Heresy 14

[Stark@heart]

Damn. Sorry. I read the article then clicked over to Amazon and read the title but missed the (posters) part. :blushing:

I was thinking the map book had already been released but it was the cookbook.

[Uncat]

I believe a few times when Jon thinks about the Horn of Winter he thinks about the song that is sang about the horn. Like the song says Joramun blew the horn to wake giants but the song does not say if you can put them back to sleep and I'm pretty sure Jon thinks about the song says the horn can bring down the Wall. It does not specify what song.

I don't remember what the wildlings think except they believe the horn will bring down the Wall. I do find it interesting that Mance was looking for the horn in the graves of giants. Was Joramun a giant or did he entrust the horn to the giants?

On the Night's King and the Wall it was said ( or thought by Bran (?) ) that the NK spotted his cold queen from atop the Wall and he chased her down and married her, so the Wall was there but it may not have been as high as it is now for him to see her so well blue eyes and all. There is an SSM where Martin said it took thousands of years for the Wall to reach it's present hight.

There is also the question on how did Joramun the King Beyond the Wall get south with his army to aid the Stark in Winterfell to bring down the NK.

I can look up quotes if you would like to see anything specific for yourself, I'm just being lazy but I will find something if you would like it. :)

Actually that SSM would be great. I missed it and my imagination that Wall rather came to be as kind of a frozen wave (once I discarded the idea of people building it block by block). From when is it?

And if that would not mean to abuse on your kind offer, the description of the horn Mance found and Mel burns would be great. The way I remeber it, it seems to be the brother of Victarions dragon horn.

[Uncat]

I just saw, how it ends. It's all a big girly fight between these two:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crystal-Rock-Fairy-Fire-Ice/dp/B004WZAJ82/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1340859692&sr=8-6

(came across it, while searching the Lands of Ice and Fire) ;)

[bloodymime]

Actually that SSM would be great. I missed it and my imagination that Wall rather came to be as kind of a frozen wave (once I discarded the idea of people building it block by block). From when is it?

And if that would not mean to abuse on your kind offer, the description of the horn Mance found and Mel burns would be great. The way I remeber it, it seems to be the brother of Victarions dragon horn.

I'm sure there's at least one other passage since I seem to remember talk of them cutting blocks of ice out of lakes and there might be an SSM but here's Mormont talking to Tyrion about how weak the NW has become.

"Once the Watch spent its summers building, and each Lord Commander raised the Wall higher than he found it."

"Once, it was said, they had quarried immense blocks of ice from frozen lakes deep in the haunted forest, dragging them south on sledges so the Wall might be raised ever higher. Those days were centuries gone, however;"

[Elaena Targaryen]

Actually that SSM would be great. I missed it and my imagination that Wall rather came to be as kind of a frozen wave (once I discarded the idea of people building it block by block). From when is it?

And if that would not mean to abuse on your kind offer, the description of the horn Mance found and Mel burns would be great. The way I remeber it, it seems to be the brother of Victarions dragon horn.

Lol, no problem Uncat. :)

Here is the description of Mance's horn from Jon in ASOS

The horn was huge, eight feet along the curve and so wide at the mouth that he could have put his arm inside up to the elbow. If this came from an aurochs, it was the biggest that ever lived. At first he thought the bands around it were bronze, but when he moved closer he realized they were gold. Old gold, more brown than yellow, and graven with runes.

This is the hellhorn from Vic in ADWD ( my AFFC is acting up but this quote may be a better discription :shrug: )

A twisted thing it was, six feet long from end to end, gleaming black and banded with red gold and dark Valyrian steel. Euron’s hellhorn. Victarion ran his hand along it. The horn was as warm and smooth as the dusky woman’s thighs, and so shiny that he could see a twisted likeness of his own features in its depths. Strange sorcerous writings had been cut into the bands that girded it. “Valyrian glyphs,” Moqorro called them.

Here is the SSM on the Wall

September 09, 2000

The Wall

I am having discussions about the Wall. Some think that it is an impossibility for a structure of that size to remain standing if it is made from ice alone. Personally I think that the wall started of a lot smaller and slowly grew larger over the centuries as the black brothers trampled layer after layer of blue metal or small stones across the top. If that is the case then the wall is probably a mixture of crushed rocks and ice, which in my opinion would be a VERY sturdy construction, as demonstrated by Jon when he filled the barrels with water and used them to crush the battering ram.

Well, the Wall has undoubtedly "eaten" a lot of crushed stone over the centuries and millenia, especially around the castles where the black brothers regularly gravelled the walkways. But there's a lot more ice than there is stone.

Yes, the Wall was much smaller when first raised. It took hundreds of years to complete and thousands to reach it's present height.

If time is permiting would you mind giving a brief description on how the wall was constructed?

Much of those details are lost in the mists of time and legend. No one can even say for certain if Brandon the Builder ever lived. He is as remote from the time of the novels as Noah and Gilgamesh are from our own time.

But one thing I will say, for what it's worth -- more than ice went into the raising of the Wall. Remember, these are =fantasy= novels.

ETA I forgot to put the link for the SSM

[Howling Mad]

I came across this passsgae in aCoK this evening which may shed some light on the Wall's construction

Together they tied off the sail as the boat rocked beneath them. As Davos unshipped the oars and slid them into the choppy black water, he said, "Who rowed you to Renly?" "There was no need," she said. "He was un protected. But here ... this Storm's End is an old place. There are spells woven into the stones. Dark walls that no shadow can pass--ancient, forgotten, yet still in place."

The question is will GRRM ever explain the magic?

[Black Crow]

Thanks again Elaena. Its the last answer that's the important one.

As to the height growing over the years the crushed stone will never have been enough to do more than compensate for the melt. I know that this was GRRM himself talking 12 years ago, but there's also a much more recent SSM in which after seeing the 400 foot quarry face which doubles for the Wall in the HBO version GRRM expressed himself and admitted that at 700 foot high he'd made the Wall way too high.

[Elaena Targaryen]

Your welcome Black Crow and as to the last answer being the important one that is why I put the whole quote because it does suit the general discussion around here lately. :) Thanks for adding about Martin saying the Wall is too high, I always forget to comment on that even though I remember it for myself.

[Black Crow]

So historians grapple over the landing date of the Andals... specifically as to whether it was 4,000 years ago or 2,000 years ago... Rather than coming to the conclusion that every one of those historians is in fact wrong, isn't it far more likely that there are varying dates on the Andal invasion because there were different invasions! They couldn't have invaded every region of Westeros at the same time. There are huge geographic roadblocks that would almost certainly necessitate a seperate invasion/landing. They may have landed in the Vale 4,000 years ago, but the Vale is largely isolated from the rest of Westeros, save a Mountain pass or two.

Is it not more likely to think that while they landed in the Vale 4,000 years ago, they may have then made it down through the crownlands 3,750 years ago, then tried to invade the North 3,500 years ago, then being rebuffed, went for the Riverlands 3,250 years ago, then the Westerlands 3,000 years ago, then the Reach 2,750 years ago, then the Stormlands 2,500 years ago, Outlying islands 2,250 years ago, and then the far Southlands (And Oldtown) 2,000 years ago.

It's just not possible for such a vast cover up. Even if the 'writers' of history steer belief in that direction.... Do you think people like Old Nan got her information & stories from a book written by a Maester ? Of course not.

You can not universally erase oral history like that, I'm sorry. It's not burning a book. You'd have to get to every single person. If your version of events was correct, someone would remember. Alot of someones, actually.

AND If you somehow find fault with the above argument, as I said previously, if there secretly was only a few hundred years worth of events between the Andals landing and the Targs landing, Bran would've realized that in short order from his weirwood time travelling.

The quotation is shortened for convenience rather than selectively, because I just want to say that I don't think we're in fundamental disagreement here. The point, particularly about the Andal invasion, is that there is no cover up simply because there is no agreed timeline. What we're seeing is key events seen differently by different people. We got Maester Luwin's version of history in AGoT, but GRRM keeps telling us (with examples) through Sam and Hoster and not forgetting Osha and Ygritte, that it isn't to be relied on. "North of the Wall things are different". There's no cover-up of a secret history, because nobody knows the true history - see GRRM's comments about who built the Wall up above.

The only "cover-up" is GRRM's decision to hold back on telling us how the Long Night ended and who really built the Wall and why, etc...

[Gar Weg Wun Sygerrik]

What evidence is there for "Kings of Winter" being different from King in the North? I looked at all the references I could find in all the books and didn't find anything specific. In Fact Maege Mormont Calls Robb 'King of Winter" when hes first crowned.

[Uncat]

Black Crow, Uncat, Lummel, others... no need to quote all of your comments...

<<I was in the middle of the 2nd to last paragraph and I almost lost everything by my backspace key turning into a shortcut for the back button on my browser. I hate it when that happens. So many good posts have been lost that way. I have to remember to type these in a document first...>>

Where were we... ah, yes.

So historians grapple over the landing date of the Andals... specifically as to whether it was 4,000 years ago or 2,000 years ago... Rather than coming to the conclusion that every one of those historians is in fact wrong, isn't it far more likely that there are varying dates on the Andal invasion because there were different invasions! They couldn't have invaded every region of Westeros at the same time. There are huge geographic roadblocks that would almost certainly necessitate a seperate invasion/landing. They may have landed in the Vale 4,000 years ago, but the Vale is largely isolated from the rest of Westeros, save a Mountain pass or two.

Is it not more likely to think that while they landed in the Vale 4,000 years ago, they may have then made it down through the crownlands 3,750 years ago, then tried to invade the North 3,500 years ago, then being rebuffed, went for the Riverlands 3,250 years ago, then the Westerlands 3,000 years ago, then the Reach 2,750 years ago, then the Stormlands 2,500 years ago, Outlying islands 2,250 years ago, and then the far Southlands (And Oldtown) 2,000 years ago.

(((Or simpler still, Middle 1/3 of Westeros invaded ~3,500 years ago, and the bottom 1/3 invaded ~2,500 years ago.)))

I'm completly aboard with this drawn out "invesion". The Andal invesion was very different from the Conquest. for once, the Andals were not one people united under one rule and one leader or else, we would have seen a supreme kingship like Aegons much earlier. I rather tend to see them as a group of tribes, peoples which were joined by a common culture and a common set of believes centred around the idea of light and fire pushing away the darkness. Within this believes, there were moderate and secular minds as well as radical preachers. I'M not saying, that they were R'holloristas but they were strongly influenced by the idea of light nd fire being good things.

They came not like Aegon following a plan, I imagine but they were giving way to a pressure from the south east. Because if we don't count the years but just take the sequence of events implied as given, their move followed after the Freehold of Valyria was founded and began to grow. Here I see the same forces at work, which we see all over history: an expanding presses on the peoples on its boarders and they who would not want to submit started to move away from the center of expansion.

In Tyrions journey we see all those ruined citys, the wast and, even dow fertil, empty lands. Valyria was no good for Essos and I assume that like Nymeria and the people from the Royne, the Andals moved West.

They did not do so on a big descision but in waves corresponding to the "shock waves" of the Valyrian expansion. And as new waves of andals came, the Andals would move deeper into Westeros.

So far we are agreed. But gain, I see a much shorter timeline. The Andal invesion stuck to the minds in Westeros as kind of an event. They did not really trickle in but rather came like - well - flood waves in short succession. Short in historical terms meaning some twohundred years which would be some eight or twelf generation.

The Romans conquered most of their empire in a similar time strech. The Franks lead by Charle le Magne build their empire in some two generations. The tribes moving west and south in the Barbarian Migration needed some eicht generations to overun all the mediteranean lands, that once were the Roman Empire.

In a world on the cultural level of the ASOIAF events like the Andal Migration or the Expansion of Valyria (they head an airforce consisting of the ultimative weappon!) don't take thousands of years to roll out. The Roman Empire rose and fell from seed to doom in some thirteen centuries. The chinese empire was mostly build by one man in one lifetime.

Taking all this in account, I just can't think of a reason, why it would take a big horde of Andals to make their way trough Westeros in such a slow pace. and again, the Valyrians had dragons. If they were only a little bit like the Romans or Persians or British, with five thousand years time, they should have conquered the whole world trice and still had a lot of time for a nap :)

That long drawn out invasion which I just came up with on the fly seems infinitely more likely than every single person in Westeros - from the Grand Maester down to the thickest headed horse muck shoveller -being completely wrong about their history. There may be uncertainty as to when the Andals invaded where, but I don't see anyone considering that all estimates are wrong and it in fact happened 1,000 years ago.

If you want to try and transpose that to R + L = J.... which, let me preface by saying is comparing something very macro to something very micro (You can confuse people when the information only has one or two or even ten sources, but when the sources are several million pairs of eyes and ears and the brains to remember, the ability to achieve universal deception goes out the window)....it would be like while almost everyone has narrowed it down to some combination of Rhaegar, Ned, Lyanna, Ashara, Wylla with a reasonable degree of confindence, we find out that in fact his parents are Paxter Redwyne and a tavern wench from Duskendale. I know you had a different point...namely that none of what we've been presented is correct... but for that to happen with the history... EVERY SINGLE person with a first-hand account of the Andal invasion would have to be either silenced, fed a fake story that they believed, or be a co-conspirator in the cover up.

It's just not possible for such a vast cover up. Even if the 'writers' of history steer belief in that direction.... Do you think people like Old Nan got her information & stories from a book written by a Maester ? Of course not.

You can not universally erase oral history like that, I'm sorry. It's not burning a book. You'd have to get to every single person. If your version of events was correct, someone would remember. Alot of someones, actually.

AND If you somehow find fault with the above argument, as I said previously, if there secretly was only a few hundred years worth of events between the Andals landing and the Targs landing, Bran would've realized that in short order from his weirwood time travelling.

It is not about a cover up. The thing is, that the eye witness is the most unreliable of sources. People tend to see and tell events the way, they like them to be seen. It was, what I tried to show with the exapmle of the Nazis in Germany. Not even a generation after it all went down, the Germans had invented their own Night's Kings tale in order to excuse themselfes. and the only reason this did not work is because the winning Allies would not let them and because their children started to blame them for the doom and would not let their parents get away with the Night's King's tale, once they grew up. And here we are talking about Western Europe.

In an oral society everything past three generations ago is legend. And in a society with out institutionalized historical research, there is noone there to putthe bits and pieces together and to create one large, reliable version of the past. Instead we have a million of little tales.

When the father tells the son about the coming of the andals, he says: It was right before you were born. This gives the son some mesure of time. Once this son tells the tale to his son, he says: It was log before you were born, even befor I was born. If that son tells the story to his son, he would say: a long time ago, before your great-grandfather was born. Now, how many years will this great-grandson make from this? And these are only for generations. The original mans great-great-grandson would only tell his son: Your sire, Humphry the Hero singlehanded killed a hundred man in a great battle. That was, when the Andals came, long, long before even your grandfather was born. And by this turn, suddenly the event marks its own date without having a certain date.

And when that great-great-great-grandson growns into Knight Humphry jr., he meets Knight Y and tells him about his sire, Huphry the Hero. He will say "it was, when the Andals came", in order to mark the time. Now it happens, that Knight Y's sire also fought the Andals, though a good fifty years later. But he would agree, nod along and say "Yeah, that was a time for heros, when the andals came." The seem to be in complet agreement over the timing of the event even though two generations were born between Humphry the Hero and Knight Y's own sire. And this even though the original event dates back only some five or six generation. A thousand years are about twenty generations.

As for Bran: the Weirwood visions don't come with a superimposed date and during a thousand years so much happens. Again, whole empires rose and fell in much less time. The British Empire was build and lost in some threehundred years. But if you show the events to a kid and if you show those events on such a granular level as Bran sees them, this kid will easily assume, that it has to have been many more years for all of this to fit in. And then this kid had already been fed some kind of a timeline by his maester. so instread of willingly questioning that timeline he will rather try to place the events he sees into this timeline he knows.

So there you are: Nothing is certain (apart from that the Valyrians must hve been a really lazy people taking a lot of naps between conquests :D)

[Uncat]

I'm sure there's at least one other passage since I seem to remember talk of them cutting blocks of ice out of lakes and there might be an SSM but here's Mormont talking to Tyrion about how weak the NW has become.

"Once the Watch spent its summers building, and each Lord Commander raised the Wall higher than he found it."

"Once, it was said, they had quarried immense blocks of ice from frozen lakes deep in the haunted forest, dragging them south on sledges so the Wall might be raised ever higher. Those days were centuries gone, however;"

This one I know, but it is not reliable as it is only part of the legends, which were build up around the Wall. The same goes for the ice blocks. It's just the kind of tale people would come up with to explain that impossible building: "Boy how did they do it?" one man would ask and the other says: "See those lines in the ice? I bet the cut enormouse iceblocks from the lakes up north an dragged them down here." And again, the one would ask "Yes, but how did they do THAT?" And the other would say "They clearly had the help of gints. You know how there once were giants?".

I once tryed to do some math on how much Ice you would need to build the Wall and it seems highly questionable if man would be able to do it. For once, it is several cubic kilometers of ice you would need. And then you would need to do it during winter because the lands beyond the wall are cold but not eternaly frozen and only during winter man would be able to find, cut and move enough ice without it melting - and we allready had a glimps of the hell, that winter is up north. Really not a time for large contructions to be done.

Then there are no larger lakes near the Wall which would meen transporting the blocks over great distances. Again not fun during the northern winter. My point is, that everything in the books up to now is part of the legends of the Wall which people like to tell to each other. The same goes for Jon seeing the lines, where he assumes that the blocks meet, when Earl climbs the Wall. But that cannot be, because the way ice works, the pressure of the ice would have fused those blocks into one mass long ago. So Jon only sees, what he thinks that should be there.

This is the reason why I was asking about the SSM. It would be one small information which is not part of the legends.

[Uncat]

Lol, no problem Uncat. :)

Here is the description of Mance's horn from Jon in ASOS

This is the hellhorn from Vic in ADWD ( my AFFC is acting up but this quote may be a better discription :shrug: )

Here is the SSM on the Wall

ETA I forgot to put the link for the SSM

Great! So much to think about - a pitty, I only saw it now, after my reply to bloodymime. Guess I would have written it differently or not written it at all. Though again Martin is afully vague once more.

[Lummel]

...That long drawn out invasion which I just came up with on the fly seems infinitely more likely than every single person in Westeros - from the Grand Maester down to the thickest headed horse muck shoveller -being completely wrong about their history. There may be uncertainty as to when the Andals invaded where, but I don't see anyone considering that all estimates are wrong and it in fact happened 1,000 years ago.

If you want to try and transpose that to R + L = J.... which, let me preface by saying is comparing something very macro to something very micro (You can confuse people when the information only has one or two or even ten sources, but when the sources are several million pairs of eyes and ears and the brains to remember, the ability to achieve universal deception goes out the window)....it would be like while almost everyone has narrowed it down to some combination of Rhaegar, Ned, Lyanna, Ashara, Wylla with a reasonable degree of confindence, we find out that in fact his parents are Paxter Redwyne and a tavern wench from Duskendale. I know you had a different point...namely that none of what we've been presented is correct... but for that to happen with the history... EVERY SINGLE person with a first-hand account of the Andal invasion would have to be either silenced, fed a fake story that they believed, or be a co-conspirator in the cover up.

It's just not possible for such a vast cover up. Even if the 'writers' of history steer belief in that direction.... Do you think people like Old Nan got her information & stories from a book written by a Maester ? Of course not.

You can not universally erase oral history like that, I'm sorry. It's not burning a book. You'd have to get to every single person. If your version of events was correct, someone would remember. Alot of someones, actually...

It's not a question of a cover up. Think of the history of your own country. Everything that ever happened was witnessed by somebody but you'll find that as you go further and further back in time there are fewer and fewer sources until you come down to the stories remembered and past on by maybe one person you didn't know everything to start with. And without a doubt what you end up with is something vastly more simple or occasionally hopelessly obscure than what actually happened.

This isn't because alternative views were hunted out and destroyed, or suppressed, or reeducated away but that alternative traditions were never passed on in the first place - did your parents and grandparents give you an exhaustive account of their life and times? If they did will you pass that on precisely to the next generation along with your account of your life and times? Or are you going to start editing it, or forgetting bits or not bother because it wasn't very interesting?

In the case of the Andal invasion that's the kind of thing that we would plot with archaeology in our world and we can compare the archaeology say of the Anglo-Saxon invasion of England with the written sources which for the Anglo-Saxons were first written down only a mere three hundredish years after the events. But then that first acount is sketchy and has a couple of mythic characters who may not have existed, and you know what, despite it being a mere 1,600 years later my family has no tradition or passed on story from what our ancestors were doing at that time!

Having said all that I doubt if the Andal invasion was more recent than a thousand years before present but the number isn't significant. The point is that before the Andals everybody lived in freedom and happyness and skipped around with the Children of the Forest. After the Andals come the Children are driven out, while they introduce steel, ships and the Seven.

[7V3N]

I compare the Andal Invasions to the European Conquest/Settling of the Americas.

[alienarea]

About the giants and the wall. What is interesting to me is the king of the giants leading the attack at the gate. Of course it could be the way giants fight, lead by their king, but from the description I picked up a grim determination as if it were the fate of the giants to bring down the wall, i. e. they build it, they have to bring it down?

[Uncat]

I compare the Andal Invasions to the European Conquest/Settling of the Americas.

Yepp, makes for a good picture. Like in the U.S., there came larger and smaler groups of people. Some would just settle down, where ever they found a place and some picking up a fight with those that had always been there. Thus, they established many different S. long before deciding about the U. thing.

[Uncat]

About the giants and the wall. What is interesting to me is the king of the giants leading the attack at the gate. Of course it could be the way giants fight, lead by their king, but from the description I picked up a grim determination as if it were the fate of the giants to bring down the wall, i. e. they build it, they have to bring it down?

This could also refer to the song of the last of the Mountain Giant: He claims, that the Wall was the doom of his kind. So it would just fit that those who were left, would want to break down the Wall or die in the attempt.

Btw: The Mountain Giants apparently died out. So they must have been different from the Giants Jon meets. Is there any small reference as of how they were different?

[Uncat]

What evidence is there for "Kings of Winter" being different from King in the North? I looked at all the references I could find in all the books and didn't find anything specific. In Fact Maege Mormont Calls Robb 'King of Winter" when hes first crowned.

Which actually is very interessting.

Annyway, so far we deduced the differences from real world examples. In this real world it makes a huge difference, if you are a King of, say France, or of the French. In the first case you would rule a strech of land and basicaly own everithing in it. Your subjects are just this: your subjects. In the second case you would be the highest organ in the legislativ, executiv and maybe even judicativ system of a country. But you don't own it and you have no claim to the goods or lives of your subjects apart of the claims, the laws and traditions would give you.

So a King of Winter would basicaly rule Winter itself, which is a huge thing. A King in the North on the otherhand is what we see Robb becoming. His Lords choose him as leader and formaly lay all legislativ, executive and judicative power in his hands. But they made him by acclaiming him and if all the lords basically desagree with him, they can force him to change descisions or in the worst case even unmake him.

Because this is another difference in the real world. The King of France was King by Gods grace and now human could deprive him of this. While a King of the French or a King in France is king, because the French once chose to have him. And to dethrone him may be against the law man, but those, man can always change.

In the real world in medieval times, most kings were made rather like the King in the North. Then in the era of absolutism, some 400 years ago that changed and the kings started to see them selfs as basicaly untouchable because God himself introned them and not man.

Applying this to the King of Winter, we assume that his legitimity derived from some higher power and man could not unmake him for a long time, while the legitimity of the Kings in the North based on the agreement of most of the other northern Lords and clans, that the Starks should be the Kings.

Or in short words a King of is a much kinglier king then a King in some place or of some people. The one is a man removed from all others. The other can very well be removed by all others. ;)

[Sword Of Mid Afternoon]

It's not a question of a cover up. Think of the history of your own country. Everything that ever happened was witnessed by somebody but you'll find that as you go further and further back in time there are fewer and fewer sources until you come down to the stories remembered and past on by maybe one person you didn't know everything to start with. And without a doubt what you end up with is something vastly more simple or occasionally hopelessly obscure than what actually happened.

This isn't because alternative views were hunted out and destroyed, or suppressed, or reeducated away but that alternative traditions were never passed on in the first place - did your parents and grandparents give you an exhaustive account of their life and times? If they did will you pass that on precisely to the next generation along with your account of your life and times? Or are you going to start editing it, or forgetting bits or not bother because it wasn't very interesting?

In the case of the Andal invasion that's the kind of thing that we would plot with archaeology in our world and we can compare the archaeology say of the Anglo-Saxon invasion of England with the written sources which for the Anglo-Saxons were first written down only a mere three hundredish years after the events. But then that first acount is sketchy and has a couple of mythic characters who may not have existed, and you know what, despite it being a mere 1,600 years later my family has no tradition or passed on story from what our ancestors were doing at that time!

Having said all that I doubt if the Andal invasion was more recent than a thousand years before present but the number isn't significant. The point is that before the Andals everybody lived in freedom and happyness and skipped around with the Children of the Forest. After the Andals come the Children are driven out, while they introduce steel, ships and the Seven.

When everyone can read and write the necessity of maintaining an oral history is no longer present. Information can be stored and accessed at a later point in time.

It could be argued that people without a written language would know more about their history than people with a written language. When all you have is oral history, getting it right is given an almost religious importance. If you were to ask a tribe of Indians (native Americans, sorry) for their creation story, you would get as many identical answers as there are people to tell you. Those individuals give the same treatment to their family history... You learn it word for word from your parents, who learned it word for word from their parents. It's not a game of telephone in a grade school classroom. Keep in mind what we now call the Old Testament was in existence long before it was ever put to paper. It doesn't seem practical or even possible to us with our incredible data resources, but when all you can know is what you're carrying in your head, and all you can know lies with your parents and/or elders, that oral history and its accuracy are assigned an importance that is almost incomprehensible to us.

I can settle with us agreeing that the exact dates of Andal landing(s) & such can't be nailed down for a host of reasons - not the least of which being different landings in different regions at different times. My problem lies with idea that all such histories are wrong, all family histories are made up, the Night's Watch LC lists were made up, and everything took place relatively recently.

You'd be surprised about what is known about the Anglo-Saxons pre and post Roman... I suggest Winston S. Churchill's "History of the English Speaking People" Vol. 1. Yes, that Churchill. It covers British history from rising from the deep to like 1400.