Know then that it is the year 10,191. The known universe is ruled by the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV, my father. In this time, the most precious substance in the universe is the spice melange.
Whether you’ve seen the movies or read all the books, if anyone asks you about the timeline of Dune, I’m sure you can confidently say that we’re ten millennia after the establishment of the Spacing Guild.
The known universe has been frozen in a state of stagnation: the same Great Houses are battling it out in the open, while various factions scheme in the shadows, and the most constant thing of all is the Spice.
But what if I told you that in the original timeline, the discovery of Spice is relatively recent? I’d argue it’s about a century, give or take.
And all the evidence is in the original book.
SPOILER WARNING
Includes content from Dune [1965]
Last week, when we were exploring the Faufreluches, I mentioned how it’s super weird that the only planet with the universe’s most important substance isn’t locked down and regulated, but is considered a backwater world where social classes are not observed.
I didn’t want to go into it then, but I will say it now: I think that’s because it was a backwater world with no value until fairly recently.
But here’s some more evidence to support my claim.
The 10,000-year-old harvester
My favorite design is from the 1984 movie.
The scene that initially sparked my suspicions was the one where Duke Leto and his senior staff get acquainted with the technology used on Arrakis.
Paul leaned forward, staring at the machine.
Scaled against the tiny projected human figures around it, the thing was about one hundred and twenty meters long and about forty meters wide. It was basically a long, buglike body moving on independent sets of wide tracks.
“This is a harvester factory,” Hawat said. “We chose one in good repair for this projection. There’s one dragline outfit that came in with the first team of Imperial ecologists, though, and it’s still running … although I don’t know how … or why.”
“If that’s the one they call ‘Old Maria,’ it belongs in a museum,” an aide said. “I think the Harkonnens kept it as a punishment job, a threat hanging over their workers’ heads. Be good or you’ll be assigned to Old Maria.”
The Atreides inherited a harvester that’s been here since the very beginning of Spice mining - we know the Navigators rely on Spice, and since the Guild was established 10,191 years ago, that would mean that piece of heavy industrial machinery has been around for at least ten millennia.
Talk about build quality.
So I ask you. Wouldn’t this scene make much more sense if the ecologists came in only - let’s say - a hundred years ago? Did some testing, figured out Spice, and then the Harkonnen’s got their mining rights? We know they’ve been doing this for “only” 80 years.
Thufir Hawat, his father’s Master of Assassins, had explained it: their mortal enemies, the Harkonnens, had been on Arrakis eighty years, holding the planet in quasi-fief under a CHOAM Company contract to mine the geriatric spice, melange.
But ‘Old Maria’ is just the beginning. Once you know what to look for, you keep bumping into first-draft remnants of a much shorter, more recent history.
Yes, you might call them plot holes that should’ve been caught in the last edit - but to me, they’re much more exciting. If you allow for these “mistakes,” you can really enjoy these fragments of what was likely Herbert’s original, more compressed timeline that got buried under the epic scope as Dune evolved.
So let’s get digging.
🔒 In the full article:
Other things and places that (cannot) predate Spice
How the imperial rivalries make much more sense
What the Fremen bribes tell us
Some generational math
The Fremen food paradox
Why these aren’t plot holes but glimpses into Herbert’s world-building
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