =>60
Scarlet - 860
Pearl-white 180
Sea-green =>160
Yellow - 380
Purple - between 50 and 700
Maroon - between 50 and 700
Azure - 340
Orange - 0 (overlapping Azure)

We can therefore calculate a minimum and a maximum range.

Minimum of 2430 years

Maximum of 5560 years.

 

Note that these are “before present” times so we need to deduct a further 300 years from each of them to get a BC date. 

 

The list above has the dynasties in the order in which they appear in the text, on the assumption that the first seven are given in a sensible chronological order. Where the purple and maroon dynasties fit into the scheme is questionable.

 

Realistically, it seems likely that the dynasties about which we have no chronological information are likely to be shorter-reigning than most of those about which we know something: the longer they’re on the throne, the more likely they are to do something noteworthy. 

 

If we restrict the two dynasties for which we know a minimum to the minimum length of their reign and assume that the three dynasties about which we know nothing a fall in the middle of the range, i.e. around 350 each, and collectively average out, that gives us a total timescale of about 3500 years. I will call this the “conservative” figure.

 

Although the timescales given for the Jhogos Nai are vague, they have been a serious problem for Yi Ti for around 2,000 years. The only historical points we can identify are the present, and the end of the scarlet dynasty. If we assume that the purple and maroon dynasties both came after the scarlet dynasty (and that the sea-green dynasty had no more than eight emperors) that gives us a maximum length for both of them of 470 years, i.e. a combined total of 940. It also gives us a revised maximum timeframe of “only” 4,560 years (the adjusted maximum), i.e. taking the destruction of the scarlet dynasty as being right at the beginning of their interactions with the Jhogos Nai and allowing for a maximum of 2,560 years before that.

 

The text seems to imply that this was not the case and the Jhogos Nai had been around for a long time before Lo Bu’s campaign, so this overall points more towards the conservative date or the minimum date than it does the adjusted maximum.

 

Putting it all together

 

Including the information from Lorath, I am treating my previous hypothesis regarding the date of the Andal exodus as essentially confirmed: that the first Andal arrivals in the Vale happened somewhere around 1700 BC, if not slightly later. This would assume that the Andals were feeling some pressure from Valyria before the destruction of Lorath, which seems sensible. 

 

More excitingly, the Essos information gives us something to work with in calculating the date of the Long Night. The obvious starting-point here is the Yi Ti chronology, which gives us a longstop date of around 5300 BC. This is not a million miles away from the Night’s Watch records which suggest around 5100 BC.

 

But as stated, that is the maximum Yi Ti date and it seems likely the real count is a bit shorter. 

 

Moving further west and looking at the Valyrians, they seem to have done the bulk of their expansion between around 2,500 BC and 1,500 BC. They had been warring with Ghis for a while before they started expanding northwards, and Ghis had “reigned supreme for centuries” before the Valyrians challenged them. Applying the usual principles, this suggests that Ghis itself established its supremacy no longer ago than 3400 BC. This, again, roughly matches the “conservative” Yi Ti figure of 3300 years.

 

Assuming that Ghis took a while to “get up to speed”, there’s still plenty of time to play with. 

 

Ghis is the earliest civilisation we know of apart from Yi Ti, and possibly the Qartheen. It doesn’t seem unlikely that it was the end of the Long Night which enabled all three to begin expanding. The Qaath civilisation peaked before the rise of Sarnor, so that was well established by around 2,500 BC, i.e. roughly the same period as Ghis. It’s implied that the Ibbenese are an older people, but their ancient history can’t be accounted for before about 2,100 BC.

 

I think, therefore, we have two dates to choose from for the end of the Long Night: about 3300 BC, and about 5,300 BC.

 

3300 BC requires us to assume that the Night’s Watch records are either wrong or that their lord commanders had a significantly shorter average lifespan than we might expect. It also assumes (a presumption in this kind of exercise) that the very long counts given by the maesters (8-12,000 years) are wrong. Otherwise it requires relatively few assumptions.

 

5300 BC gives us a lot more space to fill. We have approximately 3,000 years of civilisation to account for, which can be made to fit with Yi Ti (albeit stretching our current information to breaking point with generous assumptions) but means that Ghis either endured for a remarkably long time (around 3,000 years before clashing with Valyria) or there was a long period before the emergence of Ghis that is otherwise unaccounted for.