.... because people have remnants from the age before and bits and pieces of information and artefacts from the age before that or maybe older but the washing out of memories have passed the point where they can tell for sure. Beyond the Age of Legends, everything is more or less perceived as being from a mythic "first age", especially that no character could be certain when the Portal Stones (the few who know of them and the fewer still who know they're not from the AOL), the Horn or Valere and company are from. There remains only scraps from earlier ages - that in one humanity ran with animals (that'd be like prehistory), that in one the world was covered with ice, that there was an age with huge wars (this might well be our own - it seems RJ meant our age to end in a nuclear war between the two giants Merk and Mosk, ie: the USA and the USSR) and an age of peace (the AOL) and so on. Most common folk would overlook the scraps of ealier ages and commonly think of the present Age as the third. The fact we know humans will decide that the "fourth age" has started with victory at TG by the end of the series indicates there won't be big enough a cataclysm this time around to make knowledge of the three earlier ages disappear. Not only that, but the cosmology apparently survives intact for at least one more Age. The cataclysm that will empty the earth of man and change the continents massively must happen much later in the "timeline" - 2-3 ages from the end of the series. We'll never know anything about this, and part of the reason for it is that it doesn't fit with scientific knowledge and (to some people) with their religious beliefs on man's origins and therefore it works much better to leave the reader make up his or her own story.
We don't know what the people of the AOL perceived their own Age to be either. It's the Age in which the Wheel cosmology was developped, so maybe they had stuff to theorize or establish six Ages before their own. Typically, they probably perceived themselves as the pinnacle of human civilization, the last Age.
He was and didn't hide that. He said once he didn't try to make his cosmology scientifically accurate (he even joked "it's not real, you know". In his cosmology, there's no big bang and the sun is eternal. The Ages described in the series are some time beyond Prehistory and the Ice Age. We have to go with that as "the truth in RJ's universe" the same way the christian fringe is taking the creation myth of Genesis as real.
We don't know what the people of the AOL perceived their own Age to be either. It's the Age in which the Wheel cosmology was developped, so maybe they had stuff to theorize or establish six Ages before their own. Typically, they probably perceived themselves as the pinnacle of human civilization, the last Age.
either RJ was using certain liberties with our timeline
He was and didn't hide that. He said once he didn't try to make his cosmology scientifically accurate (he even joked "it's not real, you know". In his cosmology, there's no big bang and the sun is eternal. The Ages described in the series are some time beyond Prehistory and the Ice Age. We have to go with that as "the truth in RJ's universe" the same way the christian fringe is taking the creation myth of Genesis as real.
This message last edited by DomA on 22/04/2010 at 02:16:15 PM
thinking on the 4th-7th and 1st ages....
21/04/2010 10:32:38 PM
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I don't know that there could really be a first or last Age...
22/04/2010 07:48:11 AM
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Yeah, it's the "third age"...
22/04/2010 02:13:56 PM
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Difficult to see how you can refer to a billion people as a "fringe"... *NM*
22/04/2010 05:02:08 PM
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You really think half of all christians believe that Earth is only 3000 years old? *NM*
23/04/2010 12:35:01 AM
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Last I've heard, the majority of Christians weren't fundamentalists
23/04/2010 01:54:04 PM
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That's not entirely right
22/04/2010 03:54:23 PM
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I think FT is saying that human conceptions of time don't apply to eternity.
22/04/2010 04:14:45 PM
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However, I think RJ definitely had an idea, what each Age of the 7 Ages is supposed to be. *NM*
22/04/2010 09:53:20 PM
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I don't think so.
22/04/2010 09:57:43 PM
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No, the point is...
23/04/2010 10:06:03 AM
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Not sure what your point/question is. Doesn't seem like an issue to me quite frankly .
26/04/2010 04:45:21 PM
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Well, maybe.
22/04/2010 06:32:05 PM
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Doesn't make sense
22/04/2010 09:51:55 PM
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Why?
22/04/2010 11:16:21 PM
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The question isn't if it would be possible for the Creator...
23/04/2010 08:34:23 AM
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Yes, but as we also know from the cosmology of WoT...
23/04/2010 09:08:58 AM
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Yeah...
23/04/2010 10:03:19 AM
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Why must there have been such a thing?
23/04/2010 07:30:02 PM
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So, you believe there never was a first 1st Age? *NM*
24/04/2010 08:55:45 AM
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Yes and no...
24/04/2010 10:55:02 PM
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Don't think so, but might be an interesting question for BS! *NM*
25/04/2010 09:38:09 AM
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Re: thinking on the 4th-7th and 1st ages....
23/04/2010 04:15:49 AM
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Can't be...
23/04/2010 08:27:29 AM
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Yeah, but Loial apparently read a copy of The Lord of the Rings somewhere...
23/04/2010 09:11:00 AM
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It's reversed...
23/04/2010 10:10:56 AM
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I doubt it, I don't have the books with me right now...
23/04/2010 07:31:34 PM
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