Shadowrun is the 6th world, and started in 2011
Our world is the 5th, and started like in 3K BC
The 4th age was the age of legends, but when did it started ?
Also, the scourge happened during the 4th age, when did it started and how long did it lasted ?
Also, what where the third second and first worlds ?
Was there a scourge during the second age ?
Did each age lasted the same amount of time ?
Thanks for any answer

According to the Mayan belief, the world changes every 5000 years, and Shadowrun/Earthdown is based on the Mayan belief.

So that would conclude that:
6th world: 2011-
5th world: 3K bc - 2011
4th world: 8K bc - 3K bc
3rd world: 13K bc - 8K bc
2nd world: 18K bc - 13K bc
1st world: 23K bc - 18K bc

So what came before 18K bc in the SR world is still a mystery...

The scourge lasted for about 500 years at the zenith. So 5750 bc - 5250 bc approximately. And yes, I suppose there has been a scourge in the second age. Maybe the dragons' creation myth that Vasdenjas is talking about one time (the protospecies as offspring of the mightiest horror, who turned against their twisted progenitors). You could see the journey of Nightstalker (the dragon allfather of the namegivers and -makers) as a metaphor for leaving a deep metaplane and traveling to one of the material worlds - earth.

Humans and the Cycle of Magic is a speech by Ehran “The Scribe�.

It describes the transitions between previous ages and gives some specific dates that are very close to, but not exactly the same as, those currently accepted for the Mayan Long Count.

Earthdawn is set in the post-Scourge Fourth World, which (according to Ehran) ended on 12-Aug-3113 BC. The Sixth World began on 24-Dec-2011 AD, and (according to Ehran) will end on 5-Apr-7137 AD.

You're assuming that the cycle of magic has a fixed period. This has never been confirmed.

Good point.

Additionally, the Mayas could of course only describe with their calender what they knew; no Mayan culture noticing magic and stuff, no records of previous worlds. Maybe there have been mana cycles for 500 million years or so. Just no one noticed or remembers.

Who knows, maybe the time before the 1st age was the time of Gods. Or maybe the first age was the first age where magic was removed from the material world (hence every odd age is a low mana cycle and every even one is a high mana cycle.

The theory I find appealing, based on a canon Shadowrun fluff piece, and the source of which escapes me, is that mana acts like an oscillating sine wave rather than a generic fantasy circle/wheel of time.

The cycle peaks represent time spans of high mana. Valleys, low mana. The further one travels back along the time line, the longer the waxing/waning periods of mana. The Fifth World was five-thousand years. The Fourth World may have been double/triple/quadruple that. The Third World, double/triple/whatever the length of the Fourth and so on. Moving forward the cycling period grows shorter. The Sixth World may only be a 2500 year cycle (or more brief). The Seventh World shorter than that.

At some point in the future, by the X World, mana-cycles oscillate so rapidly the structure of the universe unravels. Or crunches to restart the Big Bang. Or transcends itself. Or we all Rapture.

Mana spikes represent universal static or hiccups in the cycles. Or a signifier of something to change in the underlying universal fabric, like a rumble before a volcano.

This decreasing-period theory of oscillations in the magic cycle leads to an interesting hypothesis:

Given that there is some measurable delay in the physical world's response or reaction to the changes in mana, as the cycle peaks grow increasingly close to each other (and similarly the valleys), the net effect on the physical world would be a tendency to stay at or near halfway between a peak and a valley. In other words, somewhere around the level where magic is present, but not high enough for great effects such as opening pathways to the Horrors or low enough to drive dragons underground and change metahumans all to humans.

It might be rough to live as an ork, though, at that stage of the condensing of periods, when change into and out of metahuman form would happen weekly.

It is almost like the astral world and physical world are slowly merging together. The Big Bang could be viewed as the separation of the two worlds (the effect that destroys and creates the physical world (and has God knows what effect on the astral world)). I wonder if this sin wave also effects the different metaplanes as well and that technically we are a metaplane as well. There will always be at least one metaplane touching the astral world at one time.

Wow I'm totally blowing my mind !

The 'first' age was only the first cycle of magic to have intelligent life around to record it. You could easily presume that mana levels rose and fell before that, but there was no one around to notice before the dragons (at least no one that's lasted to pass on their experiences.)

Well, considering that the Egyptians have been around since 10k BC, and primitive cultures were around before that there should be better records than we have.

Wikipedia mentions societies going back to 25k BC.

Shadowrun: Giving stoners existential things to talk about.

Estimates put the 1st World as far back at 18k BC, so 25K BC is the dawn of the 0th world.

Writing has only been around since about 4 to 5000 BC, however, speech has been around for 200,000 years.

So I think the best assumption is that the beginnings of recorded history recorded the current age as The First Age, then The Second Age was the first age of magic, and now we're in the 5th (or 6th--depending on which "now" you're referring to).

Interestingly enough, Native Americans call this world the Fourth World and the Fifth World is the next one.
Link

I forget the exact progression, but either 1st or 2nd world was destroyed by fire and the other I've forgotten, and 3rd World was destroyed by water (a great flood--guess what that sounds like? You guessed, Moses).

Did you actually mean Moses, or did you mean Noah?

Haha!

Tells you how long it's been since I've been in church! Completely forgetting all that bible sh*t.

(Not to harp on religion or religious people, it's just not for me).

I cant comment on all this, as I dont know enough about it.

But MAN, I miss Doc Funk and AH right now. This was their area of expertise.

Oh wait... AH is here. Durr durr durr....

Rolls over. Opens eye. Goes back to sleep.

Sorry for not replying to all those answers couldnt have some time for me at work
It seems my question wasnt worded correctly seeing the answers.
4th world was the age of Legends, we know what happened : it's earthdawn.
But when was the age of Dragons ? the second world ?
Dont you think that the 5k years cycle is a bit short to have the 4 billion years covered for the creation of earth ?
Hell, even humanity is older than 6 X 5000 years so clearly the cycles where more than 5 thousand years at some point no ?
So like AH said : we should not assume that the cycles are regular.
To come back to my initial question, i wanted to know what happened previously to Earthdawn background : the past that is explored in Earthdawn is actually prescourge, so that's still the 4th world.
What happened during the third world ? and if i'm right, the second world was the Age of Dragons.
That means the First was the age of horrors ? but that would have meant that there was no magic during the first ? I assumed horrors could only live on earth during the highest peaks of magic ?
The "cosmogony" written in ED Dragons is it something reliable ?

I have a theory.

You answered your own question. And see AH's statement and my pet theory above.

Is there a TL;DR version?

If my memory doesn't fail me I've read an article somewhere about the great flood, according to it sometime in the prehistory the Black Sea was dry and it was inhabited (the article stated that there are signs of past human presence on the bottom of the sea), kept divided from the mediterranean sea by natural dam in what is today the Bosporus Strait; one day the dam went down and the sea came in resulting in what the local population saw as the world being flooded, from which the myth. I don't realy know if it's true, but if it is we should check the human expansion from africa to the rest of the world to know if the american native mith and Noah are related.

Six million years ago, the whole Mediterranean Basin was dry, and this state spread right up into the Black Sea, though I am not sure what size that body of water was at the time. Eventually, the dam at Gibraltar (or, hey, The Pillars of Hercules!) broke, and the Atlantic rushed in. It must have been some show! That long ago, though, I don't think there would have been storytellers to carry on the history of the event.

A much later event that could be construed as a source for a flood myth is the rising of the oceans after the last glaciation period, and in particular the flooding of the Persian Gulf starting some 15,000 years ago. It was totally dry during the glacial period, and seawater progressed towards the modern delta of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers at an average rate of approximately 100 meters per year. It's highly likely that this region was populated before it flooded.

This would likely have been too late to be the source of flood myths in the Americas, but again, sea levels rose everywhere.

I have no idea what you mean.

That is the TL;DR version.

-paws

The flood story is one that is in every culture. That one I know about quite well.

10,000 BC is the earliest date for farming. Culture (in both meaning), yes. Civilization, or recorded history, no.

Oldest known hieroglyphs were dated around 3200 BC, and Menes unified the kingdom of Egypt around 3150 BC. All the known ancient civilizations actually seemingly emerge between 3400 and 3000 BC, with bronze and full-fledged scripts (which is consistent with the date given for the end of the Fourth World).
Real History, taking care of facts, and so on, "traditionally" starts in 753 BC in Roma. But Scandinavian archaeologists and historians for instance, would tell you the Scand Prehistory and Iron Age end and Scand History starts in 793 AD, as the brits recorded the first viking raid.

Sure, from the start, cultures had an oral tradition of some sort, which, incidentally, kept track of how the hill over there was created as the Moon Goddes fell in love with a hunter, and so on. The greeks remembered the Trojan War around 1300 or 1200 BC as involving a handful of Gods, immunity to normal weapons, divination metamagic, and I won't delve into some well-known trip back home occurring right after. In the Irish mythology, that appears around the same time, Newgrange was the home to the Tuatha de Danaan, as nobody remembered that humans built it around 3200 BC.

Interestingly enough, Wikipedia mentions only two particular cultures predating the Bronze Age : The Jiahu culture in Henan, China, disappear around 5800 BC. The Cucuteni-Trypillian culture in Ukraine appeared around 5300 BC, with the transition from its middle to late period around 3200 BC.

The only landmark I could find that could be consistent with First and Second World dates to justify a starting point is the arrival of mankind in America. Depending on whom you ask, they may give you date for the crossing of the Bering Strait that are consistent with the "traditional" dates for the start or the end of the Second World (18,000-13,000 BC). The Aztlan and Tir Tairngire spots may well have a lot more of importance than what was commonly considered.

It was rumored in Earthdawn that in the eastern lands of Cathay, the eastern dragons directly protected some metahuman settlements from the Scourge. Just an intriguing note.



Of course, if you ask the Azzies (as well as many of the Southwestern Amerind nations), their civilizations emerged from caves under the earth. *grins*