# Age of the (Fictional) Earth?



## Mindfire (Jan 19, 2013)

This thread is NOT about science or theology. Just to be clear.

Presently I'm trying to decide whether to set my big historical epochs in the context of centuries or millennia. If I go for an older earth, that leaves a lot of room for myths and legends and forgotten truths and ancient kingdoms. All that fictional history stuff that's fun to write about. But it also might mean there's a lot of "dead space" between the big historical/mythical events where nothing much happens. By contrast, if I set big events within centuries, there's not a lot of room for anything to _become_ legendary or forgotten. You see what I mean?

Which is the better path? Go for the grander timescale and risk historical dry patches, or go for a more densely packed timeline and risk making the world feel small and losing that epic feel?


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## Phietadix (Jan 19, 2013)

What! No scientific debate? Bummer.

Anyway I'd go with Milennia, Assuming this is all back story or set during the big events, why does it matter if there is 'dead space'?


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## Mindfire (Jan 19, 2013)

Phietadix said:


> What! No scientific debate? Bummer.
> 
> Anyway I'd go with Milennia, Assuming this is all back story or set during the big events, why does it matter if there is 'dead space'?



Idk. There's just something about seeing huge blank spaces in the timeline that bothers me a bit. It makes the world seem shallow somehow. I suppose I could always chuck in some filler like "and Whoever begat Suchandsuch, who reigned for X years and begat Whatsisface", but that's just tedious. Something was always happening in Middle Earth despite its thousands of years of existence. I don't know how Tolkien managed it.


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## Phietadix (Jan 19, 2013)

Assuming this world is bigger than two cities there will always be a war, or something remotly interestign happening. Our world as existed at LEAST a few milennia, there's no debate about that, Do you see big blank spaces in our history?


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## Alcatas (Jan 20, 2013)

^ Well, Earth is definitely older than a few thousand years. Human civilization alone is already ~9000 years old if I remember correctly (11,000 if you take the oldest founding date of the Norte Chico civ).

As for gaps in the timeline, it's entirely plausible to have dead periods when we're looking at a region. But if you're looking at the whole world, I don't think there should be too many big gaps in the timeline.


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## Phietadix (Jan 20, 2013)

Don't get started on the age of our world, It specifically stated NOT to in the original post.


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## Alcatas (Jan 20, 2013)

The OP specifically mentioned science and theology, and I don't think anything I said ventured into that realm. I simply stated a few historical facts :/ 

In any case, I was just to using the history of human civilization to illustrate that it is possible for local regions to not have anything happening at any given time, but that somewhere else in the world there should be.


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## Phietadix (Jan 20, 2013)

'Facts' 

But anyway I did agree with your main point.


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## Mindfire (Jan 20, 2013)

Alcatas said:


> The OP specifically mentioned science and theology, and I don't think anything I said ventured into that realm. I simply stated a few historical facts :/
> 
> In any case, I was just to using the history of human civilization to illustrate that it is possible for local regions to not have anything happening at any given time, but that somewhere else in the world there should be.



Well please try to avoid any statements of fact that may lead to the kind of debate I mentioned. 

As to the rest, I see your point. The world is big enough that there should be something happening, but then _what is it?_ I know a couple of my countries have a habit of cyclically invading these other countries only to be pushed back. So that should fill some gaps. But the rest of it?


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## Steerpike (Jan 20, 2013)

Guys, we have moderators who watch the threads in these forums. If comments deviate from site rules and no one has appeared to notice it, please PM one of the moderators or otherwise report the threads. Apart from those discussions prohibited by rules, Mythic Scribes seems to me to support a pretty free and open style of communication. This includes posts that may tend to deviate from the original topic of the thread and into other interesting areas of discussion. Moderators also watch that to make sure things don't deviate too far or that the discussion doesn't devolve into something it shouldn't be. I don't think it sets a good tone in any forum for members to be telling each other what they can and can't talk about. Also, it is important to keep in mind that in a forum where there is a free-flow of opinion between many members, the fact that one person starts a thread does not mean that person dictates all discussion that occurs in the thread. These discussions grow organically, as they should. If you think something is a problem, please PM a moderator or the site admin rather than taking it upon yourself to decide what another member should or should not be able to say. The ultimate arbiter of the rules is Black Dragon. I believe, however, he wants a forum that is welcoming and invites discussion, and given the sheer number of members the site has I think one can easily see how quickly things would appear to be uninviting if every member took it upon himself or herself to tell other members what they can or cannot say. 

Thanks!

:grouphug:


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## ThinkerX (Jan 20, 2013)

> As to the rest, I see your point. The world is big enough that there should be something happening, but then what is it? I know a couple of my countries have a habit of cyclically invading these other countries only to be pushed back. So that should fill some gaps. But the rest of it?



I say go with the longer approach.

First, people don't stay put.  You got long term migrations from one part of the world to another, brought on by everything from overpopulation to crop failure.  This doesn't even have to be violent invasion type stuff.  (One of my irks with many published fantasy worlds is the way populaces just 'stay put' for millenia without peacable or otherwise immigration /emmigration)

Second, you got weird climatic shifts - say a thirty year drought which crippled the affected countries for most of a hundred years, or a mini ice age in a part of the world.  Maybe a really big volcanic eruption which literally darkens the skies world wide for a year or two, possibly causing various cults to conclude some apocalyptic prophecy has been fulfilled, leading to social turmoil.

Then you have 'forgotten age of exploration' type stuff - comparable say, to the oriental fleets of the 15th (?) century, which went as far as Africa and possibly even North America only to have the whole effort shut down. Maybe in your world they left some calling cards, dropped off some colonists, or made lasting local impressions.  Purely local areas of high tech development would work as well - the engineers of an isolated city state invent steam engines, or start mucking around with hot air balloons and gliders, for example.

Plus, a longer timeline gives you wiggle room for the stuff you *WILL* be inserting later on.


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## Anders Ã„mting (Jan 20, 2013)

Mindfire said:


> This thread is NOT about science or theology. Just to be clear.
> 
> Presently I'm trying to decide whether to set my big historical epochs in the context of centuries or millennia. If I go for an older earth, that leaves a lot of room for myths and legends and forgotten truths and ancient kingdoms. All that fictional history stuff that's fun to write about. But it also might mean there's a lot of "dead space" between the big historical/mythical events where nothing much happens. By contrast, if I set big events within centuries, there's not a lot of room for anything to _become_ legendary or forgotten. You see what I mean?
> 
> Which is the better path? Go for the grander timescale and risk historical dry patches, or go for a more densely packed timeline and risk making the world feel small and losing that epic feel?



So, wait, does this actually have anything to do with the creation of your world, or are you just trying to establish how far back recorded history goes? It doesn't seem like exact age of the world is the issue here.

I'd say look at actual human history and use it as a standard. Say, a couple of thousand years of recorded history. (A lot of fantasy authors don't seem to understand how long a thousand years actually is.) Anything before that is "some time after the world was created", or maybe even some crazy dream age where normal time measuring units don't apply.

And keep in mind that blank parts of the timeline doesn't need to mean nothing interesting happened there, just that nobody knows for sure what happened there, because the records got lost in a fire, or because that one crazy emperor killed all the scholars and historians so that history would start with him.


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## Mindfire (Jan 20, 2013)

Anders Ã„mting said:


> So, wait, does this actually have anything to do with the creation of your world, or are you just trying to establish how far back recorded history goes? It doesn't seem like exact age of the world is the issue here.
> 
> I'd say look at actual human history and use it as a standard. Say, a couple of thousand years of recorded history. (A lot of fantasy authors don't seem to understand how long a thousand years actually is.) Anything before that is "some time after the world was created", or maybe even some crazy dream age where normal time measuring units don't apply.
> 
> And keep in mind that blank parts of the timeline doesn't need to mean nothing interesting happened there, just that nobody knows for sure what happened there, because the records got lost in a fire, or because that one crazy emperor killed all the scholars and historians so that history would start with him.



I like that last part. I think I might write it in. xD


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## Penpilot (Jan 20, 2013)

Mindfire said:


> Which is the better path? Go for the grander timescale and risk historical dry patches, or go for a more densely packed timeline and risk making the world feel small and losing that epic feel?



Fiction is just life with all the boring bits taken out. I think the long history will give you the best bang.


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## ThinkerX (Jan 20, 2013)

If it is any consolation, we beginners are not the only ones who wrestle with this.

For the past few months, George RR Martin, author of 'Game of Thrones', has been noting in his blog that writing 'fake history' for that world is consuming more and more of his time.  Some of this 'fake history' is 'approaching novella length'.  This from a guy who who's turned out a major blockbuster work which is now a television series AND who has no less than three personal assistants to help with the mundane stuff. 

Likewise, Feist wrote a comment about his 'Servant of the Empire' series (part of the 'Riftwar corpus) to the effect that while Kelewan seemed well developed, much of it was actually a 'false front' - his notes for that world pretty much didn't include anything past what went into the books.


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## Chilari (Jan 21, 2013)

Pick a country, any country. Look at its history. Say, Turkey. There are settlements there going back to 9000BC, there was Troy in the northwest corner that was part of the famous battle with the Greeks, there was the Hittite empire which was at war with Egypt for a long time, it was part of the Persian empire, parts were taken over by the Romans, then it was home of the Ottoman empire and so on. That's just a very basic brush over its history. Look into it and there's loads more. And that's just one country.

You can easily fit in huge amounts of history into a couple of millennia. Wars, invasions, being controlled by various different empires, regaining freedom, setting up governments, governments crumbling. Another example: Greece. Parts of it picked up agriculture fairly early, and once sea-going vessels had been developed there was a lot of trade with various other states within Greece, on the islands and around the Mediterranean. Wars between cities, cities sending out colonies - say Corinth, which send out two colonies to Syracuse (on Sicily) and Corcyra (Corfu) in the 8th century BC, was ruled by oligarchs and then tyrants before returning to oligarchy; was a huge trading power until Athens took control of trade to the east, was important in the Greco-Persian wars because it had one of the biggest navies, basically caused the Peloponnesian War to start and then after the Spartans won switched alleigances and rebelled against them. It was captured by Philip of Macedon (Alexander the Great's dad), rebelled against Alexander's successors, became part of the Achaean League which asked the new Hellenistic power Rome for a bit of help against the Macedonians, before telling Rome to go home now and realising too late - with Corinth's destruction - that the Romans were actually more powerful than they realised. Corinth was refounded as a colony, became Greece's foremost city and even had a mint, was visited by Roman emperors both before and during their rules, became part of the Eastern Roman Empire when things split - the Byzantine empire later. Destroyed by an earthquake. fell into the hands of Frankish nobles, who built a castle, and later captured by Ottoman invaders, and ultimately threw off that yoke along with the rest of Greece in 1833.

Three thousand years of history at one city summed up there. Dig deeper and there's plenty more to find. If one city can have that depth of history, you can bet a whole world can.

In fact that's exactly what I'm trying to do at the moment: build up a world with thousands of years of history. I'm starting with one city and expanding from there. So far I've not got much - an early rivalry with a neighbour, a huge walled area encompassing not just the settlements but also farmland, a war with said rival that results in huge loss of life, a truce, growth through trade, ultimately taking over the territory of the old rival, now far smallers. The walls falling into disrepair because the greatest danger now is from the sea, not the land. The walls being robbed of stone to build sea defences, palaces and temples, and later roads to allow faster travel of pilgrims visiting a new sacred site. Graves left forgotten and overgrown after an ideological shift to cremation, believed infested by ghosts by those who remember what the stones mark. Changes in government, loss of trade as a result of the port getting silted up, wars over tin mines at the edges of their territory, etc.

Go for the longer history. You can fill in gaps later if you don't have enough material, but if you have the history visible in the landscape - a town built up around a gate that still stands in a wall that's long gone, and the same stone used in ancient sea-front fortresses to use one example I'm using - then what the history behind that is doesn't necessarily matter, because you've shown that there is a history and don't necessarily need to spell out what that history was.


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## Jess A (Jan 21, 2013)

Long histories are great. I may not mention much in the novel (unless necessary; otherwise I'd bore the hell out of my readers), but having the context of the history is hugely important for me. It helps me sort out culture and attitudes towards other cultures, even the way they dress or the in-fighting between noble houses. It creates myths and legends, too. For instance, a character was named after a great warrior who started the royal line of one culture.


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## Jamber (Jan 22, 2013)

If writing over a long period of time, you could always throw in some 'Dark Ages'... Periods when not much is known, the history goes blank, etc. That way there's no need to record every historical element, but only a broad-brushstroke sense of what kind of period it was.

I quite enjoyed in Anne McCaffrey's books the way knowledge was forgotten between epochs.

Jamber


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## mbartelsm (Jan 22, 2013)

Millenia, I really like those stories of the forgottn pasts, ancient kingdoms and heroes. However, that doesn't stop you from adding wars, and important events in the recent past, it's a bit more of work, but I think it's woth it


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## Zero Angel (Jan 23, 2013)

It seems like everyone here is going with the long history, and I have to admit that is the one that I am partial to as well. 

To question you a little though, are you going to make the timeline publicly available? Because as long as it exists in your notes you can leave blank spots to be filled in as you need them--or as others mentioned, have the histories be lost in some manner. 

I have a ~30 billion year timeline for War of the Ages and I definitely have not filled in most of the details. I've settled for filling in major cataclysms, creations of universes and joinings of those universes, and anything else that I feel like including. 

Another thing to consider is the lifespan of your different races. If you have elf creatures that live for more than 100 years regularly, then you need to re-consider how long things last. Whereas a human city that's lasted for 100 years might seem like a lot to the humans, it would still be a "new" city to elves that live for 1000 years or more.

In WotA, my elves live to be around 1000, but I don't have any upper limit for dragons or demons and there are a few that number their lives in the millions of years and some super-legendary ones that are in the billions. And if the magick of a creature of *any* race is powerful enough, then there is a good chance that they will far outpace the normal lifespan of their species (for instance, the hume "gods" are around ~30000 years old).


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## Mindfire (Jan 23, 2013)

Zero Angel said:


> It seems like everyone here is going with the long history, and I have to admit that is the one that I am partial to as well.
> 
> To question you a little though, are you going to make the timeline publicly available? Because as long as it exists in your notes you can leave blank spots to be filled in as you need them--or as others mentioned, have the histories be lost in some manner.



If I ever do make the timeline publicly available, it'll be a long time from now, so let's go with no. It's staying in my notes for the foreseeable future. I don't even have an official "timeline" drawn out yet, just a fairly vague order of events.



Zero Angel said:


> Another thing to consider is the lifespan of your different races. If you have elf creatures that live for more than 100 years regularly, then you need to re-consider how long things last. Whereas a human city that's lasted for 100 years might seem like a lot to the humans, it would still be a "new" city to elves that live for 1000 years or more.
> 
> In WotA, my elves live to be around 1000, but I don't have any upper limit for dragons or demons and there are a few that number their lives in the millions of years and some super-legendary ones that are in the billions. And if the magick of a creature of *any* race is powerful enough, then there is a good chance that they will far outpace the normal lifespan of their species (for instance, the hume "gods" are around ~30000 years old).



I don't have any races that can live that long, at least not on Vard, the main continent where my WIP takes place. The Dryads of Heddas are theoretically immortal since they're, well, trees. But they don't feature in any of the stories I'm currently working on and I'm not even sure what I'd do with them yet so even their existence is a bit of a grey area. Now, some human cultures are more long-lived than others because they have received divine gifts that, along with the ability to use magic, grant extended longevity. But I don't think I'll make them live too much longer than normal. Certainly not 1000 years. Maybe their average lifespan is in the high 90s, with the max in the 120's. For comparison, "ordinary" human cultures have an average lifespan in the high 60's to low 70's with a max at about 90, so that's a difference of ~30 years. Bear in mind that this estimation completely ignores environmental hazard like famine, disease, or giant tigers trying to maul your face.


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## Nihal (Jan 28, 2013)

I guess we often forget that the human memory is somehow... extremely short. Your world can be really old but the recorded history recent.

When I was a child I used to think that there were no more wars on the world and neither would another happen, because it was a thing of the (rather dark) past and nowaday people were more knowledgeable. Such a naive child uh?

I'm just conjecturing, but I guess that is why the things are quickly forgotten or regarded as something from the obscure past. If an event isn't reinforced through the time to the new generations it's quickly forgotten, because those new generations didn't live it. Who is going to reinforce the memories of, for example, a dictatorship for their children?

Now, fantasy worlds... they often have this epic flavour and what is more epic than huge spans of time? Also, as Zero Angel pointed out the lifetime of your races plays a big role in this decision. I would stick with unrecorded story of the old, some intentional blank spots (dark ages of some sort) that can be filled later and migratory movements, plagues, wars to fill other gaps. I found out that drawing a map for my world was really helpful to flesh out this kind of information.


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