Posted: February 10, 2000 at 11:41:44: by RobRoy
: Why has there been no significant progress since the first age of middle-earth ? 6000+ years have gone by, and nothing at least pre-industrial has been developed (I mean they knew gunpowder in old china). Itīs like there has been no progress on earth since the days of ancient egypt or so !??They did have gunpowder in China, but it was being used for rockets (esentially bottle-rockets on a larger scale with a nicely sized explosion), but for real mass-killing, they still used the standard fare of bows & arrows, swords, spears etc. Japan didn't like the thought of gunpowder in battle at all, and didn't start to use guns (to any large extent) until around circa 1625, during the Edo era. The Japanese culture has a written history that is easily as old as China's and Korea's (a couple of thousand years at that time). The measure of progress need not simply be the use of gunpowder, or the invention of faster and easier ways to kill people. Both the Japanese, Chinese and Koreans had very diverse cultures, with arts, literature and an established justice system that (in some ways) puts our modern society to shame. So perhaps we should look more toward the advances of law & order, arts & entertainment then toward advances in warfare. -Rob
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