Age of the (Fictional) Earth?

[Mindfire]

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.

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.

 

[Nihal]

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.