Geography in the Age of Legends

[mindtoast]

As an excuse to re-read the books, (who am i kidding, noone needs an excuse) i decided to try and put together a list of all the hints that RJ gives us regarding the possiblegeography in the age of legends.

 

1) the sand hills used to be the edge of a 'great ocean'. I take this to mean that the mountains of mist are a newly formed range, and the ocean was to the west of the sand hills.

Does this mean that Arad Doman, Almoth Plain and Tarabon were once under the ocean?

The BWB and it is mentioned in the books that "The Domani believe they are descendents of those who made the tree of life"

 

Who made the Chora Trees? Well what better place to research than the Collam Daan, in V'saine? So either the Domani came from, or V'saine was in the vicinity of Arad Doman.

 

Tarabon call themselves "the Tree of Man and claim descent from rulers and nobles of the Age of Legends"

The capital, presumably where ruling went down, would have been Paaran Disen. So again, Taraboners might have come from here.

 

So i conclude that the entire region west of the mountains of Mist were a part of a seperate techtonic plate that smashed an island or a bit of a continent into randland from somewhere else. We even have a name for this sea that used to divide them! The Sea of Jeren (Jonais memory)

 

2) As is often said, Shayol Goul was an island in a pleasant sea.

 

3) The Aiel waste was an ocean. We think that maybe its Shorelle up there, docks poking out off the side of the now mountainside, thanks to Asmodean. Again, i think RJ is throwing us hints.

 

4) Mother Guenna tells of an old fisherman bringing up heartstone bowls and the like from the Fingers of the Dragon, near Tear.

This could be from a simple shipwreck, but RJ seems to like dropping hints that  point to things of import, not red herrings.

I take this to mean that dry land used to extend further south of where the coast now is, and theres probably a suberged city there at the fingers of the dragon. Remember, i'm assuming every hint is a hint...mostly for the fun of it.

 

5) the Rhuidean flashbacks.

Rhodric stares at tall mountains to the north, and monstrously huge mountains to the east.

"They had trailed north along that mountainous wall for long months, painfully dragging their wagons behind them"

 

Garam "We must leave these hills and move east. She says the dry rivers will run again and we will build a great city beside one"

 

The Aiel here are West of the dragonwall but also west of the river Alguenya.

They came from the west of present day randland?

 

"They claimed the earth used to shake, too, and the mountains rose or sank like the water in a summer pond" So the breaking is over by Jeordams time.

 

"Jonai stood at the edge of the cliff staring out westward over the sun-sparkled water. A hundred leagues in that direction lay Comelle. Had lain Comelle. A hundred leagues west, where the sea now ran."

 

I think the cliffs Jonai are standing on, and where he meets the Ogier who came from the north, (where the blight has apparently spread, makes sense, The Blight where it is now) is Worlds End.

So i think the Dead Sea used to be land that extended a great deal to the west, and is now under the ocean.

 

Jonai came from the East. This is back the other way. i'm thinking they came from the north originally, that randland was further south, maybe, and where the blight is, was a lot more land.

 

Who knows? Maybe i'm just making it up. Either way, it was fun.

[mindtoast]

Whoops! sorry theres more.

Book 5: Prologue.

 

"The only stone like it known, salvaged from a nameless city swallowed by the Sea of Storms during the Breaking of the World."

 

Further signs of this being the Drowned Lands, near Mayene.

[Cockta]

mindtoast I love you now. Why didn't I think of it before - creating this thread?

 

I would want to have sex (no not really) with the one who makes a map of the world in the AoL era.

[Majsju]

Regarding Arad Doman and Tarabon...Even if they were correct in their claims (which is a very big if, claiming a glorious ancestry is quite easy when all records are lost), how likely is it that they stayed in one place when the Breaking really started to make things nteresting?

[Gentled Ben]

Isn't one of the walls in the Panarch's palace supposed to be from the age before the Age of Legends? If so, that might indicate that it has been on dry land for some time now.

 

Mindtoast, that stone that lines the windows in the Amyrlin's study is surely elstone, that is mentioned as the glowing stone that the steps of the Hall of Servants are made form. Perhaps Paaren Disen was actually to the south? Also, I just read a thread on here the other day where they were quoting the encyclopedia or RJ or something to the effect that the Nine Rods of Dominion mentioned in the prologue to EotW were actually the rulers during the AoL, so if that's true, then there were nine centers of power, not one, not just Paaren Disen.

[mindtoast]

thats exactly right, Majsju i don't think tarabon and arad doman were where they are now...i think those lands were in their current shape, but not attached to the rest of randland, with "the Sea of Jeran" between them, but the two landmasses were fused together, their island was moved around so to speak.

 

Gentled Ben can you remember where you read that particular tidbit?, i'm trying to make a sort of 'list'

 

yes, its quite a tall claim, you never know if RJ is throwing hints or just red herrings...but its a fun little exercise...maybe the Wot encyclopedia will shed light on matters.

 

if anyone has any other references from the books please post them

[Cockta]

Is there anthing about Shara? The land is as mysterious now as it was in the AoL.

[Gentled Ben]

Which tidbit, mindtoast? The part about the Panarch's palace is probably in TSR when Nyneave is there.

[Angel of Death]

The AoL world looks like our world does now (throwing in a few thousand years of contental drift). We are living in the first age afterall.

[Cockta]

Seriously? So RJ just took the geopraphy from the real world and put into WoT?

 

Awesome, I guess...

[CUBAREY]

The AoL world looks like our world does now (throwing in a few thousand years of contental drift). We are living in the first age afterall.

 

Not really, not at all. Only resemblence to their world and ours is that Randland might generally be said to be Europe and Seanchen to be the Americas. However, serious problems exist in this theory, as in Africa seems to have been totally swallowed-up by the oceans. In additon, there is evidence that the East of Randland was bordered in the Age of Legends  by a great Sea or Ocean. Now following your general theory in the age of Legends Randland (Europe) would of been seperated from Shara (China or all of Asia) by a Sea. So what happened to Western Russia and the Middle East between our age (if you are correct and ours is the age immediately prior to the Age of Legends) and the AOL?

 

Moreover, one of the reasons that people assume Randland is what we know as Europe is that there are three southern nations; Altara (Italy)) Illian (Greece)and Tear (Spain) that resemble Europe of our middle ages,it should be noted that this is only true if we forget that Tear (Spain) should be located at the Southwestern part of the Continent (instead of the of Siutheastern), that Illian (Greece)is located in the Southcentral part of the continent (instead of the Southeast) and that Altara (Italy) is in the Southwest (instead of the Southcentral). Morover the Southern edge of the Randland landmass differs from our Europe by more then the Continental drift of a few thousand years would explain.

[Angel of Death]

Drift can change alot of stuff.

 

Im only saying that there is strong evidence that we are the first age. The locations of countries that have similar customs to randland nations has nothing to do with it.

[Mr Ares]

The AoL world looks like our world does now (throwing in a few thousand years of contental drift). We are living in the first age afterall.

 

Not really, not at all. Only resemblence to their world and ours is that Randland might generally be said to be Europe and Seanchen to be the Americas.

The geopgraphy of the Third Age is post-Breaking, the Breaking apparenly having quite an effect. The world is not known to have been through another Breaking between the First Age, generally taken to be our own, and the AoL. Therefore, it should be broadly similar to our own.

[CUBAREY]

The geopgraphy of the Third Age is post-Breaking, the Breaking apparenly having quite an effect. The world is not known to have been through another Breaking between the First Age, generally taken to be our own, and the AoL. Therefore, it should be broadly similar to our own.

 

Since it is not that similar (no Africa, evidence of an Ocean between Randland and Shara in the Age of Legends) my argument is that we could not have been the First Age (or more correctly in a Universe of Circular Time, the Age Immediately Prior to the Age of Legends).

 

Drift can change alot of stuff.

 

Im only saying that there is strong evidence that we are the first age. The locations of countries that have similar customs to randland nations has nothing to do with it.

 

First it would take millions of years for continental drift to cause the geographic changes between our Age and those seen in Age of Randland not a few thousand years.

 

Second, the fact that there are cultures that closely resemble cultures in our time is one of the arguments that lead some to conclude that Randland is Europe. Thus its a bit ingenius to argue that the fact those same cultures are located  in the wrong part of the Continent is irrelevent (unless you are arguing that all three cultures miraculously settled down as monolithic units in the years after the Wonderings).

[Cockta]

Guys, lets not forget that this is a fantasy series, not the real world and how it looked like for x amount of years ago, k?

[Gentled Ben]

The geopgraphy of the Third Age is post-Breaking, the Breaking apparenly having quite an effect. The world is not known to have been through another Breaking between the First Age, generally taken to be our own, and the AoL. Therefore, it should be broadly similar to our own.

 

Since it is not that similar (no Africa, evidence of an Ocean between Randland and Shara in the Age of Legends) my argument is that we could not have been the First Age (or more correctly in a Universe of Circular Time, the Age Immediately Prior to the Age of Legends).

 

Drift can change alot of stuff.

 

Im only saying that there is strong evidence that we are the first age. The locations of countries that have similar customs to randland nations has nothing to do with it.

 

First it would take millions of years for continental drift to cause the geographic changes between our Age and those seen in Age of Randland not a few thousand years.

 

Second, the fact that there are cultures that closely resemble cultures in our time is one of the arguments that lead some to conclude that Randland is Europe. Thus its a bit ingenius to argue that the fact those same cultures are located  in the wrong part of the Continent is irrelevent (unless you are arguing that all three cultures miraculously settled down as monolithic units in the years after the Wonderings).

 

Are you taking into account the Breaking of the world? It does not seem that you are considering it. It is the definitive event that separates "Randland" from the previous ages. I mean, Mr Ares pointed out that the Breaking had quite an effect on world geography, and you even quoted it, but then, you mention that since there is no Africa in Randland, we cannot have been the age prior to the Age of Legends, and I am baffled as to why. Does the Breaking not explain that, or am I missing your point?  :-\

[CUBAREY]

Does the Breaking not explain that, or am I missing your point? 

 

In part yes, you are missing my point. My reply was based primarily on the original posters comment that " Drift can change a lot of stuff". To which I tried to reply true put not in as short a time as between the Age prior to AOL and the Randland Age.

 

Second, I also  pointed out that there is very little proof that ours is the Age Immediately Prior to AOL. That facts that we do know of would seem to preclude this such as that in the AOL East Randland was bordered by a large sea or ocean and we have no evidence of a breaking between our Age and the AOL that would explain how European Russia and the Middle-East became that sea/ocean.

 

As to the Africa comment, what I was getting at was that to believe that ours is the Age Immediately Prior to AOL we must presume that the breaking at the end of AOL )while causing certain changes to geography()left the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia basicly in tact but totally submerged Africa. Also we have to presume that three different national cultures not only survived the end of our age through the AOL and right through the end of the Age of Randland but that the caused the people of those three cultures to , as a unit, pick up and move to a different part of the continent and devolve back to what is recognizable as those cultures in our middle ages. Of course its possible that this happened, but no real evidence  supporting such a theory is contained in the books.

[Gentled Ben]

Okay, I think I see what you're saying, then. I think that RJ must have said at some point that we are in a First Age, else I don't really see how people state it as clear fact. We know that we are not in the second or third age, and it does not appear likely that we are in the fourth age, but beyond that, it would seem to me that we have no clue what age we are in.

 

However, we really don't know what separated the first two ages. With the legend of Merk And Mosk hurling flaming spears across the world at each other, we can assume that Jordan alluded to a nuclear war between the US and the USSR, but we don't know much else. I read something that Luckers wrote once about the possibility that the appearance of channeling is what ends the first age and brings about the second, and that there is great violence surrounding it. He made some interesting points about how the the first channelers and their "normal" supporters must have won this conflict, and that they might have felt great remorse for their part in it and the accompanying destruction, so that the channelers became servants, and their supporters adopted the Way of the Leaf.

 

There is also the matter of a common language in the AoL, and that might be explained by cataclysmic events resulting in few survivors, who all seek each other out and band together. We see this in the third age, when after the Breaking, the old tongue is all but lost and a new language develops. For our age, with it's myriad of tongues, to become an age where there is only one tongue, then something big had to have happened. I do not think there was a peaceful, smooth transition between the first age and the second. Of course, we don't know this, as we dont' have any AoL pov's on the age preceeding theirs.

 

None of the Forsaken consider what must have come before, so we don't know. Maybe there was a Breaking of a sort that they are all aware of, but they don't think of it very often, anymore than we think of the Great Flood stories of Mesopotamia. We are all familiar with them, and if it happened, that's quite an event, but we don't usually have it in the forefront or our consciousness, and such might be the case with the Forsaken, who are the only ones who lived in that age that we get regular PoV's from, and like us not thinking of the great flood, perhaps they don't think of the nuclear holocaust, or the great war of the channelers, or the dark time of global warming, or what have you. We simply do not know if the change between age 1 and age 2 was accompanied by geographic upheaval or not.

[CUBAREY]

There is also the matter of a common language in the AoL, and that might be explained by cataclysmic events resulting in few survivors, who all seek each other out and band together. We see this in the third age, when after the Breaking, the old tongue is all but lost and a new language develops. For our age, with it's myriad of tongues, to become an age where there is only one tongue, then something big had to have happened.

 

I always thought that a single language was the weakest point in RJ's world building. Yes, its a recognized staple of fantasy and Science fiction novels but think about it. You have a single language in AOL that survives the breaking but which is replaced soon after by a totally different single language (at least the Old Tongue is not nearly as related to Randland language as lets say Latin is to Vulgate or even the Romance languages that derived from Vulgate). Indeed, language in the Wheel of Time seems to work totally opposite from how we know languages develop in reality. for example the Seanchan and Randlanders have been seperated for a thousand years but except for differences in accents the language is the same.Indeed, Regional dialects have not even begun to evolve.

 

 

I have tried to find where RJ might of said that ours was the first age but I have only found statements that indicate that RJ was never going to reveal what age our world in meant to be or that he never responded to questions as to whether pour world was actually part pf the Wheel of Time cosmology.

 

[RAMb0211]

Hey everybody check out www.sevenspokes.com it has some info on the other ages including the First Age. I know it's an unofficial chronology, but it claims that RJ confirmed the First Age as ours in one of his interviews. It also addresses the discovery of Channeling, some pretty interesting stuff.

[FallingBullets]

how do we know that our age isnt the 7th age of the last turning? the stories could have been old in the "first age" too

[Angel of Death]

 

 

First it would take millions of years for continental drift to cause the geographic changes between our Age and those seen in Age of Randland not a few thousand years.

 

 

Thousands of years of drift for the AoL appearance, then come along the insane male Aes Seadi making it like the current rendland.

[CUBAREY]

Hey everybody check out www.sevenspokes.com it has some info on the other ages including the First Age. I know it's an unofficial chronology, but it claims that RJ confirmed the First Age as ours in one of his interviews. It also addresses the discovery of Channeling, some pretty interesting stuff.

 

This should be taken with a grain of salt. The notes attached to this statement make it clear that the presumption that our age is the First Age has its underpinings on Thom Merrilin's statement in 'The Shadow Rising" that the oldest tales he knew (of Musk and merk, Elsbet, Anla, an Lenn) were from the age before the Age of Legends). Since Thom had spent several pages graphicly explaining why what they knew of ancient history was likely to have very little relation to the real facts of that history, his statement that those stories came from the age immediately prior to the Age of Legends should be viewed with a jaundiced eye.

 

Moreover, as a the following note from the site shows RJ can also be said to have said that our age was not the First Age:

 

In one of the Questions of the Week at the Tor web site Jordan suggests that channeling was first discovered at the end of the First Age, but he also states that channeling did not exist in our Age. This would seem to conflict with the placement of ancient tales involving our time being in the First Age, unless these tales were already ancient by the time of the First Age. The passage from The Shadow Rising (chapter 20) says that these tales are from the Age before the Age of Legends, which is the Second Age, and not simply any Age from before the Age of Legends.

 

 

[ROB_88]

The AoL world looks like our world does now (throwing in a few thousand years of contental drift). We are living in the first age afterall.

 

Not really, not at all. Only resemblence to their world and ours is that Randland might generally be said to be Europe and Seanchen to be the Americas. However, serious problems exist in this theory, as in Africa seems to have been totally swallowed-up by the oceans.

 

your thinking to far ahead, what we see in the map in the books is what it's like after the Breaking, it could be very possible that the AOL world looks like what our map with a few millenias of drift.

however i do think it's not that similar, we do have to count in various natural disasters lime floods, and volcano eruptions plus earhtquakes either sinking or raising some land.

and maybe, just maybe some small Power-related accidents when it is first discovered.

[Angel of Death]

Musk and merk are Russia (or Moscow) and America, there spears of fire that reahc around the world are missles.