Active Users:368 Time:10/06/2024 02:08:09 AM
There's no evidence to that effect; on what do you base that statement? - Edit 2

Before modification by Joel at 06/12/2010 02:20:43 AM

or rather, they're an inbred society with a bunch of purebred recessives running around.

Or rather, a closed genetic pool with a high predominance of recessive traits is not genocide. Sure, recessive eye color genes are the norm among the Aiel, but unless biology works very differently in Randland than in our far future/past Age there are still a few dark eyed Aiel somewhere. I live in Norway now; you don't have to tell ME how much more common recessive traits are in an isolated society, but I still see people with dark hair and/or eyes. They're the exception rather than the rule, but I don't automatically assume they aren't natives, and I'd look very foolish (at best) if I did.

An isolated bloodline is not ethnic cleansing; I assumed you knew that. As a military and general historian RJ was certainly aware of what ethnic cleansing is since it was the norm for victorious armies until fairly recently. Had he intended his heroic Aiel to be genocidal he surely would have given us an example of it, but he didn't. Not only is there no evidence for it, there's evidence against it. Jordan heavily implied an AoL Aes Sedai had a relationship with one of Rands more attractive ancestors, and assuming they adopted ethnic cleansing after becoming martial fails because, as my fiancee notes, they accepted Tigraine despite the fact she was obviously a wetlander. Their militance toward wetlanders is based on often justified mistrust, not racism; they welcome gleemen and smiths, happily trade with merchants (including the very untrustworthy Sharans) and their hatred for Cairhienin stems from a grave perceived insult that terminated a much longer period of friendship.

Is there something more than an assessment by a teenage stranger in the Waste to convince us there are NO (zero, none, zilch) dark eyed Aiel? Because, once again, he says the same thing about pale skin, ignoring the fact that he and every Aiel we've seen to date is pale above the tan line. It's far more reasonable to think the killers at the end of ToM are Aiel who've forsaken their honor and very probably the Light as well by killing unveiled. That makes a lot more sense than taking a single statement by a kid who only saw his first Aiel in the last few months as a definitive authoritative description of each of them.

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