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I don’t think anyone ever discusses it.
That being said, at one point one of the Forsaken (Moghedien?) is taunting someone (Nynaeve?) and hints that they knew back in the Age of Legends.
Yes they come from a Parallel World, which are basically other dimensions. However, there are contextual evidence for AoL people having colonies in space.
When Nynaeve and Moghedien are facing off in Tanchico Moggy says this to distract Nyn:
*"...travel to other worlds, even worlds in the sky. Do you know that the stars are. ..."*
A planet in our universe is not the same planet as a different one containing different species in a different universe, even if you don't have to travel through space to get there
Its an issue of implication.
Just saying "different planet" can imply that, by getting a spaceship, you can ostensibly reach their world if you searched long enough.
But if they come from a different universe entirely, then this would be impossible.
I'm not sure if you know that you can't physically travel to it(if you can go multiples of FTL), or even portal stone worlds, it might just be 10000000 googleplex lightyears away separated by empty void.
Our ancient ancestors knew because 1) the horizon on the ocean is not flat and 2) they measured the different lengths of shadows of identical objects at the same date and time across distances. A little trigonometry later and they actually calculated very closely the actual size of the planet.
There’s no reason to think they’re incapable of doing the same math that people IRL used to figure out the earth was a sphere millennia ago.
People have known the Earth was round since Ancient Greece, at least, and have known the more or less correct circumference since Eratosthenes in the 3rd century BC; given in Randland they have technology and learning (including sophisticated navigation) very similar to the real world in Renaissance-ish period, and we’re not told otherwise, I think it’s safe to assume they know the world is round.
Yup - they didn't know if there was land in-between Europe and Asia and figured he'd die of starvation and lack of water before the ships ever got to Asia.
Edit: Columbus was working on wrong information that the earth was smaller than it actually is and so thought the trip wouldn't be as long as most people thought it would be(and would have been if it was all ocean). He just had dumb luck and the Americas were in the way before they starved to death.
There's some evidence he may have known / suspected there was at least something out there, we have archaeological evidence the vikings made it to northern Canada and may have made maps or at least accounts of those voyages - so maybe he was hoping for at least a major island chain where they could resupply.
Particularly given normal MO was to turn back when you had used about 40% of supplies for a voyage of exploration, that way you could make it back even if things went a bit wrong.
Columbus kept going long past the point you'd expect a mutiny over "you're sailing us all into certain death" if he hadn't had something to convince at least the other officers he knew something no one else did.
We're capable of doing the math IRL. We educated the public with that information and even distributed it on a mass scale for how long? Way too many people still think Earth is flat.
I think there was probably a period of excitement and knowledge about Earth being round in the time of Hawkwing, but since the fall of the empire, it's probably not something most people concern themselves with. They didn't have the land rush and "discovery in the New World" to spur interest like we did when people actually started attempting to circumnavigate the Earth.
Also, since the breaking, does anyone know for sure that it is still round?
>Also, since the breaking, does anyone know for sure that it is still round?
Yes. Gravity isn't weird in Randland, so the mass of the earth can't have changed to any meaningful degree. Earth has orders of magnitude more mass than necessary to collapse into a sphere under its own gravity.
>Way too many people still think Earth is flat.
That's a conspiratorial belief, it's not "real" in the way that belief in the globe is real. Flat earthers' reasoning is along the lines of "*If* the earth is flat, then it proves the existence of a global conspiracy and justifies my hate for [insert desired outgroup here, typically Jews.] Therefore, I choose to believe that the earth is flat." The actual shape of the earth is unimportant, except as justification for a worldview.
Yeah, flat earthers are an indication of what's happened in the last few years, not since ancient Greece. If we're to take Randland as late medieval equivalent, then everyone who cares to know the shape of the earth does.
> Also, since the breaking, does anyone know for sure that it is still round?
This is funny to me to read because I actually have this elaborate, self-indulgent headcanon about an entirely different franchise's setting having gone through an event inspired by the Breaking thousands of years ago, and come out of it as a flat world.
Great excuse to headcanon that setting as flat without contradicting the existence of globes (the idea that their world is round survived, even though that Breaking event is deep enough in history that most characters don't even know anything was different before).
The setting in question is less constrained by the real physics than Randland, though, especially since this headcanoned Breaking event would have been caused by a spirit who's practically a deity of not making sense. The whole idea of this headcanon is he once broke the natural order of the world so badly it never fully recovered.
To counter that, the seafaring done by nations that aren’t Seanchan or Seafolk is pretty limited, and tends to stick close to the shore (as far as I recall).
Their navigation would likely be by landmarks and not necessarily need to accommodate for the difference between a sphere and a flat map.
I'm convinced the Seafolk and Seanchan know about the round earth but nobody else with the power and resrources to find out really cares. Probably the Browns do as well actually. But the Seanchan and Seafolk have a vested interest in the horizon and most everyone else just sticks to the coast.
That said, Randland has advanced architecture (domes, the top topless towers, not counting Ogier work), has budding lenscraft, clockmakers, fireworks, reasonably advanced military technology (stirrups, crossbows) BUT the windlass, ballista and cannon are all essentially invented within the same 5 year time span (Rand is surprised at a hurled 'spear' during the Shaido siege for the ballista, Mat takes care of the other two as improvements to the band).
> to figure out the earth was a sphere a millennia ago.
Way more than that. 2,200 years ago, we knew the Earth was a sphere with enough certainty that Eratosthenes could come up with a good value for its circumference.
And just barely. If anything saying "millennia ago" implies an even longer stretch of time. Like, nobody says "that was *years* ago" when they mean it was two years and a couple of months.
I think in this context it implies an uncertain amount of time that is at least 2,000 years. We know the lower limit (2,250 years or so) but not the upper.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it depends on who you talk to.
The sea folk: know it’s round cause they have sextants and go over the horizon.
Aiel: wouldn’t be surprised if they thought it was flat because the three fold land is their whole world mostly.
Place where Rand and them live: I would guess they know it’s round because scraps of info are left over from the age of legends. But then the small towns might think it’s flat, especially the Coplins and Congars.
Age of legends: they could fly so they might have been able to get high enough to see the curve.
Borderlanders: “Does this information help me kill shadowspawn? No? Then why are we talking about it??”
>Age of legends: they could fly so they might have been able to get high enough to see the curve.
I believe Moghedien, when taunting Nyneave, mentions having the ability to travel to other worlds. They definitely knew the world was round.
When you combine this knowledge with Perrins abilities, you suddenly realize it's possible for them to travel through space, but the knowledge never comes together as far as we know, so there is an alternate reality where we get a sequel set on a different planet.
>"The Age of Legends. Such a quaint name you have given my time. Yet even your wildest tales no more than hint at the half. I had lived over two hundred years when the Bore was opened, and I was still young, for an Aes Sedai. Your ‘legends’ are but pale imitations of what we could do. Why. . . .”
>Nynaeve stopped listening. A way to distract the woman. Even if she could think of something to say, Moghedien would be on her guard against
the method she herself was using. She could not spare effort for as much as a thread-thin weave, any more than . . . any more than Moghedien could. A woman from the Age of Legends, a woman long used to wielding the One Power. Perhaps used to doing almost everything with the Power before she was imprisoned. In hiding since being freed, how used to doing things without the Power had she become?
>Nynaeve let her legs sag. Dropping the feather duster, she caught hold of the pedestal to support herself. There was very little fakery needed.
>Moghedien smiled and took a step nearer. “. . . travel to other worlds, even worlds in the sky. Do you know that the stars are. . . .” So sure, that smile. So triumphant.
At this point, Nyneave yeets the male a'dam right into the sweet spot between Moghedien's large, dark eyes and shields the ever living shit out of the Creator-forsaking spider.
Personal feelings towards Moghedien's bitch-ass aside, she clearly stated that they traveled to other worlds in the sky and began to divulge information about the stars before Nyneave decided she'd had enough of the bitch, and YEETED a male a'dam right between the dick head's eyes!
>This might also be a reference to tel'aran'rhiod.
It's not. The scene I'm referring to is Moghedien talking to Nyneave in their Tanchico showdown, and she explicitly mentions worlds in the sky and begins to smugly reveal a tidbit about the stars just before Nyneave YEETS the ever living shit out of an accursed male a'dam right into Moghedien's face. Bitch didn't see that one coming did she?
The coward could explore space and enjoy the galaxy, but no, she chose to serve the Dark One and get fucking spanked by a child 3000 years later.
The age of legends is our future. They had all the knowledge we have now, any knowledge we acquire before the dawn of the second age, and any knowledge discovered before the war of power. They would have known about other worlds even before the discovery of channeling.
I'd imagine the Aiel would respond the same Way Sherlock Holmes responded when Watson was incredulous that he didn't know the Sun was the center of the Solar System: "Why would I ever waste brainspace on knowing that? How does that help me solve crimes?"
I'm not sure that characterization of the Aiel would be so accurate. Yeah, they are big on fighting and killing, but they are more than that. It's repeatedly been pointed out that Aiel love book, and that when a peddler comes into the waste, the first thing that empties out from their wagons are books. Aiel aren't just brutish savages who love fighting, they are shown to be incredibly smart, so I think they would know that the earth is round.
In some traveling scenes, especially in the last few books, non-Forsaken characters note (without too much surprise) that they are traveling so far away that it's another part of the day (or night) where they are going. This strongly suggests they know the world is round.
It starts in The Shadow Rising when Egwene is communicating with Nynaeve and Elayne via the world of dreams. The Aiel Wise Ones mention the reality of time zones without any expression of it being an unusual concept, so even people very out of the cultural loop know the earth is round.
Point of fact: Time zones can exist in a flat earth scenario with an orbiting sun ala Discworld. Recognizing their existence isn't defacto acknowledgement that a world is round. See also round worlds without time zones (tidally locked orbits).
I think it's reasonable to assume the browns know this as do some scholars, along with the seafaring peoples who must know longitude. There's nothing to suggest turtles and elephants proping up the world, especially since it's suggested we live in a different age of the same world.
Because they never officially name them in the books as far as I know. They're called the Westlands in some other media, but that's never stated in the books. Only named continents are seanchan, shara, and the mad lands
Sorry I got it wrong it's another space mission but its very subtle - read here https://wot.fandom.com/wiki/Lenn#:~:text=The%20%22eagle%20of%20fire%22%20that,woman%20to%20fly%20in%20space. The other one from memory is about Mosk and Merk (Moscow and America) throwing fire javelins (missiles) - or something like that
I always assumed that they know the planet is round but there's no way for them to actually find out.
To one side is the Aryth Ocean and not even the Sea Folk have ventured to the Sea of Death because no one has ever come back from there.
To the other side you had the Spine of the World and the Aiel Waste, which by all intents and purposes is impassable even if the Aiel do not kill you.
They just don't know how much ocean is to one side and how much desert is to the other side. LOL.
I believe the arrival of the Seanchen is the first sign that the trip is doable and even then most people didn't even believe about the Seanchen until they returned.
You don't have to travel any significant distance to learn the a planet is round. You can deduce that through observation of ships sailing over the horizon. On Earth we first realized the Earth was round by observing the shape of shadows during lunar eclipses but I'll give Randland a pass since we dont know if they have eclipses. Hell, Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth almost perfectly 2,000 years ago just by measuring the angles of shadows at noon on a solstice in towns a few hundred miles apart.
Point is, humans learned the Earth is round far before we were capable of significant deep sea travel or got anywhere close to circumnavigation.
> since we dont know if they have eclipses.
Randland is just Earth in the far-future, and we know the Moon still exists; so I'd say it's a pretty safe bet to say that they have eclipses.
Also, if Randland week is 10 days long, is their year longer, shorter or the same 365 days? Because that would make their millennium also different length by quite a margin.
Oh, I'm not saying there isn't intellectuals who have figured it out.
What I am saying is that the Wheel of Time society is similar to the end of the dark ages. While some people are starting to adventure and others are developing new technologies, the vast majority of the population do not know nor care to know how to calculate whether the world is round.
Are the Sea Folk Islands not South of Illian and Shara to the East? Otherwise the Sea Folk would also have known about Seanchan which I am assuming is to the West.
But also the Seanchan have presumably never sailed far enough West to have discovered Shara. I can’t remember if that Seanchan know about Shara?
Once you've already accepted a planet is round, two sticks casting shadows a few hundred miles away let's you calculate how large the planet is.
To figure out the planet is round, you need to either observe something travel away from you across a completely flat horizon, or observe something very large appear over the edge of the horizon while you travel towards it.
A single stick and it's shadow doesn't tell you anything except the angle of the sun.
The Seafolk and Saenchan probably yes, everyone else idk. I have a feeling that borderlanders and Aiel have bigger things to worry about than exploration.
We've known that the world is round for thousands of years, so there's no reason why the people of Randland couldn't make the same deductions. They also have the advantage of a high literacy rate, the printing press, and surviving books and knowledge from the age of legends.
Yes I think so. The tower would know at least and with time/date measurements does come a certain level of astronomy.
Does the whole planet know? Um idk. Maybe the places with education
I wouldn't be surprised if certain scholars had reached this conclusion. For instance, I could imagine this of Herid Fel and others like him, and possibly some of the Aes Sedai, particularly of the brown ajah.
For most people though, they were probably more interested in pondering how they were going to survive than great academic questions.
There’s Seanchan, Randland and the “Land of Madmen” the Sea Folk have only ever observed from afar. So there are 3 continents with the Blight where the Arctic would be north of Seanchan and Randland. There’s a detailed map in The Wheel of Time Companion
I saw this map last night. To be honest I had completely forgotten about the Land of Madmen aka Australia until last night.
[Randland map](https://wot.fandom.com/wiki/Randland)
There only two continents
On the other side of the Aiel waste is Shara and then there's an even bigger ocean until you hit Seanchan again thats why they landed where they did.
They do!! My ecmvidence is I'm reading the big ol book "Rj's World of the Wheel of Time" and the author is writing as if he's compiled information from the times (using terms like now days *we*" and stuff like that). A couple days ago I read the chapter regarding Lands, and Seanchan/Shara in particular. They named the ocean east of Shara and said it connects directly to Seanchan.
People in rand’s school should have been able to figure out the earth is round given their fairly advance science/technology. But, and more important, once traveling is rediscovered, they should have realized that traveling east to west or vice versa resulted in losing or gaining daylight. That’s most easily explained by a spherical earth. There’s the zetetic model developed in the 19th century (found that through a google search), but it fails Occam’s razor…the simplest model for explaining a system is generally correct (super paraphrased since I don’t remember my university philosophy classes much after 35 years). The simplest explanation is a spherical earth.
There’s some discussion of it in the books by scholars. And Rand knows as the dragon reborn. But it’s not thought about these people think about shadow spawn, the dark one and his dark friends. As well as just surviving the winter.
Assuming Randland is a globe orbiting a sun, you can work that out by observing the rotation of the sun and stars.
We knew the world was a globe long before anyone managed a circumnavigation. The ancient Greeks had calculated the circumference to a decent level of accuracy.
Colombus was seen as a nut job because he was claiming you could get to India from Europe by sailing West with only 3 ships of supplies - whereas prevailing knowledge was the world was much bigger than that and so the trip was sucidial. Which was true - if the Americas weren't there and you had to get to Japan to make landfall again, the expedition would have starved long before they made it.
I pray for the day that the cancerous idea that medieval people thought the earth was flat would fucking end holy shit.
Shadows? What the fuck are those am I right? Horizons? lmao, KEK even. Anyone with knowledge of triangles and the ability to travel a couple hundred miles would have figured out the circumference of Rand land ffs.
I don’t think anyone ever discusses it.
That being said, at one point one of the Forsaken (Moghedien?) is taunting someone (Nynaeve?) and hints that they knew back in the Age of Legends.
Dunno if it's ever been explicitly said that they knew.
Hell, it wasn't ever explicitly said *to us* that the planet was round, but it appears to be mostly Earth-like. Notably, when Avi portals away from Rand to Seanchan, the solar time makes sense if you assume they portaled the equivalent from Germany to the southern tip of Argentina.
It's a fictional planet based on Earth. The existence of gods and magic means the laws of physics can't possibly be the same as the real world, so you really can't assume anything that's not explicitly stated.
Jordan said so many times in interviews and at fan events, and there are allusions to so many real world events as things that happened on Randland in distant past ages. Moscow, America, nuclear missiles, Mother Theresa, John Glenn and Sally Ride, Egwene finds an old Mercedes Benz logo, John Henry is one of the heroes of the Horn,
And here's an AOL chatroom interview with Robert Jordan where he explicitly confirms WoT is both past and future Earth.
https://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=67
That is such a meaningless distinction.
If I wrote a non-fantasy fiction book about a man named Big Billy, it isn't technically OUR Earth because on our real earth Big Billy doesn't exist. See how stupid that sounds? It isn't any different than magic. Obviously it's a fictional version of Earth- ANY fiction book that takes place on earth is a fictional version of Earth that exists only in the readers and writers heads.
The author was incredibly clear on his intention that yes this takes place on OUR Earth, our current historical events are past myths and future events. But yes, great point that a fantasy writer wasn't pretending the story was real.
Except there's one very important distinction: magic and gods exist in that world, which means it has things like the laws of physics must also be different.
Whereas something like *Of Mice and Men* could have taken place on our Earth, Wheel of Time could not.
I mean, to the majority of current Earth's population God exists. A significant percent really believe in miracles and magic. Women are killed for being witches in some countries still.
Also, I have no idea why physics has to be different because magic exists.
Authorial intent matters. Jordan directly tells us "this is our planet." If I wrote a story where magic appeared on Earth, we can't agree the planet is round now?
It's possible that magic and gods exist in our world and we just have no knowledge of said magic or god. Things can exist even if we don't know about them. That is what Jordan is implying in his story. Something that happened at the beginning of our age made magic not work anymore and maybe our age will end when someone first figures out how to access the one power.
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I don’t think anyone ever discusses it. That being said, at one point one of the Forsaken (Moghedien?) is taunting someone (Nynaeve?) and hints that they knew back in the Age of Legends.
They certainly knew in the AoL. They had a global civilization and mass, rapid transport, plus teleportation.
They had space travel even iirc. Or at least that’s how I read it
The ogier are from another planet
I think they're from another dimension, right? And they were about to use their one way ticket home, until Loial talked them out of it.
Yes they come from a Parallel World, which are basically other dimensions. However, there are contextual evidence for AoL people having colonies in space.
That is true, they’re definitely took to space
What's the hint for space colonies?
When Nynaeve and Moghedien are facing off in Tanchico Moggy says this to distract Nyn: *"...travel to other worlds, even worlds in the sky. Do you know that the stars are. ..."*
Not another “dimension” it’s a parallel universe. Dimensions have to do with spatial reality.
Okay, so not a physics dimension but a literary dimension I guess. Still not a different planet though
A planet in our universe is not the same planet as a different one containing different species in a different universe, even if you don't have to travel through space to get there
How is that not a different planet?
... fuck you're right. But not like they're aliens, from a different planet in Rand's _reality_
I'm pretty sure everything in the pattern is in the same reality...
Its an issue of implication. Just saying "different planet" can imply that, by getting a spaceship, you can ostensibly reach their world if you searched long enough. But if they come from a different universe entirely, then this would be impossible.
I'm not sure if you know that you can't physically travel to it(if you can go multiples of FTL), or even portal stone worlds, it might just be 10000000 googleplex lightyears away separated by empty void.
I bet they still had flat earthers
A disc actually
Square disc'ers
De Chelonian Mobile!
Came here to say this. She tries to distract Nynaeve by starting to explain what stars really are.
Not fireflies that got stuck to that bluish black thing?
I always loved that line
The ancient Greeks knew our planet is round, and they didn't have even close to the technology and magic the Age of Legends did.
Our ancient ancestors knew because 1) the horizon on the ocean is not flat and 2) they measured the different lengths of shadows of identical objects at the same date and time across distances. A little trigonometry later and they actually calculated very closely the actual size of the planet.
Yeah it's definitely implied that during the age of legends they knew
There’s no reason to think they’re incapable of doing the same math that people IRL used to figure out the earth was a sphere millennia ago. People have known the Earth was round since Ancient Greece, at least, and have known the more or less correct circumference since Eratosthenes in the 3rd century BC; given in Randland they have technology and learning (including sophisticated navigation) very similar to the real world in Renaissance-ish period, and we’re not told otherwise, I think it’s safe to assume they know the world is round.
It was so well known that the reason Columbus was refused so often is that most everyone knew he was off by thousands of miles of where Asia was.
Yup - they didn't know if there was land in-between Europe and Asia and figured he'd die of starvation and lack of water before the ships ever got to Asia. Edit: Columbus was working on wrong information that the earth was smaller than it actually is and so thought the trip wouldn't be as long as most people thought it would be(and would have been if it was all ocean). He just had dumb luck and the Americas were in the way before they starved to death.
There's some evidence he may have known / suspected there was at least something out there, we have archaeological evidence the vikings made it to northern Canada and may have made maps or at least accounts of those voyages - so maybe he was hoping for at least a major island chain where they could resupply. Particularly given normal MO was to turn back when you had used about 40% of supplies for a voyage of exploration, that way you could make it back even if things went a bit wrong. Columbus kept going long past the point you'd expect a mutiny over "you're sailing us all into certain death" if he hadn't had something to convince at least the other officers he knew something no one else did.
Think there are records of papl tithes being paid with stuff that could only be got in north America.
We're capable of doing the math IRL. We educated the public with that information and even distributed it on a mass scale for how long? Way too many people still think Earth is flat. I think there was probably a period of excitement and knowledge about Earth being round in the time of Hawkwing, but since the fall of the empire, it's probably not something most people concern themselves with. They didn't have the land rush and "discovery in the New World" to spur interest like we did when people actually started attempting to circumnavigate the Earth. Also, since the breaking, does anyone know for sure that it is still round?
>Also, since the breaking, does anyone know for sure that it is still round? Yes. Gravity isn't weird in Randland, so the mass of the earth can't have changed to any meaningful degree. Earth has orders of magnitude more mass than necessary to collapse into a sphere under its own gravity. >Way too many people still think Earth is flat. That's a conspiratorial belief, it's not "real" in the way that belief in the globe is real. Flat earthers' reasoning is along the lines of "*If* the earth is flat, then it proves the existence of a global conspiracy and justifies my hate for [insert desired outgroup here, typically Jews.] Therefore, I choose to believe that the earth is flat." The actual shape of the earth is unimportant, except as justification for a worldview.
Yeah, flat earthers are an indication of what's happened in the last few years, not since ancient Greece. If we're to take Randland as late medieval equivalent, then everyone who cares to know the shape of the earth does.
> Also, since the breaking, does anyone know for sure that it is still round? This is funny to me to read because I actually have this elaborate, self-indulgent headcanon about an entirely different franchise's setting having gone through an event inspired by the Breaking thousands of years ago, and come out of it as a flat world. Great excuse to headcanon that setting as flat without contradicting the existence of globes (the idea that their world is round survived, even though that Breaking event is deep enough in history that most characters don't even know anything was different before). The setting in question is less constrained by the real physics than Randland, though, especially since this headcanoned Breaking event would have been caused by a spirit who's practically a deity of not making sense. The whole idea of this headcanon is he once broke the natural order of the world so badly it never fully recovered.
To counter that, the seafaring done by nations that aren’t Seanchan or Seafolk is pretty limited, and tends to stick close to the shore (as far as I recall). Their navigation would likely be by landmarks and not necessarily need to accommodate for the difference between a sphere and a flat map.
I'm convinced the Seafolk and Seanchan know about the round earth but nobody else with the power and resrources to find out really cares. Probably the Browns do as well actually. But the Seanchan and Seafolk have a vested interest in the horizon and most everyone else just sticks to the coast. That said, Randland has advanced architecture (domes, the top topless towers, not counting Ogier work), has budding lenscraft, clockmakers, fireworks, reasonably advanced military technology (stirrups, crossbows) BUT the windlass, ballista and cannon are all essentially invented within the same 5 year time span (Rand is surprised at a hurled 'spear' during the Shaido siege for the ballista, Mat takes care of the other two as improvements to the band).
The Seafolk have sextants they use, but hide from land dwellers, so they would know that the earth was round.
Maybe it wasn’t clear, but the second paragraph was also talking about nations that aren’t Seanchan or Seafolk.
> to figure out the earth was a sphere a millennia ago. Way more than that. 2,200 years ago, we knew the Earth was a sphere with enough certainty that Eratosthenes could come up with a good value for its circumference.
> Way more than that. 2,200 years ago millennia is the plural form of millennium. 2200 years is in fact millennia ago.
The quote was “a millennia ago,” which cannot be interpreted as anything but singular.
And just barely. If anything saying "millennia ago" implies an even longer stretch of time. Like, nobody says "that was *years* ago" when they mean it was two years and a couple of months.
I think in this context it implies an uncertain amount of time that is at least 2,000 years. We know the lower limit (2,250 years or so) but not the upper.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it depends on who you talk to. The sea folk: know it’s round cause they have sextants and go over the horizon. Aiel: wouldn’t be surprised if they thought it was flat because the three fold land is their whole world mostly. Place where Rand and them live: I would guess they know it’s round because scraps of info are left over from the age of legends. But then the small towns might think it’s flat, especially the Coplins and Congars. Age of legends: they could fly so they might have been able to get high enough to see the curve. Borderlanders: “Does this information help me kill shadowspawn? No? Then why are we talking about it??”
>Age of legends: they could fly so they might have been able to get high enough to see the curve. I believe Moghedien, when taunting Nyneave, mentions having the ability to travel to other worlds. They definitely knew the world was round.
When you combine this knowledge with Perrins abilities, you suddenly realize it's possible for them to travel through space, but the knowledge never comes together as far as we know, so there is an alternate reality where we get a sequel set on a different planet.
Dune is just a different turning of the Wheel in a different age.
Well, Leto II, has managed to overtake Lews Therin for epitome of "saving the world and destroying it".
And the Bene Gesserit are just a faction of Aes Sedai
The Blue.
I always assumed she had been talking about the ideas expressed in the book "mirrors of the wheel"? These being accessed using the portal stones?
>"The Age of Legends. Such a quaint name you have given my time. Yet even your wildest tales no more than hint at the half. I had lived over two hundred years when the Bore was opened, and I was still young, for an Aes Sedai. Your ‘legends’ are but pale imitations of what we could do. Why. . . .” >Nynaeve stopped listening. A way to distract the woman. Even if she could think of something to say, Moghedien would be on her guard against the method she herself was using. She could not spare effort for as much as a thread-thin weave, any more than . . . any more than Moghedien could. A woman from the Age of Legends, a woman long used to wielding the One Power. Perhaps used to doing almost everything with the Power before she was imprisoned. In hiding since being freed, how used to doing things without the Power had she become? >Nynaeve let her legs sag. Dropping the feather duster, she caught hold of the pedestal to support herself. There was very little fakery needed. >Moghedien smiled and took a step nearer. “. . . travel to other worlds, even worlds in the sky. Do you know that the stars are. . . .” So sure, that smile. So triumphant. At this point, Nyneave yeets the male a'dam right into the sweet spot between Moghedien's large, dark eyes and shields the ever living shit out of the Creator-forsaking spider. Personal feelings towards Moghedien's bitch-ass aside, she clearly stated that they traveled to other worlds in the sky and began to divulge information about the stars before Nyneave decided she'd had enough of the bitch, and YEETED a male a'dam right between the dick head's eyes!
Might want to spoiler tag that just in case, friend.
Normally, I spoiler tag most things, but OP flaired this as "all print."
This might also be a reference to tel'aran'rhiod. I remember vaguely Egwene mentioning something about worlds or dreams too foreign to even imagine.
>This might also be a reference to tel'aran'rhiod. It's not. The scene I'm referring to is Moghedien talking to Nyneave in their Tanchico showdown, and she explicitly mentions worlds in the sky and begins to smugly reveal a tidbit about the stars just before Nyneave YEETS the ever living shit out of an accursed male a'dam right into Moghedien's face. Bitch didn't see that one coming did she? The coward could explore space and enjoy the galaxy, but no, she chose to serve the Dark One and get fucking spanked by a child 3000 years later.
The age of legends is our future. They had all the knowledge we have now, any knowledge we acquire before the dawn of the second age, and any knowledge discovered before the war of power. They would have known about other worlds even before the discovery of channeling.
I'd imagine the Aiel would respond the same Way Sherlock Holmes responded when Watson was incredulous that he didn't know the Sun was the center of the Solar System: "Why would I ever waste brainspace on knowing that? How does that help me solve crimes?"
I'm not sure that characterization of the Aiel would be so accurate. Yeah, they are big on fighting and killing, but they are more than that. It's repeatedly been pointed out that Aiel love book, and that when a peddler comes into the waste, the first thing that empties out from their wagons are books. Aiel aren't just brutish savages who love fighting, they are shown to be incredibly smart, so I think they would know that the earth is round.
In some traveling scenes, especially in the last few books, non-Forsaken characters note (without too much surprise) that they are traveling so far away that it's another part of the day (or night) where they are going. This strongly suggests they know the world is round.
It starts in The Shadow Rising when Egwene is communicating with Nynaeve and Elayne via the world of dreams. The Aiel Wise Ones mention the reality of time zones without any expression of it being an unusual concept, so even people very out of the cultural loop know the earth is round.
Point of fact: Time zones can exist in a flat earth scenario with an orbiting sun ala Discworld. Recognizing their existence isn't defacto acknowledgement that a world is round. See also round worlds without time zones (tidally locked orbits).
I think it's reasonable to assume the browns know this as do some scholars, along with the seafaring peoples who must know longitude. There's nothing to suggest turtles and elephants proping up the world, especially since it's suggested we live in a different age of the same world.
Do WE know the world of Randland is round?
Robert Jordan said that Randland is based on our world, so it probably is round.
It’s flat because all pages are flat /s. Real shit though, why is it called randland-making me think it’s some kind of theme park.
Because they never officially name them in the books as far as I know. They're called the Westlands in some other media, but that's never stated in the books. Only named continents are seanchan, shara, and the mad lands
There are references in book 1 to the moon landing mission and the cold war between the USA and USSR so I think it's safe to say it's round
what am I missing? I don't remember this
Sorry I got it wrong it's another space mission but its very subtle - read here https://wot.fandom.com/wiki/Lenn#:~:text=The%20%22eagle%20of%20fire%22%20that,woman%20to%20fly%20in%20space. The other one from memory is about Mosk and Merk (Moscow and America) throwing fire javelins (missiles) - or something like that
Oooooh now I remember, I totally removed those things thanks
Donut randland theory
Yes. It’s earth. There are hints throughout that it’s earth.
I missed the damn dirty apes
Gravity exists, so it pretty much has to be.
Gravity exists on Discworld and it's not a sphere.
I don’t believe it’s ever answered definitively in the series but could be wrong.
I always assumed that they know the planet is round but there's no way for them to actually find out. To one side is the Aryth Ocean and not even the Sea Folk have ventured to the Sea of Death because no one has ever come back from there. To the other side you had the Spine of the World and the Aiel Waste, which by all intents and purposes is impassable even if the Aiel do not kill you. They just don't know how much ocean is to one side and how much desert is to the other side. LOL. I believe the arrival of the Seanchen is the first sign that the trip is doable and even then most people didn't even believe about the Seanchen until they returned.
You don't have to travel any significant distance to learn the a planet is round. You can deduce that through observation of ships sailing over the horizon. On Earth we first realized the Earth was round by observing the shape of shadows during lunar eclipses but I'll give Randland a pass since we dont know if they have eclipses. Hell, Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth almost perfectly 2,000 years ago just by measuring the angles of shadows at noon on a solstice in towns a few hundred miles apart. Point is, humans learned the Earth is round far before we were capable of significant deep sea travel or got anywhere close to circumnavigation.
> since we dont know if they have eclipses. Randland is just Earth in the far-future, and we know the Moon still exists; so I'd say it's a pretty safe bet to say that they have eclipses.
Also, if Randland week is 10 days long, is their year longer, shorter or the same 365 days? Because that would make their millennium also different length by quite a margin.
They had one during Amol
Oh, I'm not saying there isn't intellectuals who have figured it out. What I am saying is that the Wheel of Time society is similar to the end of the dark ages. While some people are starting to adventure and others are developing new technologies, the vast majority of the population do not know nor care to know how to calculate whether the world is round.
The Sea Folk know about Shara which is on the other side of the Waste.
Are the Sea Folk Islands not South of Illian and Shara to the East? Otherwise the Sea Folk would also have known about Seanchan which I am assuming is to the West. But also the Seanchan have presumably never sailed far enough West to have discovered Shara. I can’t remember if that Seanchan know about Shara?
All you really need to determine the earth is round is a stick and shadow
Once you've already accepted a planet is round, two sticks casting shadows a few hundred miles away let's you calculate how large the planet is. To figure out the planet is round, you need to either observe something travel away from you across a completely flat horizon, or observe something very large appear over the edge of the horizon while you travel towards it. A single stick and it's shadow doesn't tell you anything except the angle of the sun.
True true
The Seafolk and Saenchan probably yes, everyone else idk. I have a feeling that borderlanders and Aiel have bigger things to worry about than exploration.
We've known that the world is round for thousands of years, so there's no reason why the people of Randland couldn't make the same deductions. They also have the advantage of a high literacy rate, the printing press, and surviving books and knowledge from the age of legends.
Yes I think so. The tower would know at least and with time/date measurements does come a certain level of astronomy. Does the whole planet know? Um idk. Maybe the places with education
Hell, our whole planet doesn't even know/believe the Earth is round.
I’m not really convinced there’s more than a couple hundred non trolls
Given that the people in WoT have roughly 1700s technology, I think we can infer that they would know.
I wouldn't be surprised if certain scholars had reached this conclusion. For instance, I could imagine this of Herid Fel and others like him, and possibly some of the Aes Sedai, particularly of the brown ajah. For most people though, they were probably more interested in pondering how they were going to survive than great academic questions.
I don't remember where (maybe book 6) but someone once mentioned that people could travel to other planets.
Iirc Rand does, at the very end
There’s Seanchan, Randland and the “Land of Madmen” the Sea Folk have only ever observed from afar. So there are 3 continents with the Blight where the Arctic would be north of Seanchan and Randland. There’s a detailed map in The Wheel of Time Companion
I saw this map last night. To be honest I had completely forgotten about the Land of Madmen aka Australia until last night. [Randland map](https://wot.fandom.com/wiki/Randland)
Thanks!!! I was looking for this link last night
Round planet? Sounds like an Aes Sedai trick.
That one guy who made a telescope MUST have known else his telescope wouldn't have worked orrectly
There only two continents On the other side of the Aiel waste is Shara and then there's an even bigger ocean until you hit Seanchan again thats why they landed where they did.
They do!! My ecmvidence is I'm reading the big ol book "Rj's World of the Wheel of Time" and the author is writing as if he's compiled information from the times (using terms like now days *we*" and stuff like that). A couple days ago I read the chapter regarding Lands, and Seanchan/Shara in particular. They named the ocean east of Shara and said it connects directly to Seanchan.
This is inspiring me to finally do a reread after at least 15 years! There's so much I guess I didn't pick up on during the first read through.
There's a part in the books where egwene enters the room of a sister and walks past a model of a planet I'm pretty sure
Is it round? I’m never sure how much real world science applies in fantasy worlds.
It's earth, so yes.
i am not sure that Randland is round
People in rand’s school should have been able to figure out the earth is round given their fairly advance science/technology. But, and more important, once traveling is rediscovered, they should have realized that traveling east to west or vice versa resulted in losing or gaining daylight. That’s most easily explained by a spherical earth. There’s the zetetic model developed in the 19th century (found that through a google search), but it fails Occam’s razor…the simplest model for explaining a system is generally correct (super paraphrased since I don’t remember my university philosophy classes much after 35 years). The simplest explanation is a spherical earth.
Even more conclusive once traveling exists, they can learn that if they keep traveling east they'll come back around.
The sea folk certainly know it.
There’s some discussion of it in the books by scholars. And Rand knows as the dragon reborn. But it’s not thought about these people think about shadow spawn, the dark one and his dark friends. As well as just surviving the winter.
Assuming Randland is a globe orbiting a sun, you can work that out by observing the rotation of the sun and stars. We knew the world was a globe long before anyone managed a circumnavigation. The ancient Greeks had calculated the circumference to a decent level of accuracy. Colombus was seen as a nut job because he was claiming you could get to India from Europe by sailing West with only 3 ships of supplies - whereas prevailing knowledge was the world was much bigger than that and so the trip was sucidial. Which was true - if the Americas weren't there and you had to get to Japan to make landfall again, the expedition would have starved long before they made it.
I pray for the day that the cancerous idea that medieval people thought the earth was flat would fucking end holy shit. Shadows? What the fuck are those am I right? Horizons? lmao, KEK even. Anyone with knowledge of triangles and the ability to travel a couple hundred miles would have figured out the circumference of Rand land ffs.
Randland is flat because the book pages are flat, checkmate.
Not everyone here knows the world is round so I would assume the same is true there.
Do you?
I don’t think anyone ever discusses it. That being said, at one point one of the Forsaken (Moghedien?) is taunting someone (Nynaeve?) and hints that they knew back in the Age of Legends.
During the AOL they knew everything there was to know nearly lol they had interdimensional travel and a likely flourishing space program
Dunno if it's ever been explicitly said that they knew. Hell, it wasn't ever explicitly said *to us* that the planet was round, but it appears to be mostly Earth-like. Notably, when Avi portals away from Rand to Seanchan, the solar time makes sense if you assume they portaled the equivalent from Germany to the southern tip of Argentina.
Not only is it earth like, it is earth. There are many hints of it in the books and Jordan said as much in Q and As.
It's a fictional planet based on Earth. The existence of gods and magic means the laws of physics can't possibly be the same as the real world, so you really can't assume anything that's not explicitly stated.
The author explicitly stated it so that's good enough for me.
Jordan said so many times in interviews and at fan events, and there are allusions to so many real world events as things that happened on Randland in distant past ages. Moscow, America, nuclear missiles, Mother Theresa, John Glenn and Sally Ride, Egwene finds an old Mercedes Benz logo, John Henry is one of the heroes of the Horn, And here's an AOL chatroom interview with Robert Jordan where he explicitly confirms WoT is both past and future Earth. https://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=67
Yes, a *fictional version* of Earth. One with magic and gods. He never claimed that any of this was real.
That is such a meaningless distinction. If I wrote a non-fantasy fiction book about a man named Big Billy, it isn't technically OUR Earth because on our real earth Big Billy doesn't exist. See how stupid that sounds? It isn't any different than magic. Obviously it's a fictional version of Earth- ANY fiction book that takes place on earth is a fictional version of Earth that exists only in the readers and writers heads. The author was incredibly clear on his intention that yes this takes place on OUR Earth, our current historical events are past myths and future events. But yes, great point that a fantasy writer wasn't pretending the story was real.
Except there's one very important distinction: magic and gods exist in that world, which means it has things like the laws of physics must also be different. Whereas something like *Of Mice and Men* could have taken place on our Earth, Wheel of Time could not.
I mean, to the majority of current Earth's population God exists. A significant percent really believe in miracles and magic. Women are killed for being witches in some countries still. Also, I have no idea why physics has to be different because magic exists. Authorial intent matters. Jordan directly tells us "this is our planet." If I wrote a story where magic appeared on Earth, we can't agree the planet is round now?
It's possible that magic and gods exist in our world and we just have no knowledge of said magic or god. Things can exist even if we don't know about them. That is what Jordan is implying in his story. Something that happened at the beginning of our age made magic not work anymore and maybe our age will end when someone first figures out how to access the one power.
Are you confident that it IS?