# Technological Advancement



## Androxine Vortex (Aug 12, 2015)

So in many fantasy stories centuries and thousands of years can go by but still cultures are locked in a medieval theme. How have you handled this in your works? How can you justify this by still being believable?


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## X Equestris (Aug 12, 2015)

Personally, I haven't even tried to do Medieval Stasis.  My civilizations have had significant technological progress in the past, moving from stone tools/weapons and armor to bronze, then iron and steel.  The current era, roughly corresponding to the real world Dark Ages and then Middle Ages, is a little under a thousand years long so far.  During that time, technology has changed.  There are some differences: full plate armor hasn't really been developed yet, but the printing press and very basic telescopes have been. One civilization far in the north has gunpowder, used only in cannons right now, and guards it very closely.  Borders have fluctuated, some social structures have changed, some countries have been totally absorbed by others, etc.  I'm trying to give the impression of change.

I'm not sure how one provide a believable justification for keeping their world in a medieval state for millenia.  Perhaps having some sort of outside force that destroys any civilization that progresses past it.  That's all I can think of at the moment.


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## ThinkerX (Aug 12, 2015)

I don't go that route, myself.

In real world history, though, it comes down to slavery, or effective slavery (serfdom).  Lots and lots of work required to keep the wheels of ancient/medieval civilization turning.  Ancient societies relied on slaves to do much of that work.  These societies tended to be highly socially stratified.  Those at the top of the heap counted slaves as part of their wealth.  Run up a debt?  Take out a loan against a few dozen prime slaves.  ANYTHING that threatens the value of slaves cannot be tolerated in such a society.  Technology is right at the top of the forbidden list, along with anything close to universal education.  

In my worlds, society is in flux.  A steady stream of inventions and programs is changing things.  Former legionaries are being offered citizenship and a plots of land in the aftermath of a prolonged war, causing the middle class to expand five fold. More and more kids are attending basic level church or guild schools, for basic literacy and math skills.  Signal towers relay news across thousands of miles in days, instead of months or even years.  Printing presses, once a monopoly of Church and State, are spreading beyond those institutions.  Bicycles are exploding in popularity, along with mechanical farm equipment (still primitive by todays standards, but a order of magnitude improvement compared to the old system.)  And so on.  And yes, these innovations are bitterly opposed by the old order, almost to the point of civil war.


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## WooHooMan (Aug 12, 2015)

I don't think I've ever had that problem.  I think when a story calls for "a long time", many writers jump to 1,000 years.  This is probably to add some sense of grandeur to whatever they're talking about.  Who knows?
I usually don't go more than a century in the past.  I've rarely needed to go further and when I do, I tend to remember progression.  Like, I've had stories that explicitly said that people were speaking historical forms of languages in the past rather than the modern spoken language.  When you get it in your mind that everything changes over the centuries - be it technological or cultural - you just kind of naturally teach yourself to avoid the cultural stagnation problem.

How can you justify this?  Well, why didn't they have written language in Polynesia until medieval times?  Or why didn't Native Americans have guns until the Europeans arrived?  Some cultures just don't "progress" the way others do.  In terms of technology, it could just be a matter of not having the need or materials they need to build whatever.


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## Penpilot (Aug 12, 2015)

Advancement in technology is never guaranteed. Many things can hold back advancement like politics, religion, fear, philosophy, limited materials, etc. OR there just hasn't been a intellectual spark that will allow technology to push beyond a certain level.

Look in our world. China's first dynasty emerged in around 2100 BCE, and between that time and the beginning of the common era, they never reached the moon or developed the microchip. They made advancements in Mathematics, astronomy, even gun powder and etc., but they weren't ever able to move into combustion engines.

I wonder if our modern world could have come about if the printing press wasn't invented. This made the dissemination of knowledge through books cheaper and easier. Instead of having one person copy a book by hand, they could run off many copies in a fraction of the time.

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.


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## psychotick (Aug 12, 2015)

Hi,

I'm going to have to agree with Penpilot - do we need to justify it at all. The Chinese had gunpowder thousands of years ago - writing too as well as paper and many other advances. They didn't really progress it to an advance society. Steel's been around in the west for several millenia, the bronze age began 3,500 BC. But the Industrial revolution didn't happen until three or four centuries ago.

Progress in technological advancement is slow. By and large it happens in incremental steps, with every so often a big leap being made. But so many cultures on Earth never made those leaps for any number of reasons. Scarcity of resources. Lack of patronage of the technologist's art. Or someone just didn't have that spark of genius.

Why do you have to explain that something didn't happen?

Cheers, Greg.


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## X Equestris (Aug 12, 2015)

psychotick said:


> Hi,
> 
> I'm going to have to agree with Penpilot - do we need to justify it at all. The Chinese had gunpowder thousands of years ago - writing too as well as paper and many other advances. They didn't really progress it to an advance society. Steel's been around in the west for several millenia, the bronze age began 3,500 BC. But the Industrial revolution didn't happen until three or four centuries ago.
> 
> ...



The Chinese developed gunpowder in the 9th century.  Hardly thousands of years.

It's one thing to have a few cultures locked in technological stasis because of various factors.  It's another for the whole world to be locked in place for thousands of years.  Having that occur strains believability.


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## Feo Takahari (Aug 12, 2015)

The Japanese solution seems to be regular apocalypses. Final Fantasy, Etrian Odyssey, Golden Sun . . . The world always had fantastical technology before they invented something so dangerous it destroyed their entire civilization. (Golden Sun does particularly well with this. All their technology was based on magic, so when magic was sealed away as a danger to the human race, it was inevitable that society would decay and roll backwards.)


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## Garren Jacobsen (Aug 12, 2015)

The Wheel of Time also had the destruction thing as a theme. As for me, no I let my societies progress. It makes sense. Granted the progression isn't the same as on Earth but I still let them advance.


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## johnsonjoshuak (Aug 13, 2015)

The world that I'm currently working in has a technology level roughly equivalent to the 19th Century. ranging from late muskets and early rifles in one part of the world, rudimentary steam ships in another, and late rifles leading into repeating rifles in a third area.

I definitely wanted to avoid the medieval stasis and it seems that there are other writers of the same mind as the Gunpowder Fantasy sub-genre has started to gather some steam (pun intended...)


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## CupofJoe (Aug 13, 2015)

I don't know of any stories where all change has stopped... [someone will no doubt enlighten me]
It might just be that [even at a thousand years] the time-scale of change is not obvious within the story.

[Terry Pratchett's last few books have been exactly the opposite, that moment when something new [Railways, Money, "Human" rights etc.] kicks over the status quo and a new world emerges, that is still remarkable like the old one]

For a lot of people and times the old adage "If it ain't broke don't fix it" holds true.
Change only come around when it leads to an advantage. 
If you can grow enough food to feed yourself and your family and pay your taxes and have a little to put away for a rainy day, then why would you try something knew?
But subtle refinements would be taking place, saving the best seed for next years crops, making the handle of X a little longer/shorter... We might not notice them but those in that world will.
Throw in a repressive over-Lord/Lady, invasion by monsters or a plague or two and see how fast stasis dissolves and change occurs.


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## psychotick (Aug 13, 2015)

Hi X,

But only one culture in all of Earth's history developed beyond the medieval. All progress throughout the rest of the world is based on them spreading their wings and their technology. So where would we be now if Europe hadn't gone through an industrial revolution? And all that had to happen was for a few discoveries not to happen. If they hadn't happened in that one culture would it be beyond believability that that the medieval state would still be the most advanced technological society on Earth? 

Cheers, Greg.


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## Mindfire (Aug 13, 2015)

I start to wince when people throw out terms like "technological advancement", simply because I took a culture studies class that taught me to think about things differently. We often think about technology as developing along a linear (or exponential if you want to get fancy) curve, following the general pattern of the Western world. We're at the top, therefore advanced. Any society lower than us on the curve is considered primitive. But this is an extremely Eurocentric, superficial, materialistic, and ultimately inadequate way of thinking about social change that has even been used to justify slavery and racism. It also ignores tons of factors from differing values and mores, to resources or the lack thereof, to interactions with other cultures hostile or benevolent. Different cultures have different priorities and develop differently. Just because they go a certain amount of time without inventing X technology doesn't mean they're underdeveloped or stagnant. It just means that, for any number of reasons, they're not following the Western model. And that's fine.

As for invented cultures, you can avoid the cliches that come with a medieval stasis world without following the Western model of development. And that's probably the most interesting path because our largely Eurocentric fantasy genre hasn't done it much. Make your cultures sufficiently non-European in their values and philosophies and you can get interesting results. To say nothing of magic. My world only has two nations patterned after the Western model. Everyone else is some shade of non-Western.


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## Russ (Aug 13, 2015)

While I am all for non-materialistic advancements and valuing other cultures...the three field system does produce more crops consistently, stirrups do make it easier to ride a horse and the printing press does make mass literacy much more likely.

The human mind does like to improve and enhance things.  If there is a culture that does not show technological advancement over time, I think your world needs an explanation for that.  Even the period that used to be called "the dark ages" had significant technological and scientific advances.


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## Mindfire (Aug 13, 2015)

Russ said:


> While I am all for non-materialistic advancements and valuing other cultures...the three field system does produce more crops consistently, stirrups do make it easier to ride a horse and the printing press does make mass literacy much more likely.
> 
> The human mind does like to improve and enhance things.  If there is a culture that does not show technological advancement over time, I think your world needs an explanation for that.  Even the period that used to be called "the dark ages" had significant technological and scientific advances.



I'm afraid you've rather missed my point. What good is the three-field system to a non-agricultural society? What use is the stirrup to a society without horses? And why would a printing press be needed by a society that relies primarily on some variety non-written communication? Any given problem typically has multiple solutions, and different societies with different values will arrive at different answers. And that's assuming they even have the same problems and questions as our Western societies do, which they might not. All I'm saying is, this is fantasy. We can think outside the box. Cultures will change over time, there's no doubt about that. But they don't have to change in the same ways that Europeans, or any Earth culture for that matter, did. Especially since magic is a thing and can make a multitude of technologies unnecessary. Would a race of eidetic telepaths ever conceive of writing anything down? What use does a race of natural pyrokinetics have for fossil fuels? What if a culture values knowledge, in the abstract, for its own sake rather than for its practical applications? Even your relatively high-technology societies may have completely different technologies than we do. With all the possibilities available in a fantasy universe, I see no reason to fall back on the tropes of Western Europe.


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## Russ (Aug 13, 2015)

Mindfire said:


> I'm afraid you've rather missed my point. What good is the three-field system to a non-agricultural society? What use is the stirrup to a society without horses? And why would a printing press be needed by a society that relies primarily on some variety non-written communication? Any given problem typically has multiple solutions, and different societies with different values will arrive at different answers. And that's assuming they even have the same problems and questions as our Western societies do, which they might not. All I'm saying is, this is fantasy. We can think outside the box. Cultures will change over time, there's no doubt about that. But they don't have to change in the same ways that Europeans, or any Earth culture for that matter, did. Especially since magic is a thing and can make a multitude of technologies unnecessary. Would a race of eidetic telepaths ever conceive of writing anything down? What use does a race of natural pyrokinetics have for fossil fuels? What if a culture values knowledge, in the abstract, for its own sake rather than for its practical applications? Even your relatively high-technology societies may have completely different technologies than we do. With all the possibilities available in a fantasy universe, I see no reason to fall back on the tropes of Western Europe.



I hope I didn't miss your point, but I could have.

The initial question was "how do we explain these societies caught in technological stasis for centuries or longer"?  My belief is that you need a darned good reason for it.

I still think that technological advance when the resources are available are a standard part of the human condition.  I just used three examples that came easily to mind, but one of course can mix and match and tailor to taste.  Your group of people who avoid writing things down (for whatever reason) might still want more crops so their children don't starve.  The people who are not agriculturalists will still want better knowledge of how the seasons change to better predict where to obtain certain foods, or better tools for hunting or gathering.  Pyrokinetics still need a fuel to burn so they might quite like fossil fuels that are lighter and more efficient and burn longer so they don't have to re-start their fire places every ten minutes.  They also might want devices to better focus the heat, or to distribute it more evenly, or to make sure the smoke from the fire doesn't leave soot around the inside of their dwellings.

Technology is also a great force multiplier and result enhancer even when you really don't need a "thing" to achieve what you want.  A human can get himself some basic stones and crush grains by hand, or he can throw a rock, no serious technology required.  But despite that they tend to build water driven mills to do more of the same in a better way.  Or he might sharpen that stone he throws or invent spears and bows.  A man can see with his own eyes but a telescope or a microscope still allow him to see and learn much more, and that is without even talking about x-rays etc.

And the question of how one justifies a lack of advancement in technology in societies over centuries is not a eurocentric one.  Virtually all societies develop technology at different paces and for different purposes.  The Aztecs and Egyptians and Zimbabweans built some amazing structures without a wit of help from western europe through their own technological advances.

If a group of people has things they desire, or goals, they will seek ways to get those things more effectively and to achieve those goals.  One of the ways of doing that is technology.  I think if a society is stagnant in technology in a tale, no matter where set, or with what goals and abilities, you need a pretty strong story rationale for things being in technological stasis.  No European bias involved at all.  The same analysis to my mind would apply to any group of people no matter where they are in the world, or what special abilities they might have.


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## X Equestris (Aug 13, 2015)

psychotick said:


> Hi X,
> 
> But only one culture in all of Earth's history developed beyond the medieval. All progress throughout the rest of the world is based on them spreading their wings and their technology. So where would we be now if Europe hadn't gone through an industrial revolution? And all that had to happen was for a few discoveries not to happen. If they hadn't happened in that one culture would it be beyond believability that that the medieval state would still be the most advanced technological society on Earth?
> 
> Cheers, Greg.



Factually incorrect.  I'm not sure what you're calling "medieval" here.  There was quite a bit of advancement in China, in India, and in the Middle East that--while not at an Industrial Revolution level--is beyond what most folks consider medieval.


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## FifthView (Aug 13, 2015)

The question is a very good question and something I've had to think about in my current WIP.

The primary area of the world I'm using is the most advanced civilization on the planet and I've specifically chosen to make it an industrious, free-market society.  At the same time, in its single religion and system of government, it is static & stable and has been for a couple thousand of years.  There is a nearby continent (similar in distance to Europe-Africa) and a less advanced civilization of non-humans with whom there has been a constant state of low-level conflict (raiding by the non-humans); but otherwise, this society is geographically isolated and has not been involved in warfare since its foundation when there had been a civil war.  Most cities don't even have walls, because of the lack of domestic and international warfare, the lack of extreme banditry from the countryside, and so forth.  The stable nature of the society, the generally peaceful milieu, is extremely important for the story, and I've developed the origin and history of the society, including its geography, to support the viability of such a society.

So, I've wondered how there can be some advancements in production and technology and a generally free-market, industrious society that is quite stable, while at the same time not having the sort of progress that we've seen in our own world in Europe.

To some extent, the _lack_ of warfare has retarded technological advancement, e.g., in the technology of warfare, but that's not enough to explain why the civilization is not more advanced.

Also, the fact that it is geographically isolated, having interaction with only the less-advanced non-humans (and no peaceful relations with them) has played a large role.  Just look at how Europe's use of gunpowder required access/trade with China to develop, or how Europe imported scientific and mathematical advancements from the Arab-Muslim world.  Quite often, advancement requires a type of "thinking outside the box" in the form of foreign discovery and subsequent importation.

Finally, the type of magic system I've devised, and its place in society, has made the "necessity is the mother of invention" factor less of a factor in the society.

On another more general note, I think we sometimes forget how technological advancement happens.  Consider Leonardo da Vinci, who was brilliant and even designed devices that he hoped would allow flight — but he was not the Wright Brothers, alas.  Probably, he was much more intelligent than the brothers (not a dig at them), but ultimately having no access to refined oil (gasoline) and internal combustion engines, etc., impeded da Vinci's development of a machine that would allow him to fly.   Often, a whole society's development is required as a precursor for advancement, at least once early modernity is achieved.  (E.g., systems of refineries, mass production, and so forth.)  Then, even a "commoner" might make a discovery or invent a leap forward in technology.  Without those things, much advancement will only come from isolated intellectuals — and only if they themselves have a stable life, i.e., access to wealth.


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## DMThaane (Aug 13, 2015)

I think an important thing to remember here is how different cultural groups influence one another. The Chinese developed a printing system but it was only when when combined with the Latin alphabet that it could be used to mass produce books and open knowledge to a wider audience. Our modern science uses concepts from ancient Babylon developed and added to by Greece and Rome, developed and added to by the Islamic powers during their Golden Age, then developed and added to after being imported west. Our numerals are Indian, imported through the Islamic powers. Even our alphabet is a Latin development of a Greek development of the Phoenician alphabet. As a person of predominantly English descent I can hardly claim any of those three as 'my' people.

The knowledge that allowed the Industrial Revolution to happen only existed because of the influence of other cultures. Without the rich trade of ideas allowed by the Eurasian continent (with varying influence from Africa and later influences from America) the modern world simply wouldn't exist. I've read a few to many fantasy stories where the question on my mind wasn't 'why aren't these people more developed?' but 'how did these people develop at all with only a single cultural group on an entire continent?' That said, I was reading fantasy so I quickly brushed it off and went back to reading the book.


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## Butterfly (Aug 13, 2015)

I remember reading a blog post on this very subject by Rachel Aaron. It's still around, and took me a bit of time to find it, but I found it.

Pretentious Title: Thoughts on Fantasy Empires

She has some interesting arguments against millenia of no change or advancement in empires. Worth a read.


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## Mindfire (Aug 13, 2015)

Russ said:


> I hope I didn't miss your point, but I could have.
> 
> The initial question was "how do we explain these societies caught in technological stasis for centuries or longer"?  My belief is that you need a darned good reason for it.
> 
> ...



On further consideration, we might be talking past each other. The point I was trying to make is that a society can _appear_ to be stagnant and yet not actually _be_ stagnant. Because typically the layman's metric for whether or not a culture is stagnant is "are they becoming more like the modern Western world?" Just because a society doesn't have X technology that we deem important doesn't mean they're stuck, just that they developed in a different direction. And then there's the semantic argument where the word "technology" can be as broad or as narrow as you want it to be, so a society could have technology without having _technology_...


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## Russ (Aug 13, 2015)

Mindfire said:


> On further consideration, we might be talking past each other. The point I was trying to make is that a society can _appear_ to be stagnant and yet not actually _be_ stagnant. Because typically the layman's metric for whether or not a culture is stagnant is "are they becoming more like the modern Western world?" Just because a society doesn't have X technology that we deem important doesn't mean they're stuck, just that they developed in a different direction. And then there's the semantic argument where the word "technology" can be as broad or as narrow as you want it to be, so a society could have technology without having _technology_...



I think you are bang on.

If you point is "it is unwise to assume that the only kind of technological advancement that is worth considering is that which follows the western model" I agree completely.


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## Mythopoet (Aug 13, 2015)

CupofJoe said:


> I don't know of any stories where all change has stopped...



I can't think of any either. But I might be reading the wrong (or right?) books. 

Mostly, change just happens differently, or is kept in check by a powerful force, or something like that, there's always some kind of extenuating circumstance that doesn't exist in our world to explain the status quo. Like a Dark Lord that keeps his subjects from obtaining the resources they would need to innovate or major disasters that destroy the infrastructure needed to support innovations. Or constant warfare reducing the population and thus statistically killing off a lot of the people who would have made the innovations. 

I really can't think of any fantasy worlds where there's stagnation for no good reason. Well, I suppose Narnia comes close, but that can possibly be attributed to the fact that humans are only a fraction of the Narnian population. The animals don't have the same drive to discover and change and innovate. Gormenghast, of course, is grotesquely stagnant, but that's the point.

Can someone give some examples of fantasy worlds/stories that they see exhibiting "medieval stasis"?


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## X Equestris (Aug 13, 2015)

Mythopoet said:


> Can someone give some examples of fantasy worlds/stories that they see exhibiting "medieval stasis"?



TV Tropes has some good examples.  Some are more justified than others.

Medieval Stasis - TV Tropes


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## FifthView (Aug 13, 2015)

X Equestris said:


> TV Tropes has some good examples.  Some are more justified than others.
> 
> Medieval Stasis - TV Tropes



I like this point made in that article: "Finally, 'stasis' does not necessarily mean 'stagnant'. It's quite possible for a world to continually experience intellectual, political, demographic, or other changes even if some other element of the world remains the same for centuries."

I had just been considering the differences between stasis, stable, and stagnant when I clicked on your link.


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## psychotick (Aug 13, 2015)

Hi X,

Even assuming you're right - and I would disagree with your assessment - what you've demonstrated is that three cultures in Earth's history have advance beyond the medieval. Three out of hundreds. And still only one to the industrial revolution stage. That strongly suggests that the norm is not to advance beyond a certain point save very slowly and after a very long time.

So why do you have to explain that your fantasy culture didn't do that after thousands of years?

Cheers, Greg.


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## Mindfire (Aug 13, 2015)

psychotick said:


> Hi X,
> 
> Even assuming you're right - and I would disagree with your assessment - what you've demonstrated is that three cultures in Earth's history have advance beyond the medieval. Three out of hundreds. And still only one to the industrial revolution stage. That strongly suggests that the norm is not to advance beyond a certain point save very slowly and after a very long time.
> 
> ...



Okay, I can't just let this go. Cultural evolution doesn't have "stages". There is no "industrial revolution stage" that serves as a technological progress benchmark. That would imply some kind of end goal. (Presumably to be like the Western world?) Societies change in response to internal and external forces that are different for each. For some this leads to an industrial revolution, while others do not industrialize at all. But these differences are not mile markers on some kind of social evolution map.


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## X Equestris (Aug 13, 2015)

psychotick said:


> Hi X,
> 
> Even assuming you're right - and I would disagree with your assessment - what you've demonstrated is that three cultures in Earth's history have advance beyond the medieval. Three out of hundreds. And still only one to the industrial revolution stage. That strongly suggests that the norm is not to advance beyond a certain point save very slowly and after a very long time.
> 
> ...



You realize I gave you regions with tech progress past medieval, not cultures, yes?  That there are multiple cultures in those regions?  

The ancient Greeks had some degree of knowledge about steam and electricity.  They never had an industrial revolution because of a number of other factors.  Those other factors weren't right until the 19th century.  I find it presumptive that no other civilization could have had an industrial revolution on their own if the conditions were right.  It might have taken longer, but I sincerely doubt it would have taken many thousands of years, as we are discussing here.  And there still would have been smaller technological, political, cultural, religious, etc. changes in that time.


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## Russ (Aug 13, 2015)

psychotick said:


> Hi X,
> 
> Even assuming you're right - and I would disagree with your assessment - what you've demonstrated is that three cultures in Earth's history have advance beyond the medieval. Three out of hundreds. And still only one to the industrial revolution stage. That strongly suggests that the norm is not to advance beyond a certain point save very slowly and after a very long time.
> 
> ...



Even if we accept your premise on hierarchical sequential stages (which is interesting but debatable) I think your logic is wrong on the timing issue.

The problem is that by the time the industrial revolution hit in Europe, europe was already a very widespread colonial power.  So the spread of the industrial revolution ideas happened very quickly, where the colonial powers wanted it.  Each culture was no longer developing independently but was influenced by the other cultures it was in contact with- for good or ill.

Now if all of these cultures had similar resources, and they were all totally independent, then you could see how long each one took to reach a certain step on your hierarchy and draw some conclusions.   But they didn't, they were all influencing each other by then.

The simplest analogy is to think about two primitive humans.  The first chap develops a club and then whacks his neighbour on the head with it killing or subjugating the second chap.  Now the second guy might have independently developed the club five minutes later, but he never got the chance.

And technology is not a single marker.  For a time the arab peoples were far more advanced in math and astronomy than the europeans, but then the europeans borrowed a great deal of that stuff and caught up in those areas. But at the same time european cultures were more successful in other areas and that spread in the other direction. There has always been a great deal of cross pollination.

If  you want to talk industrial revolution you really have to narrow it down to even countries with europe who all had different cultures.  The British really got at it, while other countries did not.  You would be surprised just how agrarian even Germany was until just before WWII.

It gets really complicated when you try to account for the impact of individual genius on a culture.


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## Mythopoet (Aug 13, 2015)

X Equestris said:


> TV Tropes has some good examples.  Some are more justified than others.
> 
> Medieval Stasis - TV Tropes



Hmmm... I think my problem with this concept of "Medieval Stasis" is that it does seem to be primarily based on a Western and technological standard of advancement. A significant number of those examples (most of the ones I am familiar with) have worlds where there definitely is growth and change over time, and any kind of lack in advancement is only as compared to Western technological change within the past two centuries. 

I mean, let's talk about Egypt for a second. Ancient Egypt had about 4000 years of history where there was very little technological advancement, by modern standards. And yet, the Egyptians innovated a fair amount of technology and developed many areas of knowledge for which they were admired by even the Greeks. Some of their technology we marvel at even today, such as their skill at architecture. 

Let's face it, rapid technological advancement is a very recent phenomenon, and only because all of the right factors have fallen into place. Such as long periods of little to no warfare allowing more people to focus on research and innovation, increased availability of resources from around the world, an unparalleled accumulation of knowledge from throughout history and around the world, increased communication and sharing of ideas between researchers and engineers, etc. Basically, we reached the technological innovation event horizon. But just because no one reached it beforehand doesn't mean there was something wrong with them.


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## Garren Jacobsen (Aug 13, 2015)

Mythopoet said:


> Hmmm... I think my problem with this concept of "Medieval Stasis" is that it does seem to be primarily based on a Western and technological standard of advancement. A significant number of those examples (most of the ones I am familiar with) have worlds where there definitely is growth and change over time, and any kind of lack in advancement is only as compared to Western technological change within the past two centuries.
> 
> I mean, let's talk about Egypt for a second. Ancient Egypt had about 4000 years of history where there was very little technological advancement, by modern standards. And yet, the Egyptians innovated a fair amount of technology and developed many areas of knowledge for which they were admired by even the Greeks. Some of their technology we marvel at even today, such as their skill at architecture.
> 
> Let's face it, rapid technological advancement is a very recent phenomenon, and only because all of the right factors have fallen into place. Such as long periods of little to no warfare allowing more people to focus on research and innovation, increased availability of resources from around the world, an unparalleled accumulation of knowledge from throughout history and around the world, increased communication and sharing of ideas between researchers and engineers, etc. Basically, we reached the technological innovation event horizon. But just because no one reached it beforehand doesn't mean there was something wrong with them.



I know this is side bar but I think it's because technology tends to grow exponentially, which I think is something interesting to try working with with magi-tech.


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## evolution_rex (Aug 14, 2015)

I don't personally mind lack of technological advancements. I think a big part of the charm in these middle ages-themed fantasies is that stagnant world. Like the world was created in that era and just stuck with it. It's not particularly realistic but works in a lot of stories for me.

However, I personally don't enjoy writing my worlds that way. I like to make it to where there was a time before civilization and that it took time for the world to get where it was in which the story takes place. I don't typically skip around hundreds of years in the future so I don't usually worry about it.

But I believe it can take a long time before civilization builds up, because your world might not have had the pressure to need certain things. For example, I think slavery is something that would just need to be in your world to some extent if you have large civilizations. It was the end of slavery that brought on the industrial revolution. So I think the writer needs to take some time to think about what sort of flaws those ages had that prevented them from advancing. It is why I don't like magic being a common occurrence. If any person can learn magic then magic would be an alternative to science in terms of advancing. Someone would get the idea to use their power to make teleportation portals around the world so that everyone can communicate better, someone would make some magic robots to replace slaves, someone could literally make a computer out of magic, etc. These two things just don't go together.


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## chrispenycate (Aug 14, 2015)

My dragonverse has the dragons actively cooperating with humans because technology has advanced so far dragons are obviously doomed, should they not change (steam trains, crossbows with exploding quarrels, dynamiting their lairs. But they learn to become engine drivers, and aerial combat specialists. 

Since the humans only landed on their continent some five thousand years ago, in a dreadful state (never explained) it's taken them till now to get this far.


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## psychotick (Aug 15, 2015)

Hi Mindfire,

Not talking about cultural advancement specifically. I'm talking about technological advancement, and that does happen in stages. Peoples may advance in different ways and steps in different places, but ultimately you aren't going to get cars and computers if all those steps aren't completed.

And Russ, I agree. But you're leaving out things too. Technological advancements secifically. Just to sail across the oceans reliably you need tech. Not just to build the boats but guide them. So ignore the carpentry and rope making. Think instead about compasses and sextents. How far is your fleet going to get without them? How big a ship can you build without some understanding of structural engineering? What about guns? You want your country's power to spread into new lands? A bunch of soldiers with spears aren't going to do it. You need weapons. What about stirrups for horses? Cannon?

The simple fact is that technology builds on itself. Each new invention makes life a little easier and leads to the next. And the OP is asking why you have to explain that that hasn't happened. The answer is simply that those inventions haven't happened. 

It took thousands of years for certain cultures to reach the technological level of medieval societies, and then only a very few went on. Essentially one. And likely the reason it did was because the culture at that stage had reached a sufficient stage where it had enough people, enough food and enough wealth and the right economic / political structure / value system that a social elite could form - one that encouraged education at least for a privileged few, who in turn had the opportunity to turn their thoughts to new avenues of study. They achieved a critical mass of knowledge and theory with each new idea sparking another.

And X, you've just mentioned one of the most advanced ancient civilizations that despite everything could not advance technologically, and the reason the Greeks could not advance was simple. They lived in city states that were often warring with one another. They valued the arts, but only a very few could become artists and philosophers, while a great many more were scrounging to find enough food, dying young and working all hours of the day to live. They simply didn't have the free time available to sit down and start inventing. They needed a vastly different political structure (and of course no Rome) to advance. They needed to form a critical mass for inventing stuff. They didn't get there. They did however achieve critical mass in certain areas like philosophy, and so thousands of years later we have the writings of Plato, Socrates etc. Imagine where we'd be now if they'd managed to keep going.

The point is that there are any number of factors that need to be in place before a culture can technologically advance beyond a certain point, and the vast majority of cultures simply never have all those factors available to them. So instead they advance in what they can. 

Take for example the Maori of my homeland. Political structure was tribal and they warred. That was a problem. They had no metal available. That was against them. And probably their biggest deficit was their small population size and lack of concentration in built up areas. It didn't allow them to have a critical mass of bright people to get together and start sparking ideas and having education more freely available. They also never had reading and writing which means that knowledge could only be passed down orally. So what did the Maori advance in? Things that they could of course. Things which served their purposes which were essentially getting enough food to eat and trying to stay warm. You want an advanced bone fish hook, a flax woven net or polished greenstone adze, they're your people. You want a nuclear reactor, go somewhere else. They were never going to invent it. The vast majority of peoples in the world were never going to invent them.

So I come back to my point. Why do you have to explain that a world hasn't progressed beyond a certain point in thousands of years? The fact is that ninety plus percent of our world didn't.

Cheers, Greg.


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## Kobun (Aug 15, 2015)

Androxine Vortex said:


> So in many fantasy stories centuries and thousands of years can go by but still cultures are locked in a medieval theme. How have you handled this in your works? How can you justify this by still being believable?


This was always a pet peeve of mine. In short, I don't. What ever phase my civilization has been at, they've been there for one, two centuries at most. People spend too much time working out solutions and thinking up improvements for anything more to be realistic.

I think the reason you see this is specifically because writers think millenniums are special. They consider such a broad time frame to be suuuuuper impressive.


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## X Equestris (Aug 15, 2015)

psychotick said:


> And X, you've just mentioned one of the most advanced ancient civilizations that despite everything could not advance technologically, and the reason the Greeks could not advance was simple. They lived in city states that were often warring with one another. They valued the arts, but only a very few could become artists and philosophers, while a great many more were scrounging to find enough food, dying young and working all hours of the day to live. They simply didn't have the free time available to sit down and start inventing. They needed a vastly different political structure (and of course no Rome) to advance. They needed to form a critical mass for inventing stuff. They didn't get there. They did however achieve critical mass in certain areas like philosophy, and so thousands of years later we have the writings of Plato, Socrates etc. Imagine where we'd be now if they'd managed to keep going.
> 
> The point is that there are any number of factors that need to be in place before a culture can technologically advance beyond a certain point, and the vast majority of cultures simply never have all those factors available to them. So instead they advance in what they can.
> 
> ...



I...what?  Did you just imply the Greeks didn't advance technologically?  Because that is blatantly false.  They didn't achieve an industrial revolution, which is apparently your bar for advancement that matters.  And it's not because they didn't have enough free time.  All settled societies have a lower class that does the hard work.  That has no impact on the thinkers.  Also, the political divisions aren't a huge deal.  Warfare has been one of the driving forces behind innovation since the beginning.  Even if the political divisions were a hindrance, what do you say about the Alexandrian successor states? Not to mention how Rome continued to foster innovation amongst its Greek subjects.  People have to be willing to invest money in tools and machinery instead of buying more slaves and animals to do labor.  Metallurgy wasn't at the right level during the Greek's time.  Factors like those held the Greeks back, not a lack of free time.

 They did, however, progress technologically in other areas that were less extreme than an industrial revolution.  As did many other civilizations that went past medieval levels of technology.  Your premises are based on a great deal of misconceptions.  There aren't tiers.  This isn't a game of Civilization. The Inca had a fairly powerful empire, but they never invented the wheel.  The Aztecs, and most other Central American civilizations, never developed metal tools and weapons.  This doesn't change the fact that they did advance their technology.  Your example of the Maori proves my point, in that they may not have some technologies, but they aren't stagnant.  In contrast, many of the fictional civilizations we're talking about here have been stuck in what's usually a copy of Medieval Europe for many thousands,or tens of thousands, of years.

Also, you don't need guns to go colonizing.  Just look at the Greek and Phoenician colonies all around the Mediterranean and Black Seas.  Indeed, they did quite well for a very long time despite having military technology that was on the same level as the people whose lands they were colonizing.

It's not about explaining why your created civilizations haven't progressed past a certain point, it's about whether they've been at the point they're at now for an unbelievable amount of time.


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## FifthView (Aug 15, 2015)

X Equestris said:


> It's not about explaining why your created civilizations haven't progressed past a certain point, it's about whether they've been at the point they're at now for an unbelievable amount of time.



Strikes me that we are overlooking something fairly important to the discussion.

Typically in a novel or series of novels


most events will be occurring in the here-and-now (present)
most characters, perhaps all, will not be historians, archeologists, etc.
record-keeping may consist mostly of oral tradition; libraries may not be extensive.

So the here-and-now may be medieval.  That does not mean the civilization was always medieval, from the beginning, nor that technologies used in the novel have been around for the full 1000-3000 years leading up to the here-and-now.

If characters are aware of the age of the empire and comment on its age, there's no reason to believe they also have a full understanding of the previous millennia.   "Our great, glorious Terrbonia has endured for 3000 years!" may be somewhat correct if some sort of civilization using that name has been around for as long as that; but for all the characters know, many upheavals, changes, innovations, have occurred during that time.

Perhaps 2000 years ago, Terrbonia was just a scattering of tiny villages, or even multiple tribes loosely controlled by a "king" who dominated the environment — and not what it is now, with a more entrenched emperor with vast palaces, military forces, and ubiquitous bureaucracy with thousands of officials at all levels of society.

The "here" of "here-and-now" of the novel also means that a great portion of the present technological state of the civilization will probably go unaddressed in the novel.  For instance, there may be absolutely no need to list and describe every farming implement, every mining tool, etc., presently in use in the empire.  We as readers might gather that the civilization is at a certain state of development, _now_, by events and descriptions of things that occur in the lives of the characters, but we won't have a full knowledge of the history of the technology currently in use.  That plow being used by the farmer we meet?  Maybe that type of plow only came into use within the last 200 years.  Heck, maybe that farmer is actually using a slightly modified plow that he himself has designed — perhaps the metal on it is an improved alloy that his brother the blacksmith created.

Quite aside from the more theoretical exploration of the idea of technological progress, novels typically have a more narrow focus, a type of myopia, in that events within the story only happen within a fairly limited space and period of time, and may utilize a set of characters who themselves operate under a similar myopia.  Add to that the fact that a civilization that is presently in a medieval state probably doesn't have an extensive library system and history/archeology professions (or very limited historians and archeologists), and the shape of previous millennia will be largely unknown.

_Edit:_  Incidentally, I'm reminded of those web videos showing children being presented with technology from 20-40 years ago.  Many children can't comprehend a world in which microwave ovens, cell phones, fast internet speeds didn't exist.  For them, the world has always been the way it currently is.  The same may be true for adults when much of the knowledge about technology, e.g., craft tools, is passed down from father to son or in systems of apprenticeship, guilds, and so forth.  In those cases, the old technology is preserved.  It may seem to individuals that the world has always been the way it is, even if it hasn't.  So when we are using those characters, we might be communicating to the reader that the current state of the world has been around for thousands of years exactly as it now is.  That doesn't mean our worlds are stagnant, however.


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## X Equestris (Aug 15, 2015)

Certainly.  Having characters believe the world has always been one way is one thing.  It's why we have art from Renaissance Italy depicting Bible scenes with people who look exactly like contemporary Italians, or paintings of the Fall of Jerusalem showing the Crusaders wearing plate armor.  Having the world actually have been the same for tens of thousands of years is a different case entirely.


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## TheokinsJ (Aug 17, 2015)

As others have said, technological advancement is not always guaranteed. Indeed, in Western Europe during 'The Dark Ages', technological advancement went backwards, quite drastically. All the technical advances the Romans and the Greeks had made in architecture, Engineering, agriculture etc, all went down the drain and most of Europe went back to a primitive form of existence, with no aqueducts with running water, no concrete, no bath-houses, no central heating (Yes, the Romans invented an early form of central heating!), no paved roads etc.

Technological advancement is not guaranteed, it depends on circumstance and the availability of certain resources, and the type of society. Nomadic and semi-nomadic societies are much less likely to advance; there's no reason to invent anything or to create anything if you're just going to move on and leave it behind. The Aboriginal people of Australia are a classic example; 40,000 years on the continent, and they never advanced technologically. They never built anything- there were no permanent settlements or buildings, there's rock art left behind by them in caves, but for the most part, they were living in the stone age for 40,000 years and never progressed.
The Maori people in New Zealand who've been there for roughly 800-1000 years didn't progress much either (Although they did make permanent settlements), and others have already talked about China, and how for nearly two thousand years it remained unchanged until Western civilisation influenced it.


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## X Equestris (Aug 17, 2015)

TheokinsJ said:


> As others have said, technological advancement is not always guaranteed. Indeed, in Western Europe during 'The Dark Ages', technological advancement went backwards, quite drastically. All the technical advances the Romans and the Greeks had made in architecture, Engineering, agriculture etc, all went down the drain and most of Europe went back to a primitive form of existence, with no aqueducts with running water, no concrete, no bath-houses, no central heating (Yes, the Romans invented an early form of central heating!), no paved roads etc.
> 
> Technological advancement is not guaranteed, it depends on circumstance and the availability of certain resources, and the type of society. Nomadic and semi-nomadic societies are much less likely to advance; there's no reason to invent anything or to create anything if you're just going to move on and leave it behind. The Aboriginal people of Australia are a classic example; 40,000 years on the continent, and they never advanced technologically. They never built anything- there were no permanent settlements or buildings, there's rock art left behind by them in caves, but for the most part, they were living in the stone age for 40,000 years and never progressed.
> The Maori people in New Zealand who've been there for roughly 800-1000 years didn't progress much either (Although they did make permanent settlements), and others have already talked about China, and how for nearly two thousand years it remained unchanged until Western civilisation influenced it.



Yet how many societies in fantasy fiction are based on those?  Very few.  Most resemble the conditions of medieval Europe.  

Also, most of these groups people are mentioning that didn't progress their technology never made it past the Stone Age, and they live in rather harsh or limiting environments.  Amongst groups that progressed past that, advancements build on one another at an increasingly rapid pace.  The gaps between those advancements shrink.  

Another thing to think about here is why.  Why does the story have to be spread out over thousands of years, yet keep the same technology?  For example, if your story requires the location of an object to be lost over time, does it really have to be thousands/ tens of thousands of years in the past?  Might a smaller time frame work just as well?  If not, is it really necessary to keep your civilizations at the same level of advancement the entire time?


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## Mythopoet (Aug 17, 2015)

One thing to consider, and I've been hesitant to bring it up because I know where it could possibly take the discussion, is that it wasn't until the "scientific revolution" that the attitude necessary among scientists and engineers to produce technological advancement really existed. It is only modern science that pushes for such constant advancement. It is only moderns that view technology in a mostly positive light. The word technology wasn't even coined until the 1600s, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, and at first referred to grammar and didn't refer to mechanical and industrial arts until the 1800s. It was during the scientific revolution that the attitude of scientists changed from a general attitude of wanting to simply study and understand nature to an attitude of wanting to utilize and subjugate nature. Technological advancement of the modern kind necessarily uses the earth to the point of destruction for the unlimited progress of mankind. Many (most?) human societies would have shuddered to even contemplate that. It is only in the modern age that it has become something we don't even think about because technological advancements are one of the Great Goods of our society. 

Personally, one of the main reasons I love fantasy is because I can immerse myself in cultures that don't think that way and in worlds where everything isn't paved over for cars and dotted with cell towers. I would rather live in those worlds.


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## Androxine Vortex (Aug 18, 2015)

I know i am late replying to my own thread but i actually never read the Lord of the rings books. I am currently reading the silmarilion but did tolkien have his civilizations progress well? I'm sure this sounds like a silly question but then again i haven't fully read everything.


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## X Equestris (Aug 18, 2015)

Androxine Vortex said:


> I know i am late replying to my own thread but i actually never read the Lord of the rings books. I am currently reading the silmarilion but did tolkien have his civilizations progress well? I'm sure this sounds like a silly question but then again i haven't fully read everything.



There was some progression.  And there were collapses after catastrophes.  There was definitely change occuring in the world.


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## Mindfire (Aug 18, 2015)

Mythopoet said:


> One thing to consider, and I've been hesitant to bring it up because I know where it could possibly take the discussion, is that it wasn't until the "scientific revolution" that the attitude necessary among scientists and engineers to produce technological advancement really existed. It is only modern science that pushes for such constant advancement. It is only moderns that view technology in a mostly positive light. The word technology wasn't even coined until the 1600s, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, and at first referred to grammar and didn't refer to mechanical and industrial arts until the 1800s. It was during the scientific revolution that the attitude of scientists changed from a general attitude of wanting to simply study and understand nature to an attitude of wanting to utilize and subjugate nature. Technological advancement of the modern kind necessarily uses the earth to the point of destruction for the unlimited progress of mankind. Many (most?) human societies would have shuddered to even contemplate that. It is only in the modern age that it has become something we don't even think about because technological advancements are one of the Great Goods of our society.
> 
> Personally, one of the main reasons I love fantasy is because I can immerse myself in cultures that don't think that way and in worlds where everything isn't paved over for cars and dotted with cell towers. I would rather live in those worlds.



Mythopoet brings up a good point. One of the reasons technology has evolved so rapidly in our world is that a great number of discoveries and innovations were made without any regard or respect for nature and the environment (*cough*Climate Change*cough*). In a world where people are much more conscientious about preserving the earth- for spiritual or other reasons- technology might evolve at a much slower pace and/or in a different direction.


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## skip.knox (Aug 19, 2015)

There is no discernible cultural development in LoTR, except in the general sense of a decline from former greatness that informs a good deal of European cultural mythology. And it doesn't seem to have done him any harm in terms of sales or reputation.

I think there are two separate issues being confused here. One has to do with world building and sociological realism. In that respect, the OP's observations are quite correct. It is not realistic to imagine a world that doesn't change in any meaningful way over the centuries. I have no problem with that proposition.

The separate issue has to do with effective story-telling. There, all depends on the story. It's possible to write stories that offer no sense of historical change, or to write stories that are all about historical change. What matters is the story.

Where the OP has gone wrong is to suppose the one is a precondition of the other. It is absolutely not necessary to construction a world that takes into account long-term cultural change (let us leave aside that problematic word "progress") in order to tell a good story. And the converse is true. The failure to so construct a world does not necessarily lead to a bad story. They are separate issues.

I say this as a historian. First, tell me a good story, and I will forgive much. Make history your centerpiece, and I will show up with knives sharpened. You choose.


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## FifthView (Aug 19, 2015)

X Equestris said:


> Certainly.  Having characters believe the world has always been one way is one thing.  It's why we have art from Renaissance Italy depicting Bible scenes with people who look exactly like contemporary Italians, or paintings of the Fall of Jerusalem showing the Crusaders wearing plate armor.  Having the world actually have been the same for tens of thousands of years is a different case entirely.



How many novels actually _show_ the world being exactly the same for "tens of thousands of years?"

I think there may be examples of novels either incorporating flashback sequences, perhaps prologues taking place thousands of years in the past; or else, novels/trilogies which span the full thousands of years (perhaps advancing approx. 1000 years with each installment in a series of novels.)  But this is a fairly rare approach.

In most cases, all the action happens in a "here and now."  So unchanging stagnation isn't definitively shown.  Sure, characters and written histories might imply an unchanging society lasting many thousands of years.  But as I said in my original comment, there's no reason to believe these accounts are not limited, myopic, uninformed.

So in short:  In most cases, the issue of stagnation doesn't legitimately arise or require an author to expend effort justifying the current state of the society in which the novel occurs.


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## X Equestris (Aug 19, 2015)

FifthView said:


> How many novels actually _show_ the world being exactly the same for "tens of thousands of years?"
> 
> I think there may be examples of novels either incorporating flashback sequences, perhaps prologues taking place thousands of years in the past; or else, novels/trilogies which span the full thousands of years (perhaps advancing approx. 1000 years with each installment in a series of novels.)  But this is a fairly rare approach.
> 
> ...



I already posted the TV Tropes link.  That has some examples.  As I said earlier, it's only an issue when someone actually shows the distant past and it's the same as the story's present.


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