obviously rj had a reason when he named present randland time as the third age - either he actually thought of it as the third age (making it so) or he just happened to like the number 3 and wanted to mess with us about what age it really was. i'm going to assume that this really is the third age from here on out...

the first age was presumably similar to current times without the threat of the d.o. and trollocs et al. people farmed, channelers existed and the whole world was on the brink (then, of greatness and creativity (A.o.L.), now, of disaster). these two ages (1st and 3rd) mirror each other reasonably well, but in order for humanity to be at it's current point and exist for another 12-15 thousand years only to get back to where it is now, some sort of catastrophe is going to have to happen. obviously, the last battle qualifies as an enormous catastrophe, but if the breaking of the world, which lasted a few hundred years, can be relatively forgotten in under 3000 years, then the last battle, which will presumably take place in under a year, has to either be so cataclysmic that one of the heroes will be lucky to be left standing (or that one breeding pair will be in the same general part of the world) or it will have to be disruptive in another way.

we don't have too much to go on about what the other options are, we know that at some point in the past, men ran with wolves, which invokes a caveman-esque image. from this one point we can infer that humans may lose their humanity, i.e. rand's last action after sealing up the d.o. would be to erase conscious thought from all humans. i find it unlikely that if a significant number of people survive the last battle that they'll go along building, farming, reproducing as they had before, and that it would take them 12,000 years to reach the age of legends glory. something disruptive will have to occur that dials humans' conscious advancement back a few hundred centuries.

we also have the aiel's 'a remnant of a remnant shall he save' prophesy. the current aiel are the first part of the remnant (as they are remnants of the A.o.L. aiel), but some of them will have to be saved as well. but for what purpose? what purpose will saving any aiel serve?

also, we know that the d.o. is completely sealed by the 2nd age. 12,000 seems like a reasonable amount of time to forget the great overlord, but since the printing press currently exists, i doubt that he/it would have been forgotten. we can still cite things that happened china before 2000 bce and i doubt that if the great evil had be sealed away then that we wouldn't still know about it now. and they didn't even have the help of the printing press to keep the story alive (yes i know there is a 10,000 year gap here, but since we haven't been organized into societies for that long....just let it be).

anyway, i'll try to wrap this up. points:

- a lot of time has to pass before humanity comes back to pretty much where it is today, meaning that something extremely disruptive needs to happen.

- disruptive can mean many things (or many combinations of thing): plague, mass chaos/near extinction of humans, mass loss of memory/conscious thought, etc.

- a catastrophic war, unless it destroys everything except for a few hundred breeding pairs of humans, would not be enough to set humankind back 12,000 years (but a remnant, of at least the aiel, will be saved).

- radical solution: humans lose their intelligent thought function and slowly begin to revert back to primal man....

what do youse all think about the state of the world post-TG?

i am not sure if this will generate any discussion, but i felt like posting something and i actually did for once. cheers and big ears y'all.