Unrealistic long time span

[slant]

@Brainpowers yes sure. But oral tradition does not have to be like a game of telephone played across generations. Oral traditions is one way to preserve pronunciation across generations. Oral traditions can actually explain how people are speaking the same language for thousands of years. 

 

 

In the real world, dating is the most important problem.

 

Have you ever asked yourself what is the basis for the estimate of the most Egyptologists that the Great Pyramid was built some 4500 years ago for a pharaoh named Khufu?

lol. so we don't know.

 

 

No.  It's a fantasy.  I self-explain it by noting the fact that winters keep the population down, you have a single organization with a strange-hold on education, and there is very little interest in tech progress.

 

So civilisation in planetos suffers from seasonal destruction? Almost can believe that, is as good an explanation as any, but the recent winters are not recorded to be so horrible 

Also, the Citadel does not work in Essos 

[dielsis]

So, what other possible explanations are there? Here's everything I can think of:

• GRRM just doesn't understand history.
• GRRM is playing a clever game with something like Fomenko's New Chronology, a crackpot theory of our world's history, where everything we think we know before the late Middle Ages is actually just a series of progressively-more-distorted reflections of the same events. In Planetos terms, that could mean the Andal invasion is just misinterpreted records of Aegon's invasion, and so is the Long Night, and so is the First Men invasion.
• GRRM is deliberately introducing some mystery, but even he hasn't decided what, if anything, it will lead to.
• GRRM has a specific in-universe reason, but he's not planning to reveal it ASoIaF, except by giving hints here and there, as part of building a mysterious and deep world, leaving us wanting more, and leaving himself something to write about in the other stories he plans in the same universe.
• GRRM has a specific in-universe reason that is related to something in the story (e.g., to the explanation for the magical seasons, which he's promised to give us in the last book), but we don't have enough information to figure it out yet.
• GRRM has a specific in-universe reason, and he's left clues that we should have been able to figure out by now.
• GRRM has actually done something more radical/magical than what it so far appears to be. For example, most of the evidence could be explained by positing that history moves normally, except that it was completely frozen for nearly 5000 years.

As much as I like #2 and #7, my actual best guess is #5.

 

Would "the oral/written history is a bunch of actual lies" fall under any of those? Anyway, I like #3, #5, and #6.

 

I do not have a problem with a mythical line of people being 8,000 years old.

 

This is how I feel, for the most part. The why:

 

Tolkien was a philologist, think I spelled that right, which is someone who studies languages, and their histories and evolution. The point is that Tolkien loved the study of and creation of language, I say George didn't have the knowledge to create a different language for every different group. What Tolkien did in creating the languages in the LotR is the work of an entire lifetime. I believe most everything we have heard about history is flawed in many ways, without a written language everything gets passed down through oral tradition.

 

The scope of time George originally started with wasn't as rich as it's become, let alone as rich as it needed to be for such an ornate history. Maybe he wanted to have that much history so the people just conveniently don't evolve. However, while those past events are interesting, they probably don't matter as much to the outcome of the tale.

 

The planet that my stories take place on is around the same geologic age as Earth, yet up until three-hundred something years prior to the start of the first novel they were nomadic tribes … or, at least, it seems that way. There are very tiny hints peppered throughout as to the planet's history but nobody I've had read through has come up with the reason yet. That's on purpose, since it isn't important to the story being presented.

 

I guess it comes down to how you arrived at the story? Mine is the result of like 40-50 different derivations I discovered while working on a "future history" and I started down that path 20 years ago, only getting to the actual books a few years ago. Didn't George just spontaneously start some sort of sci-fi kind of tale and find Jon, or, at least, the basis for Jon? (I may be thinking of a different author, though.)

[Ser Arthur Hightower]

This problem is pervasive in the story. History (including social change, technological advancement, language evolution, etc.) seems to happen at a timescale 10-12x what you'd expect--except for the history of the last 300-400 years, which seems a lot more realistic. I have another thread where I document a whole list of things that are off by the same factor.

Some people try to dismiss this by saying there are hints in the books that some of the dates are wrong, and that the history in the distant past is not really that well documented. But this really doesn't work. Yes, the Andal invasion may have been 3000 years ago rather than 6000, so it's only 6x too long instead of 12x. Yes, the only records we have before the Andal invasion are a smattering of runic inscriptions, so it's only a few millennia that are 6x too slow, not all of history. But a few millennia going 6x too slow isn't an answer.

Maybe the timescales are off by far, far more than any of the hints implied--the Andal invasion wasn't 6000 years before Aegon as we're told, or 3000 as hinted in the story, or even 2000 as some fans claim to have discovered based on more subtle clues, but only 300. But there's absolutely no evidence for that, and it seems pretty unlikely.

Some people draw parallels with real-world civilizations, like the Babylonians inflating their own history by a factor of 10. Except the Maesters have written historical records going back for thousands of years, while the Babylonians had basically no records at all. It's pretty easy to be off by an order of magnitude when you have no information but the memories of living people; it's a lot harder when you have a warehouse full of scrolls written thousands of years ago. Even with the the fragmentary records left by the Egyptians, nobody got their chronology off by more than a factor of 2 or so.

Some people say, "That's what fantasy does, just like Tolkien did". Those people are misunderstanding Tolkien. Tolkien had elves (and, before them, Valar) deliberately preserving the world, keeping it as static as possible for fear it would otherwise degenerate. In other fantasy series, there are recurring cataclysms every 1000 years that mean people spend most of that time just rebuilding to their previous levels and never get ahead, or evil forces that deliberately interfere with cultures, or other explanations. Only hack fantasy writers--of the kind GRRM despises--just copy from Tolkien without understanding him.

So, what other possible explanations are there? Here's everything I can think of:

• GRRM just doesn't understand history.
• GRRM is playing a clever game with something like Fomenko's New Chronology, a crackpot theory of our world's history, where everything we think we know before the late Middle Ages is actually just a series of progressively-more-distorted reflections of the same events. In Planetos terms, that could mean the Andal invasion is just misinterpreted records of Aegon's invasion, and so is the Long Night, and so is the First Men invasion.
• GRRM is deliberately introducing some mystery, but even he hasn't decided what, if anything, it will lead to.
• GRRM has a specific in-universe reason, but he's not planning to reveal it ASoIaF, except by giving hints here and there, as part of building a mysterious and deep world, leaving us wanting more, and leaving himself something to write about in the other stories he plans in the same universe.
• GRRM has a specific in-universe reason that is related to something in the story (e.g., to the explanation for the magical seasons, which he's promised to give us in the last book), but we don't have enough information to figure it out yet.
• GRRM has a specific in-universe reason, and he's left clues that we should have been able to figure out by now.
• GRRM has actually done something more radical/magical than what it so far appears to be. For example, most of the evidence could be explained by positing that history moves normally, except that it was completely frozen for nearly 5000 years.

As much as I like #2 and #7, my actual best guess is #5.

 

All of those hold some merit, but I think the main reason is that George just likes big numbers too much (except when it comes to the number of thrusts in sex) , I think part of his legitimate reasoning is that the seasons slow down the rate of progress and that some avenues of advancement simply won't work in Planetos, IE gunpowder might not exist in the way we know it.

[Ser Naufragus]

What I thought could be happening is that they are marking years as spring thru winter rather than calender years. So 1 year might be 30 actual years. They seem to track age by name days rather than saying say 9 yo.

[slant]

that just extends it even more.

but I guess if it is frozen, it can be frozen for any length of time. 

[Lord Ravenstark]

Of course it is unrealistic. It is not a real world, he could have made thousands of years of thousands of days, wouldn't matter. Just because it happened in our world doesn't means it must happen everywhere.

[Ser Naufragus]

Yeah I guess that would make 5000 years 150000.

Are they marking time via constellations? With no astronomy how would anyone mark time with no clear seasons

[falcotron]

In the real world, dating is the most important problem.
 
Have you ever asked yourself what is the basis for the estimate of the most Egyptologists that the Great Pyramid was built some 4500 years ago for a pharaoh named Khufu?

lol. so we don't know.

We as a people definitely do know. Maybe you personally don't know, but you can find out just by going to Wikipedia and then following the source links from their article, or by googling, or even the old-fashioned ways (going to a library, walking into a university and asking around, etc.). The early Egyptologists, who were working without even archeology or correspondences to other cultures, much less things like radiometric dating, managed to get it to within a factor of less than 2 (even the handful who rejected the Cheops=Khufu correspondence); nowadays, we know to within a very narrow range. (Of course they couldn't really put "the basis" into a single sentence, since it took a whole lot of philological and later linguistic and archeological connections to narrow that range down--e.g., their explanation for why the First Intermediate Period couldn't be more than 200 years has nothing to do with their explanation for why Khufu must be from the 4th dynasty, and they need to explain both.)

Would "the oral/written history is a bunch of actual lies" fall under any of those?

First, as I explained in the rest of the message above the list, you can completely toss all pre-Andal history as unreliable to the point of useless, and cut the post-Andal history in two as hinted in the books, and you're still off by a factor of 6 or so, which is still far too much to dismiss without explanation.

If you also want to discard all of the Andals' written history completely, you need some kind of ridiculous crackpot conspiracy theory, like Fomenko's theories in our world. But of course the author of a fictional story could make it much less ridiculous in his fictional world if he put the work into it. I don't know of any authors who have played that kind of game, but that's not a reason GRRM couldn't do it--in fact, it might be a reason for him to do so. So, that's option #2.

The scope of time George originally started with wasn't as rich as it's become, let alone as rich as it needed to be for such an ornate history. Maybe he wanted to have that much history so the people just conveniently don't evolve. However, while those past events are interesting, they probably don't matter as much to the outcome of the tale.

I agree that they most of the details probably don't matter as much to the outcome of the tale. But, given that he's going to give us an explanation of the magical seasons which will most likely tie back to at least the first Long Night 8000 years ago, they presumably won't be completely irrelevant.

Meanwhile, look at that 8000 years. In similar myths in our world that specify similar periods (like the 3000 years between Ahriman's two assaults in Zoroastrianism), the time is clearly intended to mean farther back than anyone could possibly remember, as in at least 10x as long as the current civilization has existed. But GRRM made it within the lifespan of the current civilization, and only 20% beyond the end of their written records. I think he knows enough about mythology to realize he was doing that, and to have done it for a reason.

I guess it comes down to how you arrived at the story? Mine is the result of like 40-50 different derivations I discovered while working on a "future history" and I started down that path 20 years ago, only getting to the actual books a few years ago. Didn't George just spontaneously start some sort of sci-fi kind of tale and find Jon, or, at least, the basis for Jon?

According to GRRM, he started writing a fictionalized version of the War of the Roses, then decided to put it on a different world, then someone else gave him the idea to add real dragons, at which point he got excited about how such a change would impact the later history of the world (the effects it would have on strategy, political structures, etc.), and quickly decided that if he's going to write fantasy it should be not just alternate history but fantasy, at which point he came up with the magical seasons. From his recollections, it sounds like all of that took place over a relatively short span of time. There's no indication that he ever intended it to be sci-fi.

Tolkien was a philologist, think I spelled that right, which is someone who studies languages, and their histories and evolution. The point is that Tolkien loved the study of and creation of language, I say George didn't have the knowledge to create a different language for every different group. What Tolkien did in creating the languages in the LotR is the work of an entire lifetime. I believe most everything we have heard about history is flawed in many ways, without a written language everything gets passed down through oral tradition.

First, philology isn't the same thing as historical linguistics; it's sort of a combination of historical linguistics, literary criticism, and literary archeology.

Meanwhile, you don't actually have to do much work to just say there's a different language. As proven by GRRM, who only took a handful of sentences spread over 5 books to establish Valyrian as a realistic language family. It would have taken no more to establish Andlish as a realistic language family, if he'd wanted to do so. So, the fact that he didn't do so seems to be a choice.

Finally, "without a written language everything gets passed down through oral tradition" explains nothing about a world with 6000 years of written language. They have scrolls going back to the founding days of the Citadel, and even before that, they brought a written book with them to Westeros. It would be like explaining the few historical discrepancies in the second half of the Hebrew Bible by saying that if you don't have writing, your history is like a game of telephone. That's a true statement, but irrelevant: the Hebrews did have writing, and the earliest written versions of that history are at least 2800 years ago, and most of the history starting 2800-3000 years ago is accurate with only a few discrepancies, so using the idea that it's all oral tradition to explain why it's all wrong is so misguided that you can't even call it an error.

[falcotron]

All of those hold some merit, but I think the main reason is that George just likes big numbers too much (except when it comes to the number of thrusts in sex) , I think part of his legitimate reasoning is that the seasons slow down the rate of progress and that some avenues of advancement simply won't work in Planetos, IE gunpowder might not exist in the way we know it.

But the seasons clearly don't end civilization as we know it, forcing them to rebuild. They're only a few years long. Maybe little to no progress happens during winter, but when spring comes, there are plenty of people still alive, ready to pick up the same cultural tools they had a few years ago. Maybe you could stretch the "winter = hibernation of civilization" idea to slow progress down to 60% normal speed, but I can't see how you could get it down to 8%.

Also, do you seriously believe that, if gunpowder didn't work, we'd just be stuck with an amalgam of 11th-16th century technology until the end of time?

[Bloodrobin]

Some people draw parallels with real-world civilizations, like the Babylonians inflating their own history by a factor of 10. Except the Maesters have written historical records going back for thousands of years, while the Babylonians had basically no records at all. It's pretty easy to be off by an order of magnitude when you have no information but the memories of living people; it's a lot harder when you have a warehouse full of scrolls written thousands of years ago. Even with the the fragmentary records left by the Egyptians, nobody got their chronology off by more than a factor of 2 or so.

 

Maybe they don't? If they think they do, maybe the maesters are wrong about the dates or even about what the records claim? Some textual references for these claims about the maesters' records would be helpful. I cannot recall what you seem to be referencing.

 

FWIW, we see large exaggerations of times in mythical/historical records in our world. For example, some of the biblical accounts attributed to Moses or the time of Moses in 1400 BCE were possibly written a thousand years later. The Testament of Abraham was written 2000 years after the time it references, the Book of Enoch 4000 years after the time it describes. And those are just one particular religion/culture. We seem similar large time spans in all major mythological histories. Not sure which of the explanations it falls under but it seems likely that the times given in aSoIaF are exaggerations, and that GRRM intends for us to recognize that they are exaggerations and that (at least some of) the maesters understand it as well.

[Raving Stark the Mad]

So civilisation in planetos suffers from seasonal destruction? Almost can believe that, is as good an explanation as any, but the recent winters are not recorded to be so horrible 

Also, the Citadel does not work in Essos 

OK.  Let's take a look at societies that did not tend to develop, or at least stagnated for a period of time.

 

The Dark Ages in Europe are usually pointed to as a period of tech reversal.  It actually gets a bad rep, but the fact of the matter is that large scale war, the fall of government, and Christian fundamentalism led to a serious period of low growth.  Can we apply any of these factors to Essos or Westeros?  War? Government/Civilization collapse? Religious fundamentalism?  Check, check, check.

 

China, India, and the middle east, were far far ahead of Europe in development, when you take a look in 1000 AD.  What happened?  If development is always exponential, why didn't China or India stay ahead?  Because some large centralized government put a stamp on some development, for fear of societal disruption, same as they did in Japan.  Or if you disagree with that assessment, whatever other reason you can come up with, there are plenty of theories.  Guns, germs, or steel, right?  But the fact of the matter is, that progression is not always a given to be exponential and forward.  "Progress" is a very elusive and slippery devil to pin down. 

 

Just because someone can build a pyramid, does not automatically mean they are going to be building an I-phone tomorrow, or next week, or in 10,000 years.   

[slant]

that is a very good explanation. 

there is no reason why planetos has to be compared to history on earth, or tolkein, or any other timeline 

 

but grrm's many references to real world, mythology, and fantasy elements prevent that kind of immersion

 

so believe this more:

 

 

Meanwhile, look at that 8000 years. In similar myths in our world that specify similar periods (like the 3000 years between Ahriman's two assaults in Zoroastrianism), the time is clearly intended to mean farther back than anyone could possibly remember, as in at least 10x as long as the current civilization has existed. But GRRM made it within the lifespan of the current civilization, and only 20% beyond the end of their written records. I think he knows enough about mythology to realize he was doing that, and to have done it for a reason.

[Brian Powers Of Palantíri]

Maybe they don't? If they think they do, maybe the maesters are wrong about the dates or even about what the records claim? Some textual references for these claims about the maesters' records would be helpful. I cannot recall what you seem to be referencing.
 
FWIW, we see large exaggerations of times in mythical/historical records in our world. For example, some of the biblical accounts attributed to Moses or the time of Moses in 1400 BCE were possibly written a thousand years later. The Testament of Abraham was written 2000 years after the time it references, the Book of Enoch 4000 years after the time it describes. And those are just one particular religion/culture. We seem similar large time spans in all major mythological histories. Not sure which of the explanations it falls under but it seems likely that the times given in aSoIaF are exaggerations, and that GRRM intends for us to recognize that they are exaggerations and that (at least some of) the maesters understand it as well.

Not even the Maesters agree, in the True History, some said that the Andals crossed 6000 B. C. (Before Conquest. ) others say 4000, and some claim it was only 2000 B.C.

[Shireen Purratheon]

Yeah I guess that would make 5000 years 150000.

Are they marking time via constellations? With no astronomy how would anyone mark time with no clear seasons

A year in Westeros as the maesters mark it is twelve turns of the moon. We can reasonably assume that that's a common assessment where ever we see the concept of years in the story.

 

I think Falcotron touched on something important on page two saying that history has been progressing fairly analogous to Europe since the Doom of Valyria. As said in the same post, there's probably not a sci-fi reason for it, but I think it might be important to explain the stagnation. In the four hundred ensuing years, the Valyrian language across Essos developed similar to the Latin-based languages in former Roman domains.

 

In that time, it seems that there has indeed been technological development like the glass gardens, lenses and telescopes from Myr, crossbows that are being improved upon, insurance salesman and an upscale banking system in Braavos, I'm fairly certain that a ballista/scorpion style siege weapon was a fairly recent thing in the east, and Aurane Waters' dromonds are supposed to be an improvement. This all shows that recent history has not been singularly stagnant. Maybe the previous stagnancy has to do with magic in the Freehold as has been suggested, maybe not.

 

Even with that, I acknowledge that the Andalic language has remained stagnant while Valyrian has evolved. The explanation I'll use is that the Citadel is the single university type organization in Westeros, preserving all of the Andalic texts, speaking and teaching only that traditional Andalic language used in these texts. These maesters educated as such go on to educate the children of nobility in that exact same traditional Andalic language. This would be similar to how in Europe higher learning institutions, monasteries, and such used a form of Latin that remained relatively unchanged. This explanation doesn't explain the language the smallfolk use being the same, but it's better than nothing.

[Brian Powers Of Palantíri]

[quote name="slant" post="7278729" timestamp="1439840269"]@Brainpowers


Dude, you called me Brainpowers, probably the nicest thing ever said to me on the forums. LOL.

[the trees have eyes]

First there is no reason why the history of Westeros has to mimic the history of Europe or for society and technology to develop at the same pace or in the same way as they have on Earth.  Indeed if they did it would feel rather derivative and as an author GRRM wants to create his own story and his own world.  Our own development follows the path of a series of ideas and discoveries that we take for granted but there is no guarantee these were destined or inevitable.  We only have the example of our own world to go by but an example of one hardly sets the standard for the norm so I'm happy with whatever course of events he feels relevant to the world and story he wants to show us.  Instead of gunpowder we have the pyromancers and wildfire etc...

 

Second he was heavily influenced by medieval Europe and the Wars of The Roses in particular so he sets the story in what loosely feels like medieval Europe in terms of feudal society, religious practice and technology.  And of course he creates this wonderful mythology and early history as a backdrop.  This is all fine for the story and neither the height of the Wall, the length of the seasons, the size of Westeros or the age of the noble dynasties really matters.  Because he set out to write a series of novels not a complete history of Planetos and things like linguistic diversity (or lack thereof) simply weren't a major concern.  (For the record the Hobbits from the Shire speak the same language as the People of Gondor and Rohan).  He may have added the worldbook due to the extreme popularity of the series and his readership's thirst to know more (and, cough, cough, the commercial opportunity this popularity entails) but it was not his original intent to go this deep and, like this thread shows, his readership are holding him to some pretty high expectations.

 

Third I feel he wanted to add mystery and to create a vast scale of time as well as distance for his World to make things feel larger and for distant events and legendary characters to echo down the ages.  I don't think he expected anyone to tell him it was unrealistic for Lann the Clever or Bran the Builder to have lived so long ago!  Rather he expected them to enjoy the folklore and pre-history of the legendary figures as much The Hammer of the Waters and The Broken Arm of Dorne or the Long Night or The Doom of Valyria.  Don't look at it too closely and expect a watertight timeline and rationalisation in other words - enjoy the aura of legend and mystery.

[Kyll.Ing.]

OK.  Let's take a look at societies that did not tend to develop, or at least stagnated for a period of time.

 

I like your explanation, but for one little part of it...

 

Why are then the periods of stagnation so ridiculously stable? I mean, a policy of "let's not invent anything any more, ever" is just as liable to failure as a policy of unrestrained innovation. Sure, a country can stay isolationist and intentionally stagnant for a century, or even a few, but for millennia? And all over the world? What are the odds that no ruler, anywhere at any point ever decided to open up for new ideas? That languages never took a separate turn across great geographical isolation, for instance in the North or the Iron Islands? Or that no enterprising young merchant ever made any useful inventions? I mean, stuff like weaveries is only a tiny step up from the current technological level. Surely that would be bound to happen in at least a few places for at least some time over the course of the thousands of years?

 

Stuff like architecture, shipbuilding, medicine and warfare will evolve and develop over time; language and culture even more so. Yet Brandon the Shipwright felt confident enough in his navigation abilities to try to cross the Sunset Sea several thousand years BC, and the Ironborn of the present (a culture which has been centered around seafaring for thousands of years) still don't sail out of sight from land. The Red Keep - two-hundred-something years old - is one of the very newest castles in Westeros, and it seems to be built according to the same philosophy as Winterfell (which is several millennia older).

 

And why does never anything seem to be regarded as old or outdated? Heck, the Manderly's seat in White Harbor is still called "the New Castle", approaching a thousand years of age. It's like Britons still calling the Tower of London by that same name today. The Ghiscari still revere the traditions of Old Ghis as The Greatest Stuff Ever, although that city fell five thousand years ago. They are still trying to emulate the lockstep legions, which proved to be ineffective against dragons even before then, and from then on until the fall of Valyria (again, five thousand years), dragons were around to prove their superiority at every opportunity. How the hell can they still regard the lockstep legions in such high honour when its perfect counter remained an active battlefield weapon for so long? It'd be like a modern nation today still insisting that this "armour" thing is a fad, and that before long the sling and stone will prove to be a much better weapon than anything invented since. The mindset of the Ghiscari that the lockstep legions were perfect, was not changed at all through five thousand years of dragon warfare. How is that even possible?

 

In short; I can buy local stagnation for quite some time, possibly up to a thousand years (longer any real life culture's stagnant period after cities were invented - and on Planetos, Oldtown is said to be at least ten thousand years old, so clearly they've been well beyond that step for even longer than us). But global stagnation, for so many thousands of years, even across big geographic barriers? No way.

[Raving Stark the Mad]

Sigh. 

 

It's not REAL peoples.  You can't expect a made up world to behave like a real world in all matters 100% of the time.  You're going all Spoony. 

[falcotron]

FWIW, we see large exaggerations of times in mythical/historical records in our world.

I don't think there's any point addressing this one yet again. You're the third person to raise a point that was already answered before anyone raised it, and no one making this point has yet responded to any of the challenges. The same thing happened on the previous thread on a similar topic early this year.

Not sure which of the explanations it falls under but it seems likely that the times given in aSoIaF are exaggerations, and that GRRM intends for us to recognize that they are exaggerations and that (at least some of) the maesters understand it as well.

And likewise for this one, except even more so.
 

The Dark Ages in Europe are usually pointed to as a period of tech reversal.  It actually gets a bad rep, but the fact of the matter is that large scale war, the fall of government, and Christian fundamentalism led to a serious period of low growth.  Can we apply any of these factors to Essos or Westeros?  War? Government/Civilization collapse? Religious fundamentalism?  Check, check, check.

Even if you accept this mistaken popular view of the "Dark Ages" as a time of no social advancement, you're talking about 400 years, which is still off by an order of magnitude as an explanation of social and technological stagnation in Westeros. It's like I asked you how a giant could be 90 feet tall, and you said, "Well, some people are 9 feet tall." Not actually being true is only a minor problem; not even beginning to address the question is a much bigger one.

China, India, and the middle east, were far far ahead of Europe in development, when you take a look in 1000 AD.  What happened?  If development is always exponential, why didn't China or India stay ahead?

Not all exponential curves are the same. Looked at separately, e^x and 2^x look very similar--but if you plot them side-by-side over most ranges, the difference is pretty big. And yet, of course, they cross each other. Meanwhile, you can fiddle with multiplicative and additive terms, and think you're making a huge difference, and then you zoom out and they look almost identical. On the large scale--the scale of thousands of years, as we're talking about here--the curves of almost anything you choose to measure in any of these societies are clearly exponential; the few little glitches here and there don't change that.

[Ser Arthur Hightower]

But the seasons clearly don't end civilization as we know it, forcing them to rebuild. They're only a few years long. Maybe little to no progress happens during winter, but when spring comes, there are plenty of people still alive, ready to pick up the same cultural tools they had a few years ago. Maybe you could stretch the "winter = hibernation of civilization" idea to slow progress down to 60% normal speed, but I can't see how you could get it down to 8%.

Also, do you seriously believe that, if gunpowder didn't work, we'd just be stuck with an amalgam of 11th-16th century technology until the end of time?

 

You criticise my ideas, yet your own ideas on the subject are rather flimsy. Perhaps it is because the idea of a civilisation staying static for that long is unrealistic?

 

Also the gunpowder example was clearly just an example, I made this clear by saying "IE" which means that the thing I said was just one idea, and that there are other examples.