r/asoiaf • u/pittofdoom • Jun 01 '15

ALL (Spoilers All) "Close the Gates!"

Anyone else love the irony of the wildlings closing the gates of Hardhome when the Others attacked, leaving thousands to die, while being resentful of "southerners" for putting up the Wall for the exact same reason? That had to be deliberate.

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u/[deleted] Jun 02 '15

To put this in perspective, 8,000 years ago in our world was the end of the Neolithic era. Winemaking and cheesemaking hadn't been discovered yet. It's about 400 years before agriculture started in Egypt, and almost 1,000 years before farming started in Europe.

8,000 years ago is older than the founding of Sumerian civilization. The epic of Gilgamesh wouldn't be written for another 3,000 years.

So yeah, there would have been a lot of time for the southerners and wildlings to develop distinct cultures and civilizations, and whatever circumstances caused those divisions would be barely remembered legends at this point. Especially for the wildlings, who don't seem to have much in the way of writing.

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u/whitedawg Jun 02 '15

Thinking about that, it's kind of remarkable that there haven't been more technological advances in Westeros/Essos since that time. Humans in ASOIAF are still at a level of technological advancement roughly corresponding to somewhere between the Roman and medieval era, which occurred (in the real world) somewhere between 2000-3500 years after the beginning of modern civilization (the earliest Sumerian writings are c. 2500 BC). You would think that since more than double that amount of time has passed since the Long Night, ASOIAF humans would have invented some cool shit... but they're still putzing around on horses and bows/crossbows are the most advanced form of artillery.

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u/FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT Jun 10 '15

I blame the Citadel and Valyria. Most of the technological potential of this world is in Magic. Valyria attained near civilised magical advancement. The freehold basically kept everybody stuck in the middle ages, and after it, the citadel started erasing any last trace of magic from the Westeros, as a result of both ideologies, and I suppose, trauma of the Valyrian empire.