Reply To: Do you think that a terrible event occurred in the Great Valley in the past?
I know little about geology, but it’s likely that the Great Valley itself has existed for tens of thousands of years. It’s likely that it was settled by leaf eaters because it was rich in green food and could be defended reasonably well from sharpteeth. From the original movie, it mentioned that the Great Valley was “a land that was still lush and green.” This implies that the rest of the world was undergoing some pretty radical changes, but the Great Valley was so far untouched.
This hypothesis is further evidenced in the 4th movie when the wandering migrating longneck herd noticed changes everywhere they went. “Lands that we had migrated across for years had become…the Land of Mists…” It’s unclear how the Great Valley remained unchanged while the rest of the world fell apart, but the Old One in LBT 4 seemed convinced that changes were very possibly going to hit the Great Valley next.
Thankfully they never did (unless you count the swarming leaf gobblers (locusts) that ate all the green food in the Great Valley, but that’s not exactly climate change). However, the reason why the swarming leaf gobblers came to the Great Valley might be due to the fact that green food had become so scarce elsewhere.
Grandpa Longneck certainly knew what they were as soon as he saw them, which implies that they were at least relatively common outside the Great Valley. Remember that Grandma and Grandpa Longneck have spent most of their lives living outside of the Great Valley.
