On the Five Lost Kingdoms

Finally, there is the charming hypothesis that each of the Principal Races descends from a separate primordial kingdom, all five of which were destroyed in the same ancient catastrophe.

The theory arose from an observation which is genuinely curious. Human, Elven, Dwarven, Aesir, and Gremlin traditions all contain stories of an age before the present world: flooded cities, burning skies, mountains split open, winters without summers, and migrations undertaken by ancestors fleeing some immense calamity. From these parallels it has been proposed that five great civilisations once existed simultaneously and were erased by a single disaster, leaving only scattered survivors from whom the modern races descend. Unlike most theories discussed in this volume, this one has the irritating quality of not being obviously stupid.

The difficulty is evidence. The stories differ in chronology, geography, cause, duration, and nearly every useful detail. Some describe floods, others fire, others darkness, others plague. Several are clearly moral allegories. At least two Aesir accounts which are often included in comparative studies concern the failure of seasonal mammoth migrations and probably describe famine rather than apocalypse. Still, the coincidence is sufficiently interesting that I shall refrain from dismissing the matter entirely.

This has already caused three colleagues to accuse me of endorsing the Five Kingdoms hypothesis. I do not. I am merely capable of distinguishing “not demonstrated” from “impossible,” a faculty which appears to become less common in direct proportion to one’s seniority.