Game Of Thrones Spin-Off: Everything We Know About 'The Long Night'

5. It Takes Place 5,000-10,000 Years Before Thrones

The commonly presented history of Westeros pegs the Age of Heroes, which is the era when a number of great houses were formed, as taking place around 10,000 years before Aegon's Conquest (which itself was 300 years before Game of Thrones), with the Long Night then coming around 8,000BC.

It was thus expected that's when the show would be taking place, but Martin has now revealed that it might be closer to the original timeline. Well, slightly. He told EW:

"10,000 years is mentioned in the novels. But you also have places where maesters say, 'No, no, it wasn’t 10,000, it was 5,000.' Again, I’m trying to reflect real-life things that a lot of high fantasy doesn’t reflect. In the Bible, it has people living for hundreds of years and then people added up how long each lived and used that to figure out when events took place. Really? I don’t think so. Now we’re getting more realistic dating now from carbon dating and archeology. But Westeros doesn’t have that. They’re still in the stage of 'my grandfather told me and his grandfather told him.' So I think it’s closer to 5,000 years."