Hi
Drognan,
nice thread! But I would actually even oppose what you said: the level of technology did not stay the same, it went
down. There is all the talk about the skill of the ancient craftsmen being lost, for example, the diminishing of mankind and all that.
Overall, I think Middle-Earth has the antique concept, present in many of the ancient myths (and very prominently in the classic Greek thinking), that the world was originally in its "golden era" and with each new age, the level of knowledge goes down, not up. Things are forgotten, continents drown: all of this works for Middle-Earth as well. Likewise with the "divine powers", the contact of the Elves with them and the contacts of the Men with the Elves.
In the First Age, the Valar were taking active part in the Middle-Earth events and Elves lived side by side in the kingdoms of Beleriand. In the Second Age, the Men of Númenor lived in contact with the Elves who were coming from Valinor (and thus were indirectly in contact with Valinor themselves), and Elves were still important players, even though most of the most skilled and "high" Elves - the Noldor - left Middle-Earth and the alienation between the two races slowly appeared. In the Third Age, the races of Men and Elves were completely apart, ships ceased to come from the West and were only leaving. The only visible "assistance" to Middle-Earth were the Istari, the Wizards, who were not even supposed to work openly. Most of the Elves had left over the Sea and in the Fourth Age, the Elves were all but gone and no ships were even bound for Hither Lands after the Last Ship, and we know of no interventions of the Valar whatsoever.
So this is a concept that applies also to knowledge and "technology". The thought of "technological advancement" is alien to Middle-Earth, at least in the sense we understand it.
And on top of everything I have said, if there is "technological advancement", then it actually is often portrayed as something evil. The word "technology" is evil. I would argue that this is not a sign of any "backwardness" on Tolkien's part (even though he sure would have preferred some of the "good old things" to uncertain development which, by the time of inventing especially new weapons and rise of new ideologies, many of them rather harmful, by the start of the 20th century, was a realistic concern), it just reflects a different understanding of things, or giving a different meaning to them. "Inside" Middle-Earth, for example Saruman uses technology - I would argue that he is the Inventor with capital "I". So are Sauron and Morgoth, respectively. There are, sure, positive portrayals of invention - Aulë, the Noldor, the Dwarves; it would be unfair to omit these - but technology as it is is usually the instrument of the "evil guys". That is not because advancement as seen in LotR and the other books would be anything evil by itself, I argue, but because in Middle-Earth, in my opinion, technological advancement necessarily contains weapons and war in itself. Inherently, sort of.
Just think: where do you see any "technologically advanced" stuff (if I pass the references to a train in the Hobbit
)? Usually this is some "Orc stuff": the "liquid fire" which, in Orthanc, burns down an Ent. The "blasting fire" at Helm's Deep. And in the Hobbit, we get this lovely quote:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by TH, Chapter 4: Over Hill and Under Hill
[The goblins] make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones. (...) It is not unlikely that they invented some of the machines that have since troubled the world, especially the ingenious devices for killing large numbers of people at once, for wheels and engines and explosions always delighted them.
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Which, I believe, is also Tolkien's personal worldview showing through when it comes to modern war weaponry, but this is also the main viewpoint of the in-Middle-Earth setting.