The Anthropology of Game of Thrones

Hey! Welcome back to another installment of Trey the Explainer! In light of the upcoming premier of the final season of Game of Thrones, I took the time to have a detailed examination and speculation of the paleontology, prehistory, and anthropology of Westeros and Essos in George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire World. In this video I discuss the various fictional races of the world and try to create a biological and evolutionary tree based off the information given in the books. We will try answer questions like: where do Humans come from? And What are the White Walkers exactly? Hope you enjoy!

Some Artists I neglected to credit:

[FilmFightFanatic]

By the time "Winds of Winter" is released, us homo sapiens would probably already have evolved into an entirely different species.

[OnePlancheMan]

The White Walkers are just highly evolved barn owls. You heard it here first, folks.

[huxley]

kind of wish the show went for a more ethereal look for white walkers rather than the very mundane magic zombie design. would've been more distinct + memorable.

[ktaragorn]

"Im a fan of the show"
"in the wake of the premiere of the final season"
oh dear :D

[TheGrizzlo]

“Sothoryos is the continent we know the least about”

Ulthos wants to know your location

[thembelanihdlamini]

OK I've seen a lot of GoT nerd videos, but this has to be one of the nerdiest. I love the simplistic explanations.

[ZigZag-mwir]

Technically there are fish people, in the shivering sea, and flat out deep ones.

[LimeyLassen]

Worth noting that even in a setting where magic is real, the principles of evolution still hold up. Like if dragon breath is supernatural, dragons would still evolve to take full advantage of it.

[Divinemakyr]

"Sothoryos, probably the continent we know least about."
*Staring at Ulthos intensifies.

[jacksonlynch]

I would argue that, even though the Children and Giants probably diverged from each other long before they arrived on Westeros. The size difference between the two in comparison to the Ibbanese, Brindled Men, and Homo Sapiens is likely explained by Insular Gigantism and Insular Dwarfism. Given the fact that an isolated species will trend towards following an evolutionary path designed to deal with unique environmental pressures, it seems likely that the two species were isolated from each other and the rest of the world millennia prior to the last Ice Age. The Giants likely faced environmental pressures that were predatory in nature, while also being able to take advantage of plentiful food sources to increase in size and bone structure in order to protect from said predators. In contrast, the Children probably found themselves in an ecosystem that was relatively bereft of large predation, but also saw food sources in reduced abundance, leading to adaptations trending towards lower energy requirements. This would develop into smaller and more delicate statures. Then, as the Ice Age began and sea levels dropped, it's likely that both groups were suddenly exposed to the continent of Westeros, likely in the form of land bridges connecting to their respective islands of origination.

I would posit, therefore, that due to stark differences in appearance, the Children and the Giants are not really closely related at all. They share bipedalism and a geographical location (Westeros) but do not exhibit any other real anthropomorphic similarities. I would probably assume that the Giants are probably a species that branched off from the Ibbanese or Brindled Men several millennia before the last Ice Age, while the Children branched off even further back, perhaps 10 Million years prior to the last Ice Age. I might even go so far as to suggest that the Children were the first to split from the rest, and that the isolation that lead to their Insular Dwarfism likely predates the split between the rest by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years. This is also, I believe, supported by the fact that their intelligence level surpasses most, if not all, other species on Planetos.

Now...this is wild speculation...but I suspect a cursory inspection of the Sunset Sea by oceanographic technology would probably reveal either a Hawaii-like set of submerged islands off the coast of Westeros, or a small, submerged subcontinent far west and north of Westeros with an oceanic ridge that would act as a land bridge during a major Ice Age.

If you took the time to read all that, I hope you enjoyed!

[The_PokeSaurus]

I love it when writers mix science with fiction. Its a nerd's paradise.

[vladimirlagos]

I think the true gold gem for paleobiologists in the world of "Planetos" is that continent of Sothorios. Located in the equator and thus less likely to suffer from ice ages and fairly removed from homo sapiens influence, it must be a teeming with late extant transitional forms not only for early humans, but also for other creatures such as dragons.

By the way, I really like his hypothesis about the white walkers as aliens since they clearly don't fit with anything else in the planet.

[redsnake]

I finally figured out. Game of Thrones is a post-apocalyptic world and the white walkers are the surviving robo-anthropo-droid-AIs of current civilization.

[serioushamster]

What did the Others say to each other during the Long Night?


No Homo.

[ToqTheWise]

The Others seem to be a lot like Daugar, the undead of Norse mythology which unlike classical zombies are intelligent. It’s for this reason I think that they’re the result of some sort of a mutagenic organism/pathogen. I also wouldn’t completely rule out magic since there does seem to be clear examples of magic such as warging and arguably Jon’s resurrection. I like the idea of a world that combines magic and natural science, even putting a science to magic. But then again we’re talking about Lord George, first of his name, writer of books, and crusher of dreams so all of this could be wrong.


Edit: I think House Targaryen itself is another example of magic. No house could survive that long with that much inbreeding.

[gymcelsocialism]

Mark Twain said, first get your facts straight, and then twist them at your leisure.

Meaning that you can build fantasy only if its based in the real world, and that attempting to go full Jupiter Ascending destroy any semblance of suspension of Belief. It's easy to accept a fantasy world if it feels real to us.

[MagnusTonitrum]

Apparently the Giants of Essos (I hope that is spelled right) are much larger than the Giants of Westeros. They’re twice as tall as their Westerosi brethren/descendants/cousins.

[internetduck]

"No animal on earth has 4 legs + wings."
I think George means no vertebrate... xd

[arkadeepkundu]

2:11 "Grorge has taken the time to think these things out"
*Well, too bad the directors didn't*

[The_Butler_Did_It]

One small point, in our world aurochs survived until surprisingly recently, the last known example died in Poland in 1627.