No advance in Technology

[Faramir Took]

Does anyone else think it is strange that in 3000 years, there were absolutely no advances in technology???? You would think with all the bright and powerful people wandering around middle earth in all those years, that someone would have invented something!!!!!

[Miranda]

Did they want to? Hobbits liked things to endure, elves are so timeless I doubt they'd want to change (and besides they're bogging off the the greys soon enough) men are too divided to create any real developments and dwarves- well, nuff said!!! Mx

[Sween]

Tolkien was himself very very against technology so thats why if anything there is a decline in technology in tolkiens work throughout time till men finally become dominate.

the dwaves nuff said? excuss me but of all the races bar the eleves the dwaves were probably the most skilled at making things much more so than men.

There is a early on quite a bit of development (esspecially in the sil) and they learn of the valar how to make all sorts of fun stuff

[Lollypopgurl]

Well, Lord of the Rings just wouldn't be the same with technology.

It's a fantasy, it's unreal. It definately would not be so good with people dropping bombs everywhere. I really can't belive you asked that.

And besides, Saruman with a laptop is just too weird.

[Kevin McIntyre]

Tolkien does not go into detail about technological progression. However some basic examples would Melkor actively using breeding (dragons, orcs, trolls), the elves perfected weaponary, ship building and certain level of quasi Roman and Medieval like technology was spreading.

[DraztiK]

And don't forget that Sauron invented a Cloaking Device

[Sween]

i find it intresting with tolkiens work that each race is basically upon a diffrent time line to the others (well in terms of fashion anyway)

the hobbits like to dress in clothes from about a 100 years ago. Rohan is obvosly quite viking influenced and glondor more medieval.

The elves seems to be a bit pre hisorty to me you cannot really realate them to anything the romans were not as graceful as the elves were.

this is a post that could possiably of been influenced by the movie and my ignorance so feel free to have a go.

I think the buildings of middle earth are facinating the fortresses surpass anything that we have ever managed to make many of the buildings in lord of the rings were made thousands of years before the war of the ring but were still in mint condition. Bar Dur could not be broken even after 9 years of seige. i love the agonaths i think someone somewhere should try and make them in this world cos they just would surpass anything we have made (maybe excluding the prymids)

[Elf.Freak]

maybe they didn't have technology in Middle Earth!

But i totally agree though, someone should've invented something (but what about the mithril coat and, as DraztiK said, the cloaking device).

[BeardofPants]

What an ignorant statement. There are always technological advances - I think you are perhaps missing the message that tolkien was trying to pull across - the depiction of Saruman who was using industrial technology (which can be compared to the technology we use) to illustrate the negative impact that it had. There were many instances of "technology" being used: palantirs, rings of power, weapondry, architecture (Orthancs walls could not be crumbled), horse & cart, etc. These are all technologies that could hardly be called 'primitive.' Furthermore, you can not limit technological advances to just the dwarves and men - elves too, used certain technological developments, ie the rings of power, the silmarils, etc. The Noldor were reknown for their love of crafts.

[The Lady of Ithilien]

A timely question -- was reading the prologue to the 1965 revised edition the other evening, and this sort of popped out at me (emphasis added):

Growing food and eating it occupied most of their time. In other matters they [hobbits] were, as a rule, generous and not greedy, but contented and moderate, so that estates, farms, workshops, and small trades tended to remain unchanged for generations.

[olsonm]

Originally posted by BeardofPants
What an ignorant statement.

I was wondering when you would find this thread.

[IronParrot]

I could go on and on about the role of technology, but instead I recommend Tom Shippey's Author of the Century, wherein he discusses, among countless other topics, Saruman's characterization as a technocrat...

[cassiopeia]

Originally posted by Faramir Took
Does anyone else think it is strange that in 3000 years, there were absolutely no advances in technology???? You would think with all the bright and powerful people wandering around middle earth in all those years, that someone would have invented something!!!!!

Didn't Sauron 'invent' the one ring. A pretty nifty device, I believe. BoP has already mentioned the technology they used - you don't expect them to have invented the automobile and computer, do you?

[BeardofPants]

Originally posted by cassiopeia
...computer, do you?

Who needs the internet, when you've got a palantir?

[Agburanar]

Saruman invented loads of stuff, including a whole new breed of orcs don't forget! Today's scientists would be hard pushed to do that (plus they wouldn't be allowed!). He also invented the 'blasting fire' (some kind of gunpowder?) that the orcs used at Helm's deep.

[Nunc]

BoP is right, I believe.

Part of the main message of LOTR is the "evils of the industrial age" with the implication that industrialisation defiles the earth, in some cases beyond healing.

I think the idea is also that the Elves perfected natural technology; the palantiri were elvish gifts to the Numenoreans. The Noldori created the silmarils and other fantastic jewels. The Teleri also created (with Ulmo's aid and direction) the swan-boats, and the Eldar as a whole built cities and so on, the craft of which probably passed to the Numenoreans... or before that when the Noldor were in Middle Earth during the Exile, perhaps they taught the craft of building impregnable fortresses to the three houses of men (the fathers of men).

As the Numenoreans fell and dwindled, and as Gondor failed, note the lessening of technology. The implication is that it was once what it is no longer, that, along with the "golden past" it too is sinking into oblivion.

[Dunadan]

That's an interesting point. The stuff about Saruman representing the unfettered technocrat, and the sentimental portrayal of pre-industrialisation is well documented. But I'd never considered the decline of Numenorean "technology" in this light.

Perhaps this is to do with our own attitudes to technology. We have thoroughly bought into the notion that technical development is always in the "forwards" direction. I suppose it's the same theme in the "unmaking" of the Ring, something we could not countenance with, say, nukes.

[Blackboar]

Imagine inventing like a whole new spieces of living being!!
I would love to think of a race; their personality's, looks,
everthing!!

[The Lady of Ithilien]

One thing that's often overlooked is the focus Tolkien had on creation, which included but certainly wasn't limited to technology. This can be seen in a question I saw at another JRRT Web site once: what did the Elves do in Aman all the time? The basic idea there was that they got bored, but I think rather they were meant to fulfill their being with the help of the Valar and their blessed presence. Hence, among other things, so much was created there by them: the ships of the Teleri and the beautiful port of Alqualonde (? spelling, the books aren't handy presently); Tirion, etc.

Creation, like all things of power (the most primitive of which would be a sword), was double-edged and could slip and "cut" its user. The Noldor got into the act of creation the most deeply in terms of tools (technology), and so they, alone among all the Elven kindreds, were the most skilled, as embodied by Feanor and the Silmarils, but they also got their egos caught up in their technological successes, and that, rather than the technology itself, was the problem.

It wasn't so much the "evils of technology" that Tolkien was getting at, as everybody used some technology (even hobbits), so much as it was the confluence of technology and ego -- beings creating via tools instead of via their own qualities, or will.

Hence, in his mind (and in "The Akallabeth") the Numenoreans toward the end of their days sailed to Middle-Earth in steam ships, but when they went to land on Aman, it was aboard ships rowed by hand, i.e., by human will. If it was just "evil technology," then certainly Ar-Pharazon would have steamed his way into the Forbidden Lands.

And so the hobbits, until Saruman's intervention, escaped evil, by being "generous and not greedy, but contented and moderate," not getting their egos all caught up with tools, but living in a balance with creativity (in their case, cultivation of the land for food and gardens and forests, etc.).

Contrast Feanor's fierce and ultimately destructive love of his Silmaril's with Sam's love of ropes, for instance, or if you want to keep it elf on elf, with the words of the people of Lorien, who said that they put the thought of all they love into what they make -- that was the magic of the elven cloaks the Fellowship was given.

[Amandil]

There seems to be a general theme of EVIL being the primary source of technological "advancement." Morgoth (breeding-twisting things), Sauron (breeding and twisting the bred and twisted things, siege engines), Sauruman (breeding the bred and twisted things with Men, blasting fire), Sandyman's smokestacks, etc. Good, on the other hand, seems to -- um, I dunno -- be concerned with perfecting existing creations. Mithril wasn't a technological advancement per se, but the use of a better metal for perfecting existing technology -- i.e., chain maille.

I don't suppose this applies in all cases, but there seems to me something to it. I think Tolkien deliberately reversed "mainstream Western society's" belief in progress in his writings. Change or "growth" (in the capitalist economic sense) wasn't seen as good, in Middle Earth. Quite the opposite, it seems to me. Only by the end of the Third Age, beginning of the Fourth, when the Elves are all pretty much gone or fading away does the race of Men start "accelerating" towards all the loveliness of modern life... Yuck!

...but I ramble.

Perhaps a more basic distinction is between the organic and the mechanical, rather than simple technological "progress" or not...?