Off the top of my head, I thought King Harald was quoted as being the first human historian? I don't know, I haven't really consolidated all the new lore yet.

I'm with you though, I get the impression or feeling that The Dragon War occurred before Ysgramor's Return. It feels more ancient than that. Might have to delve into some reading I think.

You can talk to a man (I believe named Valmir) in front of the Forelhost ruins south of Riften who says that it was the last bastion of the Dragon Cultists in the time of King Harald. Journals and notes found inside corroborate this, and suggest that the extermination of these last Cultists happened some time after the Dragon Wars (the author of a journal expresses shock at finding Cultists still extant). So the wars were finished before Harald's reign, but this definitely agrees with the placement of them in the early years of the First Era.

Honestly, I still feel like they were just shoddily jammed into the timeline for the sake of Skyrim, without enough thought put into it.

I've been leaning towards trying to see the Dragon Wars as occurring in the Dawn Era, but it just doesn't fit.

I remember the Forelhost quest, that was awesome. Harald being the first human historian is obviously a pre-Skyrim lore note. I wouldn't say Dawn Era (That's when the gods still walked Tamriel, if you go by some accounts) but more late Merethic is what I was thinking. Skyrim establishes The Dragon Wars occurring in the early 1E though, so yeah like you said; it just feels 'jammed in'.

Didn't MK make some mentions more than once about how time was "fuzzy" back up through the early First era? Like, specifically when he was talking about Nedes and Atmorans? Maybe this applies here. Maybe it happened during that "fuzzy" time. Convenient plot device but an applicable one.

 I almost like the dawn era because then i feel like it could one of many numerous possible histories. Something that could have both happened and didn't happen...

But i don't think men were around much around that time, and like we've pointed out..the game really wants you to think it happens inbetween Ygramor and Harald.

I do want to point out that this book: Before the Ages of Man

It says Ysgamror was the first historian. 

Yeah says that on the timeline too. Don't know where I pulled Harald out of, haha.

Reading The Dragon War now and a couple of other books. The war itself could occur anywhere from the Late Merethic after Ysgramor's Return to sometime before 1E139.

Might've had something to do with Harald being referred to as the first historic king.

Definitely - That sitting in the back of my head, along with this:

The earliest Merethic date cited by King Harald's scholars was ME2500 -- the Nordic reckoning of the first year of time. As such, the Merethic Era extends from ME2500 in the distant past to ME1 -- the year before the founding of the Camoran Dynasty and the establishment of White-Gold Tower as an independent city-state.

All the information just tends to merge with itself after a while, haha. Guess that's why the lore needs to be revised from time to time.

It's indeed rather shoddily jammed in, said to have happened so it could be referred to, rather than having been fitted in with some thought. So much for what got represented in game.

But that's good. There's echoes of something more beautiful here. Remember: we were taught something about the Dawn Era recently. The Dawn is not just the beginning of the world, but also the end of the previous one. It is a mortal construct, an amalgam of countless ideas that managed to linger between worlds, that's why its so fuzzy.

So when did these events last take place? In the Dawn, which is to say at the end of the last world, heralded by Alduin. And when are they taking place now? At what was to be the end of the world, which is to say the Dawn.

Now think of The Five Hundred Mighty Companions Or Thereabouts, just how long that story takes and why it wraps around all the time. You might as well say this fight with the dragon takes place all the time.

I'm not sure if it was dialog or books that seemed to imply that the time where humans and dragons were formally at war was during the Merethic, when time was much cleaner and more rigid than the Dawn but much more bendable than in the numerical eras. Not to mention the winning stroke of the war was tantamount to raping Time itself by literally tearing it a new orifice with an Elder Scroll and shoving a dragon god in it, and then later rewriting history so that the dragon god was changed. Granted, I still have a bit of the main quest left that I have not done or even seen, but since the merethic has been rewritten so many times it's not that unusual that there would be holes and loops and twists. 

Plainly, Alduin was incarnate after humans came to Tamriel, and the writings about the Atmoran animal gods being primitive worship of the Eight makes me think that the Dragon Cult was the "first among equals," as Alduin seems to be both the most powerful and most visible. The big question is why did the Atmoran Cult be recorded as benevolent while the one on Tamriel suddenly became a vicious arm of a tyrannical, speciesist regime? Did the rewriting of history to include Akatosh somehow only change Alduin when he arrived in Tamriel itself?

As the Game Tells it:

Before there were humans there were Dragons. Humans show up and the Dragons convince Humans to worship them. Why not? Dragons are strong 'children of Akatosh' blah blah - awesome. Demi-Gods, lesser Aedrea..something along those lines. (Cousins of Elves?)

Humans worship the Dragons in Atmora and it's not a big deal. Dragons' are aloof and benevolent..humans are mostly free to do their own things. 

Question One: When do they get the voice?! 

Paarthurnax and Kyne are responsible for giving Humans the voice. Paarthurnax was originally Aludin's number 2 and has done many crimes against humanity. This makes it sound as though humans got the Voice as a result of the Dragon War. If this is TRUE, it means Ysgarmor would not have had the voice. Or any Companion. It means no Atmoran had the voice and instead was given it at the onset of the Dragon war in Skyrim, during those 12/13 lost generations..

 So Ysgarmor comes and fights the elves and the companions colonize and war all over the place. At the same time there is a some what muted worship of animals, especially Dragons. (I worry the animal worship angle only confuses what we do know about early nordic religion...)

Windhelm, and Jorrvaskr are built. Eventually Whiterun is built around Jorrvaskr. Ysgramor's son finishes Windhelm and his linage rules from it. Some time after this moment Dragon worship increases and becomes corrupted. Or Dragons involvement intensifies..

Question Two: Where are the Dragons?

To date I have found no Ysgramor source that deals with Dragon worship, or use of Dragons in the wars with the Snow Elves. 

In the time of Ysgramor's.....grandchildren?? the Draaagon war begins..

The Dragon's become oppressive gods. Humans attempts to fight them but suck. Paarthurnix does unspecific crimes, then changes sides. He and Kyne teach Nords how to use the Voice. 

War continues, but even the Voice is not enough to defeat Alduin. Who now, or always? ruled the dragons of Tamirel (and atmora?)

Three disturbingly forgetful heroes learn to shout mortality at dragons and defeat alduin using an elder scroll. Or banish him.

Things calm down, most the Dragon priests are put to death...

1E 113 King Harald 13th of Ysgramor's line is born and unites Skyrim.

During his reign the last Dragon priests are rooted out...

Correction, the Dragon Priests become oppressive dicks and when the populace rebelled the dragons intervened. The dragons are just protecting their investment/followers.

 If only I could edit!

Also, Olaf One-Eyed who died in IE 454 is a Dragur. 

He's born hundreds of years after the last Dragon priests are killed. He enslaves a Dragon, and in no way seems to worship them. I say this because some of the loading screens hit that "no one knows why the Dragur woke up...some think its because they worshiped dragons... and now that dragons are back they woke up!"

I can see this applying to the Dragon Priests, (but only to a limited degree - a good example being the Eye of Magnus quest where you fight a Dragon Priest who has been awake..for at least decades!). Maybe Dragon Priests then summoned the Dragur up as undead. But with the Olaf, i don't believe specific Dragur can all be fingered as Dragon worshippers. 

I don't recall exactly how Labyrinthian went, but weren't the draugrs there containing the Dragon Priest? I vaguely remember having to kill two before before Morokei became free.

 They were shades containing him. I think they were the old Arch Mage's companions. 

 I wonder, does rewriting Tamriel's history also effect Akavir, Atmora, Aldmeris, Thras and Pyandonea? The Dragon Cult was supposedly benevolent in Atmora, despite Alduin being the World-Eater. If they became cruel and oppressive tyrants, as did Alduin himself, when they first reached tamriel, then I may have an idea:

Alduin is, and was, a force of nature, not a force of evil as he is seen today. So while he will end the world, the knowledge of the Atmorans that in destroying the world he would birth the next made him simply a force to be endured and respected. When he came to Tamriel, a place where Akatosh had been written into history for the first time in the kalpa cycle, Alduin was also rewritten to be an active, rather than passive, aspect of time-as-destruction and therefore evil, choosing to enslave humanity until he would devour the world and the Akatosh-aspect would help to restart it with Magnus and Shezzar and the rest. So, with he and his priests suddenly tyrannical warlords, humans rebelled. Even though Ysgramor had the Shouts from Kyne as a natural process, the creation of evil Alduin rather than passive Alduin meant that humans also first recieved the Thu'um from Kyne along with Paarthurnax. Because humans are not as severely effected by Temporal fluxes as Dragons, Dragons do not remember a timeline where Alduin was passive and the Great Dragon rather than his firstborn.

I love the Merethic. Everything can make sense to humans, unlike the Dawn where things were all strange and wonderful, but it is all still strange enough to have multiple incompadible timelines both being true.

You know, that scene immediately reminded me of Nehrim...

I've been thinking about this, and the only satisfactory way I can find to look at it is taking into account the cyclical nature of kalpas. The dragon cult reigned between Ysgrammor and Harald, and then the tales of those times wrapped around time and caught up with themselves (much like the Song of Return.) The animal totems are the Nine. The bard's college questline suggests Olaf colluded with, rather than captured, a dragon so its reasonable he could have become a draugr much later than typical.

Guys, something made me think just now.

If the Dragons only intervened when the Dragon Priests became oppressive and tyrannical, could these Priests have performed a ritual similar to the Dragon Break that the Alessian Order performed? MK seems to think "heaven itself shed" Alduin from Akatosh. Perhaps whatever ancient ritual the Dragon priests, presumably led by Konahrik, performed fractured the Divine in some way and corrupted or reshaped Alduin to serve the Priest's needs, and they turned him as a weapon against the races of men. Just a random thought I had. It doesn't contradict other things we know about Tamriel's history and could easily explain the time inconsistencies.

 And most important, it sounds pretty damn cool. I can see why that would work. Having all nine (there's that number again) meet up at Labarynthian to perform magics so powerful that even wearing a mildly enchanted wooden mask can fold you back in time from the future just makes for a good story.

Yeah..there's none one but two "time wounds" in Skyrim.

This could even be a recurring theme throughout the series from here on out if Bethesda takes advantage of it. Imagine how that increases the number of potential expansions. You could relive ancient and pivotal battles like Red Mountain by simply manipulating weak points in time. You could be Pelinal Whitestrake. After all, who knows how many Dragon Break like events occurred in the past? Maybe not all were well documented, and if they were patched up well enough nobody would know the difference. (Like when MK suggested there was one version of events where Cyrus really did split the atomos and make a fool of Vehk, etc.)

That sounds awesome and like you said; huge opportunity for expansions along those lines. There's actually really little information on the Dragon Priests themselves in the game - Like, why do they call Otar 'The Mad'? He was locked away in an elaborate safe-tomb too. I'm hoping for more information, possibly another book, about them in the expansions that are coming. Or going along with the example you gave Pilaf, the Dovahkiin could travel back to the Merethic Era using these 'weak points in time' to fight Konahrik (Could be a good reason why we don't actually see him in the original release).

That would be really awesome, I think.

We could also find out why his mask looks like Almalexia's, and why they both look like Trinimac's. ;)

Echoes and echoes again.

See, the next Elder Scrolls could be less Redguard Flash Gordon and more Terminator. Who keeps making these pesky holes in time? Is it Carmen Sandiego? The culprit is always one step ahead. Every time we mend one of these blasted dimpled chad* in the Scrolls another appears..and the Hist? They're no help at all! Screw 'em! I suspect Alduin got sent forward in time to more than one time-place, sadly, and he has to be destroyed in all of them to make sure he's really for real gone for all time, or at least until the 9th Era where the Hist prove to be just as useless as they are now and were then. Screw 'em and Trinimac too.

*While we're on the subject, I demand a recount. I don't believe there were, in fact, always 13 Elder Scrolls. At least eight of them are missing by my count. Where in the hell could they have gotten to? Mere-Glim is just as useless as the Hist. They're not in that tree place at all. Who would steal eight Scrolls, especially ones that haven't even been written yet? It wasn't Cyrus this time. Was it Konahrik? Harald-Hairy-Breeks? The damned Khajiit with the robe? I demand answers, but mostly I demand more questions. I think the possipoints are drilling into my brain and making me not think so good. Shoulda worn the tinfoil hat like they told me to. Need a nappy time soon to sort things out.

My head...oh, Mora, my head.

 Nu-hatta and Hasphat are going to get to the bottom of this.

Wait for it.

Nu-hatta and Hasphat are the TES Hardy boys.

Except what Hasphat says will directly contradict what Nu-hatta says. The Nedes are the only time they have agreed on anything.

I think that might open up the door too much though, and be really alienating to new players. Time travel always gets to make things annoying and incomprehensible after a while =/

Or awesome, if done right.