The World Sea

[RobertAlexWillis]

I go further abroad than the US for sources and discussion (thank heaven), and you're right it is generally accepted worldwide. I don't subscribe to theories based on their acceptance by others (which I bet you'd NEVER have guessed).

 

In all likelihood, Jordan does believe in evolution. That said, the clues he's implanted don't seem to indicate it in the Wheel, at least to me. Perhaps in your very apt example of kalpas, full cycles of evolution are only found on the initial spiral "levels".

[Guest Majsju]

Thinking about it, there is a very easy way to include evolution in RJ's world. Obviously there must have been some time between the creation of the world and the start of the Wheel, since the actual creation can not be a part of the 7 Ages in the Wheels turning. So the easiest way to solve the problem with evolutions is to have the Wheel start once the Creator thinks that evolution has gone far enough. A point where humans have evolved so far that they have become a species completely separated from apes, and probably have begun the process of building a society. Lets say around the time the river societies started in our history, around 5000 BMT. Once that point is reached, the Wheel kicks in. The initial starting point of the Wheel has humanity at a level developed far enough that a return there fits within the normal turnings of the Wheel, so that it is not a beginning anymore.

[Luckers]

I read a rather interesting theory that deals with the idea that the Creator bent reality into a wheel from its original state in order to deny access of the Dark One to it. Could sort of fit with this.

 

Thats a good point about kalpas Robert.

[hapazard]

Or why not take into account that some of the ages (e.g. the first) could well be very long. I think that a cyclic universe would explain it all pretty well.

 

Firsth age (sevral billion years)

-birth of universe

-creation of earth

-rise of humankind and technology

-the one power is discovered

-destruction

 

Second age (sevral thousand years)

-rise of a power wrought society.

-opening of the bore

-the war of power

-sealing of the dark one

-the breaking of the world

 

Third age (sevral thousand years)

-Mending of the bore

 

Fourth age ?

 

Fifth age ?

 

Sixth age ?

 

Seventh age ?

-The universe collapses into itself and end the world as we know it.

Firsth age

the universe rebounce and recreates itself.

 

And so forth in eternity.....

[Guest Majsju]

Hapazard, that theory looks nice written down, but it doesn't work with what we know. Since memories flows both ways in WOT, for example Rand being influenced by our myths, and our myths being influenced by Rand, there can not be a gap in the Wheel where there are no humans to pass those memories along.

 

I read a rather interesting theory that deals with the idea that the Creator bent reality into a wheel from its original state in order to deny access of the Dark One to it. Could sort of fit with this.

 

Indeed, and my idea works much better if you add the reasoning in this.

[hapazard]

No!

 

That doesn't work and I wil use an example to illustrate why.

 

Rats!

Today you can find rats just aboute anywhere on earth and in many places, as tropical islands, they wouldn't disappear even if we did.

 

Agree?

 

'couse if you do and you think that RJ have written the wheel of time to be our world. How do you explain that we didn't find any rats on those islands when we discoverd them?

 

The answer is that you can't without having a VERY big disaster, a disaster so big that it would surly anhiliate all humans.

[Guest Majsju]

Look at WOTs world map. Those tropical islands does not exist.

 

The face of the Earth is constantly changing, and the first to appear as well the first to disappear are islands. Volcanos, earthquakes and the sea rising due to global warming will make many of these islands disappear. With new turnings of the Wheel, other islands will appear in their place, islands not yet "discovered". (You seem to forget that a great deal of these islands were inhabited thousands of years before the Europeans accidently found their way there.)

 

And you make a flawed assumption regarding the great disaster. Even if 99.9% of humanity are annihilated, there will be a lot of people left. But remote tropical islands will belong to the part of the world that suffers the most, because they are exposed to more dangers than other parts of the world.

[hapazard]

Oh come on!

 

Look at the map, when I said remote tropical islands i meant islands like madagascar a chump of land that has remained apart from africa at least the last 60 million years. To kill all of the rats and other animals we (europeans) have brougth there the island eould have to sink into the sea!

 

And yes I know very well that most of these islands were inhabited pre to european exploration. But that misses the point as the natives who probably came there in small canoes didn't bring any rats.

[RobertAlexWillis]

Let me make sure I understand you here ....

 

 

If I understand you correctly, you're arguing that because there are parts of our world that did not have rats at some point in history, that the Wheel has to completely regress to near total entropy with each turning so that rats can re-evolve in some places, but not others, leaving some parts of the world rat free.

 

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okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay ....

 

There are ways for species to go extinct other than total world upheaval (see: Dodo). And there are DEFINITELY things that could kill off a particular species in certain areas of the world without decimating mankind irreparably.

 

Maj is totally right about the nature of islands, both in Randland and our lovely planet. They are environments in flux. And in many of those environments species come and go over time, and in much SMALLER times than the billions of years postulated for evolutionary development. Sorry, evolution is not implicit in the current turnings of the Wheel. Given what we know of memory and legend in Jordan's universe, then one of three options applies... 1) evolution as a one time deal when the Wheel started (Maj's straight time bent into a loop), 2) evolution as a phenomenon of early turnings in an ascending spiral (Lucker's kalpas) or 3) straight up creation without the necessity of evolution.

[Guest Majsju]

Sink in the ocean, or be thrown up on dry land by a bunch of channelers who have gone crazy.

 

Keep in mind that you don't have all the disasters we're dealing with in our world, you must add channeling to the equation as well.

 

For example, read FOH, where Asmodean points out that a part of the Spine of the World might very well have been a coastal town before the breaking.

 

This is after all fiction, you can't use our world as 100% evidence for eventual events in the world RJ has created.

[Sa Wasai]

So is Randland a sea bottom?

Asmodean pointed out the city on the mountain peak as a seaport (in the Jangai Pass) but there is another reference- Shayol Ghul used to be a tropical island and a tourist spot.(Sorry, can't remember which book.) After the Breaking it became the northern most end of the Blight. Also, Rand mentions finding a huge petrified fish in the Sand Hills in EotW. Was the Waste an inland sea drained in the Breaking? Was Randland a sea? Were they both seas with a chain of islands running north/south that became the Spine at the Breaking? Lews Therin blew himself up into Dragonmount, moved a river, and created the island later to be called Tar Valon. If he did that prior to the rise of the Spine of the World (or the draining of the Randland Sea) then Dragonmount and Tar Valon would have been created underwater and there wouldn't be a river channel to shove aside. DM and TV don't look to be high ground.

 

Is Paaran Disen and Shayol Ghul the same place? Seems that the Dark One would be strongest at the Bore.

 

I'm not discounting the possibility that spin and tilt were altered during the Breaking. The "red star" on the eastern horizon mentioned in EotW might be used to determine position and time. I can't remember how to calculate precession and celestial shift.

 

 

I'm just throwing a bunch of loose ideas out- no cohesive theory as to how it all fits together.

 

 

(Never eat a handful of chocolate covered espresso beans and then wash them down with a Red Bull)

[yolindamo]

That last is good advice...

 

Anyway, Don't forget the difference between Macro and Micro Evolution. One is theory, the other is scientifically proven. Also, there is always the possiblity of de-evolution or apocolyptic events which would create the cyclical nature of existance created by the Wheel even if evolution is in the mix.

 

So, here is what I think, our world is supposed to be an Age on the Wheel of Time. Because the Wheel "turns" and Ages both "come and go" we are both before and after Randland time. Both Ages feed each other.

 

And of course the landscape is different. That was the whole outcome of the Breaking. It completely changed the nature of the land. Something of that nature theorectially would occur at the end of each Age.