Dawn Age

"They were people of the Dawn Age, the very first, before kings and kingdoms," he said. "In those days, there were no castles or holdfasts, no cities, not so much as a market town to be found between here and the sea of Dorne. There were no men at all. Only the children of the forest dwelt in the lands we now call the Seven Kingdoms."
- A Game of Thrones

The Dawn Age (or D.A. for dates) describes the period between when only the Children of the Forest and the Giants existed in Westeros, and when the First Men began migrating from Essos over the unbroken Arm of Dorne. It lasted until the sealing of the Pact on the Isle of Faces, and was followed by the Age of Heroes.

History

Before Men

Very little is known about Westeros before the arrival of the First Men. The Children of the Forest lived here alongside the giants and the weirwoods, worshipping the nameless gods. Though strange structures built during this period made of slick black stone, such as the Seastone Chair in the Iron Islands or the foundations of Oldtown, speak of another and even more mysterious race men call the Deep Ones. Westeros itself was far more densely forested, with the Children living in a vast primeval wood that once stretched from Cape Kraken along the Stony Shore to the Rainwood. Neither the Children nor the Giants had knowledge of metalworking, and their weapons were made of stone, wood, and bone, and another substance known only to the Children as dragonglass, or obsidian.

The Coming of the First Men

The First Men arrived in Westeros approximately seven thousand years before the Coming of the Andals, crossing the Arm of Dorne and gradually spreading through the new continent, bringing the First Gods, horses, cattle, sheep, and bronze. Why they left is unknown. But the First Men came in the thousands from the very start, settling Dorne first in mere decades, and then moving northwards to the Reach; the Stormlands; and the Riverlands over the next few centuries. The Mountain and Vale and the North would be the last regions they would settle. The Ironborn emerged as the First Men migrations continued, launching raids on the First Men kingdoms almost immediately, though it is unknown whether they themselves were First Men or an entirely different people.

Every region the First Men settled, except Dorne - which the Children called the 'Empty Land', they encountered the Children and the Giants. Initially the First Men had cordial relations with the Children, but as they erected forts, began farms, and built houses, felling the Children's sacred weirwoods to do so, the Children attacked and war broke out between them.

For the first few centuries, the First Men and the Children warred with each other. The former chopped swathes of weirwoods, slaughtered the Children, and claimed vast tracts of land throughout Westeros. The latter turned to their magics and their Greenseers to call on beasts to aid them, but as the conflict ground on, the Children realised they were slowly losing.

The Breaking

As a last ditch effort to staunch the flow of invaders their greenseers gathered in their hundreds, offering sacrifices, and with their combined magics broke the Arm of Dorne - an event named the 'Hammer of the Waters', turned the Neck into a swamp, and crumbled away the Iron Islands to a shadow of what it once was.

Despite the near-apocalyptic disasters that befell the First Men, they were already too entrenched in Westeros to leave, and the war continued over many more generations for centuries, perhaps millennia. Eventually, the mightiest greenseers of the Children came to the realisation that this was a war they could not win, and made peace with the kings of the First Men, who had grown weary of the fruitless conflict.

The Sealing of the Pact

Both sides met on an island at the centre of the God's Eye, a large lake in the Riverlands, and there agreed to the Pact. The Children would retreat to the deep forests, giving up all other lands to the First Men, and no more weirwoods would be cut down. The Children, to seal the Pact in the eyes of the gods, carved a face into every weirwood tree on the island, and it was named the Isle of Faces thereafter.

Trivia

• The Drowned priests speak that the Ironborn are not descended from the First Men, instead they emerged from the seas and the halls of the Drowned God shaped in his image before the First Men ever crossed the Arm of Dorne. And it is known that the Ironborn never used the runes of the First Men themselves.

• Casterly Rock was erected in the last centuries of the Dawn Age.

• Tales of the legendary first Reach king, Garth Greenhand, describe him as existing in Westeros millennia before the First Men arrived, treating with the Children and the Giants and trying to teach them how to farm, to sow crops, and to harvest, to no avail.