40 000 Years Later. No changes?!

[Legendary Sidekick]

Don't forget that we stand on the shoulders of giants. We have written documentation of discoveries and an effective way to communicate facts, theories and discoveries to the next generation. In earlier times, there was this:

It's fascinating, but I imagine this did little to progress society in a way that is apparent to people of our time. Even then, there would be some progress. This painting could be a story about how P.J., the chief's son, used to wear a bird mask and literally scare the crap out of bisons. Finally, he was gored as a result of his foolishness. He died while having an erection, which is an embarrassment to his tribe. Grokmar the Bellyacher did what smart hunters to: he used his spear thrower tool to kill the bison from behind, spilling its entrails in a single shot. If only P.J. had learned to hunt like Grokmar…

Point is, we see evidence of the spear thrower tool, but there's no record of hunting tactics and other survival lessons that may have been passed on, which may have been great progress for that era. Thousands of years from now, no one will know how much the phone advanced in our lifetimes. What is life-changing for us will be as insignificant to the people of the year 10,000 as the lessons of this cave painting are to us.

 

[King_Cagn]

Okay everyone I looked at it and came up with a solution to what could have halted the progress of civilization, and that is there world's version of an Ice Age that lasted approximately 30 000 years, thus implying that the physics is different and that the Ice Age was magically induced.

Though I'll have to look deeper into this one.

 

[Terry Greer]

If you're dead set on such a long time frame the one way you could do it and keep it credible is to have some repeating catastrophe or global change. For example a regular solar flare every few hundred years.
That could then be used to generate world-wide events that repeatedly cull the population and decimate societies so they revert to more primate technology.

Add in the fact that the society used up all the 'easy to obtain' natural resources in its first boom and you have a society that will never again enjoy an industrial revolution.

It could then have settled into a cyclic rise/fall almost steady state.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

I would seriously avoid the idea of a continuing ice age. Or of any calamity. Because eventually they'll all lead to one of two things happening. Either the people will die out or they'll move to somewhere better. Instead stick to the limitation of resources and ask yourself questions like why have many stone age tribes alive in the world today, not advanced?

As I said before, usually advancement occurs when people have free time - i.e. don't have to hunt and gather so much etc because there is abundant food. And free time plus the increased population that this allows - one or two of whom will be creative geniuses - will allow for advancement. But even then you can only advance in a way that your resources allow.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[SM-Dreamer]

Do want to point out the Sumerian King List[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_King_List where rulers are said to exist/reign for hundreds and thousands of years.

Also, the world could have in that 40,000 years waxed and waned, cycled between periods of growth and stagnation, but ultimately still be the same because it never managed to get anywhere. Reasons could be warring, catastrophe, and the like not allowing the world to advance.

We humans have been around for tens of thousands of years, and except for migrating and evolving, civilization is a relatively new thing. That's tens of thousands of years where we were too busy just trying to survive.

Is it sometimes irritating to see the "eternally middle ages" setting? Yes. Can it be explained properly and be made acceptable to the reader? Yes.

 

[Saigonnus]

Not sure if it came up, but perhaps things in your world are cyclic. Perhaps 40K years ago was a "medieval setting" that advanced to the point where they "nuked" themselves back to the stone age, and since it would take a while to fully return from an event such as that, once more they advanced to the "medieval era" again... relearning old tricks as it were. Just a thought I had.

 

[WeilderOfTheMonkeyBlade]

In my world, where there's only a TINY amount of iron, so all humans 'ave really got to work with is bronze, humans have gone, in 10,000 years, from down-trodden hunter gatherers - down trodden by the "elves" , wyverns and brownies and the Children of the Southern Storm, to ruling the world, basically, with basic and slow trains, airships, and powerful magic to shape stone and build really well (and implement an amazing sewer system! Its so nice to be able to write about clean cities and have an proper reason as to why I'm doing so!). And this is without iron/steel, and with lots of monsters - Wyverns, various barbaric tribes of elves and Angels- winged and super powerful humanoids trying to kill them - so yeah, even with an attempt at a reason, I'm not buying 40,000 years of stasis. In another work I've had to include the Grey Plauge- something that makes the black death look weak - and which occurs every few thousand years, to explain why, in sixteen thousand years humans are only at late medieval/early modern period!

 

[Saigonnus]

Just wondering why, if a plague occurs fairly regularly (in geologic terms), hasn't the humans developed an immunity to it. It stands to reason if you are infected by the black plague and live, you will be immune to it, and pass that immunity on to your off-spring. That is whay happened with the bubonic plague in south and central America. When the spaniards brought it with them and it wiped out much of the population, the rest developed a natural immunity. Now, mexicans, nicaraguans etc all have the same wonderful immunity that white European had from their exposure to it.

 

[AllegedObserver]

Have you made a timeline?

I am putting together a fantasy setting where some of the race (Humans in this case) were originally space-faring colonists who crashed onto my world. Over the fullness of time (thousands of years) have grown in population, lost their mastery over technology, then discovered things, and so on. But I've made a basic timeline of events and have found it really useful. Especially when it comes to things like traditions, languages, regional histories and so on.

 

[evanator66]

I've got one: cycles of total dark ages. Every few thousand years, the <insert powerful entity here>s have gone to war against each other and wiped out all recent progress, causing the world to constantly be stuck in a medieval/ancient state. Also, there could be buried ruins, which contain mind-eating plagues (for humans) that cause a generation at a time to become complete idiots, setting back progress, however, the disease is magical and can only emerge once every few thousand years.

 

[Philster401]

Or it could that They decided to use magic instead of technology.