Technology in M-E?
Greetings.
I have been reading the details of the races of the Noldor, Numenoreans etc and it seems that they were were a fairly advanced civilisation. My question is when it says advanced technology how would one interprit this? i.e did they have mechanized components, development of gunpowder? I'm not really sure. P.S Also I've always wondered on wether the silmarils were really magical or they were prehaps just uranium for they have very similar components and effects. cheers. |
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As a more general answer: it's been suggested that a lot of the "magic" in Middle-earth is simply "sufficiently advanced technology" (in Arthur C. Clarke's phrase). Up to a point I agree with this, but I'd be wary of being too literal about it, and casting it too much in terms of the present. I doubt you'd find a bunch of wires and microchips inside a palantír, for example. I don't think these books are just "hard SF" disguised as a fantasy. Although, we might look at how that quote concludes: "...indistinguishable from magic". I'd say that often technology, magic and art in Middle-earth can't really be separated from each other at all; it's more a matter of knowledge and ability. |
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Although Tolkien never mentions gunpowder, descriptions in Lord of the Rings suggest its existence in Middle-earth.
To place this discussion in context, we should be aware that as early as 1267, Roger Bacon knew how to make gunpowder and was familiar with its explosive effects. It was another sixty years before gunpowder weapons began to appear in European military arsenals, but they spread quickly. The point is that in Europe during the Middle Ages, gunpowder was known, through few knew how to make it. Gandalf’s fireworks bespeak of gunpowder: fireworks are an early use of the mixture, and Tolkien’s description of them by Bilbo in The Hobbit and as narrator in Fellowship of the Ring are excellent descriptions of “modern” fireworks that we see today, little changed except in computer-controlled electronic ignition from those Tolkien saw as a child, and that in turn basically the same as Chinese fireworks eight or nine centuries ago. Now Gandalf was also the bearer of Narya, the Ring of Fire, and he displayed some significant fire-related abilities. In The Hobbit, he lit pinecones that he used to attack and frighten the wolves of the Misty Mountains in “Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire”. These burned with various colors, as might fireworks treated with various chemical compounds. (In fact, all flame colors are caused by the chemicals present in them.) In Fellowship of the Ring, “The Ring Goes South”, he creates “green and blue flame” (like many copper compounds) when he lights the wet tinder in storm in the Redhorn Pass; and later fighting the werewolves, he used a “blazing brand” that “flared with a sudden white radiance like lightning” that spread quickly to many trees (much like magnesium). I’m not saying that any of these similarities to real world chemistry indicate that Tolkien intended that Gandalf was a practicing chemist; but Tolkien was familiar with fireworks and pyrotechnics (he certainly saw – and experienced! – a lot of chemical pyrotechnics during World War I); and at Oxford University, he could easily ask any number of first-class chemists how such ignitions might be surreptitiously accomplished and what they would look like. Maybe all this was due to Gandalf’s being a Maia, or maybe it was due to Narya, or maybe Tolkien did use real chemistry as his starting point: any or all of these could be true. What Aragorn called “Devilry of Saruman … the fire of Orthanc” and described to Théoden as “a blasting fire” (Two Towers, “Helm’s Deep”) was never said to have a sulphurous smell, something most people notice about gunpowder. (I don’t recall that Tolkien ever described anything in Lord of the Rings with a “sulphurous” odor, not even the poisonous fumes of Orodruin or Gorgoroth, where sulphur should be expected around an active volcano.) But while Gandalf uses his fire-“magic” for constructive purposes – even delight in watching fireworks is constructive – Saruman uses his for evil, for blasting and killing. In Two Towers, “Flotsam and Jetsam”, Pippin described machinery producing “fires and foul fumes”, killing Beechbone the Ent who “got caught in a spray of some liquid fire” that sounds reminiscent of Greek fire. But even if these are examples of better living through chemistry, I suppose the inhabitants of Middle-earth would have just called them all “wizardry”. Speaking of machinery, we should consider, for example, the Doors of Durin at the Westgate of Moria: they opened on a word. We would call that “magic,” though Galadriel told Sam, “I do not understand clearly what [mortals] mean [by ‘magic’]; and they seem also to use the same word of the deceits of the Enemy.” We could accomplish opening the Doors of Durin with computer-activation, as long as the power supply did not fail nor the machinery break down. Perhaps, as Nerwen postulates, what we are looking at are examples of Clark’s Third Law, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. |
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Regarding the Numenoreans, here's a passage that I have not seen at all in my travelings that I think should be taken into consideration. It's probably not well known as it is an earlier work of Tolkien's and people probably don't think of it as accurate, but here it is reproduced for your consideration.
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Numenor seemed to possess the technology of cannons as well, as that most obviously fits the description. But this is a very common piece, and almost to be expected. |
Great quotes, Ironfoot!
Since I have only some parts of the HoMe series, this information is new to me. One thing I don't understand though - why were these machines built after the Downfall? That doesn't make that much sense... |
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I tend to think the flying ships were abandoned. They don't appear in any of the later texts (if I recall correctly), including the Mannish tradition The Drowning of Anadûnê, and the mixed tradition Akallabêth. Granted The Fall of Númenor could be seen as a variant tradition, but in my opinion if it was supposed to be thought of as Elvish tradition then it awaited a general revision in any case, because it was explicitly a flat world version -- that is, a once flat world made round -- whereas the Elves taught that the world was always round according to The Drowning of Anadûnê (Mannish) tradition. Even if I'm right about that much, that doesn't necessarily mean JRRT would have abandoned the flying ships, and this becomes another case of an existing idea from an 'early-ish' text (Fall of Númenor) that is not specifically denied -- or mentioned -- in later versions of essentially the same tale (although again, the later tales are arguably meant to represent variant traditions in any event). Does the idea still necessarily exist in an internal sense? hard to know. This text being relatively private and 'unknown' (from Tolkien's perspective) would not necessarily call for some sort of written direction from the author himself, even though at times JRRT would writes notes to himself, or slash through something later rejected, for instance. |
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