Haven Timeline: Chronology of Events and People

by The Cat's Whiskers

This is a "back story" timeline of events and people in the Haven "universe". Any writer wishing to use this to make life easier is welcome to. The timeline has a lot of explanation so I have also done a Short Dates Only Timeline. It is designed to dip in/out of as needed for your own story writing. It covers the distant past founding/origin of Haven up to Season 4.

1. Chapter 1: AD 150 to 1215

This is a timeline/chronology of characters and events for the TV show: Haven

Any Haven fan-fic writer who wishes to use this to make life easier for yourself is welcome to do so. Please message me via Fan Fiction Dot Net's PM Service if you have spotted any mistakes or want to add anything I have missed or that needs updating. Please note that I have no way of replying to or contacting "Guest reviewers" unless you have an email address/Fan Fiction account.

IMPORTANT: I apologise for the fact that there is a lot of explanation given, but as I was doing a "just the facts timeline" I realised that it didn't make sense to me, who has been following the show since S1:1, so if I wanted it to be of any practical use, I was going to have to explain to the reader/fan-fic writer what I mean.

This timeline doesn't go much beyond Seasons 1 and 2 in great detail, thought all 4 seasons are included (Version 1.1 was completed in June 2014 and in the UK transmission of Season 5 is pending).

This was intended to be a general outline only, so I apologise if I have left something out that you consider "vital" or included something you consider to be "trivia". However, please see Author's Notes at the end for further explanation – the mythology of the show requires quite a lot of background explanation to make sense, and provide the details that fan-fiction writers can make good use of, so I have erred on the side of caution and been waffling rather than too brief. As someone once told me, 'brevity is the art of wit, and you don't have either.' Regrettably true, it seems.

Certain biographic information is also not given "in universe" i.e., on screen during the televised episodes – certain information for instance is revealed in the contrasting Jordan and Dwight "webisodes" in the Season 3 box set, plus the cast/producer commentaries and interviews/behind-the-scenes vignettes available on the DVDs from Season 1 onwards.

But since not everyone has or cannot afford to buy box-sets of TV shows with these additional scenes/commentaries, I have tried to "double source" data from televised episodes that every viewer will have been able to see.

SOAP BOX MOMENT: Why? Why? In Season 4 of A Town Called Eureka a brilliant unknown person whom I shall laud greatly had a wonderful realisation of just how extremely frustrating it is to constantly be bobbing out of an DVD episode to watch deleted scenes and then have to "remember" where they fit in context to make the televised episode (edited for yet another Haemorrhoid Cream advert) make (more/any) sense.

This brilliant person then gave us a box set with several extended episodes. It was a thing of beauty to have episodes where you could watch it all the way through without having to bounce around like a rabbit dosed on LSD. Why can this genius not be rolled out across all networks for their TV DVD box-sets? DVDs Don't Have Adverts! So why not reinsert the deleted scenes into the episode Where They Belong. Extended Episodes Rule! And it will also make the DVDs more attractive to buy if you realise you get to see a bit more than "just what was on TV". Okay, moving on:

Troubles, Troubled and Town:

The TROUBLES are bizarre events, situations or locations that have a "supernatural" element, or expansion, or cause. For example, in S2:1 Nathan, Audrey and Real Audrey have to take cover in cars when they hit by a sudden shower of dead frogs. This can be a perfectly natural weather phenomenon and has happened with storms in sub-Saharan Africa "sucking up" small fish/amphibians and depositing these in rain downpours dozens or even hundreds of miles away. The Syfy Channel movie Sharknado took the same recognised weather event of a hurricane water-spout "sucking up" objects/sea life to the extreme, but if you replace the sharks with small fish, frogs or small birds, it does happen.

However, the Troubles are differentiated from this natural phenomenon in that a particular "Trouble" clearly has some paranormal identifier to it – for example, the raining frogs were preceded by water turning to blood and a plague of gnats, indicating that an isolated, rare weather occurrence was not to blame. Sometimes a Trouble will cause a problem, or it will increase/escalate a pre-existing but previously non-supernatural situation, or be an obvious thread in a wider situation that is not in of itself classified as a "Trouble". One example is the Haven Christmas Special Silent Night where the only indication of any unusual issue was that everyone bar Audrey thought it was Christmas - in the middle of July. It is demonstrated in the show (particularly Season 4, and S4:12, see main timeline) that The Troubles pre-date both the Troubled and the Town and can therefore exist independently of both (see timeline below), although in recent history, the Troubled have precipitated many of the Troubles.

The TROUBLED (alias the Cursed, the Afflicted) are people who have (often without realising it) some sort of "paranormal" or "supernatural" ability that affects those around them – sometimes it can be just their own family, other times friends and neighbours, other times everyone else.

The reasons pejorative terms are used by both others and the Troubled themselves is because the Troubled mostly are unable to control their "Trouble". This is because as Audrey explains (S4) that with a Troubled individual "it's all to do with what the person's feels". That is, the Troubled person has their individual condition triggered usually by a high-intensity emotional reaction to something; unfortunately that something, also usually, is emotionally negative (bereavement or being a victim of crime) rather than emotionally positive (celebration or orgasm).

Since an intense emotional-psychological state of any kind, either positive (joy, ecstasy, delight, merriment, satisfaction) or negative (anguish, rage, grief, envy, lust, arrogance, malice) reduces mental rationality, cognitive reasoning and intelligence for the duration of the high-intensity emotional state, the person is often unable to logically and calmly direct their Trouble.

There are the odd exceptions to this, (such as Captain Richards in S1:7, Sketchy and Duke himself from Season 2 onwards) but this ability to partially/fully control the Trouble is determined by the particular expression of the Trouble, i.e., what the Trouble itself is and how it manifests:

For example, in S1 (Butterfly) and S3 (Double Jeopardy) and S4 (Lay Me Down) where the individual's Trouble is dream-events that manifest in reality, a way to manage that Trouble would be so-called 'lucid dreaming' where a person consciously controls or directs (at least partly) the content and events within their own dreams whilst asleep. In Season 4:7, Lay Me Down, Audrey helps Carrie Benson stop the Trouble she is inadvertently causing by guiding her through a brief lucid dreaming exercise.

However, LD is extremely difficult to learn in the first place – in S4:7, we see that Carrie only succeeds (and then with intensive encouragement from Audrey) because the women in her family have been practising the technique for generations, and from early childhood. In short to achieve LD consistently over the long-term takes several years of intensive Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Mindfulness training and work with sleep-disorder neurologists and psychologists before reaching any sort of autonomous/self-sufficient ability. Not to mention the costs of paying for all that training/therapy/medical treatment to get there.

Other Troubles, such as the Hendrickson family Trouble being that they are 'bullet magnets' are – relatively speaking - much easier, cheaper and quicker to manage effectively. And before you get to any of that, there is the simple fact that quite often the person concerned does not know what they are doing - either for quite some time as in S1:2 Butterfly or S4:8 Crush - or even at all, as inS3:9, Sarah, or S4:2 Survivors.

The TOWN of Haven's exact founding – as in being populated by White West European settlers nearby any pre-existing native Indian village – is unknown, but logically about 1605 AD – See the Timeline below. To be completely accurate, Haven is not really a town, but: "a group of small, individual fishing villages and inland farming hamlets that have developed in close geographical proximity to each other which are interlinked by roads and in-shore coastal boat travel." Obviously labelling the entire geographical area covered by these farmstead and hamlets as the "town" of Haven is far easier and simpler.

As a teacher of Creative Writing, I can assure anyone who wants to try their hand at writing fiction, regardless of genre, that accuracy is highly desirable, but only to the point that it doesn't interfere with the story-telling. Just have some pompous outside official (tax inspector dropping in on the Haven Herald for instance?) pedantically correct Vince saying something like 'here in the town of Haven' with something like, 'I think you will find, Mr Teagues, that there is no such town of Haven, rather that topographically "Haven" is a colloquial appellation given to a group of small, individual…' and then stick to Haven.

However, the scattered nature of "Haven" in terms of infrastructure typical to any town – stores, banks, police stations, factories, houses, barns, roads, railway lines, etc., - means that it is still entirely plausible that a goodly chunk of the people who live in the area are not and never have been Troubled, whilst others in other parts of the area are and always have been Troubled – in (S2) the population is shown to be 25,121 (Silent Night) and in the S2 commentary Emily Rose (who plays 'Audrey Parker') mentions this as being helpful to make the storylines believable in that Haven was big enough for some people to have never heard of the Troubles or experienced them, but small enough for the town to be a bit insular and gossipy and folks know most of other folks' business.

Key to timeline abbreviations:

648 – Year of an event, according to Western Gregorian/secular calendar – see note on dating used in Author's Notes to this timeline in the final chapter.

BC – Before [the birth of] Christ – see Author's Notes

AD – Anno Domini [after the birth of Christ] see Author's Notes

TEAMS – The Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower that passes over that area of the Maine coast every 24 years in May. The exact date in May changes but TEAMS always appear in at the end of the first week of May, and takes place between 5th and 8th May.

THMS – The Hunter Meteor Storm that passes over that area of the Maine coast every 27 years in October. The exact date in October of the Meteor Storm changes but THMS always appears in mid-October and takes place between 15th and 25th October.

Example: (S1) = Season 1

Example: S4:15 – S = season, 4 = which season (currently 1-4) and 15 = episode number

Audrey Parker's Day Off = title of episode referred to

C. or c. = circa or about

Bef. = Before

Bet. = Between

Aft. = After

? = Query re person or event OR to signify that fact/data/name is unknown/not given in canon

Det., ST, Off., Dr., Ch. = Rank, i.e., Detective, State Trooper, Officer (Police), Doctor, Chief, etc.

* = Nota Bene(NB) additional note regarding a specific point

OSE = Off Screen Event – a vital tool for TV shows that only have 40 minutes to tell a story. This is where characters later on in the episode or season or series know information or facts that they were not there to see; hear or learn of first-hand. Viewers presume an OSE where that character was brought up to speed on events to avoid having to gift the character(s) with intermittent psychic powers to explain how they know stuff – although of course in Haven, intermittent psychic powers is a "reasonable" explanation.

Italicised entries = A real life event or person that is included because it or they may have some relevance to the mythology of Haven (or then again, may not but I am erring on the side of caution). For example:

1536:

King Henry VIII of England breaks with Roman Catholicism and begins Dissolution of the Monasteries

Italicised words, phrases and excerpts = are used to denote emphasis, or to indicate a quote, for instance:

…but it is impossible to determine what he believed to be…

…yet there is no such Trouble noted in Haven…

…in S3:14 Duke said, 'How on earth did we get to this point?' when he was arguing with Nathan…

Important: Please see end of timeline for note about the dates given below.

Haven is a modern, contemporary-set show of the "supernatural beneath the surface" genre.

Therefore, aliens, ghosts, vampires, elves, dwarves (of the race of people variety, not the medical condition variety), clones, teleporting, alternate universes (not to be confused with parallel universes which is a bona fide scientific quantum theory) are all Valid In-Universe tropes as are crossovers or interactions with shows or other fan-fiction such as – e.g., Grimm, The Librarians, Doctor Who, Supernatural, Star Trek, Stargate: SG-1, Stargate: Atlantis, Sanctuary, The Invisible Man, Moonlight, Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and so forth.

Since Haven is set in a modern setting, with a surface veneer of "normalcy", crossovers or interactions with shows or other fan-fiction such as Castle, Elementary, Sherlock, Criminal Minds, Lie to Me, New Tricks, Law & Order, The Mentalist, Numb3rs, Magnificent Seven ATF/MCAT AU Fan fiction series, The Sentinel, A Town Called Eureka (and Warehouse 13 possibly) are also Valid In-Universe although to a more variable degree: Hawaii 5-0 exists in the same "universe" as does JAG, NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles, Castle, Criminal Minds, etc., so characters from these shows could interact with Haven characters to some extent.

Due to the level of explanation needed for the mythology of Haven, I have also produced a Timeline of Dates that include all the key dates listed here but which have no explanation with them, for speed.

Again you are welcome to use that instead, or both. This timeline is not meant to be read narratively or chronologically like a story, you can dip in and out wherever you feel it is most useful to help you see where the plot "idea" is "coming from" or to use some of the dates in your own fan-fiction, if anything sparks a Plot Bunny.

So, on with the "show" as it were:

Timeline of Events, Places and People in the Haven 'universe'

C. AD 150 – 400:

The Roman Empire has been in gradual decline since the megalomaniacal maniacs of Christ's era in the first century AD.

AD 175:

As an example of the medical and socio-political knowledge and sophistication of the era, this is the earliest as yet discovered mention of Parkinson's Disease as "the Shaking Palsy", indicating it was already known and identified as a discrete pathology in its own right by the first century AD.

AD 407 – AD 410:

Roman legions finally withdraw altogether from South East and midlands Britain under the orders of Western Emperor Constantine III. This was effectively the founding of the Kingdom of Powys from the prosperous, cosmopolitan Roman province – the provincial capital of modern day Wroxeter was the fourth largest city in Roman-controlled England.

C. AD 430

Birth of Ambrosius Aurelius (alias Emrys Wledig), to the wealthy, aristocratic Anglo-Roman ruling family of the Kingdom of Powys in the West Midlands region of England; legendarily this family descended from the children of Magnus Maximus [Macsen Wledig], the last Emperor of England and Gaul (France) from 383 to 388 AD through the marriage of his daughter Sevira to Vortigern, a powerful warlord during the final decay of Rome's power in Britain. Ambrosius is commonly described as being the father of Merlin* and the older brother of Uther Pendragon*

* When the 'Troubles' first started is unknown, even by – especially by – the Haven characters in canon, but the mythology of Haven dovetails/interlinks well with Celtic-Norse mythologies particularly in the concepts of "other worlds"**

For many decades the traditional historical treatment of ancient civilisations was as primitive, superstitious landlubbers, terrified of crossing a puddle. However, in recent decades improved maritime archaeology has demonstrated that ancient peoples around the globe were all bold, confident, technological and highly successful seafarers and oceanic voyagers; this has caused a debunking of old orthodoxies about the New World not being discovered by Europeans until the 1400s, and so on.

At the same time, British historians and scholars have been able to use new technologies to investigate histories and "legends" of pre-Norman Britain which had been dismissed as nonsense. In the 400s AD, an Irish Gaelic account: The Voyage of Maelduin's Boat described a voyage Merlin took to North America, describing the ship landing first on a noted stretch of beach (Porcupine Strand) in Labrador, then going down the coast - and notes that Merlin stayed behind when the ship went back to Ireland, dying and being buried on what the Irish called Mannanan Island (Mannanan being a Celtic God of the Sea), which is an island off the coast of Maine.

The Indian name for the same island is Manana Island, as Manana is the Mi'kmaq name for an Algonquian God of the Sea. Such voyages were considered nonsense, despite the deserved reputation of Irish Celtic Christians as the "most learned men in all the Earth" and it being generally acknowledged that they had settled as Christian orders as far as Iceland and Greenland and were frequent and experienced seafarers:

During the reign of Charlemagne, the geographer-writer Dicuil, active between 812AD – 830AD recorded that Irish Celtic Christians made regular voyages to and from islands so far "north" that at the summer solstice there was virtually perpetual daylight. In contrast to other chroniclers, Dicuil's works, most notably the De Mensura Orbis Terrae [The Measurement of the World's Orbit], have been demonstrated to be singularly accurate even though the vast majority of its information is taken from the Mensuratio Orbis compiled for the Roman Emperor Theodosius II in AD 435 – 400 years earlier - despite human beings supposedly being superstition addled landlubbers shrieking in terror if splashed by a puddle. Dicuil even accurately records the journey of the Frankish (French) monk Fidelis in AD 762 along the canal (long since lost) rebuilt by Emperor Trajan that then existed between the River Nile and the Red Sea from Old Cairo to Suez – and which may indeed have given Ferdinand de Lessups of the Suez Canal Company the idea to rebuilt the canal yet again in the late 19th Century.

The idea of timid ancients who cowered from even paddling held until the mid-1970s when marine historian and explorer Tim Severin came across the Navagatio, the account of the Irish Saint Brendan the "Navigator" dating from the 600s AD, just two hundred years after Merlin supposedly made the trip and Emperor Theodosius II's remarkably accurate naval navigation aid was published.

Unlike Merlin, Brendan came back but the key theme that struck Tim Severin was that the ancient accounts did not seem consider such frequent two way voyages between Ireland and the Far Westland/Vinland to be particularly unusual. In the 1000s AD, the Norwegian Viking settlers to Iceland found the Irish already there living on the main island itself and also on the Vestmannaeyjar – the Islands of the West Men archipelago just off Iceland's northwest coast, the West Men being the Norse name for the Irish. In The Book of Icelanders, written in 1133 by Ari the Learned, he states that the Irish Icelanders sailed from Iceland westwards as they had had previous bad experiences with the non-Christian Vikings, who considered monasteries to be easy pickings for loot and slaves. But if you sail westwards from Iceland past the Westmen Islands you have Greenland and then – North Eastern Canada down the New England coast.

So Severin reconstructed a small two-mast Irish "leather boat" (curragh) made from tanned oxhides, flax, ash and wool grease typical of the period based on the 600s AD voyage of Brendan to see if the journeys described were feasible – five men in something the side of a large rowboat set off from Kerry, West Ireland, to follow the Stepping Stone Route of Brendan's account and hopefully make landfall down the East Coast of North America – in Newfoundland/Nova Scotia/New England.

His journey, which he published as The Brendan Voyage proved that it was not only possible but actually relatively easy to sail from Britain to the east coast of America by going up past the Faroe Islands, swinging underneath the south coast of Iceland, coast-hop down east Greenland and then over to Labrador, and then coast hop again from Labrador down along to what is now the New England coast of the USA. Severin's expedition showed that the most "difficult" part of the voyage (the one historians had used to dismiss it as fantasy) 2000 miles from Iceland's south-west coast to Newfoundland's east coast, was actually done in about nine weeks causing no particular desperate privation to the crew – despite them being in a small boat not much bigger than a modern-day dinghy.

What made Severin's voyage of 1977 far more significant in debunking the orthodox claims of "ancient humans were too stupid to manage seafaring" was that his voyage had it far more difficult than that of Brendan in the 600s or Merlin in the 400s, for his research had highlighted the fact that water conditions in north latitude seas and oceans is more hostile and stormy nowadays than it was back then. In his book, The Brendan Voyage, chapter Greenland Sea, Severin quotedProfessor H.H. Lamb (1913-1997) the leading climatology historian of the mid to late 20th Century: 'there were periods, particularly between AD300 and 500, [AD 650 to 850] and again between AD 900 to 1200 [during which much warmer weather] reduced the frequency of storms and the possibility of safe voyages to Iceland and Greenland higher in those times..' The fabled and supposedly mythical Northwest Passage was undoubtedly a useful and much used reality.

The 400s AD was when Merlin sailed, the 600s AD was when Brendan sailed and the 1000s AD was when the Vikings/Norsemen invaded the Scottish Isles, Ireland, Iceland, Greenland and Leif Erickson founded "Vinland" (Newfoundland). Ari the Learned in 1133 notes that the Irish were in the habit of setting off on sea voyages near the Arctic Circle in February – a time of year most modern mariners who sail the north latitudes would consider "insanely suicidal".

Professor Lamb categorised AD 300 – 1200 as the Mediaeval Warm Period [MWP], which was followed by the Little Ice Age [LIA] of 1500-1700; unfortunately his work was rapidly hijacked for political and money-spinning ends by eco-activists; although Lamb himself founded the first "climate change think tank" his input was quietly side-lined because he had published his findings in works and words that the layman could readily grasp, including easily understandable charts and diagrams that completely sabotaged the "global warming" anti-carbon, anti-fossil fuels, the Industrial Revolution was bad, climate change is an underway disaster caused by evil humans and we must all pay triple taxes to combat it and so forth.

The MWP and the LIA demonstrably had nothing to do with human activities; there were no factories, Industrial Revolution, CFCs, internal combustion engines, etc., completely exposing "Global Warming" as the scam it is to anyone who read Lamb's measured, cautious, impartial work – which sensibly offered several theories, but left it to ongoing scientific research to prove or disprove. In the early 1990s, author Graham Phillips wrote Merlin and the Discovery of Avalon in the New World, which was similarly based on the 200 years' before the Navigatio account of Maeldun's Boat and he too reached the conclusion that frequent travel between the British Isles and at the very least Newfoundland down to New England on the eastern seaboard of North America was a frequent, regular, not that remarkable occurrence to people at the time.

As someone who has been lucky enough to visit most of the nations described both by Thor Heyerdahl (Polynesia and New Zealand) and Tim Severin/Graham Phillips (Scotland, Iceland, Greenland and Canada) I can confirm that much of Severin's book in particular in terms of being feasible oceanic navigation is certainly plausible. There is no way to know for sure, but it would not surprise me at all if small groups of men from the "special forces" – Britain's Special Boat Service and/or the US Navy SEALs and so on – have periodically decided to see if they can pull off the Maeldun/Navigatio feat of sailing from Ireland to Maine by the Stepping Stone Route for themselves in the spirit that if a cerebral academic civilian like Tim Severin could pull it off in 1977 in a northern climate far less forgiving than that Merlin and Brendan would have experienced, and so on…

What is more, 30 years prior to Tim Severin's feat up and around the North Atlantic Ocean, proving the excellent seamanship of the ancient Celtic nations, Thor Heyerdahl and his 1947 Kon-Tiki voyage had previously debunked claims of "primitive landlubbers" by validating the seafaring exploring brilliance of the Polynesians in the Pacific Ocean. Indeed, it is increasingly being admitted that both Celts (white skin, red hair) and Phoenicians (brown skin, dark hair) settled in New Zealand by the 500s AD, centuries before the Maori got there.

That the original Maori voyagers were violent cannibals whose standard MO was to invade and exterminate the native populations was widely known until it was suppressed by the bigotry that is Political Correctness in the 1970s in order to make white New Zealanders the necessary racist whipping boys for liberal "equality and diversity" campaigns. To their credit, many Maori object to the official policy of deliberately destroying pre-Maori native sites so archaeologists cannot study them. However, since the Maori MO was to kill and eat males and enslave females for concubines and breeding it is possible DNA research amongst Maori, especially mitochondrial mother-daughter DNA may demonstrate the Celtic/Indonesian ancestry, since women pass their mtDNA from mother to daughter ad infinitum just as men pass their Y-DNA on from father to son. Another example is Australia, where the Aborigines who set out from Indonesia had to have had extraordinary talents at seamanship and oceanic travel millennia before arrogant archaeologists and palaeontologists are willing to give them "credit" for being intelligent enough to be classified as a human species.

As a result, some scholars suggested that maybe the reason ancient trading and contact voyages between the New World/Americas and the Old World nations are virtually unmentioned until the explorations of Columbus at the end of the 15th Century wasn't because they didn't happen, but rather because they were so commonplace as to be unremarkable. Tim Severin makes this point in his memoir of the trip, The Brendan Voyage, in that there were a whole variety of people both before, during and afterwards whom St. Brendan recorded as being knowledgeable and experienced in not just finding the great "Western land" but living there. One of these, interestingly, was a man named Menoc, which has been suggested (probably inevitably) as a version of Merlin***.

Another is listed in the Navigatio when the notorious fog banks of Newfoundland thwart Brendan making landfall initially he sails back but is joined by a Faroese experienced in making regular landfall on that coastline. When they do land along the Newfoundland/New Brunswick/New England coastline, their camp is meet by a youth who is fluent enough in Irish Gaelic to converse with them, who tells them it is a vast land, but the "vast river" that St. Brendan knows they cannot get across – possibly the Gulf of St. Lawrence, or the sea entrance to Lake Melville or Sandwich Bay – has Celtic settlers living there. As Tim Severin's book shows, the Navigatio, The Voyage of Maeldun's Boat, and the chronicles of such as Ari the Learned and the Norse Viking journeys demonstrate that they the collective remnant record of long-term, stable Celtic seafaring culture that regularly voyaged across the North Atlantic to North America and back on journeys of communication and exploration.

One historian gave the example of the Romans, who had a technical process to heat and bend ivory into tiles without splintering it – these ivory tiles were polished to give off a blinding white gleam and the most famous example of their usage was to cover the 43-feet-tall wooden sculpture of Zeus seated on a throne at Olympia. This was far cheaper than carving the statue out of marble, much easier to keep polished and much easier to repair for chipping and cracking. Created in AD 43, the statue was one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World.

This ivory bending technique has been lost to craftsmen for over two millennia, but the reason it wasn't written down frequently enough to be preserved is because "everybody knew about it" and saw no need to record what, at the time, was blindingly obvious. A similar example is at-risk human languages or extinct languages such as Ogham, which at one time were spoken by thousands or even millions of people – Latin, for instance. Nobody recorded them for posterity because they were "common" knowledge that "everyone already knew" until suddenly they weren't.

As of 2014 there are about 7500 living languages, but many linguistic ethnologists believe that as many languages and more (circa. 8000) have become extinct over the last 7000 years of human history, with many leaving no trace – the languages of the Neanderthals and the Denisovans, now known to have been contemporaneous socially and culturally with H. sapiens, for example. Any historian worthy of the title will have a plethora of examples of history that has been lost forever because it was considered to be so unremarkably commonplace as to be not worth writing down.

In terms of the relation of Merlin to the mythology of Haven, the Arthurian legends abound with people (not least of whom Merlin himself) who have objects or powers that can produce "mighty" and more often than not "terrible" rather than "delightful" effects. Consider "The Guard" symbol-stroke-tattoo, which has a distinct Celtic flavour to it – we do not as yet know who invented the symbol/tattoo**** or when, other than that it was ancient by the 1600s. In S1:5, a local tattoo artist, who is clearly no older than being in his early to mid-20s, tells Audrey and Nathan that he recognises the symbol because he invented it, yet this is soon proven to be a lie both in Season 1 canon episodes' storylines and in the opening credits:

In Season 1, Julia Carr takes Duke to the Eastside Cemetery and points out the multiplicity of graves – some obviously at least 150+ years old, that have The Guard symbol carved on them; indeed, Eastside Cemetery in Haven appears to be the 'unofficial official Guard families' graveyard' from what Julia points out to Duke. And in the opening credits we see The Guard symbol was verifiably in use at least as early as the 19th Century, as we see it prominently carved into the 1887 headstone of one Jack Moody.

Additionally, the opening credits clearly show Native Americans using an offering bowl to smoke incense before it as a religious symbol, like Christians burn incense before a cross (particularly in Catholic, Coptic and Orthodox denominations) and Buddhists burn incense before an image of the Buddha and Hindus burn incense before Brahma, Kali, etc. The tattooist's claim of invention is flatly contradicted eventually in S4:12.

Again in terms of Merlin, think about the portal "pool" under the lighthouse (S4:12 & S4:13), In S4:11 Jennifer Mason reads a quasi-riddle that refers to the "portal" or "well" under the lighthouse as the "Heart of Haven" – the H being capitalised as if the phrase is a title as much as it is a description. Imagine a youthful Arthur having voyaged from Wales to Tuwiuwok with Merlin, watching goggle-eyed as the Lady of the Lake rises up out of the seething "well" (The Woman – perhaps the original incarnation of Audrey?) bearing Excalibur and the Scabbard, the latter of which has the power to heal any wound.

See also 'Before 1200 AD' – admittedly contact with "Haven" by whites pre-the Pilgrim Fathers is conjecture, but it is a strong possibility, as the connections between Arthur, Merlin and the coast of Maine and New England are well established in non-fiction, real-life historical and archaeological literature.

** E.g., the Norse pantheon believed that Earth was one of Nine Worlds within the branches of the World Tree, interconnected and between which it was possible to travel, and that the Ice Giants, Dwarves, Elves and so on were species that lived in their native 'world'.

*** The real names of Arthur, Uther, Merlin, Ygraine and Guinevere cannot be stated with absolute certainty because a person's birth name was often superseded by a "nickname" or sobriquet in adulthood, for example, just as Ambrosius Aurelius would have been far better known as Emrys Wledig with Ambrosius being his "stuffy" formal, official "Sunday name" as we might term it.

Giving someone another name was often done to symbolise authority or power over the person or group given the name, or it was bestowed upon them as an accolade. In the Bible for example, Abram and Sarai are renamed Abraham and Sarah by the Lord, as Jacob is renamed Israel. In both 20th Century Russia and pre-World War II Nazi Germany when the pogroms against the Jews were widespread, Jewish families were forbidden to use their real surnames in Russian and German society and had to – publicly – use the surnames "assigned", so instead of Judah ben Yakobim, a person might be assigned the name Judas Schwarzkampf or Gelbwaßer; schwarzkampf is "blackhead" or a facial pimple/acne spot, and gelbwasser is "yellow water" – urine, or piss.

Unsurprisingly, Jewish families ignored these insulting impositions to the maximum extent possible – thousands emigrated to Britain and the USA, making tracking them difficult, as when they embarked from the Russian and German ports, officialdom insisted they be listed on the ship's manifest as…Schwarzkampf, for instance. However, since that name was not used from the moment they were safely up the gangplank, they arrived Southampton, England or Ellis Island, New York and walked off the boat to register their arrival as Judah ben Yakobim, or quite often anglicised to Jude Jacobson, with nothing to link them to Judas Schwarzkampf.

As more positive example, Pope Gregory unilaterally renamed Dionysius Exiguus "Denis the Little" without asking the man as he felt that the monk's forename was inappropriately pagan for the inventor of a Christian calendar. Albericus Vespucci was posthumously bestowed with the forename Americus by those who believed the Americas had been named in his honour. In the Americas, people had child-names, such as Loud Voice, and were then given a "man name" upon reaching adulthood as a warrior or priest or medicine woman, such as "Little Deer" became "Walks Far Woman". In Oriental cultures also, such as China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, etc., a person's name even from birth had meaning, such as Grief of Dawn might be given to a girl whose mother died in childbirth, or Breathes Like Dragon to a man afflicted by halitosis.

But if Grief of Dawn became the queen or concubine of a prince, her name would be changed to something like Blossom of Early Light; similarly if the man managed to get rid of his halitosis, those who knew him might rename him Lips of Sweeter Air. In many cultures a person could be known by two or even three names across their lifetime with no explanation given to later interested parties that they were all the same person. An example pertinent to the mythology of Haven is again Ambrosius Aurelius, as some scholars believe that he is identical to Riothamus, a Brythonic title-name meaning "high king", "supreme leader"; Riothamus fought with the Romans against the invading Goths in France in AD 470.

The "historical" Arthur, et al, lived in between AD 450 – AD 500 in Britain. In King Arthur, The True Story, by Graham Philips and Martin Keatman, the authors examined the linguistic, ethnographic, literary, archaeological and geographic historical record and theorised that Arthur was an Anglo-Roman High King (chief king over less powerful kings) in the 5th Century AD:

The most likely candidate for Uther was Enniaun Girt, High King of Powys. Effectively founded in AD 407 when the Emperor Constantine III withdrew the legions from Britain and surviving over 200 years until it diminished with areas being absorbed into the ascended Anglo-Saxon and Viking kingdoms of the middle 600s AD, Powys was the most successful, powerful and extensive and Middle Age kingdom.

Enniaun Girt was of Celtic Brythonic (Breton) ethnicity and in Brythonic which was proto-Welsh, he had the nickname "Uther Pen-Dragon", or "terrible-headed Dragon" – his red dragon war pennant became adopted as the emblem of Powys, then Wales, where it is still clearly visible on the Welsh flag today. A variety of the earliest surviving texts list Ambrosius Aurelius' younger brother as being named Uter, and there is an ancient theme that Ambrosius was not succeeded as High King by his son Merlin but by his younger brother Uther Pendragon. He is also (as Enion Yrth) listed as King of Gwynedd – this is in line with the era, as what we today would call a "nation" was split into smaller kingdoms and principalities, ruled by kings and princes, the most powerful of which (not necessarily the largest by size or wealthiest by money) would be the High King or Crown Prince.

The High King might thus rule over two kingdoms (but not likely more than that) directly, and rule over or strongly influence others indirectly via marriage alliances either for himself or his heirs. In that period, the term "warrior" was synonymous with "king", but there were some ruling queens, such as Ygraine appeared to be in her original form and such as Seaxburgh, a real-life queen in the 7th Century. Powys and Gwynedd became one kingdom in AD 955 when Rhodri the Great inherited Powys from his sonless maternal uncle, King Cyngen and Gwynedd from his father Merfyn.

As it happens, the peak of Powys as a socio-political reality was during the AD 450 to AD 550, the century encompassing the "peaceful period" the monk Gildas describes and which is ascribed to the reigns of Ambrosius, Uther and Arthur. Enniaun's son, the next High King was Owain Ddantgwyn (White Tooth). However, Owain's "man name" was Arthur – in Brythonic, Arthur means "dreadful bear", and in modern Welsh, arth is still the word for bear, centuries after the British ursine species were hunted to extinction. The Dreadful Bear, son of the Terrible Dragon – all very macho and war-hero appropriate names.

Merlin meant "eagle" and whilst it was sometimes literally given to denote a man with a classic "hooked beak" Roman nose, it was also given to indicate literal keen eyesight or more usually metaphorically to mean "far sighted" or denote wisdom and guile – in a 5th Century Royal adviser, being like Ian Richardson as Francis Urquhart in House of Cards was a great advantage (it is sad that Richardson did not leave to see Game of Thrones as he would have been the perfect cast member).

*** The Guard symbol is confirmed to be far older than Haven itself in S4:12. When Jennifer Mason notices The Guard symbol appearing and disappearing, Duke tells her he knows a person with a tattoo of The Guard symbol that does the same thing, and takes her to Vince and Dave Teagues. It is revealed that Vince Teagues' appearing/disappearing "tattoo" is actually a birthmark – signifying a birth-right: the firstborn child in each generation of the family is born with the "tattoo", which designates him or her as the hereditary protector of Troubled People in this reality or world, "Earthside". Dave explains that the Teagues have Native Amerindian ancestry, being descended from the Mi'kmaq tribe – when the White Europeans settled at Tuwiuwok and named it Haven, the Teagues family were amongst them – a male Teagues married the female Mi'kmaq who was the Hereditary Protector (Protectress, in the case of a female) of the Troubled, and their firstborn was born with the "mark".

This may explain why some people can make the tattoo appear and disappear at will (Julia Carr, Vince Teagues) whilst others apparently can't (Nathan Wuornos, Dwight Hendrickson). We know that The Guard mark is used as a religious symbol (by the Mi'kmaq as shown in the opening credits) and as a coded recognition sign (on the gravestones in the opening credits and the Cogan house in Colorado where it designates a "safe house") and as a physical tattoo denoting individual membership of The Guard (Dwight Hendrickson, Nathan Wuornos, Jordan McKee); Vince Teagues reveals it also appears as a "birthmark" on some people. In Season 1 and 2, when Julia Carr is explaining The Guard to Duke, he never realises that she has a Guard tattoo just above her left shoulder blade as it disappears and reappears, just as Vince's does.

However, Nathan's tattoo does not disappear or reappear, nor did Dwight's when he was burying Grady after Arla Cogan murdered him – it is a tattoo only. There is nothing explained in the show but presumably those people on whose body the tattoo appears/disappears were either born with it as a "birthmark" indicating Mi'kmaq ethnic ancestry, or if they had the tattoo done as adults, they had Mi'kmaq ethnic ancestry that enabled them to control the revelation of the tattoo's presence in front of others. Julia Carr shows Duke a photograph of one of her grandfathers with the tattoo on his lower left forearm as Vince Teagues' has but doesn't mention her own "tattoo" – this would suggest that the tattoo in her family is a hereditary birthmark, not a conscious adult choice to 'give me love and hat on my knuckles and oh, nice, that maze tat' too!'

Since the Teagues family descend from the marriage of a male white Celt Teagues to a female Amerindian Mi'kmaq who at that time was the firstborn of her generation, therefore designated to bear the role of the hereditary Protector/Protectress of the Troubled, I think it is likely that the maiden name of Julia Carr's mother Eleanor Carr (the ME in Season 1) was Eleanor Teagues, and that the photograph was of Julia's maternal grandfather, Eleanor's father. This would also make sense in terms of Eleanor's job – just as the Haven Herald was founded to cover-up the Troubles and so protect the Troubled, the Haven pathologist/Medical Examiner would also of necessity be "in on it" in order to certify that the deceased died from, for example, inhaling fumes from a gas leak and ensuring that the autopsy/post-mortem did not mention/ignored the claw marks from a rougarou or the teeth marks of a wendigo.

As a genealogist, looking at the interaction between Vince and Eleanor particularly in Season 1, particularly S1:9 when Eleanor was accidentally killed (the shape shifter knocked her down the stairs in the dark), I would say that Eleanor and Vincent were most likely more distantly related – second or third cousins seems about right – than first cousins or siblings/half-siblings. However, this is not definite – others could have married into the Indian family of the Mi'kmaq Tribal Protectress and she and '?' Teagues could have had several children.

AD 441:

The Eta Aquarids (aka Aquariids) Meteor Shower [TEAMS] takes place every 24 years* over Haven, Maine. All TEAMS take place over a period of four weeks' duration from 21st April to 20th May, and the shower "peaks" during the middle of the first week of May, (around the 5th) to the middle of the second week (around the 9th) with the peak of the peak, the "maximum" on the night of the 7th May. It is called a shower rather than a storm because it is far fainter to the human eye than The Hunter Meteor Storm (Orionids) of October and is usually unnoticeable.

* In real life, TEAMS takes place every year in May not once every 24 years. Why the 24-year TEAMS is important in the mythology of Haven is explained under '444 AD' below.

444 AD:

The Hunter Meteor Storm [THMS] takes place. All THMS take place over a period of two weeks' duration; from the 15th to 29th October, and the "peak" period – which in the TV show is when The Woman enters the Barn – always takes place at during the third week of October, this is usually between the 20th to 25th, with the peak of the peak (maximum) on 21st, 22nd or 23rd October. It is called a storm rather than a shower because it is more visible throughout than the TEAMS, despite being of shorter duration and because the maximum is often very visible to the naked eye during the mid-October "maximum".

THMS is central to the show and the mythology of Haven. The Troubles "come back" and at some point during that period of the resurgent Troubles, The Woman arrives in Haven and helps the Troubled – she is immune to the Troubles and can either help stop the Trouble or mitigate its effects. When the HMS reaches its peak – the point when it can be seen passing over Haven in mid-October, The Woman enters the Barn and the Troubles cease for approaching 27 years before gradually starting again, which is a harbinger of the return of The Woman.

In real life, there is an annual Orionids meteor shower; during the first two weeks of October, the Orionids may be preceded by periodic Draconid meteor showers, which can be short-lived but spectacular, however the Draconids are not an annual event, and the Orionids are. Overlapping slightly from the Orionids and also an annual meteor shower are the Taurids that last to mid-November, but again these are not as visible.

In terms of the mythology of Haven, the Orionids have so far been highlighted as the key celestial event. Both the Orionids and the Eta Aquarids are caused by the orbit through the Solar System of Halley's Comet, whereas the Draconids and Taurids are not. It is when the generally 75-year-long orbit of Halley's Comet goes through the Inner Solar System and passes the constellation of Orion, that rock fragments break away and add to the meteor shower, making it larger and more visible than TEAMS.

In the mythology of Haven, THMS is not an annual but a specific event that recurs every 27 years at the beginning of the third week of October, on which date The Woman enters the Barn and the Troubles "stop for 27 years". However, this not quite accurate, as the Troubles start up again a few years before the THMS, meaning they return between 24-26 years after THMS. In the show, the "begin again" date is not given, but calculations made from things that the characters learn and do themselves gives a logical start of 24 years after THMS, around 7th May.

There is so far nothing beyond Duke discovering that The Hunter is a meteor storm at the Haven Herald in Season 3 that has been referenced in the show. However:

In 2010, the maximum date was 23rd October (night of THMS). In S3, Reunion, Jeanine tells Nathan about her Trouble, 'three years of nothing but cake'. Since her best friend's wedding took place in late spring/early summer three years before 2010 that would be 2007. Jeanine is the earliest known Trouble of the current Troubles, and 2007 would be 24 years after the THMS of 21st October 1983 when Lucy Ripley enters the Barn. In S4, Vince Teagues states that the "official" date of the Troubles that led to 1983 THMS restarting was 12th June 1981, but only because the Trouble in question was witnessed by the attendees of a Little League baseball game. This would be 25 years after Sarah Vernon entered the Barn 21st October 1956. However, in S3:9 Sarah we learn that Stuart Mosley's Trouble had to take place in the Spring/Summer of 1953, which again is 24 years after The Woman entered the Barn around 20th October 1929.

Therefore, it seems logical to assume that since a meteor storm caused by Halley's Comet is linked to the cessation of the Troubles, a meteor shower caused by Halley's Comet is also linked to the resumption of the Troubles. Although nothing has been stated on the show, we have two verified periods (2007 and 1953) where we know a Trouble was activated at the same time or just after TEAMS (April-May) 24 years after the previous THMS (mid-October) took place. It therefore seems logical to surmise that the Troubles begin again just after TEAMS 24 years after the previous THMS:

The Woman entered the Barn mid-October 1929, and Stuart Mosley's Trouble activated between April-July 1953; Sarah Vernon entered the Barn mid-October 1956 and the Troubles presumably restarted mid-April to mid-July 1980; Lucy Ripley entered the Barn mid-October 1983 and Jeanine's Trouble activated in June 2007. The fact that the Troubles gradually peter out after The Woman enters the Barn as the Orionids decline and peter out from the peak period of the HMS until THMS is over by the 31st October to the 9th November, is paralleled by the fact that they appear to start gradually and unnoticed and increase over time until they are "obviously back" during the far less visible and noticeable peak period of the EAMS.

It may also be relevant that give or take a few months the orbit of Halley's Comet takes either 75 and a bit or 76 and a bit years to traverse the Solar System, so a period of 24 years (x 3 = 72) and/or 27 years (x3 = 81) both last approximately one-third of the total of time it takes Halley's Comet to go through our Solar System. In many ancient and modern religious and scientific belief systems, "three" is a powerful number, applied to everything from Trinity Deities to Mathematical Triangles to literary and allegorical emphasis: 666, the number that denotes complete, ultimate evil and 7th Heaven (777) the ultimate paradise.

Remember: In the mythology of Haven TEAMS and THMS is each a "special" event of meteor activity that takes place over one 24-hour period every 24 and 27 years, whereas in real life both place annually and last at least two weeks, though both are invisible to the naked eye for 99% of the duration. For the purposes of this timeline, the EAMS and THMS are both treated as if they happen only once every 24/27 years. Generally, only the year of THMS is given unless TEAMS is particularly relevant – remember, there is no visual evidence as yet shown on the TV show that the Troubles existed before 1887, although there has been plenty of verbal statements to the effect that they did (see '1887')

C. AD 459:

Ambrosius Aurelius becomes High King of Powys, Bretwalda, Over-King or High King of the Britons.

471 AD – THMS, remember all THMS take place mid-October, around the 22nd October/third week of October.

C.470 AD:

The Romano-British priest and historian Gildas (born c. AD 469 – AD 570) states that Anglo-Roman King Aurelius Ambrosius (Emrys Wledig) the putative father of Merlin (Emrys) and an Anglo-Roman-Welsh-Celtic Briton army won a major battle against the Saxon/Viking/Jutes invading from the Germanic countries, but that they could not maintain total repulsion of the encroaching Saxon/Viking tribes. It is possible this battle may have been the same one fought by Riothamus the "high king" of the Britons in Northern France in AD 470.

482 AD:

First of the two proposed dates* of Battle of Mount Badon/Badon Hill, in which a Romanised Anglo-Welsh Bretwalda or High King (commonly believed to be Artorius or Arthur) decisively defeated the Viking/Saxons again, causing a clear division of Western England and Wales that was Celtic 'Christian'* and Saxon South, East and North East that was Viking/Celtic 'Pagan'*

* See '1530s'

498 AD: THMS

498 AD is also the alternative date* for the Battle of Badon Hill.

* The exact date of the Battle of Badon Hill is uncertain. The main source is the major work of the monk Gildas, On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain which has been verified as 5th Century due to it mentioning five kings (although the identity of two are ambiguous).

Traditional history assigned the year AD 547 as when Gildas completed and published this; but more recent meta-analysis of all available textual and historical sources by scholars such as Robert Vermaat, When Did Gildas Write? On the website Vortigern Studies: British History 400 – 600, has demonstrated that it was written at least ten years, more probably 25 to 30 years, earlier, therefore between AD 515 to AD 530. Vermaat suggests AD 515 – AD 520, say AD 517. Since AD 547 places Badon in AD 498, the real date of circa AD 517 pushes Badon back to at least 490 if not earlier.

Unfortunately Gildas could be obscure in his internal dating. He writes that it was 44 years at the time of writing since the Anglo-Roman Bretwalda led the battle that led to the Britons enjoying a generation of peace, a peace he was writing in. But which battle? Gildas was born about 469, which would have made him a year old in 470 when Ambrosius (possibly called Riothamus) pulled off a "breathing space" quasi-victory in Brittany and retreated back to Powys where he successfully entrenched and maintained Powys' pre-eminence against neighbouring Anglo-Roman kingdoms as well as the Viking and Saxon-Goth-Jute invaders.

Gildas would have been 12 years old if Badon had been fought in 482 and 29 if it had been fought in 498. Historians and genealogists generally accept a generation as a span of 35 years for statistical purposes, so if you add 35 years respectively to 470, 482 and 498 you get AD 505, AD 517 and AD 533. Between AD 515 – AD 520 is the new timeframe for Gildas' work. That helps because any writing, whether it is fiction or non-fiction, is all about perspective. How the author relates to the world is how his characters or his work shows the world.

For example, Gildas was a rather self-righteous denunciatory Roman Catholic pedant and that comes through – Ambrosius as a Celtic Christian Anglo-Roman is the golden boy, and Vortigern as a pagan/heathen is not only the idiot who invited the Saxons to settle in Kent and East Anglia in the first place he was also a thoroughly nefarious and wicked character who even practised "incest", something that in reality the polygynous, polyandric laissez-faire Celtic Christian Britons tended to be more philosophical about. It is most likely that Gildas would consider the "generation of peace" to be the present generation he was living in as starting from when he was old enough to remember it "seeming to be so", much like we today often remember our school summer break to be long weeks of sunshine compared to current "rain and aggravating kids", when the probability is that nothing much has changed!

Since Gildas wrote his work between 515-520 and since he was too young to remember 470 but the right age for 482 to make a powerful impression on a neo-teenage mind, and too life-cynical by 498 to believe that the "peace" would last more than "a couple of years" then most logically the Battle of Badon Hill took place in AD 482, when it would have made the most potent impression on the youthful Gildas. In addition, by the 520s to 530s the first faint stirrings of political intrigue and strife were stirring, as the Saxons and Vikings flexed their invading muscles and Powys began to decline as a political power. By the late 520s it is unlikely Gildas would have considered himself to still be benefiting from the "generation of peace" wrought by that "great battle".

In the end though, there is no way to know. Thousands of pre-Norman textbooks dealing with the history and society of England and Wales were destroyed during 1536-1541 when King Henry VIII ordered the "Dissolution" (destruction) of the Monasteries, which also served as England and Wales' libraries, museums, art galleries, hospitals, homeless shelters, and so on. It was cultural vandalism on an epic scale, comparable to famous disasters such as the burning of the Library of Thebes, that of Alexandria, that of Baghdad, Timbuktu, and the Nazis.

525 AD (Summer):

Monk Dionysius Exiguus, alias Dennis the Little, invents Anno Domini, what becomes the Julian and then the Gregorian (from 1752) calendar, in order to that everyone in the Christianised Roman Empire can celebrate Easter (March-April) at the same time without having to use complicated multiplication calendar 'tables'.

The idea immediately gains popularity; Dennis, not realising that the Romans had no concept of the number zero, miscounts the birth of Christ by a couple of years, but otherwise is extremely accurate – Jesus Christ was actually born the 1st week of October in the 'year' 2BC (2 years before the birth of Christ, ironically) but this was an amazing feat of mathematical calculation given that Dennis had to work his way through multiple and often contradictory sources. Until 525 AD, in the Western Hemisphere time was 'counted' from the reign of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, whom Dennis despised as a notorious tyrant and persecutor of Christians and he did not want to base any calendar on the generally universally loathed Emperor (by Pagans as well as Christians).

525 AD – THMS (October)

541 – 543 AD:

Plague of Justinian, recurrences until 750AD, caused by Y. Pestis (bubonic plague). See by 600 AD, below.

552 AD - THMS

579 AD - THMS

By 600 AD – Celtic seafarers have already established periodic travel (trade/raid) with what will become eastern Canada and New England; with temporary "winter camps" down the North Eastern seaboard as far as what became Chesapeake Bay/Washington D.C. At this time, the Algonquian language group tribes live* all down this coast. Celtic and Indonesians have co-colonised the North and South Islands of New Zealand by this period.

* See 'Spring/Summer 1173'

By 600 AD – Oriental and Asian nations such as Japan, India, China, Korean and Indonesia are using fingerprints to catch criminals and try court cases; in Europe, most sorcerers and magicians, the ancient world's scientists and researchers, are developing into alchemists – the 'father' of organic chemistry, alchemy essentially invented the Scientific Method* of Hypothesis (Theory), Controlled Conditions Test, Record Observations, Revise Theory, Retest, Record, Revise Theory ad infinitum.

* Today, most "serious" scientists and "experts" sneer at crypto zoologists, parapsychologists and the like, and deride alchemy and historical sorcerers, mesmerists (hypnotists) and the like as stupid New Age superstition. If you know of any "professional" like this, take note of their ungrateful arrogance and let your opinion of their "expertise" and their competence reduce exponentially to the amount of conceited "confidence" they display in their own unassailable opinion.

It is true that there are many eccentrics out there, but 99% of the time it is the dedicated amateur and the person who is open rather than close-minded who makes the discoveries or who, after being vilified and insulted for months or years, is proven to be correct.

As noted, Timothy Severin and Thor Heyerdahl both turned the received wisdom about ancient seafaring on its head in the 1940s and the 1970s. It was the amateur enthusiasts who founded and sustained the Richard III Society, not the "expert" historians or any of the scientists based at the University of Leicester (much as Dr Turi King et al have tried to co-opt the glory) who put in the hard slog and eventually discovered the grave of Richard III himself, particularly one member of the Richard III Society, Philippa Langley:

'People who have an active interest in Richard III call themselves Ricardians, and Philippa Langley is proud to be one. Ricardians [and those in other fields similarly motivated] read, research, question old ideas, develop theories, and aren't afraid to challenge traditional ways of thinking. It's a tough mountain to climb, and you get used to people suggesting you might be a little odd… Richard had made good laws and earned respect as a ruler. His death had been lamented. There was no reason why he should not have been left to rest in peace at the site of the old friary…It was this belief that underpinned her determination to fly in the face of accepted opinion. So began Philippa's long road which lasted three years. Selling the concept, raising the funds, planning the logistics, recruiting the participants, commissioning the archaeological work and overseeing the whole process…' [Italics mine]

In short, the fact that most historians still decry the idea of even at least intermittent travel, even if not semi-regular, between North America and Britain during the early Hundreds AD if not before is actually a powerful reason for believing exactly that – you can practically see the egg-flying-towards-smug-faces. Interestingly, on Manana Island, runes carved into 'standing stones' suggest early Gaelic contact before the 600s AD.

In terms of the mythology of Haven, it is relevant because so far we don't have any comparators between "Earthside" and "Otherworld". Yes, I know those descriptions are a bit cheesy, but they are easy, simple, universally understood descriptors of our world of Haven, Maine, and the Otherworld where the Barn, Agent Howard and William apparently comes from; remember my advice given about the accurate description of Haven versus what helps the storytelling?

When I say comparators I mean that – we know nothing of what Otherworld is like in its economies, societies and cultures, religions, politics, geography, geology, etc. Of course we can make certain logical deductions – Jennifer Mason, Dave Teagues, The Woman and William all clearly demonstrate a human species population, and they don't seem to take violently ill by being Earthside, so similar atmosphere, vegetation, livestock, foodstuffs, and so on can be posited.

However, Earth currently has seven billion people – over our history we have had over 10,000 language groups including ancient and modern tongues, and within one nation-state a variety of highly disparate cultural, religious and economic societies can live side by side with varying degrees of integration or parallel rather than intersecting development.

What is Otherworld like in terms of technology, science, art, literature, medicine, politics, religion, social norms and taboos, financial systems, and so on? Ahead of us, or behind us, or like us Earthside, a vastly differing mix of the two. In terms of science and technology we tend to think in Western terms whereas there are societies on Earth whose scientific, economic and cultural "development" is over a century "behind" our own. In terms of science and technology, for instance, Japan is 25 years ahead of the USA, and 30 years ahead of the UK. Since palaeontologists now know that old beliefs of linear evolution from primitive ape to superior human is incorrect and that Earth had at least four different contemporaneous and overlapping cohabiting (and interbreeding) human species for a big chunk of our history, is that still the case in Otherworld?

We just don't know – but the question is relevant in terms of Haven mythology because in S4:12, Audrey is examining a Haven Herald newspaper article about the funeral of a Haven resident – supposedly from Spanish Influenza but really a Trouble. As Audrey moves a magnifying glass over the typeface, you catch a glimpse of the paragraph which mentions 'the dreaded virus…caused by 'cytokines' – however, the first cytokine (interferon-alpha) wasn't discovered until 1957, and the newspaper article photograph shows it dates from 1902 (see '1902'), 55 years earlier. So, how did the journalist at the Haven Herald know what cytokines were, and above all how they made such viruses as the Spanish Influenza fatal for healthy adults** whilst the more vulnerable "usual suspects" of children and elders survived? There's no way to know – it could be more advancement, or since we know time moves differently in the Barn, maybe time moves different in Otherworld than it does Earthside, although the latter seems unlikely, as it would be too complicated to match up such big differences in "time speed" (characters in the Star Trek universe have good reasons for hating temporal mechanics).

** Cytokines are essential in the body's autoimmune response, in fighting off infections; however, if things go wrong they can actually cause a disease to worsen or to cause death. Over-reaction and over-production of cytokines has been linked in real life to many things such as major depression (suicidal ideation), Dementia diseases and cancers. If cytokines are over-produced this can trigger what is known as a Cytokine Storm. Sometimes when the immune system is fighting a pathogen the production of cytokines goes into overdrive – this is most likely to happen when the immune system encounters a new or high-mortality-likely pathogen, such as Ebola or Marburg Virus. A Cytokine Storm will produce high fevers, swelling, redness, exhaustion, nausea – but if it happens in a vulnerable part of the body, it is the Cytokine Storm that kills the person, not the virus or bacteria that the immune system is fighting.

For example, if a Cytokine Storm happens in the lungs, fluid may develop and block the person's airway, killing them. In the post-World War I global Spanish Influenza pandemic, "flu" was already a respiratory illness, and the variant of influenza virus was particularly virulent and "nasty", causing a mass outbreak of Cytokine Storms in the lungs of Flu sufferers. The reason that "healthy" adults died is because young children and elderly people's immune systems do not produce sufficient cytokines, even if they are otherwise very healthy and fit, to cause a "storm", so the asthmatic six or seventy-six year old was far more likely to survive the Spanish Flu than the Olympic athlete 26-year-old marathon runner, whose body would have gone "nought to Cytokine Storm" in the space of a few hours.

Exactly the same thing is believed to have been behind the horrendous death toll of the Black Death (a combination of two related viruses, the pneumonic and the bubonic plague) across most of the known world between 1346 to 1353, which reduced the population of the planet by between 75-200 million people (the Spanish Flu killed around 50 million). The Black Death popped up periodically until the turn of the 20th Century, causing what is popularly termed the Second Pandemic of 1629 – 1772 in Europe and Asia, and ditto the Third Pandemic of 1890-1902 which devastated China and India.

In actual fact, the Black Death was the Second Pandemic, being a repeat of the Plague of Justinian (541-543 AD, 639AD and 700 – 750AD) – yet again, the Plague of Justinian is believed to have killed about 25 million people across Europe, Asia, Arabia and the Oriental nations due to cytokine storms. The so-called Second Pandemic, which included the Great Plague of London in 1665-1666 was actually the Third Pandemic, and the Third Pandemic of China/India the Fourth Pandemic. The Spanish Influenza outbreak was the first occurrence of the H5N1 "bird flu" virus, which was unknown to human immune systems at the time – had it been a de facto Fifth Pandemic of Bubonic Plague the death toll would have been far lower due to the long-term hereditary immunity in the human population.

606 AD - THMS

633 AD - THMS

660 AD - THMS

664 AD:

Synod of Whitby decrees that religious rites should follow Roman Catholic Christianity (f. St. Peter) rather than Celtic Christianity (f. St John the Beloved Apostle) – this change is largely accepted but run concurrently alongside Celtic rites* and only gradually changes following the Conquest.

* See '1530s'

687 AD - THMS

714 AD - THMS

741 AD – THMS

750 AD:

Last recorded outbreak of the Plague of Justinian, year that The Voyage of Maeldun's Boat was written – perhaps suggesting that the formerly oral ballad was put in writing to try and persuade people to literally flee the plague by emigrating to the USA as their forebears had been doing for 300 years.

768 AD - THMS

795 AD - THMS

822 AD - THMS

849 AD - THMS

876 AD – THMS

880s AD:

King Alfred the Great consolidates power as High King of England, and collates the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a compilation of major works in England that had been begun about 150 AD. Alfred's unification of various laws, religious observance, his emphasis on universal education for children (rather than just boys), and community administration created the first sense of 'English' identity, which preserved Anglo-Roman-Celtic English culture after the Norman Conquest of 1066, and which ensured the survival of the English language.

903 AD - THMS

930 AD - THMS

957 AD - THMS

984 AD - THMS

986 AD:

Leif Erickson founds a permanent colony in Greenland

By 1011:

Leif Erickson and has founded semi-permanent trading posts/camps and mini-colony farmsteads in "Vinland" (Newfoundland) stretching from Labrador down to Boston/Cape Cod.

1011 AD - THMS

1038 AD - THMS

1041 AD:

Bi Sheng invents moveable type in China

1065 THMS

1066:

William, Duke of Normandy defeats King Harold II of England at the Battle of Hastings to become King William I the Conqueror of England. Roman Catholic Christianity becomes more prominent as practised by the Normans (who are Celts) but Rome does not take a "hard line" against Celtic practices such as polyandry until the mid-16th century (See '1530s').

1092 – THMS

1119 - THMS

1146 - THMS

Spring/Summer 1173:

Probable founding of the farming/fishing town of Tuwiuwok* by the Mi'kmaq Algonquian-language tribe

* Although there are exceptions, the majority of topographical features such as rivers, lakes, mountains, bays, coves, woods and cliffs, etc., take their names from a nearby human settlement, not the other way around. This would indicate that the cliffs - Tuwiuwok Bluffs – Nathan takes Audrey to in S1:1were named Tuwiuwok ("Haven") by the townspeople, not the town named for the cliffs.

The Algonquian-language Indian tribes of New England had a three-pronged socio-economic system: first, many of the most prominent tribes constructed a series of small farming and fishing villages throughout what is now Massachusetts, up through New Hampshire, Maine, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, connected by unpaved roads, and a portion of the townsfolk would move in a "circuit" around these villages every three years in order ensure that no one area was over-farmed/fished.

Secondly, they also practised a three-year crop rotation system similar to that of Norman feudalistic Europe and England after the Conquest, which increased crop yields, extended livestock pasturage, etc. Thirdly they divided activities along sex lines – women were heavily involved in farming crops and livestock and maintaining the static buildings; men were active hunter-gatherers/fishermen, woodsmen and explorers, miners and goldpanners; this eminently sensible division of labour along the lines of each sex's strengths (which would be screamed down today as sexist) effectively doubled the bringing in of resources and trade. This tripartite approach was so successful that by 1500 the population of southern Algonquian tribes in comparison to more nomadic tribes had tripled to the extent the southern tribes averaged 100,000 more people. The first European colony in Boston, MA, Popham Colony founded 1602, was sited near a major Indian town of the Abenaki tribe for exactly those reasons of fertile acreage, good pasturage and trade opportunities with the Abenaki.

If you look at the most accurate description of "Haven" (really the towns of Chester, Lunenberg and Halifax on the coast of Nova Scotia): "a group of small, individual fishing villages and inland farming hamlets that have developed in close geographical proximity to each other which are interlinked by roads and in-shore coastal boat travel," this is a description of Algonquian language tribes' settlements in the real-life area of what we now call New England and the Eastern seaboard of Canada down Newfoundland and New Brunswick. Given that the portal 'well' or 'pool' currently hidden underneath the lighthouse (S4) appears to have been there hundreds of years if not thousands of years prior to any human settlement, it seems logical that the Mi'kmaq tribal priests and chiefs decided to settle there to monitor the 'portal' and try and live in relative peace and security.

It may even be (in line with S4:12) that one day a Mi'kmaq woke up to find that tattoo on his or her arm and told the tribal leadership that they just 'knew' they had to stay near the portal. Probably that Mi'kmaq witnessed someone coming from Otherworld to Earthside and they married and had children, becoming the ultimate ancestors of Vince Teagues. The Mi'kmaq must have been successful in making the area reasonably secure and pleasant to live in, at least long enough for the area to have been safe enough to be given the name 'haven for…' – Tuwiuwok – rather than Boca del Inferno (Hellmouth) as was the Chumash Indian name for Sunnydale in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

1173 – THMS October

1200 - THMS

Before 1200 AD:

The geographical area that will become "Haven" is already known for being an area where supernatural phenomena are present, prevalent and a problem – as suggested above, an Indian village most logically named Tuwiuwok was most likely founded on the site in the 1100s. In (S4) the Teagues brothers explain that during the explorer John Cabot's trip to North East Canada/America in 1497, (this really happened) his brother Sebastian Cabot (fictional) met and lived for several months with the Mi'kmaq Indian tribe, bands of whom lived and still live down the eastern coast of Newfoundland (where John Cabot initially landed) and what is today NE Maine.

The Teagues reveal that the Mi'kmaq told a Sebastian Cabot about the Troubles which had been extant for 'several generations'. Generally speaking, Family Historians/genealogists consider a 'generation' to be a period of 35 years' duration. Two generations is approximately one average human lifespan (70 years). If you count four generations (140 years) back from 1497, when Cabot recorded his interviews with the Mi'kmaq, the Troubles were affecting and afflicting the area by the 1350s; if you say six generations to be 'safe' that takes you back to the 1280s.

In traditional history teaching in schools it is often easier to remember people or events than a list of dates. In the UK, using the reigns of British monarchs is a useful way to break "history" down into smaller, far more easily digestible chunks; a similar method is used in the USA using Presidents, such as "the Reagan era" or the "Nixon era". Mention the "Regan era" to an American and – if he or she has any formal education or general awareness at all – he or she will immediately know you are talking about the 1980s. Say Nixon, people think of the 1970s and so on.

Other useful ways include relating history to certain wars. For example: Duke and Nathan (being the same age) are of the 'generation' of the 1st US-Iraq War and 9/11 (Desert Storm, c.1991 and 2001). Their parents' generation were of the Korean/Vietnam war (1950s-1970s). Their grandparents were of World War II/Korean War (1930s-1950s), their great-grandparents were of World War I/Great Depression (1910s-1930s), their great-great-grandparents were of the 2nd Boer War/the Age of Empire (1890s-1910s) and their great-great-great-grandparents were the Crimean War/American Civil War (1850s-1880s). There is overlap with the previous generation and the next but the general idea is sound.

From this, as well as the possibilities inherit in the 500s and 600s AD, it could well be that the Troubles have existed in that area for centuries – maybe even millennia, being present already when humans first colonised that area (see '1173' above, 'Before 1497' and '1605').

1215 AD:

The Barons' War ends with King John of England and the English aristocracy signing a peace accord known as the Magna Carta (Great, or Long Charter) on Runnymede Island. The Magna Carta enshrined that the King was subject to, not superior to, the laws of the land, and that certain rights such as the Writ of Habeas Corpus* (You have the Body) and the accused's right to trial by a jury of his peers*.

Long rightly praised for being ahead of their time, in Europe, the Magna Carta has been the subject of much hyperbole in claiming it as a revolutionary ideal that founded the Mother of All Parliaments. Many of the ideas in the Magna Carta were not progressive but recessive – going back to how urbane, cosmopolitan and egalitarian Roman-Celt England and Wales was before the Norman conquest of 1066. Rule by law rather than (divinely claimed) right had been a signature feature of the Celtic witanegamot (or elders' council). The Magna Carta was the beginning of the end of feudal serfdom in England, as when the Black Death hit only a 100 years later, it was the basis of many native English peasants seizing the opportunity to move into the houses of dead higher-classes and charge more for their labour.

In terms of the mythology of Haven, the Magna Carta followed by the decline in serfdom enabled "ordinary" Britons of non-conformist faiths (by then CCP having been superseded by Roman Catholicism in England and largely marginalised as Presbyterianism in Scotland and Congregationalism in Wales) to recommence pre-Norman activities such as exploratory seafaring on a wider scale, for example such as the New World discovery voyages of the turn of the 16th Century. This meant such British-Celtic families as the Teagues, Driscoll, McKee, had scions whom had the freedom from servitude to gamble on a "better" life in the New World.

* The Writ of Habeas Corpus, literally "You have the Body" was a legal requirement that those who had arrested a person bring him or her before a Judge or a Court. The Writ of Habeas Corpus had existed in English common law long before Magna Carta, and was not introduced or invented by it, but Magna Carta "assumed" that people had a general familiarity with its existence and usage of it:

'No Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseized of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will we not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land.' [Italics mine].

The "freeman" was the highest level of the Serfdom or Peasantry class. Just as the aristocracy was divided into Royalty, Duchies, Marquessates, Earldoms, Viscounts, and Baronies even the "lowest" social class was stratified: the "serf" class consisted of Freeman, Villein (not to be confused with villain as in criminal, though the latter was used as a snobbish slur against peasants and working-class people), Cottager/Cottar (or Bordar, from which we get boarder or lodger) and finally Slave (not in the traditional kidnapped sense, but a formal contracted socio-economic state of being).

Habeas Corpus protected against the sort of thing seen in dictatorships, where dissenters, journalists, and sundry "undesirables" are arrested and simply "disappear" forever without ever getting near a court. Whilst virtually anyone could make an arrest (even today the ability of an individual to make a 'citizen's arrest' still exists in the UK) the law demanded that the arrester make an account of why within a reasonable amount of time before an authorised legal representative of the State, or as it was then, the Sovereign:

'The King [as represented by the Judiciary and the Courts of the land] is at all times entitled to have an account why the liberty of any of his subjects is restrained, wherever that restraint may be inflicted.' [Insertion mine]

The major benefit of Habeas Corpus was that it could be used by a private individual citizen, or even the arrested person him or herself, to get to a Court where their situation would be out in the open to public scrutiny and thus help them get released. Habeas Corpus therefore also acted as a preventative against the arrested person being tortured or murdered as the sight of such an abuse in court would almost immediately swing the Judge and jury in favour of the arrested person on the spot.

Probably the most famous occasion was the case of Stewart v. Somerset in 1772, where the English godparents of a black American (Massachusetts) slave brought to London by his owner issued a Writ of Habeas Corpus against Charles Steuart when Somerset fled in London and in revenge Steuart tried to put him on a ship to Jamaica to be sold as a plantation labourer. Forced to produce Somerset, the American was represented and funded by many black and white Londoners (the black population of Britain at the time being about 20,000) and Lord Justice Mansfield ruled that slavery, which had never been allowed by English or Welsh law, was illegal. One of his lawyers John Philpott Curran the Irish orator said afterwards, 'the air of England has long been too pure for a slave, and every man is free who breathes it.' In actual fact, Curran took the credit for an unnamed lawyer who successfully argued for the freeing of an abused Russian slave in 1569 before the Court of Elizabeth I:

'Cartwright brought a slave from Russia and would scourge him, for which he was questioned…English is too pure an air for a slave to breathe in.' A scourge was a whip made out of leather strips with small pieces of bone or stone knotted along the strips to slice and tear the flesh – it was a common Roman punishment and Cartwright was apparently promptly arrested when he attacked the slave in that manner. In actual fact, Lord Mansfield was acting on the precedent of Chief Justice Hold in 1702, Smith v. Brown:

'…as soon as a Negro shall come to England he is free; one may be a villein in England, but never a slave.' Since "villeiny" (again, not to be confused with villainy as in criminality) was a formal contract even for the lowest-ranking serf, whereas slavery was by then an act of kidnap followed by violent abuse to force subjugation, slavery was never legal in England and Wales.

In terms of the mythology of Haven, the show is actually filmed in Canada, so the "laws" and "by-laws" of Haven are actually Canadian, which are based on the English legal system. In New England itself where the show takes place (the Maine coast) it was slightly complicated by the fact that there were two parallel streams of colonisation by White Europeans, particularly Britain:

Non-conformist religionists of Celtic ethnicity such as Scots, Irish, Welsh and West English (mostly Puritan, Reformation, Catholic) went voluntarily to colonise Maryland, New Hampshire, Newfoundland, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, etc., and many indentured servants* also went voluntarily, as a means of paying for their sea passage to a new life.

At the same time as orphans, criminals (or those sentenced to a prison term to be more accurate), vagrants and debtors/destitute were shipped over as outright slaves; plus bound and voluntary apprentices, labourers, farmstead and household servants, and involuntary indentured servants* the last being the economic mainstay of New England in the 18th Century.

The former group were desperate to get there, to escape assorted persecutions and economic downturn and the latter group were infuriated at being there. This made New England ripe for social, religious, political and economic tensions, conflict and flashpoints, and of course, as we seem to see in S4 of Haven William and Mara entered the mix at some point in the 16th (1500s) or 17th Century (1600s) who made an unpredictable, dangerous life already much worse.

An example of this occurs in S2:2 Fear and Loathing where Vince Teagues reveals that the original Troubled person was an 18th Century English youth named Tristram Carver, who was sent to relatives in Haven by his family as an indentured servant*. Resentfully viewing Haven as a prison rather than an opportunity to make a new life, Carver literally carved the child's puzzle board, 'imbuing his hatred of the town into every piece' (Vince Teagues, S2:2). When the puzzle was complete, Carver tried to assemble it – when Carver slotted a piece into its outline dent on the puzzle board the real-life Haven landmark represented by that piece (e.g., church, lighthouse, pier, house, etc.) was violently destroyed, exploding into superheated rubble and ash as if consumed by a superhot fire. Everything and everyone inside that building was also destroyed. Carver's intention was to wreak havoc by inserting all the pieces then destroying the entire puzzle board and the town with it. His relatives took the puzzle board from him, but were unable to destroy it as that would destroy the town, so scattered the pieces across New England in the hope nobody would ever put them together.

Another hint is Audrey's frustration in S4:12 in that 'troubles are always related to the people that have them', but they cannot fathom the rationale behind the Harker Curse – when a Harker weeps aloud, people who supernaturally "hear" the sound drop dead but someone standing nearby can be unaffected, whilst other victims can be five miles away or more. Since they cannot do this, they cannot come up with a way to stop the Harker Curse with four-month-old Aaron Harker (other than killing him) to avoid doing as William demands of Audrey: deliberately give someone a "new" Trouble.

There is no way to know, but it seems like that the Harker Curse originated in much the same way as the Carver Puzzle Board – a Harker man or much more likely boy* (see *indentured servant below) whose hatred of being shipped to Haven was so great that his loud sobbing and expressions of loathing for Haven – and everyone and everything to do with it – were turned into a Trouble that killed certain people. Again, there is no way to know for sure, but logically, the people who died when a Harker cried were probably direct descendants of the people that the Original Harker blamed and hated for his being in Haven, just as Tristram Carver hated and blamed his relatives who had immigrated to Haven on an earlier colony ship for his being there – perhaps the farmer who held his indenture bond, or the town sheriff who monitored him as a prisoner, or the ship owner who refused to allow him to stowaway back to England secretly, or the woman who caught him trying to escape and delivered him back to his master/employer who then beat him for intransigence and "ingratitude."

Of course, this also raises a continuity/plot plausibility issue in that having discovered such a Trouble's "original cause" in Fear & Loathing - i.e., only the year before in 2010 - in "real life" it should not have been any real intellectual leap for the main characters – certainly not Audrey, Nathan, Duke, Vince, Dave – or Dwight for that matter - to think back to the Carver Curse, and Ian Haskell's continuation of it, and realise that the Harker Curse was a variant on the puzzle board curse and that would have suggested options to deal with it based on Ben Harker Junior's feelings about liking Haven and living there. Of course, that didn't happen in terms of plot because the script needed Duke to have his original Trouble back and for Audrey to give into William's demands to Trouble someone.

* Indentured servants (servitude) was a technically voluntary labour system whereby a person (usually teenagers/young adults) paid for their sea passage to try and begin a new life in the "New World" as a colonist by working for an employer already based there for a set number of years. It was particularly used by poor working-class youths across Britain and German nations to afford passage to New England. Patrick Grolsch, the unpleasant, non-Troubled lawyer in S2:11 who attempts to murder Stuart Pearce has a German name and may be an example of a Germanic descendant of such a youth.

Generally, the person would sign an indenture with the ship's captain as payment for passage; the captain would sell the indenture on to farmers, fishermen, craftsmen, and innkeepers, anyone who needed labour. This rather effectively acted as a protection for the person (especially young women) from abuse and rape on board because if the person died en route the ship's captain lost financially. Over 50% of the white immigrants to the "Old Dominion" (the thirteen original colonies of New England) from the 1630s when the practice began in earnest to the 1770s when the American Revolution began (1776) were indentured servants.

During that era the age of legal of adulthood for men was 24 years (it was lowered to 21 years in the 19th Century, then to 18 in some US States/European nations in the 20th Century), although the age at which a boy or girl could be made an apprentice was 13 years. Since the social concept of "teenagers" did not exist until the 1960s, people went from "child" at age 23 to "adult" at 24 with none of today's gradual increase in "self-determining rights" from being able to smoke, buy alcohol, get married, etc. It went from "nought to your problem now" overnight, literally. Since the parents of a child or legal guardian of a ward/orphan had absolute authority, they could sign the contract with the ship's captain for the indenture period – this was anywhere between one to seven years, though the standard was five years – for any "child" up to and including one who was 23 years of age. Those who travelled across as adults (age 24 plus) under their own recognisance, usually undertook to be an indentured servant for three years. Generally speaking, the majority of indentured servants were in in their early to late teenage years – between 13-19 years of age.

Although the indentured servant was not paid a wage, the conditions had to be met by both parties – the employer had to provide food and board and was expected to teach the servant some self-sustaining trade or craft and at the end of the indenture, was required to provide the servant with a new set of clothes, to signify their new life as an economically free, autonomous individual. As in the case of Tristram Carver, 'many of the servants were actually nephews, nieces, cousins and children of friends of emigrating [colonists] who paid their passage in return for their labour once in America.' (Gary Nash, The Urban Crucible, 1979 p15).

This was needed as most colonists could not source free employees because it was so easy for new arrivals to take the risk of setting out or up on their own or striking West for the still undiscovered interior/West Coast. Ironically, wages were low in Britain due to a surplus of labourers, but the cost of getting to the New World where their economic value would soar was impossible to meet – so indentures solved the problem for all parties – the father wanting his child to have a better life (and to reduce the cost of supporting a growing teenager/23 year old who could not find work in Britain); the ship's captain minimised his financial risk by charging a token amount to the parent/guardian and then selling the indenture at full price in New England; the employer got stability of employees backed up by the courts; the indentured servant got food, shelter and education/training and the prospect of a far more prosperous life.

It would seem that Tristram Carver (and, presumably, the Original Harker) was probably engaging in a massive ongoing self-pity party – perhaps he believed that as a Carver, i.e., family member, he should have been above or exempt from having to do the same as the family's other servants. On the other hand, it is true that not all indentured servants were voluntary – white slavery was commonplace during some periods of the 1600s and 1700s. There was a particularly thriving white slave trade in kidnapped children, especially along the nearest coastline of Britain and the Germanic States to East Coast America: in Britain, Liverpool and down the west coast of Scotland from Aberdeen to Glasgow. In the 6 year peak period of child kidnapping/slave trafficking in western Scotland from 1740 – 1746 over 600 children were snatched and shipped to New England from Aberdeen alone.

Continues from the Year 1227 AD in Chapter 2…

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