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Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

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Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#361

Post by vintermann »

bombcar wrote: post #300
mcv wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LOTR is famous for the women missing from social life, so there is no reason that such measures have been taken. Maybe the women are missing from not just from social life, but from the world. Not just the entwives[0] and the rarely seen dwarven women, but even human women are surprisingly rare. How many of all those many men making an appearance were married? Only hobbits seem to have actual families, but still no…

Sam, post war, has a large family, and some of the other hobbits do as well (Farmer Cotton, for example). But it also seems that Frodo and Bilbo were NOT mentioned as being "strange" or anything, so it's not certain that everyone would marry and have a family of any size.

They were explicitly mentioned as being strange, though not explicitly for being bachelors. More for being rich, reclusive and unusually young-looking for their ages.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#362

Post by erikpukinskis »

gostsamo wrote: post #254
ghaff wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes homo sapiens levels of childbirth however. As a number of comments touch on, a lot of the lack of technological advance could be hand-waved away as a result of low birthrates and a generally low population. You could also perhaps factor in a general societal distaste for technology although human history suggests that societies which can't or won't create technology are overwhelmed by societies that do.

I mean, we can all say "magic" and not think about it, but the fun here is in thinking and the hand-waving is not in the spirit of it.

It’s not just magic. In the First Age children were more of a vanity project… every creature in existence had a downright biblical origin.

Men don’t even exist until the Second Age, and “cities” at that time are basically just family settlements, with maybe a few dozen generations of men. And at first they’re below replacement rate. Look at the family tree of Beor: http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/B%C3%ABor#Genealogy… no one is having three kids. It’s two or one.

The Third Age is only a few thousand years later. There’s just not enough time at those kind of birth rates to blanket a continent the way humans have.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#363

Post by zahllos »

tablespoon wrote: post #316
zahllos wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also clear that the author hasn't actually read the lord of the rings. It doesn't feature in the films but the scouring of the Shire happens after the defeat of Sauron, in which Saruman and Wormtongue take over the Shire and push the same industrialization they were pushing at Orthanc. They have a small battle, Saruman is killed by Wormtongue, who is killed by Hobbits and then everything is right again for the…

> It is also clear that the author hasn't actually read the lord of the rings. He even says so in one of the early paragraphs. Also this substank "Launched 15 days ago". Feels like clickbait self-promotion. I'm not sure why anyone's wasting time with this nonsense question while not-high.

Why are fantasy settings by and large medieval (and not evolving) probably has some interest (often the setting involves lost technology, "a great civilisation has disappeared". Tolkien does this too, with the silmarils, the fall of numenor). In fact per Tolkien law all the amazing elves are basically dying out and we're gonna be stuck with boring mortal men in the fourth age. So arguably all the good stuff has happened and we're on the road to ruin. Wonder if he read the daily mail?

A significant portion of authors might just be emulating Tolkien, I suppose. Also hard to have a secret elven forest base with high resolution satellite imagery, thermal imaging and precision guided weapons.

You don't need the books though, you can check online to see about the scouring of the shire and Saruman in general, which for the Tolkien case makes his views pretty clear.

If you really want to waste some time, consider that the eagles came and rescued Frodo/Bilbo from mount doom near the end. They could easily have flown them _into_ mordor in the first place, especially since at that time the Nazgul were not airborne, saving a very extensive tour of New Zealand (uh I mean middle earth) in the process. Would've needed far less elven bread and a smaller fellowship and got them more air miles. Gandalf could've also taken a spa holiday instead of an arduous hike, bungee jump with a balrog, death and resurrection, which I'm fairly sure weren't covered by his travel insurance and likely not recommended by his doctor.

Ultimately it is a story. In some senses alternative worlds allow you to compare "what ifs?" and this can be fun. However you have to be careful how much you read tvtropes...

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#364

Post by drewzero1 »

Symbiote wrote: post #350
Angostura wrote: post #241

I highly recommend "The Last Ring Bearer" for people who like to have a bit of fun with Tokien. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer Eskov's version of the story describes Mordor as a peaceful constitutional monarchy on the verge of an industrial revolution, that poses a threat to the war-mongering and imperialistic faction represented by Gandalf (whose attitude has been described by Saruman as "crafting…

I liked the idea of The Last Ringbearer , but I found the writing pretty awful, like something written by a teenager for an English assignment. > Mordor then made its second mistake ... although, as it always is with strategic decisions, that could only be judged post factum: had the move worked, as it had every chance of doing, it would no doubt have been recorded as brilliant. > That was when the Mirror first made…

I would consider that a fault of the translation rather than the original writing, though not knowing Russian I couldn't say for sure. Translating literary works is a necessarily imperfect art, and as I understand it this translation was done on the translator's free time without compensation, so I'll take what I can get!

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#365

Post by EddieDante »

karencarits wrote: post #352
CrazyStat wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Being a paleoantologist, he made a question to Tolkien's book: why the Middle Earth had such strange land mass distribution, which is geologically impossible. And this started the "Last Ringbearer" book. Unfortunately he missed the answer: at the time Tolkien was writing, plate tectonics was still considered an absurd hypothesis, the subject of mockery by "serious" geologists. As such the understanding of "geologica…

If I recall correctly, the geography of Middle Earth was heavily changed during the wars between Morgoth and the Valas. I.e., it wasn't entirely shaped by natural processes but also by the willfull acts of semi-Gods

Meddlesome demons ruin everything. Too bad Feanor didn't think to create Stormbringer instead of the fucking Silmarils; he could have shoved it up Melkor's arse and then put the rest of the Valar and Maiar in their place.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#366

Post by pessimizer »

1) An obvious failure of public education. They weren't training/apprenticing enough magicians.

2) Racism/nationalism. Magicians should have been working with dwarves to develop technology. Instead the only magician who concentrated on developing industrial technology worked with a manufactured slave species that lacked dwarf institutional knowledge, and additionally focused all of his efforts in developing war technology.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#367

Post by kelseyfrog »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #345
hguant wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>geology science explaining why it's impossible. Mordor is...it just doesn't work. It's a hard scrabble plain with a large inland sea bounded on 3 sides by jagged, abrupt mountains that are entirely isolated from any other ranges, and form right angles with each other...oh and the surround a cone volcano that just emerges from the ground. Any one of these things (minus the, I repeat, NEAR PERFECT RIGHT ANGLES formed…

...are we just going to ignore the fact that Middle Earth also has wizards and mind-controlling rings? I don't mean this dismissively, I just think more imagination is called for. If Mordor couldn't have arisen via normal plate tectonics, then geology must work differently on Middle Earth, or there must be other magical forces at play. (If I remembered anything significant about LoTR I would suggest a more specific t…

> geology must work differently on Middle Earth

This is where a lot of people get stuck. They see the enormous effort put into world-building Middle-earth and can't help but see a gaping geologic hole. Yes, geology must work differently, but how? It frustrates people to see entire languages and histories fleshed out in minute detail on one hand, but on the other "rocks just do different, bud" on the other.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#368

Post by GoblinSlayer »

hguant wrote: post #334
antifa wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Middle Earth had such strange land mass distribution, which is geologically impossible I would love to watch a YouTube video explaining the geology of Middle Earth and the geology science explaining why it's impossible.

>geology science explaining why it's impossible. Mordor is...it just doesn't work. It's a hard scrabble plain with a large inland sea bounded on 3 sides by jagged, abrupt mountains that are entirely isolated from any other ranges, and form right angles with each other...oh and the surround a cone volcano that just emerges from the ground. Any one of these things (minus the, I repeat, NEAR PERFECT RIGHT ANGLES formed…

If you mean the map, compare to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TabulaRogeriana_upside-do...

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#369

Post by CrazyStat »

peace4all wrote: post #355
CrazyStat wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a proper human translation of the same essay: https://www.salon.com/2011/02/23/last_ringbearer_explanation... Note how he discusses plate tectonics and Tolkein's ignorance, having forgotten (or never realized) that plate tectonics was not taken seriously in Tolkein's time.

He has written a big book on evolution of Earth and theories around it. [1] It includes a whole chapter on plate tectonics, the preceding theories, and how plate tectonics itself was gradually accepted. In the book, there's also a large review on other scientific problems, like where the Sun gets energy from, why the Earth has magnetic field, where does internal the heat of the Earth come from, etc. Lots of "how do w…

If he was 100% aware of the status plate tectonics had at the time Tolkien was writing them he should not have criticized him as he did.
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