How much time passed b/w Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild

[mαrkαsscoρ]

A humongous amount for sure. Wherever you place Botw (downfall timeline for me), it's obviously the furthest point in Zelda chronology. So just kind of making this thread to see if anyone wants to take a stab at how long the gap is b/w both games. Tricky part is the undefined time frame b/w certain games, but whatever, you can just throw out numbers. The interesting part might be comparing that to real life human history.

 

[Mima_sama]

15,617 for the Downfall Timeline, give or take a few, starting with the creation of the world and ending at BotW.
This is based on mostly conjecture about how long each era lasted, but also with the canon numbers of 100 years between ALttP and ALBW, 10,000 years from the initial fight against Calamity Ganon to the Calamity in BotW that puts Link in cryostasis for 100 years, plus the 17 years OoT Link lives for.
However, for all we know, the Era of the Goddess lasted for tens of thousands of years-- as opposed to the arbitrary 2,000 years I gave it for sake of brevity.
It's fun to guess, though.

 

[mαrkαsscoρ]

15,617 for the Downfall Timeline, give or take a few, starting with the creation of the world and ending at BotW.
This is based on mostly conjecture about how long each era lasted, but also with the canon numbers of 100 years between ALttP and ALBW, 10,000 years from the initial fight against Calamity Ganon to the Calamity in BotW that puts Link in cryostasis for 100 years, plus the 17 years OoT Link lives for.
However, for all we know, the Era of the Goddess lasted for tens of thousands of years-- as opposed to the arbitrary 2,000 years I gave it for sake of brevity.
It's fun to guess, though.

gotta love how this implies the backstory to botw is a longer time gap than pretty much the rest of the series

 

[GZ Zelda]

I'm gonna work with the DT as well. So there's at least sixteen Zora kings before Ocarina of Time, each living for on average 200 years, that's at least 3200 years before Ocarina of Time. Then 100 years until ALttP seems actually too short: "centuries of peace" is maybe 4? Enough for the Zora to resettle effectively in Labrynna, the Gorons in Holodrum, place Queen Ambi's reign just after the end of Ocarina of Time as OoA time travel is 400 years? Then 6 generations between ALttP and ALBW (kids at 25? 150 years). Then enough time for the Zelda name to go out of fashion long enough for Zelda the First to happen in Zelda 2 backstory, maybe 500 years? Another 200 before Zelda 1 and Zelda 2, then another rough 500 years before the first Great Calamity and then 10,000 years until Breath of the Wild and then an extra 100.

SS-OoT: 3200
OoT-ALttP: 400
ALttP-OoA-OoS-LA-ALBW-TFH: 150
TFH-Z2: 700
Z2-BotW: 10,600

15,050 years.

The time before Ocarina of TIme and the time after Zelda 2 clearly contain the most gaps in history, but OoT-ALttP-OoA-OoS-LA-ALBW-TFH-Z1-Z2 happen within 2000 years of each other.

 

[Mima_sama]

I'm gonna work with the DT as well. So there's at least sixteen Zora kings before Ocarina of Time, each living for on average 200 years, that's at least 3200 years before Ocarina of Time. Then 100 years until ALttP seems actually too short: "centuries of peace" is maybe 4? Enough for the Zora to resettle effectively in Labrynna, the Gorons in Holodrum, place Queen Ambi's reign just after the end of Ocarina of Time as OoA time travel is 400 years? Then 6 generations between ALttP and ALBW (kids at 25? 150 years). Then enough time for the Zelda name to go out of fashion long enough for Zelda the First to happen in Zelda 2 backstory, maybe 500 years? Another 200 before Zelda 1 and Zelda 2, then another rough 500 years before the first Great Calamity and then 10,000 years until Breath of the Wild and then an extra 100.

SS-OoT: 3200
OoT-ALttP: 400
ALttP-OoA-OoS-LA-ALBW-TFH: 150
TFH-Z2: 700
Z2-BotW: 10,600

15,050 years.

The time before Ocarina of TIme and the time after Zelda 2 clearly contain the most gaps in history, but OoT-ALttP-OoA-OoS-LA-ALBW-TFH-Z1-Z2 happen within 2000 years of each other.

Interesting! I hadn't thought about the Zora-- their extended longevity plus the fact that they're meticulous record-keepers could certainly help with measuring the time! Of course, they weren't always around-- they're notably absent in SS, MC, and FS; so there's that span of time to account for, but they have to show up somewhere between FS and OoT. Gonna have to reread some of the extra materials to see if I can glean anything else from them.
It's interesting that we both landed in the ~15,000y range, give or take a few hundred years.