Ancient Kingdoms

[Leaf]

Has the Four Nations always existed or where they separate factions that no longer exist in the current world? In Zuko's Story, on his quest to find the Avatar, Zuko goes to Roku's temple on the crescent island where he reads through scroll after scroll about information regarding the Avatar's past lives. However, all he discovers were treaties between kingdoms that no longer existed and a long list of births/deaths. This is of course movie canon since the book is a prequel to the movie. But is this relevant to the series as well? If so, perhaps a majority of these ancient kingdoms inhabited the Earth Kingdom continent united by Chin the Conquer.

[waterfire (I am back!!!)]

That is very interesting, possibly pre-avatarish???

They must of been minor kingdoms outside of the 4 nations we know today. Possibly normal people kingdoms?

Or they must be kingdoms like Omashu and Ba Sing Se that are long gone

[Leaf]

They're probably just factions that later were united by Chin the Conquer.

So think Earth Kingdom.

[night]

This is more of a theory, so I'm moving to the Theories Board.

[asian malaysian]

If we take the longer view of things, even the Avatar hasnt always existed as we have learned from the Lion Turtle. On this point, you may have noted from the arrangement of the Avatar statues in the Souther Air Temple that Roku's statue is pretty close to the centre on the ground level (ie- not much room for many future Avatar statues). The point being, I think the Avatar universe has several Ages much in the way Lord of the Rings had several Ages. My view is that the four nations developed during the age of the Avatar and concievably partly due to the Avatar. Of course, this is all conjecture.