As established previously, the “known world” in A Song of Ice and Fire stretches for seven and a half thousand miles from the Lonely Light in the Sunset Sea to the Saffron Straits beyond Asshai. This vast stretch of territory incorporates the continent of Westeros, a vast chunk of Essos and the northern-most reaches of Sothoryos and Ulthos, along with numerous islands. However, it’s only a small chunk of the world (rather less than a quarter, at most). The question that naturally arises is, what else is out there beyond the edges of the maps?
A highly speculative look at the world beyond the maps. The red line marks the limits of canon knowledge (the edges of the known world maps). What lies beyond is total guesswork, but indicates how much of the world remains unknown (and Essos and Sothoryos could, of course, be much, much larger than shown here).
The answer is probably “not a lot”, at least in terms of powerful empires, kingdoms or other nation states. And there are some clues and indications from real history as to why this is so.
In European history, reasonably accurate maps of the continent, particularly the eastern Mediterranean basin, were created as early as the 7th Century BC. These maps also showed the north coast of Africa. It would take over 2,100 years until European explorers accurately mapped the far southern tip of Africa and created the first complete maps of the continent (and reasonably accurate maps of the entire continent would have to wait until well into the 19th Century). According to Herodotus, a Phoenician expedition circumnavigated Africa as early as 600 BC. This claim has been doubted, but the record of the voyage accurately reports the changing direction of the sun in the southern hemisphere, which some have claimed gave it credence. Real or not, the Phoenician report indicated that the southern extremities of Africa were lacking in riches or civilisation and providing no incentive to travel there. Overland travel, of course, was discouraged by the extreme hostility of the vast Sahara Desert.
So in real history, there was no incentive to explore the far southern reaches of Africa as there was no-one down there to trade with, and it was easier (and safer) to travel overland through Egypt to get from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, if necessary. On the other hand, the existence of China was known to Europeans in antiquity, and a huge amount of indirect trade was carried out between the Roman and Han Empires via the intermediary nations in the first couple of centuries AD. There was a significant push to find viable sea and land routes to China and the East Indies to make trade more profitable and eventually – almost out of desperation – drove Columbus into his journey across the Atlantic in 1492 and Vasco da Gama in his 1497-98 trip right around the coast of Africa and up to Calicut in India.
Or to put it another way, almost no-one said, “Let’s see what’s out there!” and hurled themselves completely into the unknown. One of the few groups that did was the Norse Vikings, who ended up colonising Iceland, Greenland and Vinland (in north-eastern Canada) by around 1009 AD. But they were lucky because the distances from north-western Europe to Iceland, Iceland to Greenland and Greenland to the North American mainland were not large.
How this relates to A Song of Ice and Fire is clear: Columbus was driven by the need to travel to a known destination (the East Indies, China and other Asian markets), as was da Gama (India), and the economic benefits of opening a trade route to a known and previously-reached (overland or by ships travelling across the Indian Ocean) destination. The impetus for their voyages of exploration was to get to a place that was already known to exist.
In the context of Essos, no such destination is known to exist. East of Asshai, the Shadow Lands, and the Thousand Islands knowledge peters out into pure fantasy or complete befuddlement. No-one knows what’s out there and the people who’ve tried have either never returned or, as in the case of Corlys Velaryon, the Sea Snake (53-132 AC), had to turn back due to lack of supplies or a lowering of morale.
The Roman and Chinese Han Empires in 200 AD. Although direct contact was extremely limited (unless you believe the Jackie Chan movie Dragon Blade), intermediary nations carried trade and information between the two superpowers.
What is particularly interesting is the fact that there is no indication of shared or passed-on knowledge. In the Roman period there was only very limited and sketchy contact between Rome and China, but intermediary nations stretching between the two (Parthia, Kushan, Tibet) could act as a conduit for trade and information, even if much of it was sketchy or inaccurate. In the case of Essos, it’s almost like a wall slams down beyond the Mountains of the Morn and the forests of Mossovy. It appears that no-one from Yi Ti, Asshai, or Ibben knows what the heck is out there either. If there were any further cities or nations, presumably they would have explored westwards and encountered the Mossovites, or the empire of Yi Ti, and some news of it would have made its way to Westeros.
This allows for a very simple conclusion: there is pretty much nothing out there past the Grey Waste and Mossovy. Essos may stretch on for a (relatively) short distance or for many thousands more miles, but either way there is no civilisation to be found or, if there is, it’s separated from the known world by such a vast gulf of wilderness that it’s not worth the exorbitant costs and dangers of making such a journey.
There may also be geographic hindrances. We know that the Saffron Straits link the Jade Sea to unknown bodies of water to the east, beyond the island-continent of Ulthos, but no-one has apparently explored the straits and returned. It may be that the far eastern end of the straits closes up to the point where they are not navigable by large ships, preventing further exploration that way. If equatorial Ulthos is even half as inhospitable as Sothoryos, then overland exploration will also likely be impossible. We know that there is no reported civilisation at all on Sothoryos (Jaenara Belaerys of Valyria spent three years exploring the continent on her dragon, Terrax, and reported that she still hadn’t seen all of it and she suspected it was as large as Essos, “a land without end”), which would discourage exploration down the coast of that landmass or whatever presumed straits or seas separate it from Ulthos. This effectively bars eastward exploration to the south of Essos.
To the north, civilisation to all intents and purposes ends at the island of Ibben, three thousand miles to the east of Westeros. Beyond Ibben, there is a grand total of one (relatively) safe port on the Shivering Sea: Nefer, the capital of N’Ghai, and that is a city of dubious repute which can only be reached via the forbidding Thousand Islands. Nefer is approximately two thousand miles from the Port of Ibben and one thousand miles from the furthermost-edge of the known world map. Even a sailor as hardy as the Sea Snake didn’t like the risk of a voyage east into unknown seas and lands with no known safe harbourage, and chose to return to Westeros (where, years and decades later, he would play a major role in the Dance of Dragons). It also appears that no ships have ever come west to these lands from whatever may be at the far eastern end of Essos.
Is it possible that the far east coast of Essos can be reached by sailing west across the Sunset Sea? Certainly, assuming there isn’t another landmass blocking the way. It might be that Essos wraps around most of the globe and its eastern shores lie just a few thousand miles across the Sunset Sea. However, George R.R. Martin has said that Essos is about the size as Eurasia (21 million square miles, or almost exactly three times the area of South America/Westeros). Whilst this would make Essos huge, it wouldn’t be so huge it would extend an additional 10,000 miles further eastwards, and wouldn’t be vastly bigger than what we see already on the maps.
According to Martin, we’re never going to get an official, full world map or a globe showing where everything is. But from the text, my conclusion is that if there are other pockets of civilisation in the world, they are incredibly distant and remote from the settled parts of Westeros and Essos, and will play no role in the rest of the story.
Atlas of Ice and Fire 
It’s interesting that Sothoryos and (as far as we can tell) Ulthos appear to be so inhospitable to civilization, considering there’s a tropical civilization in the Summer Islands, and there were cities in northern Sothoryos before the Fall of Valyria. It could be that there’s an extra added dimension of unpleasantness of Planetos’ rain forests from both magic and the various extra nasty creatures (like the hinted velociraptors and wyverns).
No equivalent to the polynesian culture on Planetos, either, spreading out across the tropics of a vast ocean.
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The relationship between Rome and Han China is one example, certainly, but what of the great Central and South American civilizations that had gone centuries without European involvement? Even in North America admirable cultures of various sizes waxed and waned unknown to the outside world. The Eastern shores of Essos would likely be as you say in order to make sense in GRRM’s semi-realistic world but elsewhere on Planetos cultures which we would today consider significant could believably be neglected by the rest of the world due to the current technology level and a lack of trade interest. If a spice merchant travels the length of Sothoryos looking for peoples who might have an abundance of spices, but only finds other goods then-considered to be worthless, why would that merchant consider it an opportunity worth publishing? However, if that same people group happened to be sitting on something then-considered to be valuable, chances are everyone would know about it eventually depending on the worth of the goods. That’s if they’re even friendly and the merchant lives long enough to tell someone else.
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Good point made. There was no such vast desert preventing the Mississippian civilization from trade and interaction with the Inca through intermediaries in the Caribbean and the Aztecs & Mayans. We know that trade was common place throughout both Americas because within decades of Columbus’ arrival, both the North and South American populace was decimated due to diseases the American peoples had no resistance to, brought by Columbus’ crew.
We now believe that the Amazon Rainforest, for example, was host to as many people as Europe prior to the Black Death – vast ruins have been discovered, devoured by the rainforest in just the century between Columbus and the Spanish Conquistadores. At least 30% of the Amazon’s soil seems to have been anthropogenically developed through swidden agriculture. And the Mississippi valley was similar.
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Why is the Saffron Straits even called the Saffron Straits? You would think that that’s a route via which Saffron is transported westwards. But if nobody knows what’s on the other side and the area north is nothing but mountains where nobody dares to go to and nobody visits Ulthos on the south side where does the name come from?
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The shores of Ulthos are dotted with dark-coloured trees and plants, which seem to be saffron. Ships have sailed into the straits and explored the coast a bit (hence how they’re on the map) and come back, so they took the name from there.
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But why call it “Straits”, then? Strais implies it has an end to another sea, or ocean, or whatever watermass.
Elsewhere it would be a gulf or something similar.
And if you don’t know if it’s closed or not, why call it “Straits” anyway? It implies a knowledge of what’s beyond.
Even the simple fact that Ulthos is considered a continent instead of a huge island seems to imply the same thing
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The “straits” bit might just be the gap between Asshai and Ulthos, and the waterway beyond is technically a different body of water altogether, so that would still work even if that body of water is a bay or closes off further up the coast.
I don’t think it does and GRRM seems set on Ulthos being large enough to be more than an island but small enough to make its position as a continent more dubious (so I suspect it’s a fair bit smaller than, say, Australia).
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Has there ever been any actual indication in the book that things eventually start getting cooler again once you go far enough south? (Given the impossible and explicitly magical nature of other climatic elements, I wonder about it…)
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I know that GRRM says that the theory of a landbridge between eastern Essos and the Lands of Always Winter is incorrect, but I wouldn’t discount the possibility of something like the Bering Strait between them. That the Grey Waste and the Shadow Lands are so cold and desolate seems very suspicious, as well as the hints that whatever the Five Forts were built to keep out is similar to the Others.
Otherwise, I’d think the east of Essos must go on for quite a ways beyond the map. The further east you go, Essos just gets wider, not narrower, and as you said, no one in the known world knows where it ends or what’s out there. If the furthest east of Essos does lead to a big ocean as your speculative map suggests, that’s a huge chunk of coastal land not to be hiding any unknown civilizations, unless it juts north enough that I’d be as cold and desolate as our world’s Kamchatka or Chukotka. If the eastern shores of Essos are temperate, you’d probably find civilizations the same as we find China, Japan, and Korea on the Pacific Coast of Asia, unless there’s some magical reason, or another non-human race akin to the Others that is already occupying it.
Your post discusses the Mussovites as if they’re an advanced civilization, but I never got the impression that they are. The name, “Mussovy,” suggests a parallel to Russia (Muscovy), but that could be a red herring. Mussovy’s cold, grim forests sound like the Siberian taiga, which never developed any advanced civilizations, and its shapeshifters and demon hunters might just be tribal peoples practicing shamanism similar to indigenous Siberians, infused with an unknown degree of fantasy elements. Whether or not the Mussovites are organized into a unified country, a series of petty kingdoms or city-states, or just tribes, we can’t assume there are no further civilizations beyond them from their own lack of reports, as we’re already lacking a lot of information about the nature of Mussovy itself. It’s possible the Mussovites know exactly what there is beyond them but don’t want to share it, or nobody’s ever interacted enough with the Mussovites to just ask them.
Anyway, I’d hope I’m wrong about Essos and Westeros both ending near one another at a cold, desolate tundra strait, as I want to believe there’s an unknown continent or two, or maybe a series of islands, hidden beyond the Sunset Sea the same way the Americas have been. The idea of a parallel to the Americas, with civilizations akin to the Mesoamerican, Andean, Amazonian, Pueblo, Pacific Northwest, or Mississippian Moundbuilder ones of our world, mixed with powerful magic, strange, fantastic beasts, non-human races, and gargantuan monsters, is just too cool.
It would be cool to imagine that the furthest north of Westeros actually extends to encompass their world’s Arctic Circle, making the North Pole a place on solid land rather than the middle of sea as it is on our world.
As for Sothoryos, I’d guess the ancestors of the Summer Islanders, the Naathi, and the remaining indigenous peoples of the Basilisk Isles (like the Isle of Toads) must also have once inhabited Sothoryos. The brindle-skinned race that inhabits Sothoryos today, which is not even fully human, appears to have wiped them out. Someone on reddit suggested that perhaps the human Sothoryi who built the ancient ruins still present there today are perhaps still there, hiding an advanced Wakanda-like civilization from the rest of mankind through magical means. I like that idea. Seeing as Sothoryos is seemingly endless, perhaps there are still some human cultures hidden at the furthest south of it.
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