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Why Didn't Technology Advance in Middle-earth? Middle-earth Explained
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- čas přidán 27. 04. 2024
- Middle-earth has many famous weapons and artifacts of power, but there is little to be said in terms of technological advancement in Tolkien’s works. Why is that? Today we will explore this idea and find some answers! Thank you all so much for watching! Let me know your thoughts on this in the comments below! As always, a great thanks to the online artists whose visual works made this video possible! If you are one of the artists, please let me know and I will post your name and a link to your work in this description!
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Imagine the Council of Elrond as a Zoom call.
"You're muted, Boromir son of Denethor"
"Fool of a Took! You disconnected the call!"
😭😭😭😭
"Gandolf, you boomer! Turn your cat filter off!"
Dammit you beat me to that comment haha. ❤️@@eas2252
Greatest comments ever
Remember that Thorin and Balin left Bilbo's contract on his mantel under his CLOCK!!!!
Also Lobelia S-B's umbrella.
@@keyboarddancers7751 You do realize that umbrellas are ancient right.
Bilbo complained about his plumbing once too
Had Saruman stayed good and lived, he would have brought Hyperdrives and lightsabers to Middle-earth 😂
And become Count Duku! It's full circle!
@@philkugler2429 🤣🤣
Thus giving us Warhammer 40K, but fifty thousand years too early.
@@remandstimpy YEEESSSS
It should also be noted that Tolkien himself was disenchanted with industrialization and for the time what he considered the modern world. He fought in the first world war, where technology had advanced greatly at the cost of human lives, traditional values, and our connection with nature which he valued greatly.
Middle Earth is a romanticized version of the Middle Ages, taking inspiration from stories of the knights of old and even King Arthur. Tolkin essentially created his own ideal world where technology never advanced past the days of swords and shields, anything beyond that was to him, evil and unnoble. We see this with the machines of Saruman and Sauron.
Pretty much hit the nail on the head.
Yeah, but it all had to stand on pillars of magic. Without magic, the Middle-Earth would have never looked any better than the real medieval Europe. Its a high fantasy, it doesnt work like a real world. That´s also a reason why the lesson about "acceptance of what is is more than enough for happy life" just doesnt work in real life. If that lesson was true, humans would still live in caves and hunt animals with javelins and primitive bows.
The whole homo sapiens-sapiens is based around technological advancements, without which even Tolkien would have never been able to share his stories.
@@pavelslama5543 I partly disagree. The op is completely right in his statement. Its not the magic that necessarily held the peoples back. From a meta perspective, Tolkien very much created a world where the people of Middle Earth were inclined to live more in line with nature, and that destructive progress was used by villains and vagrants. He was inspired by his experiences with the war and the impacts ecologically of the industrial revolution.
Also important to note, it is also canon that middle earth is just an ancient period of the actual Earth. And there is some merit in your own statement about magic though, in that many of the non-humans were in decline by the end of the Third Age. Elves were leaving, Dwarves were in population decline, and Hobbits were mostly sticking to their own small lands, now being sparse and hidden from view in the early 20th century. And orcs/goblins continued to suffer losses and deaths, likely got exterminated til there were too few to continue repopulating, in their own fucked up way.
@@pavelslama5543 your comment is wrong on a few levels.
Some of the descriptions and images made by J.R.R. Tolkien himself look later than the middle ages and more like the 18th and 19th century in fashion, decor, and architecture.
Because it would destroy the natural beauty of Tolkien's world. As we saw with Saruman it turned the lush green environment into a smoldering wasteland.
The dwarves did find coal! In The Hobbit, Gandalf tells Thorin that if they thought Bilbo was the wrong person, they could either go on the quest with 13 people and have bad luck or "go back to digging coal". We can speculate that they didn't like the smell of the smoke much, so the idea of using it on a larger scale for machinery was repugnant.
Coal was used a a heat source before the industrial age, such as in braziers and in forges for smelting metal.
It was a humiliation because these guys were noblemen. They also rankled at working iron instead of gold. Coal and iron were for commoners.
Feanor was leader in inventions and new technologies in Valinor. Had he lived long enough in Middle-earth, I'm sure technology would have advanced much further. Tolkien says that Manwe himself isn't able to fully comprehend what Feanor would've been able to achieve if he had stayed sane and focused on his art and work.
Imagine what Feanor could have been and done if Manwe had not released Melkor from his imprisonment in the Halls of Mandos… Manwe was a fool.
@@timonsolus Manwe certainly had his fair share of misjudgements and wrong decisions that led to Feanor's downfall.
Yeah, with Feanor living for thousands of years it is likely that elves would regularly sail through the skies, if not the outer space, and reach depths of oceans, and travel faster than any living being ever could just on its own.
Fëanor was a craftsman and inventor who had few peers,if he hadn't listened to the lies of Morgoth middle earth would have been very advanced, almost on today's level.
@@c.antoniojohnson7114 Considering that he made an instant technological jump from basically stone age into a steel age, I´d say that Middle-earth would have been able to reach today´s technological level even before the end of the First age, if not even sooner.
Saruman was all about technology use. Had he survived im sure he would have brought ME into a newly advanced age
Yes. Coal mines, ironworks and textile mills.
You should really check out the fanfic "Saruman of Many Devices" where he stays on the path of good instead of being tempted by the One Ring and does just that. He kickstarted the Industrial Revolution in Middle-Earth.
Remember a passage from sci-fi think it was Ursula Le Guin .
Concerning industrial revolution. It got worse, then much worse. General conditions of population.
Then started to improve. But didn't reach the agrian utopia.
Maybe post industrial abundance (no scarcity) can get us back there.
He would have brought lightsabers to Middle-earth.
@@pedrovargas2181 Especially red-bladed lightsabers with bent handles...
This is a way in which I think that the film trilogy actually improved a bit on the books, via the production design. If you look at the Second Age battle of the Last Alliance, the men wear mostly mail and wear very Roman-ish helmets, and the elven armies with their shield and helmet designs look Spartan/Macedonian. There's no mechanized warfare in evidence. Then in the battle of Helm's Deep we see elves in intricate plate with an archery focus, and in Return of the King we see Gondorian soldiers dressed mostly in full plate, and using trebuchets against siege towers and battering rams. It really feels like an Iron Age vs. late middle ages progression, so that even though we're still in a world where armies fight with swords, there's been technological progress between the eras.
Good catch!
Gondorians couldnt even match the numenorean tecnology, in fact they are less advanced
You could look at it like Roman Empire at its height versus some late middle-ages european kingdom. Rome was the golden age, the trade flourished and their mathmatics, laws and infrastructure were superb, in many cases surpassing the medieval (even late medieval Europe). However romans didn't have steel, only iron (because they didn't add carbon to it), roman numerals were inconvenient compared to arabic ones, and in many other cases their technology and production process was in fact either reinvented and improved or surpassed by late medieval Europe transitioning into the early modernity.
Although I think the closest comparison we have to Numenor/Gondor is classical Rome and Byzantium - a rightful heir to that civilization, yet in many cases stuck in time and regressed in certain terms (like lacking the proper navy)
The Last Alliance army would completely wreck 3rd age troops. no contest.
We have what, maybe 400 years of industrial revolution. Before that we went thousands of years in our history without much change. So I can see that in another world no changes taking place for tens of thousands of years in a society, especially if they have magic.
The Elves have magic. But Men don’t.
Yes. The bronze age advanced to the iron age around 1,200 BC. Gunpowder wasn’t introduced until about 1,400 AD and industrialization didn’t even begin until the steam engine came along in the late 1,700s.
@@jefffinkbonner9551Exactly,the technology we have today is only a 150 year progression. Now technology is evolving faster than humanity,and that's dangerous.
@@jefffinkbonner9551 : Actually gunpowder was introduced in the 1200's in China and the 1300's in Europe. The earliest cannons were small ones firing metal bolts and large ones firing stone cannon balls.
We have mountain lions on our property frequently, and our daughter can’t go out after dark because it’s “bear o’clock.” Not many folk fear mountain lion attack daily, but we do take precautions and don’t take the trash out after dark usually.
"Now he has mind of metal and wheels."
With all the cities and buildings and statues and monuments that the peoples of middle earth made I see them far more advanced then they seem. But perhaps it was for the best that they did not advance so quicklyin technology. The further in technology we get the farther we get from our past and the simple things that make life good.
A question that I always thought about. Thanks for the video!
The Fourth Age would see the advancement in communications by way of Messesger hawks in the south and crows(correction: dwarvish Ravens) in the north. Arnor and Gondor being so large necessitated the need to communicate with each other. Advancement in barges and trade would grow with the populations of the regions. A large city on the Anduin on the edge of Rohan would become the center of trade, Celebrant City.
Because Tolkien himself wasn't a fan of technology?? 🤷
Correct , Tolkien hated the Industrial Revolution
Yeah, this aspect of the story is 100% just author´s self-insert.
Doylist explanation vs Watsonian
He was fine with technology- It was mindless industry that destroyed natural beauty and indentured people to it, that he hated.
industry ≠ technology
Tolkien was anti industry.
I actually have an answer to the question posed and the answer is not the video's answer, although that is clearly a contributing factor on top of the following. Technological advance is proportional to population because the proportion of a population that are scientists - or equivalent - remains consistent for the most part. It is also driven by necessity. Our real world early history's technological advance was restricted by a much smaller population. The world's population today is 2,000 times the size it was 12,000 year ago so we're able to scientifically progress at a much faster rate.
According to letter 211, Tolkien posited that we were either in the 6th Age or at at the end of the 7th Age, and some 6K years had passed since the fall of Fall of Barad-dûr. The earliest known use of the Bow and Arrow was around 54,000 years ago, fire arms did not see widescale use until around the 13th Century, so from that point of view, technology did not progress for more than 53,000 years, far more than the sum total of Arda's timeline, and around that time the world began to see significant population growth, and as I began this with, technological progress is proportional to population levels.
Remath that in accoubting for valian years because orome the hunter wouldve used bows
But the was more the 53k years i thought in arda
Not just population level.
Population level multiplied by technological advancement.
If you have fertilizers and combined harvesters, you almost don't need any farmers anymore (percentage of population wise).
So not only does society have a lot more people today, a much greater percentage of them can go to university.
And with everything being digital, you can today find and read the papers of labs and research groups that you didn't even know existed, instead of being stuck in the library of your own university (and perhaps an exchange system with those around yours, but certainly nothing globe-spanning)
As Professor Farnsworth will one day say:
“Technology isn’t inherently good or evil, it’s how it’s used. LIKE THE DEATH RAY!!!!”
British scientists tried to create a Death Ray to destroy enemy aircraft, and their failure ended up inventing radar instead.
Man, this is another question I wanted an answer about and I am glad it's told here!!!
Thanks for an interesting topic on Middle Earth processing, Until Rhun RS...Marion Baggins Out!!!
Also Back From Holiday!!!
Ted Sandyman, of the Shire Rural Development Council, has entered the chat!
Captivating subject. Eagerly waiting for next week's topic though.
Interesting topic. Was hoping to see the advancement of rope ladders.
While I don't believe that Tolkien was a Luddite, the transition from earth, grass, and cobblestones to concrete, glass, and steel was disturbing to the Professor. The mechanization of war was terrifying to him. If this wasn't driven home in the trenches of WW I then surely the Panzers, Bf 109's, and ultimately the atomic bomb, cemented an anti-technology bias in Tolkien. All of the glory or honor of war had been paved over and detonated by the horror of what men can do to one another with the aid of the Machine. That is reason number one for Middle Earth's technology doldrums. Ironically, it appears that Middle Earth's most pastoral setting is also its most technologically and socially advanced community. Hobbits have a mail delivery system, working clocks, and tea time, but they are wise enough to go no further, except for one turd in the punch bowl (lookin' at you Ted).
In story, here are several factors that contributed to the techno stagnation of the Third Age:
1. Doomed Arnor. The death toll of the War of the Last Alliance took the best and brightest of the men of Arnor. It's first real king was a child. After eight centuries of rebuilding, the kingdom fragments into three and by the fourteenth century TA Arnor has new neighbors to the the East and by the end of the 1,300's Rhudaur has been infiltrated and has become a pawn of...
2. The Witch King of Angmar. From turning Rhudaur to a successful invasion into the Arnorian heartland in 1409, to the final destruction of old Arnor in the winter of 1974 TA, the second millennia of the Third Age belonged to the Lord of the Nazgul. After his arrogance led to his defeat at the Battle of Fornost in 1975 and the subsequent dismantling of Angmar, he would make Y2k a thing in the Third Age of Middle Earth with the siege and capture of Minas Ithil, perhaps thinking that if you destroy his home he will just have to take one of yours. Considering the way the Third Age had turned out, the Witch King's arrogance at the gates of Minas Tirith is not unwarranted even if it is unwise.
3. Bio Warfare. The Great Plague of 1636 devastated Gondor and all of western Middle Earth, but it finished off Cardolan. Cardolan is the bread basket of old Arnor and the center of commerce. The ford where Boromir lost his horse was once the city of Tharbad, gateway to Arnor, with river access to both Ost-in-Edhil in the Second Age when the city was established and also river access to the west gate of Khazad-Dum. The invasion of 1409 and the subsequent plague in 1636 severely reduced the already underpopulated kingdom of old Arnor. This is why Eriador seems so empty in the LOTR.
4. The Balrog. 1974 - 2002 were perhaps the most devastating years of the Third Age. In between the loss of Arnor and Minas Ithil there is the loss of the last economic powerhouse of the North, Khazad-Dum. If there were anything like modern manufacturing in the Third Age it would take place in Khazad-Dum. After the cranky Balrog kicked Durin's folk out of their home in 1980 TA civilization north of the gap of Rohan ceased to exist except for the Shire and a few scattered settlements of the remnant of the Three Houses of the Edain that were left in the North.
5. Saruman. Saruman does not show back up in the West until 2759 TA. He missed all of the above events while off doing who knows what in the East. Imagine Saruman of Weathertop. Instead of a place of contention between the sister kingdoms of Arnor it could have been a place of cooperation and negotiation with a mediator with the Voice. When it is clear that Sauron has risen again for certain in 2941, Isengard should have been the host of the Manhattan Project that was going to unite the Free Peoples and blast Sauron to the Void. Instead it became a place to hide loot that did not belong to him and an orc manufacturing facility. Imagine what could have been if the followers of Aule had learned the lesson that Aule forgot to teach on the joy and rapid advancement that can come with the collaboration of like minds.
That first but is the key bit most are just missing or ignoring. It's not that Tolkien hated technology, but that he was fearful of where it was leading. They are very different emotions leading to very different responses. And I can't really blame him. He fought in the first world war, lived the struggles of the interwar years and witnessed the second world war. That really should scare anyone. Couple this with seeing a growing loss of connection to nature that many are working in our current time to re-establish and middle earth essentially being in a dark age from massive loss of life and the collapse of centres of commerce, and it makes sense that the level of technology is low. It's also made rather clear that the third age is simply not the hight of technology and learning in Ardas history, with old relics being of higher quality that newer creations and much knowledge having been lost.
Like many other videos of yours I enjoyed this one a lot. And I appreciate that you have a concluding thought at the end of each of them.
You covered that well. We could learn much from how they lived. I would only add that in actuality, war has stifled our true progress as well😉. Great commentary and video.
Cyberpunk Middle Earth! LETS GOOOOO!!!!
Nice work dude thanks
Thank you
I want to know how the hinges work on those round Hobbit doors.
Excellent video yoystan always wanted to know this question keep up the great work
I suspect that until all of the elves and dwarves are gone from Middle Earth, and with them most of the magic, there would have been little impetus to innovate. I would expect that as the Fourth Age progresses, this would start to change. There was little skill left in Gondor of a magical nature by the time Aragorn was crowned. Without elven teaching, this would be unlikely to change. 😊❤😊
This is a good point.
@@PseudoNym100 Thanks 😊
It did advance. In Tolkien's mythology, Arda is OUR planet. It advanced during the dominion of Men when the Elves departed. The Elves, being immortal and tied to the world, did not feel the need to make big changes. We can see the same thing a little bit in why elderly people grieve at places they grew up in being built up and changed so much.
Just been sent over by Shieldmaidens of Arda channel. Looking forward to exploring your channel :)
I think you're right, hobbits especially liked to live as thier forefathers did.
I think if it were an advancable possibility then maybe the dwarves or the dark lords would've pioneered technologies, through crafting or the engine of war?
I think overall it was Tolkien's desire to create a mythology set within the realms of english historical myths that predetermined the technological levels of Arda, and his own love of what he saw as a diminishing rural past that set the races' wishes to preserve thier lands?
I read my mother's copy of the Hobbit three years ago while I was keeping a sick bird company.
the stuff that Bilbo and his friends reminded me of what we was going through with Covid 19 that year. I liked how Bilbo voices his opinion on the gold to his friends after the Dragon left the cave.
Well, that certainly explains the lack of tactical nukes.
Hey Men of the West please make a video on the folklore behind the story. Like how Gandalf is Thore, Boromer is Roland from the Song of Roland, the bridge in Khazad-dum is Sterling bridge in Scotland, and Helm's Deep is one of the Mot and Bailey castles built by the Normans in England. The sean where Gandalf and Thorens company throw flaming pinecones at Wargs is based on one with Loki in Norse mythology, also I think Aragorn is Odysseus but I haven't looked into it.
Actually the better question is why technology advanced so quickly in the renaissance and industrial revolution periods and from then contulinuing up to now.
For most of our history technolgical advance has been slow and sporadic. Innovations pop up occasionally in some region and sometimes spread slowly or rapidly ( iron, saddles etc.) and sometimes are lost (greek fire for example).
Technology can even fall backwards when societies collapse (arguably the fall of Rome for example at least in western Europe).
Most societies didn't put a value on innovation and change for their own sake, but preferred staying with traditional ways, tweaking them as minor advances were made.
Some went through a period of advance and then stopped it for various reasons (China for instance can be argued to have been ahead of Europe until they froze their techology advancement resulting in them being overtaken by Europe several hundred years later during the Renaisance).
Elves by their nature were not particularly innovative with a few exceptions. Dwarves were ahead of everyone else in terms of mining and engineering although Orcs were also said to excel in some aspects of technology related to their evil purposes. Hobbits were famously uninterested in technology, as apparently were most men. The exception of course being Numenor who advanced greatly, became powerful and then collapsed.
So while technology advanced slower in Middle Earth than it did in our world, the contrast wasn't as great for most of our recorded history. Remember it took most of the last 12,000 years to get from planting crops, stone tools and villages to iron weapons and wind and water power. And then only the last few hundred to get to steel, steam, atomic power, electronics, nanotechnolgy and quantum computing.
So our modern era is very much the exception in our own history.
To be fair, the "medieval" style of weapons was dominant for some 4500 years in our timeline: from the copper age through to the 15th century.
Our own technical / industrial revolution was preceded by an explosion of Scientific Knowledge and Research, which Middle Earth has no trace of.
Great video that had me thinking about how Earthlings have been advancing technology, in particular during the Industrial Revolution alongside the Enlightenment Era, which was a departure from a connection not only to nature but also the supernatural, and more toward materialism and science. We learned that one day our world will end, and we’ll have to look towards outer space as a means of survival. In contrast, the people of Middle Earth maintain a very close connection with the races of beings that were more angelic, like the Maiar, Valinor, even the elves. They recognized Eru Ilúvatar as the creator of everything with no need to even question. Likewise, they had Dark Lords to contend with who were living within Middle Earth to make everyone have a common enemy. While living with all these aspects, trying to become an industrial tycoon seems futile and kind of pointless when compared to the might of these other beings, kind of humbling almost, and it makes most people of Middle Earth stick to their means of necessity and their traditional ways, like mentioned in this video.
Could've used the Shire change, under Sharkey and his minions ..... as a point of example on "technology" and Tolkien's opinion of it.
I love your show❤🎉
I always wondered this myself.
Can you talk about the advances that Saruman brought on theShire… And what happened after the scouring?
no gunpowder and no steam power , both things that kick started the industrial era
No, gunpowder has been around a long time. I think steam power and electricity was what push the industrial revolution.
Gunpower is found in the Two Towers when the Helms Deep's wall exploded with Saruman's bombs. Also, Gandaf has fireworks in the Fellowship of the Ring, which, last time I checked, is made primarily of gunpowder along with other chemicals. Either Gandalf snubed Middle Earth(lol), or Middle Earth didn't really care about advancing like we do.
You mentioned they could have found coal if they wanted to, but would there have been coal? Unlike the millions of years of evolution on our earth, weren't there only thousands of years in Middle Earth? At least after the creation of the sun and moon; I'm not sure how many years of the Lamps or the Trees there were.
Good point. Middle Earth (Arda) was only about 21,000 years old by the end of the Third Age, dating from the arrival of the Valar. However, gems like diamonds existed in Middle Earth, created by Aule, so maybe Aule created coal as well.
The dwarves in The Hobbit were told by Gandalf that they could “go back to coal mining” if they would take Bilbo on their quest.
Saruman’s next step would be a canon or guns
Yes. Early small crude cannon firing iron bolts, large siege bombards firing stone balls, and early matchlock arquebuses.
Tolkien was, professionally, a philologist. And that is incredibly important to remember for this specific conversation. He, as part of that profession, studied, analysed and understood much of the development, rise, and cycles, of civilisation. There are three main points that arise as a result. First, dark ages are not a single event of history, but a descriptor of types of events experienced throughout history. The term speaks specifically to civilisation, rather than society. When civilisation regresses, that is a decline. When civilisation stops altogether, or is only maintained in insignificantly small populations and centres, then that is called a dark age. We know the Medieval Dark Age following the fall of the Western Roman Empire simply because most of the English speaking world understands Western European history better than other forms of history. However, even Western European history has a number of dark ages. The most significant one before the Medieval Dark Age was the Bronze Age Collapse, where an almost global dark age ensued. This Bronze Age Collapse included a sub-event we call the Mycenae Dark Age, or Greek Dark Age. As with the later Medieval Dark Age, the Mycenae Dark Age saw most pre-existing technology lost, history become legend, and literacy almost completely evaporate. The same thing happened in Mesopotamia during the same time period - that is where you see the decline of the Samarians and Akkadians, and later the rise of Babylon and Persia. Even China and the Indus civilisations saw a huge decline over the same period - a lot pertaining to the loss of tin from what is now Afghanistan (critical for manufacturing bronze). One of the few civilisations to survive intact was the Egyptians (albeit much reduced), but they never recovered their power afterwards. And, like the Medieval Dark Age, Tolkien would have been well versed in these events...and what they meant in technological development terms. Keep in mind, for thousands of years in our own history, the sword and spear have been the standard weapons of war until only a couple of centuries ago, and there are actually reasons for that! Second, while we see in the last few centuries the expansion of technology through conflict, that has only been in the last 200 years or so. Prior to that, war was a catalyst to technological and academic loss, as was plague and famine. The Renaissance and Industrial Revolution have brought about fundamental changes to how modern civilisations function that most fail to comprehend. We almost saw this in the aftermath of WWI, but geopolitical events occurred that kept another dark age at bay...although these same events were what led to WWII, fundamentally linking these two horrors. Again, this is something that would have been well understood by Tolkien. And thirdly, the genre Tolkien was aiming for was legendarium - a set of stories from which to form and maintain cultural heritage and value. This builds, as people have mentioned elsewhere in the comments here, on the legends and myths of other European cultures, to which again Tolkien was very well versed. If it was a legendarium that predates the Industrial Revolution, it could hardly contain advanced industrial systems! No more than the Celtic Arthurian legendarium does.
Hi what is the name of soundtrack you use in the background it is very relaxing.
It’s funny that one of the most often quoted things from Tolkien seems to be about his dislike of allegory meanwhile his personal stance on technology seems fairly represented in LOTR. The good are at harmony with nature and the world while the bad use more advanced technology like gunpowder and such.
There is a bit of irony in loving the lack of progression given their harmony with the land (which sounds great) being discussed via CZcams.
It might of had Nùmenor survived. If you consider the scrapped steampunk Nùmenor idea or not, in canon Nùmenor still had the greatest ships and even great marvels like stone that shone from starlight and moonlight, as well as the mysterious unbreakable black stone used at the walls of Minas Tirith and Isengard. The secrets of its construction seems to have been lost by the early third age. Imagine much of Gondor having walls of unbreakable stone.
The main thing that prevented technological progress in Middle Earth was the lack of the printing press. Making books was so arduous and expensive that I think Bilbo’s hand-written book There and Back Again was the only one in existence! I mean, who else even read it?
It’s next to impossible to transmit scientific and technical ideas without making thousands of copies of research papers and distributing them widely, to other scientists across the land. Also, knowledge can accumulate over the centuries (in books), and subsequent generations of scientists can build on previous advances. This is out of reach using scriptoriums and scribes, but achievable using the much cheaper printing press. This is why the modern scientific revolution didn’t happen until after the printing press was invented.
I hope you make What if the Hobbits had a military?
Like what if the Shire had an army like the Gondorians, elves & dwarves?
I like how it’s all humble in middle earth
I always liked the idea that the reason why is because LotR era Arda is a post-apocalypse setting. Arda went through the War of Wrath which saw the sinking of an entire continent, then the entire planet went from flat to round when Numenor went the way of Atlantis. That's two armaggedons in the span of a few thousand years....then on top of that you've got Arnor falling to pieces, Eregion being razed to the ground, Moria plundered, Erebor became a dragon hole, Gondor crumbling to a shadow of its former self. Is it any wonder that almost /all/ of the places the Fellowship travels are ruins of long lost/reduced civilizations? So yeah, the reason the technology doesn't advance isn't just because of narrative license, but because the whole story takes place in a post-apocalypse.
I find it funny that Warhammer 40k and LoTR has the same end result in technology even if the path there is different. Great video!
It did but the sneaky elves hid it and kept it for themselves. The pointy eared sods....
Not entirely. Remember the Westernesse weapons (like Merry's Barrow-blade) that had similar properties to the weapons of Gondolin-being of exceptional make and particularly effective against specific targets. Other civilizations did learn from the Elves, but the power that came with that knowledge made them (Arnor in this example) top targets for Sauron and the Witch-king, and so were wiped out before their knowledge could become more widespread.
The Elves were already fading (read: getting tired of the world and leaving) so there weren't enough of them to continue teaching others on a large scale. The Dunedain might have picked up where the Elves left off but with the destruction of Arnor and overall decline of Gondor, there simply weren't enough enlightened people to maintain the tech level humanity had already achieved, much less advance it further.
Then there's the Dwarves, but they were also hampered by their ring, dragon, and Balrog-related problems.
They had cell phones and tv’s over in Valinor
Great video, I’m not sure if he ever talked about it but I’d love to know why Tolkien never included fairies in the Lotr universe, why is there presence of magic but no presence of the fae.
The various wars throughout the ages of Middle Earth probably play a huge role as well. When people are just trying to survive and rebuild their lives, dedicating time and resorces to technologies, which may ir may not help in that process coukd seem like a,waste.
Even in our own history. technological progress very seldom goes backward and then only for a while or only in some parts of the world. We speak of our Dark Ages but that was basically Western Europe after the fall of the western half of the Roman Empire. Well, it wasn't as dark as people like to think and other areas of the world, such as the Byzantine Empire, the Middle East, India, and China, continued to progress.
I think the explanation for the lack of progress in Middle-Earth is something more fundamental. The early ages of Arda were a much more magical time but that began to fade over the ages. My theory is that when magic was a greater part of Arda, the physics of Arda were somewhat different than they came to be in much later times such that things that are possible now simply weren't possible then.
I've always wondered about this, we literally had angels present in middle-earth, majars and valars who had enormous knowledge about the quantum structure of the universe and what could be created and invented better. They had the knowledge of the Creator himself. I'm surprised Sauron didn't invent bombs and rockets for example.
I would say the development of technology was much less generalized than in our history, but there are some examples of very advanced stuff. The steel bows of the Numenoreans for example, and as you noted, their shipbuilding. They must have solved the problem of determining longitude if they were able to sail reliably long distances, and that requires clocks with very stable and reliable mechanisms, which were very late to develop in our history. Also the Numenoreans, and early Gondorians, had some building techniques that seem pretty sophisticated, such as in the construction of Orthanc, and the Pillars of Rauros. They don't seem to have developed coal burning or steam power, though maybe the dwarves did. I would say they applied technology in very particular and limited ways, not designed just for labor savings but only when very specific situations required it. On the other hand, they had the palantiri but were clearly uninterested or unable to replicate them, so they accepted some limitations that were not necessarily truly so. Interesting discussion, good topic!
I think another important note is that they had technology but but it was in the form of magic and not in mechanisms. As magic faded from the world mechanisms advanced. They changed their focus from advances in magic to advanced in weapons only after most of the magic was gone
The tech of ME is basically the tech of our Earth up until the early part of the 19th century industrialization,
which means using metals to create inventions. There was a lot of craftsmanship in ME but no mass
production, and no market for products. That changed in humans 19th century. I think the closet situation to
that of a corporation was what the Dwarves had in Erebor. They created a high end product desired by many
important people in ME and traded these products with people of Gondor, Rohan, Laketown, Dale, and the Shire.
The aspect of Trade leads individuals to innovate and produce new products, leading to new kinds of tech.
I'm reading the book The fall of Gondolin and I've read that Morgoth had build dragon of steel fuel with fire that can escalated mountains and permit them to attack gondolin and they even transport troups. I'm I right?
I believe that clocks existed in the Shire. Oddly singular and isolated example of complex metalwork in ME.
Tolkien liked the products of technology, up to a point, so long as they were handmade by artisans and available only to the elite. Bilbo can have a clock because he's a nobleman and it's fine for him to possess luxuries and curiosities. But if there were a clock factory in the Shire and every common Hobbit had one ticking away on their nightstand, they'd be portrayed as a plague on society.
Considering that technology in today's world has progressed thanks to investments in the military field, it can be questioned why technology has not progressed in Middle-earth, but it is clear that the destruction and depression brought by wars also have a negative impact on technological development. This is ironic in itself. When we consider it in terms of Tolkien mythology, there is a theme of fall in the stories in general. In keeping with this theme, the lack of technological progress in Middle-earth despite the passage of ages is consistent within the universe itself. Major events such as the weakening of the elves who pioneered the technology and the fall of Númenor can be cited as key reasons why this progress did not occur.
Technology tends to evolve very slowly. It took something like 2 million years for earlier humanoids (our world, not Tolkien's) to go from one type of spearhead to a better type.
Not to get all Preston Jacobs but Earendil's ship which flies through space under the power of a gem capturing the power of the stars, made of "mithril and elven glass"? That sounds kinda like a spaceship. And a helm of adamant, which is to say diamond, seems pretty impractical for armor but isn't a terrible option for a transparent face shield...
Why didn’t Frodo & Sam use a DJI Mavic 3 and remotely drop the ring from a safe distance? You get about 40 minutes out of the battery in normal mode.
I imagine realms and worlds where civilizations often rely on magic rather than get inspired, it'd make sense to have little or no investment in technology. In our real world, _'necessity is the mother of inventions'_ . If there's something we need and want to accomplish, we just invent and make shit up.
All of this leads to a far bigger question. Since Arda is Earth in an early age, and earth now has comparatively vast technological improvements from that age, what changed?
I think our own history may hold some answers. From the days of the bronze age, Greece and Rome and other relatively advanced societies there really wasn't a rapid advancement to something resembling our modern world. It wasn't until the renaissance period that the world really started to change rapidly.
In our world information didn't spread too fast due to different reasons. One was the cost of producing books or similar means of preserving knowledge. Another was that there was just a small amount of the population that was able to get much education except what they needed for their profession, just a small upper class had both leisure, knowledge and wealth and the ambitious among them may have found greater prestige in other fields than knowledge and technology. Both guilds of commerce, religions and even schools hoarded and secluded knowledge instead of sharing it.
The economic systems wasn't so much about technological efficiency either, it was more about the number of people and the amount of land that people could control and extract revenue from, and military conquest may have been the most efficient (but also wasteful) way to increase one's power.
Add that the cultures of middle-Earth may have been conservative in their own way, some with long life-spans that may have brought them patience. This, combined with relatively small populations may have meant that expansion and exploration may have been preferred to technical advancement.
To use a real world example, the Romans were about a step away from a practical steam engine. They had the basic technology to do it, but they never made that next step of putting it all together and, eventually, the technology was either lost or fell by the wayside.
Materials technology can advance without significantly changing what we see in a culture's daily life, unless we specifically look for it.
Bronze smelting started circa 2500 (some claim 3000) BCE. Iron was around 2000 BCE though not refined to where it was common until 1000 BCE. The earliest known steel weapon is the Vered Jericho sword (circa 650 BCE), but steel was extremely uncommon until around 600 CE and wasn't produced in quantity for a few centuries even after that. All of these were used for sword/spear/axe weapons, a span of almost 4,000 years before gunpowder weapons appeared on Western battlefields. Mail made from iron has been dated to the 3rd century BCE, with references going back two centuries earlier.
The Romans had water mills by the 3rd or 2nd century BCE, but were rarely used due to materials technology limitations. But by the time the Domesday book was compiled in 1086 CE for William the Conqueror, England and Wales had approximately 1 water mill per three population centers of village size or greater.
I believe technology *did* advance in Middle-Earth. I mean, Ted Sandyman owned the Old Mill in Hobbiton. Surely there were other examples elsewhere in Middle-Earth. But for storytelling reasons, and also worldbuilding, there was no pressure to develop mass-production/industrialization techniques. The great crafters of Middle-Earth were singular individuals much as Archimedes, Heron of Alexandria, Vitruvius, and da Vinci were. Once their times had passed their knowledge & skills were also lost.
It should be noted that even in our real world hundreds and thousands of years went by with only small advances made in technology. They had done about all that could be done with walking, the horse, sailing ships, etc. It took the chance imagination of a steaming kettle to lead to the steam engine, and another chance realization that led to electricity. So many other technologies were only possible because of those core inventions. Who knows what other technologies we have missed out on because a key thought didn't happen at the right time. So I think the main reason why Middle-earth technology didn't really advance was because the imagination wasn't happening the way it did here.
Counterpoint: Classical world around Mediterranean Sea was highly interconnected and organized into rather similar-like societies from around Alexander the Great's times till Late Roman period. During this time elements of industrialization could well have been developed: however, the science (if the way studying these matters happened then can even be called science) was actually rather stagnant for much of the time. Large scale slave labor, a norm almost in every corner of the Mediterranean, has been hypothesized as major reason for this lack of incentive.
Redeeming the bad name of Middle Ages in sense of technological advancement (Damn you Petrarca!) is another discussion entirely, something general public doesn't seem to be prepared even today.
Given the power of the One Ring and what it took out of Sauron to make it. I wonder if the ring would have consumed him
Simple word, Demoralization. Without the infrastructure we have, when an area was lost, so was the magic they had to build their great works. The things of Valinor were copied, poorly, and each cataclysm destroyed the ability to make great things, but the constant reminder that 'the old days were better' caused people to waste time lamenting them, rather than looking forward in a 'what can we do' kind of way. Likewise if you weren't of royal (and that meant Elven) blood, you weren't supposed to do great things. That's why the Hobbits were such a surprise to people, they were advancing on merit instead of bloodline.
I think something else happened entirely. The magic of Middle Earth is largely technological. Numenor had "flying ships" and many technical marvels, before it sank because Sauron talked people into attacking Valinor. The survivors lost a lot of technical knowledge in the process. Then in the 3rd Age, there was a further mass depopulation due to the Eastern plague. The Late Roman Empire also suffered a major technical decline due to plague, and the Mound Builders of North America lost almost their entire culture due to smallpox. I think repeated disasters are what have crippled Middle Earth's technology. Interestingly, Hobbits have clocks...
I always felt the magical tech allowed skilled craftspersons to go beyond mere macro-scale development into micro, nano, bio, and genetic scale innovation. Thus, swords of renown may not have merely been made from a skilled blacksmith with a forge and an anvil, but maybe used skill and magic in addition to advanced metallurgy using powder sintering, and nanoscale wires and logic circuits with orc-detection code perhaps with an intelligence made not of machine learning but by imbuing heart and soul into the organic matter of the sword's grip. OK, maybe that's not how they made it, but it might be how we could make advanced swords that replicate the magical swords of renown: Magnacut steel, LEDs or AMOLEDs or electro-luminscence with fiberoptics, including biometric sensors and wifi in the hilt.
We used wood for fuel. They could not use trees for fuel as some of them are living beings. They could have mined for coal but there may have been a powerful backlash by those beings disadvantaged by the destruction and pollution. It seems like the environment had strong built-in defence mechanisms.
Answer at 7:30
Reading Tolkien, I always got the sense that technological development did happen all the time, but the societies that did so were constantly facing massive structural problems like war, disease, and depopulation. Saruman seems interested in jump starting industrialization in the Shire, but the local economy has no real need for it: their agricultural sector is doing just fine and Eriador has become dangerously underpopulated, both of potential enemies and potential trading partners. The Dwarves of the Blue Mountains seem to be an adequate source for any particular industrial products that they might want.
Dale, Erebor, Laketown, and Thranduil's relm form another case study. Here, there is an obvious hub for trade and technical development, even able to overcome mutual mistrust. There's a healthy link with the Iron Hills too. But Rhovanion basically doesn't exist, Rhun is too far away (or hostile), the Grey Mountains are too difficult to safely resettle, and Sauron's influence on Mirkwood cuts off any links with the remaining men of the Anduin Valley. The results are that the region can't make the most of its advantages, existing on a virtual island with Orcs & Easterlings just over the horizon.
I know that the term "dark ages" has fallen out of fashion. But the decline of the Roman Empire in Western Europe saw depopulation, the fracture of political stability, a general decline of trade, and an overall reduced capacity to develop technologically. The technological advances from warfare did not see much civilian use until centuries later.
It would have been an interesting twist if the Sauron had been defeated by elves with steampunk tech.
Its actually interesting that, the more time passes the more distant we get from what it is that actually made works of fantasy, fantastical. In this case, the melding of time periods is a part of what made the setting a fantasy setting --Armies with thousands of cavalry, knights outfitted with steel swords and full plate armor --these things did not exist alongside kings who lived in mead-halls and rode into battle personally on the front lines. In fact, the former are much closer to the invention of steam engines and the use of gunpowder than they are to the latter. This was intentional, but I think it loses significance as we progress into the modern era and homogenize the past.
One guy knew the magic sword recipe, he never wrote it down, then got his skull crushed by an orc.
NUMENOREAN: The sea is right!
ERU: Uh-oh! No part 2 for ya!
I think this comes down to a view of history. People and their institutions were better in the past. Life sucks now compared to the last Golden Age, which was preceded by a dark age and an even better Golden Age.
Our view of technology is based on a more general attitude of progress. It gets better. The future is better than today which is bettet than the past.
How societies were build also could have been a part of this. The Romans for example stagnated a lot, technologically wise. And the Bronze Age before that also saw limited tech. advances, where after the 500ADs, we saw a huge improvement in technology, including during the post Classical time (500-1500).
But yeah, it is not logically sound at all, it is what Tolkien prefered to happen. When you keep in mind how he grew up and what time it makes sense.
I imagined in later Ages, and with the Elves and Dwarves are gone, the Men of Middle-Earth will progress technologically.
So, during the siege of Minas Tirith, the Rohirrim could have come over the hill with a flight of A-10s? Yes, please!
Well Saruman tried but the hippies stopped him with their trees and flower power
Also keep in mind that that Tolkien's world was meant as a kind of mythology or proto-history of our own world, and in our own history, technology stayed pretty much the same for thousands of years until the industrial revolution.
This. LoTR is more akin to a chivalric romance like Malory’s La Mort’darthur than a novel. The seeming lack of development of technology demonstrates this well. One only has to read The Knights Tale from Chaucer to see he sets the tale in Ancient Greece but there are castles and jousts and ‘modern’ 14th century armor. Even in most of the medieval Arthurian romances - Arthur is portrayed as killing the Saxons, but he doesn’t wear 5th century British/Roman armor - he wears knightly armor in fashion with the author’s era
them going by time throws me off. what do yholu mean 10 o'clock? how the hell do they check that? what if its cloudy?
The Roman empire was aware of steam power, but its sole application was as a bit of a novelty, the aeolipile. Had some genius actually imagined harnessing that motive power, the Romans might have had steam engines, their empire criss-crossed by Roman railways, rather than simply the famous roads. It's not enough to have the basic technology; there must also be vision to expand on it. ='[.]'=
The idealized nature of the civilizations allowed for the lack of motive for technical advancement.
It's easy to stay in the "Medieval" instead of moving into the Renaissance/Early Modern when your "Medieval" had no crushing poverty, virullent diseases in apocalyptic waves, occassional droughts and famine over entire regions, political/military insecurity, arbitrary vilolence, ever-present crime, large-scale illiteracy, grinding social inequality, realistic economic concerns, etc., etc., etc.
They didn't advance because they had no need to. Their way of being more "contented" and "closer to nature" relative to real life is an outworking of the fact that they were spoiled peoples living in fantasy lands.
I see it as magic in the world becomes obsolete in the third age compared to the first age and that is the main progressive shift of middle earth, where middle earth shifts to a new era.
What about Saruman, the Geneticist?
Imagine the pirates of Umbar showing up on the Anduin and just getting carpet-bombed by aircraft from Gondorian carriers lol.
It's because Tolkien was essentially in many ways a Luddite. So that had an influence in his writings. He had no use for Technology. Also his secondary world exists in the ancient world. So there wouldn't be much technological advancement in the way that we have experienced in our world.
Except the printing press, of course…
@@timonsolus Yes exactly of course.
I was just thinking about this...
10,000 (or 20,000?) years of NOTHING and now we have all this in about 200 years.