3,000 Years????

[Dan Z.]

I’m on book 12. I absolutely love this series. My only question is, why or how in 3000 years have they not made any technological advancements?

[Gypsum]

I asked that on this forum. I can't find the thread, but people had some interesting answers.

 

The first, as I recall, was that the Breaking basically sent society back to the Stone Age. All the knowledge was lost.

 

The second was that when a certain proportion of the population can channel the One Power, it negates some of the impetus for technological advancement. Why would you have discoveries in things like medicine when you can just zap someone with the One Power and fix pretty much anything, far better than our modern medicine can?

 

The counterargument, of course, is that people in the Age of Legends could also channel, but at the same time, they had what appears to be cars and planes or some kind of motorized transport.

 

 

[Jsbrads2]

Their cars and planes were using the “Standing Wave” a Tesla-esque infrastructure of terangreals which powers all devices around the world.

It was all based on channeling.

Magic can deter tech advancement, but intellectual property rights, lack of corporations, investment, and many other forms of organization also hinder real change.

Randland’s uneducated farmer may tinker with a plow or a wagon, but with no profit for sharing that tech, it may die in a generation or be handed down to his son…

The separate small countries, periodic wars, schools at best designed to support nobles… besides for much more prevent the development of technology. 

[wotfan4472]

18 hours ago, Dan Z. said:

I’m on book 12. I absolutely love this series. My only question is, why or how in 3000 years have they not made any technological advancements?

 

When you think about it, they pretty much did make technological advancements. The main reason they are not implicit by the time of the books, is because the Shadow took steps to cause calamities at certain points over those 3000 years.

 

The first calamity was the Trolloc Wars. That conflict lasted 300 years and left only Tar Valon intact as an entire society. Outside Tar Valon, only the Stone still remained. The consequence was that all the knowledge and steps taken to recover from the Breaking was lost in the process. The world recovered again and by Hawkwing's death, was shattered again by the Shadow causing the second calamity in the form of the Hundred Years War. When you add in the language changes over that time, it is not surprising there was no advancement. What technology we see in the books was preserved by those taking charge from the ashes of Hawkwing's empire. They all pretty much kept what worked, and nothing more. They only started developing over the books.

[Scarloc99]

I look at it this way. 

First age (our age), the age of "low" technology, there is no "one power" so ultimately all technology is based on electronics or chemical manipulation. For instance advances in Medicine involve genome tech, or the development of new drugs (chemicals being manipulated or made), or advances in chip creation and AI. 

2nd Age starts (age of legends), the very first accepted Aes Sedai, now this may have been a genetic mutant, the first of the "one power genes" or they where the first to learn how to use it. At this point the one power slowly supersedes traditional technology. 

There is a moment in the books, I forget where, that I think it is Moghedien is looking at a store of Ter'angreal commenting to herself at the mundanity of some of these items. I imagine it reached a point where the one power was used for TV's, Mobile Phones anything that normal tech uses to power today, and that makes sense, humanity is already facing a real issue with accessing the raw materials required to make computer chips etc. Mining the exotic metals impacts the earth, getting oil out of the ground contributes to global warming I can see humanity embracing a power that seemingly had no side effect for the planet or those that use it. 

But, that means all technological advance becomes reliant on Aes Sedai. Anyone who does not wield the one power may use these items but can never make them. I wonder if that was the start of the Aiel culture, individuals that could not channel and therefore saw their only contribution to be serving those who could. During this time knowledge of how to make simple substances like gunpowder are lost. In medicine the one power negates all necessary use of vaccines, pain killers, cancer drugs etc (I imagine big pharma had a seizure when that became clear lol). But quickly that knowledge is lost, it probably only takes a generation or 2. Especially if you think in reality even now a tiny proportion of the population of the world really understand how these things work, let alone how they are made. Even simple things like farming have been turned by the one power, knowledge of crop rotations, what can be planted where, soil PH, even the impact of the weather is no longer required because all of that can be controlled and, with a song, any crop can be grown. Non channeling humanity doesn't need to have knowledge of "how things are made" and Aes Sedai probably care little for mundane technologies. 

Then the Breaking, happens and suddenly any technology that requires Saidin to operate immediately becomes obsolete or mis trusted. The ability to make those items is lost instantly, The female half also suffers shock, with female channellers dying, or working simply to try and save what little they can. Humanity regresses back, not quite to the stone age, probably more akin to the ancient romans in terms of society, but, in terms of tech, they are staring over. Humanity would focus on the technology they need to survive, farming techniques, building fortresses etc.

Now add on top of that the facts as described by @wotfan4472 above you can see that the chances to develop real technology are impacted. 

 But there are also other influences stopping it 
The Aes Sedai, manipulate and control and will be working to ensure that no one nation develops a huge technological advance. They also put the emphasis on the one power as a means of "technological wonder" 
The Dark Lord, through Dark Friends will want to ensure that anyone who makes real advancement is dealt with. This is seen when he kills Rands Philosophiser  simply because his knowledge was advancing beyond that which the Dark Lord wanted. 
The right conditions. China was technologically far more advanced then europe for centuries, but, development stalled because they never developed glass themselves (it was a luxury they bought in)  (they where content with the ceramic tea cup and so never tried to shape glass to form drinking implements leading to beakers, test tubes etc). They also didn't develop eye glasses and so as population aged there ability to continue research etc faltered. Had China discovered how to make glass then you can imagine many of the scientific advancements, especially in chemistry, would have been made in China before Europe. 

Having said that there are some real advancements in technology seen in the book. For instance Gunpowder. The Illuminators are able to do amazing things with fireworks, Mat remembers the repeating crossbow, and, not wanting to spoil things, has some other ideas about the uses of gunpowder. 

But, don't underestimate how reliant humanity can come to be on "magic" to the detriment of what we consider other forms of technology, and, when that "magic" is removed, how far back it can set things. 
 

[wotfan4472]

Thanks for that. I knew someone would state the other side of the issues.

[Jsbrads2]

When Rand is walking thru the Glass Pillars, a male Aes Sedai tells the Aiel to keep the Way of the Leaf as if that has some deeper purpose. I have a theory about that, but it also seems the Aiel predate the Age of Legends Aes Sedai society. 

[Aan-Alone]

On 12/4/2022 at 2:36 PM, Jsbrads2 said:

tells the Aiel to keep the Way of the Leaf as if that has some deeper purpose.

I believe keeping to the Way of the Leaf, does have a much deeper meaning. Developing a very personal, spiritual connection or relationship with reality and all the entities therein.

Edited January 12 by Aan-Alone

[Mailman]

It's hardly a stretch if you use our civilization as an example.

Take any period of 3000 years prior to industrialization occurring and there is not the explosion of advancement that has happened since that would indicate a marked difference.

 

[Sabio]

Anytime Ishy was spun out he started something to ensure the world wouldn't unite and keep things in chaos.  Getting Hawkwing to turn against Aes Sedai and then the war over his empire, Trolloc Wars, then a 2nd Trolloc War to try and destroy Hawkwing's empire, etc.  Ishy would always do/start something to try and destroy what was being built.

Edited January 14 by Sabio

[Asthereal]

On 11/24/2022 at 7:01 PM, Gypsum said:

The counterargument, of course, is that people in the Age of Legends could also channel, but at the same time, they had what appears to be cars and planes or some kind of motorized transport.

 

To be fair, the lore does suggest that Randland had technology before it had channeling. The idea is that our time (or something similar) would be the first Age, and the second Age was kickstarted by the discovery of the One Power by people who were able to channel it. If we stick to this order, one would expect the advancements in the second Age would be mostly in channeling, and combining weaves with existing technology. Purely technological advancements had been more or less obsolete for a few millennia, assuming the Age of Legends was about as long as the third Age.

 

A big issue is that during the Breaking, almost all channelers will have perished. The men went crazy and caused destruction akin to the movie 2012 (think Earth Crust Displacement), and many of the female channelers will have died trying to stop the rampaging men. What was left, was an unrecognizable planet, with almost no channelers left, most of humanity dead, and everything that was even somewhat vulnerable burnt, buried or otherwise blown up. So what we were left with, was an Earth that was changed completely, most knowledge gone, most channelers gone and the ones remaining would be heavily preoccupied with finding and gentling male channelers. The few remaining normal people (I would estimate not more than a few hundred thousand to have survived the Breaking) would have been forced to reinvent regular farming methods and the like.

 

But the main reason why I don't think it's all that strange to see such little advancement in the 3000 years since the Breaking, is that every few hundred years, a wave of trollocks would get sent across the land, and of course there's a lot of civil war in the history of the third Age as well. The times weren't ideal for advancements. But more importantly, our current advancements went really fast, with the invention of the steam engine being like 300 years ago. Before that, we had like 1200 years of steady decline. It seems weird now, but in the times since the advancements of the Greek and subsequent Roman societies, we've gone backwards for well over a millennium. And that was without male channelers going nuts and trollocks roaming around. To us in our time, advancement seems inevitable, but our own history shows it's not that simple.

[HeavyHalfMoonBlade]

6 minutes ago, Asthereal said:

Before that, we had like 1200 years of steady decline.

This does not seem correct. At the start of the Dark Ages, the collapse of the Roman Empire, or more particularly, the collapse of an effective tax collecting apparatus, meant a loss of much knowledge. But this does not equate to steady decline. 

 

Some things, such as metal work went backwards - the Romans made helmets on lathes out of single pieces of metal - in the Dark Ages in Europe this was replaced by the Spangenhelm (made up of small plates held together by bands) as the ability to produce and work large pieces of metal had been lost. However the ability to work metal continued to develop, leading to full plate in the fifteenth century, far surpassing Roman abilities. This was then superseded by technological advancements in weaponry, making the cost and weight of armour uneconomical. Hardly a steady decline in technology, in fact, exactly the opposite.

 

And in the East, the Roman Empire did fall until 1452 (I guess, too lazy to look up) completely so did not experience a Dark Age in the same way. And that is only looking at Europe (as is the wont of Europeans).

 

History in no way shows a steady decline, at any point. How would the industrial revolution ever have happened if technology had been going backwards for 1200 years?

 

This is just something that is not touched upon in the books. Take the Two Rivers, there are no schools, not even the most rudimentary, zero mention of any technology relating to farming, and no sense of changing practices over time. Mat shows literacy is not a given, and despite most characters being avid readers, we see that literacy is not common amongst the common people. I don't think this is a deliberate point in the books - it is simply part of the agrarian "medieval" culture, and this particular aspect simply has not been dealt with.  

[Asthereal]

3 minutes ago, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

This does not seem correct. At the start of the Dark Ages, the collapse of the Roman Empire, or more particularly, the collapse of an effective tax collecting apparatus, meant a loss of much knowledge. But this does not equate to steady decline. 

 

Some things, such as metal work went backwards - the Romans made helmets on lathes out of single pieces of metal - in the Dark Ages in Europe this was replaced by the Spangenhelm (made up of small plates held together by bands) as the ability to produce and work large pieces of metal had been lost. However the ability to work metal continued to develop, leading to full plate in the fifteenth century, far surpassing Roman abilities. This was then superseded by technological advancements in weaponry, making the cost and weight of armour uneconomical. Hardly a steady decline in technology, in fact, exactly the opposite.

 

And in the East, the Roman Empire did fall until 1452 (I guess, too lazy to look up) completely so did not experience a Dark Age in the same way. And that is only looking at Europe (as is the wont of Europeans).

 

History in no way shows a steady decline, at any point. How would the industrial revolution ever have happened if technology had been going backwards for 1200 years?

 

This is just something that is not touched upon in the books. Take the Two Rivers, there are no schools, not even the most rudimentary, zero mention of any technology relating to farming, and no sense of changing practices over time. Mat shows literacy is not a given, and despite most characters being avid readers, we see that literacy is not common amongst the common people. I don't think this is a deliberate point in the books - it is simply part of the agrarian "medieval" culture, and this particular aspect simply has not been dealt with.  

 

Sure, you could go into detail about which aspects saw decline and which saw progress, but the fact that ancient Greek scientists knew that the Earth was round, and that they knew approximately how large it was, but that in 1200AC people thought the Earth was flat and so on should tell us more than enough.

Ever since the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west, we saw decline in most fields. Mainly in education, healthcare, state law, and most sciences. Turns out having the church as your main source of leadership is suboptimal. Let's face it: advancements were few and far between during the dark ages in the western world. Of course it's a completely different story in Asia. But let's not go into full history mode. I was only making the point that advancements aren't nearly as inevitable as the mordern Westerner might expect.

[HeavyHalfMoonBlade]

Yes, I appreciate that it is pointless to go into a full discussion on the history - but what I mean is that when the ability to raise taxes became severely hampered, lead to large sections of the specialized urban technology to be lost. There simply was no way to fund all these people who were not directly productive. This lead not to a decline, but a sudden loss, in certain sectors. I imagine farming was unaffected, as no one stopped farming at point. The recovery from that point was slow, but it did happen. Wars did not stop progress, though they could certainly slow it. 

In areas like the Americas where complex societies were wiped away by climate change, such as droughts of more than a hundred years, which wiped out concentrated urban populations. Same in Egypt between Kingdoms where climate conditions meant the dissipation of population concentrations, and everyone went back to subsistence farming until excess food could be produced again. 

 

The breaking surely could be such a situation, but the Trolloc Wars and Hundred Years War seem more questionable to me.

[Bugglesley]

On 1/15/2024 at 5:50 AM, Asthereal said:

 

Sure, you could go into detail about which aspects saw decline and which saw progress, but the fact that ancient Greek scientists knew that the Earth was round, and that they knew approximately how large it was, but that in 1200AC people thought the Earth was flat and so on should tell us more than enough.

Ever since the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west, we saw decline in most fields. Mainly in education, healthcare, state law, and most sciences. Turns out having the church as your main source of leadership is suboptimal. Let's face it: advancements were few and far between during the dark ages in the western world. Of course it's a completely different story in Asia. But let's not go into full history mode. I was only making the point that advancements aren't nearly as inevitable as the mordern Westerner might expect.

See below, a world map from the 1200s:

 

You will notice it is round. Medieval people (educated ones, anyway (and if that caveat makes you pause, I want you to consider for a moment if the (conservative estimate) 2/3s of Classical Greek society who were owned as property and illiterate were sitting around checking Eratosthenes's math)) knew full well the earth was round. Where medieval people were wrong was on geocentrism, but let's talk about that for a sec. Usually, and incorrectly, the Galileo affair is cited as the "dark ages church trying to hold back le epic science man when it was really "hey maybe don't write a book arguing your position where the Pope is clearly inserted as a character named 'dumbass.'" If you dig into the actual science, he was losing by the rules set out by the Greeks that the Church followed. The truth was only established when modern science started coalescing based on but in opposition to the model of inquiry established in Greece. The Scientific revolution was not some kind of return to Greek/Roman "science," it was a departure from Greek/Roman models that had been in active and continuous use and development.

 

The model being defended by the church in Galileo's trial was the Ptolemaic model. You will notice a funny word in the middle. Looks Greek idk.

 

"Healthcare declined," you say? Oh, you mean all those quacks assigning leeches because of Humors etc, right? Guess that ridiculous theory came from? Oh it was Greece.

 

There also were certainly no architectural advances.

Look at that! Romans very literally could never. They did not have the skill in stonework or access to glass or metalworking that allows this to exist. It was made from 1194–1248, smack in the so-called "dark ages." Fascinating.

 

Now, you can ask yourself, was it a social good that vast resources went into spending an entire human lifetime making those windows to glorify religion as opposed to other pursuits? Sure. But what, exactly, did resources flow into in the Roman period? Vast edifices for bloodsport, palaces for autocratic rulers, triumphal arches erected with the riches of conquered, plundered and enslaved people? Wow, great! Sign me up! Sounds like a wonderland of Scientific Rationality!

 

And I haven't even gotten to how "of course, it's a different story in Asia" is an insane thing to say, because knowledge is transferable. So how, exactly, was the world "held back" when the Silk Road and the Indian Ocean trade existed, allowing Asian advances and ideas to filter their way to Europe anyway?

 

You are arguing for this chart unironically:

And if you show it to any trained historian who has actually meaningfully engaged with the literature on Middle Ages Europe they will take one look at it and roll their eyes so hard they are in danger of muscle strain. Reverse image search the chart and you can have your pick of people with Ph.Ds dunking on it like it's the NBA all-star game. This is a good one.

 

The real answer to this thread is: anyone talking about linear "advancement" or "progress" or "Civilizational development level" has not a single clue how history or science actually work. It is not like Civilization where you unlock "techs" in a linear progression forwards until Gandhi gets nukes, nor is it like a train that can either go forwards or backwards. It's complicated and messy. People can know how to make gorgeous, vaulted ceilings and stained glass that the Romans could only have dreamed of while also having no idea how to mix concrete to make things the Romans made as a matter of course. Is that "forward" or "backward"? You have contact between pre-Columbian Americans and Europeans, and Tenochititlan is larger than any city in Europe, with better plumbing, more advanced and efficient agriculture (potatoes and corn are exactly as "natural" as high-yield wheat or rice), math and astronomy that put Ptolemy to shame... also, no large-scale ironworking and no wheels. How can you subscribe to a linear model in the face of this? (without being hideously racist and reductionist and claiming that the Aztecs/Mayans were "backwards savages" despite the obvious material evidence to the contrary, or by thuggishly claiming military conquest is the sole measure of a society's worth, and even that only by ignoring that estimates of up to 90% of the precolumbian population of the Americas died from a variety of virgin soil epidemics during that conquest and that the vast majority of Cortez's army was made up of Mesoamericans sick of the Aztec's shit).

 

Of course, complicating this is that RJ completely buys into a similarly deeply inaccurate paradigm of how history, societies, and "technology" develop. If only someone, anyone, had thought to make a school! There would be steam cars within months. Maybe you can chalk that up to "the Pattern said it was time" or whatever, but RJ's belief in Great Man history (ta'varen are people who are such Great Men that they literally distort reality around them) and the incorrect notion that scientific (and really all) advancement comes from the rare, singular genius who Figures It Out in a moment rather than broad, society-level incremental changes in understanding and economic and political contexts that are invariably necessary for those moments to happen.

 

And when that context includes big scary nightmare monsters smashing up the place every couple hundred years...?

 

Tl;dr medieval people weren't that dumb (or smart) and Roman people weren't that smart (or dumb). They were people who tried their best to understand the world around them in context that they lived, which included some degree of access to the knowledge of those who had come before. This process is not predetermined or linear, but it does build on itself. The whole premise of the OP is deeply misguided and the responses equally so.

[Mailman]

On 2/24/2024 at 3:57 AM, Bugglesley said:

See below, a world map from the 1200s:

 

You will notice it is round. Medieval people (educated ones, anyway (and if that caveat makes you pause, I want you to consider for a moment if the (conservative estimate) 2/3s of Classical Greek society who were owned as property and illiterate were sitting around checking Eratosthenes's math)) knew full well the earth was round. Where medieval people were wrong was on geocentrism, but let's talk about that for a sec. Usually, and incorrectly, the Galileo affair is cited as the "dark ages church trying to hold back le epic science man when it was really "hey maybe don't write a book arguing your position where the Pope is clearly inserted as a character named 'dumbass.'" If you dig into the actual science, he was losing by the rules set out by the Greeks that the Church followed. The truth was only established when modern science started coalescing based on but in opposition to the model of inquiry established in Greece. The Scientific revolution was not some kind of return to Greek/Roman "science," it was a departure from Greek/Roman models that had been in active and continuous use and development.

 

The model being defended by the church in Galileo's trial was the Ptolemaic model. You will notice a funny word in the middle. Looks Greek idk.

 

"Healthcare declined," you say? Oh, you mean all those quacks assigning leeches because of Humors etc, right? Guess that ridiculous theory came from? Oh it was Greece.

 

There also were certainly no architectural advances.

Look at that! Romans very literally could never. They did not have the skill in stonework or access to glass or metalworking that allows this to exist. It was made from 1194–1248, smack in the so-called "dark ages." Fascinating.

 

Now, you can ask yourself, was it a social good that vast resources went into spending an entire human lifetime making those windows to glorify religion as opposed to other pursuits? Sure. But what, exactly, did resources flow into in the Roman period? Vast edifices for bloodsport, palaces for autocratic rulers, triumphal arches erected with the riches of conquered, plundered and enslaved people? Wow, great! Sign me up! Sounds like a wonderland of Scientific Rationality!

 

And I haven't even gotten to how "of course, it's a different story in Asia" is an insane thing to say, because knowledge is transferable. So how, exactly, was the world "held back" when the Silk Road and the Indian Ocean trade existed, allowing Asian advances and ideas to filter their way to Europe anyway?

 

You are arguing for this chart unironically:

And if you show it to any trained historian who has actually meaningfully engaged with the literature on Middle Ages Europe they will take one look at it and roll their eyes so hard they are in danger of muscle strain. Reverse image search the chart and you can have your pick of people with Ph.Ds dunking on it like it's the NBA all-star game. This is a good one.

 

The real answer to this thread is: anyone talking about linear "advancement" or "progress" or "Civilizational development level" has not a single clue how history or science actually work. It is not like Civilization where you unlock "techs" in a linear progression forwards until Gandhi gets nukes, nor is it like a train that can either go forwards or backwards. It's complicated and messy. People can know how to make gorgeous, vaulted ceilings and stained glass that the Romans could only have dreamed of while also having no idea how to mix concrete to make things the Romans made as a matter of course. Is that "forward" or "backward"? You have contact between pre-Columbian Americans and Europeans, and Tenochititlan is larger than any city in Europe, with better plumbing, more advanced and efficient agriculture (potatoes and corn are exactly as "natural" as high-yield wheat or rice), math and astronomy that put Ptolemy to shame... also, no large-scale ironworking and no wheels. How can you subscribe to a linear model in the face of this? (without being hideously racist and reductionist and claiming that the Aztecs/Mayans were "backwards savages" despite the obvious material evidence to the contrary, or by thuggishly claiming military conquest is the sole measure of a society's worth, and even that only by ignoring that estimates of up to 90% of the precolumbian population of the Americas died from a variety of virgin soil epidemics during that conquest and that the vast majority of Cortez's army was made up of Mesoamericans sick of the Aztec's shit).

 

Of course, complicating this is that RJ completely buys into a similarly deeply inaccurate paradigm of how history, societies, and "technology" develop. If only someone, anyone, had thought to make a school! There would be steam cars within months. Maybe you can chalk that up to "the Pattern said it was time" or whatever, but RJ's belief in Great Man history (ta'varen are people who are such Great Men that they literally distort reality around them) and the incorrect notion that scientific (and really all) advancement comes from the rare, singular genius who Figures It Out in a moment rather than broad, society-level incremental changes in understanding and economic and political contexts that are invariably necessary for those moments to happen.

 

And when that context includes big scary nightmare monsters smashing up the place every couple hundred years...?

 

Tl;dr medieval people weren't that dumb (or smart) and Roman people weren't that smart (or dumb). They were people who tried their best to understand the world around them in context that they lived, which included some degree of access to the knowledge of those who had come before. This process is not predetermined or linear, but it does build on itself. The whole premise of the OP is deeply misguided and the responses equally so.

Nice garbage word salad.