May-18-2010, 07:51 AM (UTC)
Demise of the Elderlings Theory.
What exactly happened to the Elderlings, and for that matter the Dragons?
There are a lot of points of contention in my theory, so I've broken them down into numbered section to make discussions flow more smoothly. (I love arguing theories!)
1. Time Frame
What ever it was, it must have happened fairly quickly. Or at least, the majority of the damage was done in one fell swoop. I believe that the dragons and the Elderlings, at least in this local area, died out more or less simultaneously. otherwise, Elderlings from somewhere else along the river have freed the buried Dragon cases from Frengong. For that matter, presumably they would have been able to find Sea Serpents and lead them to the cocooning grounds along the Rain Wild River.
2. Was it Global warming?
The devastation that destroyed the Dragons and Elderlings seems to be relatively localized. We have definate evidence of sunken structures throughout the Pirate Isles. Sea Serpents recognize structures that they used to fly over underwater along the coast. The Skill Pillar on Others Island is knocked over and underwater. Presumably, neither of these things were true when the Elderlings built it.
On the other hand, a relatiely short distance north is the island of Aslevjal, where Elderling harbour structures are still at proper sea level. Although there is are a great deal of Elderling structures in the Six Duchies, none of them seem to be obviously at the wrong elevation. Even Kelsingra, with the exception of the missing chunk, is still pretty intact - not like Frengong or Cassarick.
3. Memory Stone is a Rare Commodity.
Others Island, in conjunction with the Serpent River (Rain Wild River) is the Dragons only nesting/cocooning ground. Dragons and Sea Serpents both have enormous home ranges. If there were a population of Dragons somewhere else in the world, they would have been apparent. Surely, they would have moved into the range vacated by the up-until-recently-extinct Cursed Shores dragons. Sea Serpents were almost mythical along the Cursed Shores until about ten years before the begining of the LST, so they too apparently range quite far. If there was another population of Sea Serpents in the world they would have encountered "our" Sea Serpents at some point.
I think that the reason there are only two cocooning grounds, both along the same river, is that the Memory Stone only comes from one place - namely, the area including Kelsingra, the Stone Dragon Garden, and Verity's Quarry. Dragons need this stuff to cocoon, and this river, whose headwaters are presumably near the source of this stone, is the only place where one can find Memory Sand.
(Aside: Memory Stone is black streaked with silver. Skill Water is also silver, and is found in the same place as memory stone. The two must be related. Either the Skill water is dissolved Memory Stone Silver Stuff, of the Memory Stone has picked up flecks of pure skill from contact with the Skill Water. I haven't decided which yet.)
4. Underwater Ruins
Either the land sank, or the sea rose. I think it's the land sank, mostly because land in other parts of the world (Aslevjal, as mentioned before) hasn't sunk. If the ocean rose, presumably all of it would rise. Also, there are changes in the Rain Wilds topography that could be best explained by large scale land subsidence. The Rain Wild River was once a more or less straight, deep, clear river travelling through a wide valley. Now, it's a wide, shallow, meandering river with a myriad of tributaries, where the land in between said tributaries is decidedly swampy.
Rivers flow toward the ocean (or a big lake, or to where they peter out in the desert, or to another river, etc) along a particular curve. If the land rises, as in the case of the canyons along the Colorado River, a canyon is formed as the river erodes down to its natural level. On the other hand, if the land subsides, the river suddenly loses its momentum in its path toward its delta. It will form meanders, or spread out into a lake or a swamp, like the Rain Wild River. For that matter, like the large shallow lake/marsh Thymara and co. encounter on the way to Kelsingra. Ruins are found below the surface of this lake, so it was presumably once a low-lying plain bordering on a river of smaller lake. Tintaglia also states that the Serpent River, which borders Kelsingra, is much shallower than it used to be when she attempts to land in it and nearly cripples herself. Land subsidence can cause a river to broaden and become shallower.
5. The Missing Piece
There's a chunk missing from Kelsingra, but the rest of the city seems to be mostly intact. This is a little harder to explain. I don't think it is a meteor, because large meteor strikes are incredibly violent and it seems unlikely that relatively fragile structures like the map tower would have survived that. Admittedly, it seems unlikely that anything sufficiently violent to knock out a chunk of the city could possibly have left the rest of the city so intact. Also worth mentioning is the fact that the Serpent River near Kelsingra, although shallow, actually still has cut banks. So, although it has changed, it hasn't changed as much as the rest of the river/swamp system.
6. Lahars and such.
The big flood in DH is probably a Lahar, a volcanic mudslide that occurs when volcanic eruptions melt mountaintop glaciers. These things are extremely dangerous, can travel at speeds of 60 kph over a distance of 300 kilometers, and have arguably claimed the most lives in volcano-related natural disasters because of the enormous distance they can cover. A Lahar 300 km from its source can still be quite deadly. Usually these are more mud than water, but I think we can grant Ms. Hobb some poetic lisence here. Anyway, this means that the volcanic eruption that caused this flood (backed up by the earthquake and sooty rain that foreran it) could have happened quite far away, or been fairly nearby. The nearly flat nature of the Rain Wilds means that the lahar would not have travelled very fast, by giant raging doom flood standards.
7. So, where are you going with this, Lord Punctual?
I think that there was a period of increased Geological volatility in the time of the Elderlings. This would have been a much more massive eruption, and possibly also from a closer volcano, than the one that happened in DH. By the way, I think that this volcano is in the opposite directions from Kettricken's Mountains.
I think that this volcano was formed initially as a result of block faulting in the area - meaning that large blocks of land are vertically offset from one another. This is why the Mountains give way so sharply to the broad plain where Kelsingra is located.
When the volcano errupted, it erupted massively, emptying its magma chambre. This caused the already unstable land to subside substantially. Most of the rain wilds subsided as one large piece, however smaller isolated sections dropped even further, explaining the chunk that is missing from Kelsingra.
Prevailing wind currents kept the city of Kelsingra from being burried in ash. Frengong and Cassarick weren't so lucky. In DK, prevailing winds carried volcanic ask downriver where it landed on tarman's decks. "Dirty Rain" isn't uncommon in the Rain Wilds, but no-one who visits Kelsingra ever comments on there being ash all over the place. Back in the day, these same winds carried ash down the former course of the Serpent River, beginning to bury the cities along the river in ash.
8. How did Frengong and Cassarick get burried, and why are all the tributaries of the Rain River acidic if the acid comes from that distant volcano?
The Elderlings who lived in Frengong saw what was happening. Frengong had the primary cocooning ground, and most of the dragon cases were there. The Elderlings dragged the cases inside, ironically into the same room where Elderling Oldsters gathered to make Memory-Stone Dragons, thinking that eventually the sunlight coming in through the sky-light would prompt the dragons to emerge, and they would be able to walk out through the room's large doors.
Unfortunately, shortly thereafter the rest of the disaster happened. Much like the Lahar in DH, a flood rushed down the now flatter valley, carrying debris, sediment, and more ash-mud with it to bury the two cities entirely. This initial flood tract eventually became the "other river" at the junction where Tarman ran aground in DH - the milky white, acidic, volcanic meltwater river that is the source of the acid in the Rain Wild River. This flood inundated the entire sunken valley with sulphuric acid tinged water, which is why all of the tributaries that Tarman passed, except the one that eventually led to Kelsingra, were acid as well. They all drained from the same acid-contaminated basin.
9. So, what about Kelsingra?
Because of the turmoil along the former Serpent River, the Kelsingrans were more or less cut off from the outside world. This would not have been such a problem, except for the "missing chunk." I believe that this is a small block fault that subsided more than the rest of the city. In Kelsingra, the Silver Skill Water underlies the regular ground water. When this chunk fell, it exposed the Silver Water to the river water, as the river water flooded in and claimed the sunken section of the city. This means that the river water became contaminated with the Skill Water, which is deadly to regular humans and dangerous to Elderlings. I think the river was probably the main source of water for the city, because they would have the be incredibly careful when drilling their wells not to accidentally dip too deep and come up with Skill Water. With the River contaminated, I think the Elderlings died off from poisoning, or else abandoned the city with the help of their Dragon friends (and skill pillars) upon realising that it was no longer liveable. Sadly, the regular humans who lived there were almost certainly unable to escape using either of those means, and died, trapped.
10. What about the dragons?
I think it probably took quite a long time for the Rain Wilds area to stabilize enough to expose the cocooning grounds at Cassrick. Even in "present day" it took a lot of humans building locks and staircases to get the serpents up the river. In the time of geological upheaval and presumably society collapse, it would have been downright impossible. I think that for a time, Dragons went on mating and laying eggs - which is why we still have sea serpents and Others, but not Dragons. It's not that they're longer lived, but the latest laid dragon eggs would have yielded serpents, and Others, that were significantly younger than the dragons that laid those eggs. The Sea Serpents in LST were at the end of their life spans. They are most likely members of the very last generation of dragon offspring - hatched from eggs laid well after the actual disaster.
The same would be true of the Others. Perhaps the reason that there seem to be so many of them is that Dragons began to become rather desperate toward the end and began to pal around with humans more than they would have under other circumstances. (No pun intended.)
11. And the rest of the Elderlings?
The Elderlings seem to have cities all around the world. Elderlings have great difficulty reproducing. I think that the largest increase to their numbers probably comes from Dragons sculpting more Elderlings, not from Elderlings having little Elderlings of their own. Without Dragons to bolster their numbers (and for that matter, support their societies) they probably disappeared through a combination of dying out, and marrying into the much larger regular human population. It also should be said that Kelsingra was the administrative capital of the Elderling civilization. It's pretty hard for a society to accomplish anything after it has lost its administrative capital, even without considering the natural disaster and the loss of the Dragons cocooning grounds.
12. And I think that's it. A lot of these points need backing up with book references, I know, and I'll get to that soon, I promise. I was just kinda anxious to get my crazy theory out there and see what everyone thought of it.
What exactly happened to the Elderlings, and for that matter the Dragons?
There are a lot of points of contention in my theory, so I've broken them down into numbered section to make discussions flow more smoothly. (I love arguing theories!)
1. Time Frame
What ever it was, it must have happened fairly quickly. Or at least, the majority of the damage was done in one fell swoop. I believe that the dragons and the Elderlings, at least in this local area, died out more or less simultaneously. otherwise, Elderlings from somewhere else along the river have freed the buried Dragon cases from Frengong. For that matter, presumably they would have been able to find Sea Serpents and lead them to the cocooning grounds along the Rain Wild River.
2. Was it Global warming?
The devastation that destroyed the Dragons and Elderlings seems to be relatively localized. We have definate evidence of sunken structures throughout the Pirate Isles. Sea Serpents recognize structures that they used to fly over underwater along the coast. The Skill Pillar on Others Island is knocked over and underwater. Presumably, neither of these things were true when the Elderlings built it.
On the other hand, a relatiely short distance north is the island of Aslevjal, where Elderling harbour structures are still at proper sea level. Although there is are a great deal of Elderling structures in the Six Duchies, none of them seem to be obviously at the wrong elevation. Even Kelsingra, with the exception of the missing chunk, is still pretty intact - not like Frengong or Cassarick.
3. Memory Stone is a Rare Commodity.
Others Island, in conjunction with the Serpent River (Rain Wild River) is the Dragons only nesting/cocooning ground. Dragons and Sea Serpents both have enormous home ranges. If there were a population of Dragons somewhere else in the world, they would have been apparent. Surely, they would have moved into the range vacated by the up-until-recently-extinct Cursed Shores dragons. Sea Serpents were almost mythical along the Cursed Shores until about ten years before the begining of the LST, so they too apparently range quite far. If there was another population of Sea Serpents in the world they would have encountered "our" Sea Serpents at some point.
I think that the reason there are only two cocooning grounds, both along the same river, is that the Memory Stone only comes from one place - namely, the area including Kelsingra, the Stone Dragon Garden, and Verity's Quarry. Dragons need this stuff to cocoon, and this river, whose headwaters are presumably near the source of this stone, is the only place where one can find Memory Sand.
(Aside: Memory Stone is black streaked with silver. Skill Water is also silver, and is found in the same place as memory stone. The two must be related. Either the Skill water is dissolved Memory Stone Silver Stuff, of the Memory Stone has picked up flecks of pure skill from contact with the Skill Water. I haven't decided which yet.)
4. Underwater Ruins
Either the land sank, or the sea rose. I think it's the land sank, mostly because land in other parts of the world (Aslevjal, as mentioned before) hasn't sunk. If the ocean rose, presumably all of it would rise. Also, there are changes in the Rain Wilds topography that could be best explained by large scale land subsidence. The Rain Wild River was once a more or less straight, deep, clear river travelling through a wide valley. Now, it's a wide, shallow, meandering river with a myriad of tributaries, where the land in between said tributaries is decidedly swampy.
Rivers flow toward the ocean (or a big lake, or to where they peter out in the desert, or to another river, etc) along a particular curve. If the land rises, as in the case of the canyons along the Colorado River, a canyon is formed as the river erodes down to its natural level. On the other hand, if the land subsides, the river suddenly loses its momentum in its path toward its delta. It will form meanders, or spread out into a lake or a swamp, like the Rain Wild River. For that matter, like the large shallow lake/marsh Thymara and co. encounter on the way to Kelsingra. Ruins are found below the surface of this lake, so it was presumably once a low-lying plain bordering on a river of smaller lake. Tintaglia also states that the Serpent River, which borders Kelsingra, is much shallower than it used to be when she attempts to land in it and nearly cripples herself. Land subsidence can cause a river to broaden and become shallower.
5. The Missing Piece
There's a chunk missing from Kelsingra, but the rest of the city seems to be mostly intact. This is a little harder to explain. I don't think it is a meteor, because large meteor strikes are incredibly violent and it seems unlikely that relatively fragile structures like the map tower would have survived that. Admittedly, it seems unlikely that anything sufficiently violent to knock out a chunk of the city could possibly have left the rest of the city so intact. Also worth mentioning is the fact that the Serpent River near Kelsingra, although shallow, actually still has cut banks. So, although it has changed, it hasn't changed as much as the rest of the river/swamp system.
6. Lahars and such.
The big flood in DH is probably a Lahar, a volcanic mudslide that occurs when volcanic eruptions melt mountaintop glaciers. These things are extremely dangerous, can travel at speeds of 60 kph over a distance of 300 kilometers, and have arguably claimed the most lives in volcano-related natural disasters because of the enormous distance they can cover. A Lahar 300 km from its source can still be quite deadly. Usually these are more mud than water, but I think we can grant Ms. Hobb some poetic lisence here. Anyway, this means that the volcanic eruption that caused this flood (backed up by the earthquake and sooty rain that foreran it) could have happened quite far away, or been fairly nearby. The nearly flat nature of the Rain Wilds means that the lahar would not have travelled very fast, by giant raging doom flood standards.
7. So, where are you going with this, Lord Punctual?
I think that there was a period of increased Geological volatility in the time of the Elderlings. This would have been a much more massive eruption, and possibly also from a closer volcano, than the one that happened in DH. By the way, I think that this volcano is in the opposite directions from Kettricken's Mountains.
I think that this volcano was formed initially as a result of block faulting in the area - meaning that large blocks of land are vertically offset from one another. This is why the Mountains give way so sharply to the broad plain where Kelsingra is located.
When the volcano errupted, it erupted massively, emptying its magma chambre. This caused the already unstable land to subside substantially. Most of the rain wilds subsided as one large piece, however smaller isolated sections dropped even further, explaining the chunk that is missing from Kelsingra.
Prevailing wind currents kept the city of Kelsingra from being burried in ash. Frengong and Cassarick weren't so lucky. In DK, prevailing winds carried volcanic ask downriver where it landed on tarman's decks. "Dirty Rain" isn't uncommon in the Rain Wilds, but no-one who visits Kelsingra ever comments on there being ash all over the place. Back in the day, these same winds carried ash down the former course of the Serpent River, beginning to bury the cities along the river in ash.
8. How did Frengong and Cassarick get burried, and why are all the tributaries of the Rain River acidic if the acid comes from that distant volcano?
The Elderlings who lived in Frengong saw what was happening. Frengong had the primary cocooning ground, and most of the dragon cases were there. The Elderlings dragged the cases inside, ironically into the same room where Elderling Oldsters gathered to make Memory-Stone Dragons, thinking that eventually the sunlight coming in through the sky-light would prompt the dragons to emerge, and they would be able to walk out through the room's large doors.
Unfortunately, shortly thereafter the rest of the disaster happened. Much like the Lahar in DH, a flood rushed down the now flatter valley, carrying debris, sediment, and more ash-mud with it to bury the two cities entirely. This initial flood tract eventually became the "other river" at the junction where Tarman ran aground in DH - the milky white, acidic, volcanic meltwater river that is the source of the acid in the Rain Wild River. This flood inundated the entire sunken valley with sulphuric acid tinged water, which is why all of the tributaries that Tarman passed, except the one that eventually led to Kelsingra, were acid as well. They all drained from the same acid-contaminated basin.
9. So, what about Kelsingra?
Because of the turmoil along the former Serpent River, the Kelsingrans were more or less cut off from the outside world. This would not have been such a problem, except for the "missing chunk." I believe that this is a small block fault that subsided more than the rest of the city. In Kelsingra, the Silver Skill Water underlies the regular ground water. When this chunk fell, it exposed the Silver Water to the river water, as the river water flooded in and claimed the sunken section of the city. This means that the river water became contaminated with the Skill Water, which is deadly to regular humans and dangerous to Elderlings. I think the river was probably the main source of water for the city, because they would have the be incredibly careful when drilling their wells not to accidentally dip too deep and come up with Skill Water. With the River contaminated, I think the Elderlings died off from poisoning, or else abandoned the city with the help of their Dragon friends (and skill pillars) upon realising that it was no longer liveable. Sadly, the regular humans who lived there were almost certainly unable to escape using either of those means, and died, trapped.
10. What about the dragons?
I think it probably took quite a long time for the Rain Wilds area to stabilize enough to expose the cocooning grounds at Cassrick. Even in "present day" it took a lot of humans building locks and staircases to get the serpents up the river. In the time of geological upheaval and presumably society collapse, it would have been downright impossible. I think that for a time, Dragons went on mating and laying eggs - which is why we still have sea serpents and Others, but not Dragons. It's not that they're longer lived, but the latest laid dragon eggs would have yielded serpents, and Others, that were significantly younger than the dragons that laid those eggs. The Sea Serpents in LST were at the end of their life spans. They are most likely members of the very last generation of dragon offspring - hatched from eggs laid well after the actual disaster.
The same would be true of the Others. Perhaps the reason that there seem to be so many of them is that Dragons began to become rather desperate toward the end and began to pal around with humans more than they would have under other circumstances. (No pun intended.)
11. And the rest of the Elderlings?
The Elderlings seem to have cities all around the world. Elderlings have great difficulty reproducing. I think that the largest increase to their numbers probably comes from Dragons sculpting more Elderlings, not from Elderlings having little Elderlings of their own. Without Dragons to bolster their numbers (and for that matter, support their societies) they probably disappeared through a combination of dying out, and marrying into the much larger regular human population. It also should be said that Kelsingra was the administrative capital of the Elderling civilization. It's pretty hard for a society to accomplish anything after it has lost its administrative capital, even without considering the natural disaster and the loss of the Dragons cocooning grounds.
12. And I think that's it. A lot of these points need backing up with book references, I know, and I'll get to that soon, I promise. I was just kinda anxious to get my crazy theory out there and see what everyone thought of it.
but thought I'd comment while I had it in my head...I was certain that there was a source of memory stone in a quarry on Aslevjal (or somewhere in the Out Islands), and it was from there that the Pale Woman quarried the stone to make her dragons?
...go Lord Punctual!), but a thought popped into my head (yep, it happens sometimes
!) and I had to bring it out into the light.
!!!!
.
!!!!
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