So the Citadel was founded by Peremore Hightower in the Age of Heroes thousands of years before writing existed in Westeros? Are we to take that as historical embellishment? I’m tempted to chalk it up to a mistake on Martin’s part but that seems like a really obvious and silly one if that’s the case. Could an order like the Maesters exist in any meaningful way before the invention of written records? It seems like the answer would be no.

The issue of the literacy of the First Men is one of the biggest inconsistencies in ASOIAF worldbuilding – although it’s possible to parse one’s way to coherence. On the one hand, Sam says in AFFC that: 

“The oldest histories we have were written after the Andals came to Westeros. The First Men only left us runes on rocks, so everything we think we know about the Age of Heroes and the Dawn Age and the Long Night comes from accounts set down by septons thousands of years later.”

And in WOIAF, Maester Yandel omits the First Men from the list of “lettered races” who left behind written records from the Dawn Age. So that’s the evidence we have that writing post-dated the Andals.

However, there is counter-evidence. WOIAF also repeatedly mentions “runic records” that were “written in the Old Tongue” which Maesters from the Citadel can read and have translated into the Common Tongue. A lot of these records go back into the Age of Heroes, and some even go back into the Dawn Age…and if you think about it logically, in order for the records of the Night’s King to have been destroyed, there must have been written records of some kind back in the Age of Heroes. 

(Further confusing the issue, the WOIAF has a rather ambiguous statement that the Starks’ “legends came before the First Men had letters” – which suggests that the First Men gained writing at some period, although whether pre- or post-Andal it doesn’t say.)

Here’s my theory: Sam doesn’t speak the Old Tongue and probably most Maesters don’t, unless they’re among that rare breed of Maesters interested in ancient history and archaelogy who took the time to learn how to speak the Old Tongue and thus read the runic records of the First Men. So Sam’s being a bit of an Andal cultural supremacist, in that he’s treating translations of surviving First Men records that were done after the Andal invasions as the only real records. But if you think about it, the Citadel is the one place in Westeros where, because it’s been kept safe by the Hightowers, First Men records and the ability to read them have survived.