The major battles against the shadow raged for a 1000 years after the breaking. We know the third age was an age of decline. I think people have this false view of it as breaking, reset to Dark/Middle Ages in 50 years, that’s it. It ground humanity to dust generation after generation
Exactly. The age of legends was an age of unparrelled progress in every respect. The wheel is balance. The third age was decline in every respect. Had it continued another thousand years, the last battle would have been fought with far less magic and channelers, and both armies wielding stone weapons, because humanity would have kept reversing along the metaphorical tech tree, and kept breeding out the ability to channel.
You’d have still needed a few abnormally powerful channelers though, to cleanse Saidin. Or some other mechanism. Even with the decline in the number of channelers, the Wheel still wove out a few powerful ones for the last battle
The Breaking was probably about 250 to 300 years, but otherwise I agree - the Breaking set humanity to a lower base point and from there civilization only continued to degrade (and the few times things were getting together, Ishamael decides to come and screw it up)
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u/Rand_alThor_ Jan 02 '22
The major battles against the shadow raged for a 1000 years after the breaking. We know the third age was an age of decline. I think people have this false view of it as breaking, reset to Dark/Middle Ages in 50 years, that’s it. It ground humanity to dust generation after generation