Channeling Population.

[AerionBFII he/him]

Im a huge fan of the series and i was curious to know the channeling population.

I was curious if there had ever been a WOB about it?

Does anybody know the Channeling ratio roughly, like 1 person in 10,000 or 100,000 can channel?

[Yata he/him]

No no, the Channer Ratio in the popolation is really more high.

It's something like 5%. Therefore every 20 peoples, one of them may earn to channel the True Source.

[Left he/him]

I do remember seeing a percentage in the companion, but I didn't commit it to memory. Probably some searching online and through other forums will dig it up.

[Yata he/him]

I do remember seeing a percentage in the companion, but I didn't commit it to memory. Probably some searching online and through other forums will dig it up.

The 5% is percentage of Fade birth inside of a trolloc offspring. And the Fades are the result of a trolloc with the channeling gene through the Human side.

[king of nowhere]

it was mentioned in the books that the percentage of channeling population during the age of legends was 2-3%, and it was much higher than that of the third age.

 

The most we can do for the third age is make estimates with the numbers we have. I think the only case where we can make actual estimates regards the aiels, because

- we have a good count of how many channelers the shaido had

- we have a good count of how many warriors the aiel had, which can give us informations on the population

- we know the aiel get virtually all the people born with the spark

 

So, the shaido channeling wise ones were stated to be around 400 before the battle of malden. wise ones didn't swap clans for the bleakness, so that was all the shaido wise ones and only the shaido wise ones. we have no idea if the twelve clans have the same size, but lacking better information, we can assume they roughly do. That makes around 5000 female channelers among all the aiels.

 

Before the battle of cahirien, we are given the total number of aiel fighters as around one million, among all the clans. We cannot infer the relative size of the clans from it, because many aiel abandoned their clans to go with the shaido.  Now, we can try to figure out the general aiel population. that's mostly guesswork, because we don't know the percentage of the aiel population who were algai'd siswai. However, with preindustrial technology, most of the population would be needed to grow food. But aiels are very warlike, so we can expect them to keep as many warriors as possible. This gives us a reasonable estimate of the total aiel population between 10 and 20 millions. Less, and they could not feed all those warriors. More, it's not realistic; first, they would use the population surplus to make more warriors, and second, how many people can really feed off a desert?

 

So, considering that half of those aiel are women, we get an estimate that one person in 1000 or 2000 has the spark. That among the aiel, where wise ones are held in high esteem and marry many times.

 

In the westers lands, percentages ought to be smaller, but likely still within the same orders of magnitude: channeling women can go to the tower, where they either become aes sedai, who don't make children, or they join the kin, and don't make children. Or they never go to the tower and become wisdoms, who seldom marry. Basically, channelers in the westlands are unlikely to leave offspring, so there will be less of them. Given the size of randland, and estimates on population density in preindustrial societies, I'd guess they have 100 to 200 millions people, and a few tens of thousands potential channelers, most of whom never learn to channel because of the [sarcasm] enlightened [/sarcasm] white tower recruitment policy of waiting women to make the trip to be tested.

That's consistent with what we saw: 1000 aes sedai and 2000 kinswomen representing the modest fraction of women who went to the tower. A somewhat higher estimate can be mmade by the recruiting of the rebel aes sedai, who got some 1000 novices from murandy alone. Depending on how far the women came to be tested, and how many women came to be tested in the first place, we could raise the estimate of potential channelers to several tens of thousands. On the other hand, the pattern was having a heavy hand in shaping events towards the last battle, so we can't truust those events to accuratelly represent the actual percentages among the population.

 

Among the seanchan population the amount of channelers is even lower, since damane are sistematically culled from the gene pool - and even sul'dam don't look like they marry often. The seanchan continent is bigger than the westlands, but it is likely to have less channelers; probably a few thousand damane in the whole empire, with a few times that number in sul'dam. We never get hard numbers, but it seems the return comprises 300-400 damane, maybe 500, and they would leave some back in the empire.

 

I have no idea about the sharans, and no good estimates for their population - they have a big land, but the disposition of mountains and the principle of rain shadow dictates most of it is desert. They sistematically breed their channelers, so they should have a fair number of those, and I was in fact surprised that (spoilers for the last book, just in case you haven00t finished the series yet)

the sharan expedition force in the last book apparently only has some 500 of those (egwene claimed the aes sedai killed 400 sharan channelers, which was all of them. Add the 71 making the circle with demandred). However, we have word of brandon that the sharan fractured and the side that went with demandred was not all of them.

 

EDIT: but, as far as i know, there is no word of jordan or brandon with solid numbers of channelers otherwise

Edited January 5, 2016 by king of nowhere

[Yata he/him]

In the Randland the % of Channeler was more low than in other place of the World because the White Tower "killed" all the male channeler for thousands of years. Removing a good part of the channeling popolation from the genetic pool.

[king of nowhere]

In the Randland the % of Channeler was more low than in other place of the World because the White Tower "killed" all the male channeler for thousands of years. Removing a good part of the channeling popolation from the genetic pool.

Male channelers were killed in seanchan too. among the aiel, they were sent in the blight. So, that's not a difference. The only place where male channelers left offspring is shara, where, starting from age 15, they are regularly sent to breed, until they are killed in their early twenties.

[11thorderknight]

I'm pretty sure it was stated somewhere that approximately 1% of the 3rd Age population could learn to channel, as opposed to the 2-3% during the Age of Legends. In terms of the number born with the spark though - the best guess we have is that in Seanchan, there were 3-4 sul'dam for every damane, meaning that between 20-25% of potential channelers were born with the spark.