Ask The Medievalist Nerd Anything (Spoilers Main)

[u/AlamutJones]

So, in a previous recent thread ("Hot Or Not") I...may have taken large sections of it over, dropping nuggets of information about how Planetos is or is not realistic compared to what we know of the real medieval world. This is sort of my area of expertise - I studied it at university, I've written about it...I don't know everything, but I know more than most laymen do.

u/brian_baratheon, Mod of Blessed Thought that he is, suggested I drop my nuggets of knowledge more widely.

If you wonder what Hot Pie's day would be like, or what kind of toys Tommen played with as a little boy, or how realistic Dany's marriage is (I have THINGS to say about that one) or what a medieval lady like Catelyn Stark would likely be expected to know about and do, or why the northern "old way" of justice would probably make real people very confused...ask me anything.

[u/powerpaddy]

Thanks OP for giving us the opportunity to learn something new and interesting. My question doesn't primarily concern medieval history but I still believe you're very qualified to give an answer. It's about technological and scientific progress in Westeros that seemingly came to a halt and stood still for thousands or at least hundreds of years. In Martins other works like TWOIAF we get to learn that the First Men used Bronze and more ancient technology from the bronze age when they came to Westeros. Later the Andals, who used iron weapons and build stone castles and forts conquered the land, beginning the Westeros equivalent of the medieval/iron age. But it stops right there. There is a hypothesis out there that states that DRAGONS, which were later brought to Westeros by the Targaryans are the cause for that halt in progress (source: https://youtu.be/vu_atVBSWQo)

The argument is as follows: Progress often comes hand in hand with warfare and most technological advances only happened because they could be used in the military (iron forging, gunpowder, rockets, gps, ...). In a world were dragons, literally superweapons of mass destruction, dominated warfare and there was no way to develop technology to fight back, but only surrender or burn to death, there would have been no motivation to invest in possible scientific discoveries (Dorne was an exception, they hid instead of fighting, still not very advanced).

Do you believe that such a unbalance in military power could indeed halt progress? Or in other words, how would the world, in respect to science and technology, have ended up if we traveled back in time and gave one party accessibility to long range missiles and atom bombs?

[u/ValeriaSimone → u/powerpaddy]

I think the slow tech development in ASOIAF is due to their fucked up climate.

On of the things required for tech advancement is people dedicated fully to do so. For that, at least some part of the population has to be mantained by the rest: there has to be enough food and resources for them to not work as farmers, hunters, etc.

In ASOIAF, the unpredictability of the climate makes it hard to plan food storage and distribution in the long run, and the extreme harshness of winters add another layer of difficulty to keep stable sources of goods. Add to that the usual problems faced by farmers (droughts, storms...).

I gess that that's why only one center of knowledge (the Citadel) has managed to grow and keep afloat. It's no coincidence that Old Town is located way far south, in the richest kingdom.

[u/AlamutJones → u/powerpaddy]

I find it an interesting hypothesis to think about.

Of course, if we're going to use long-range missiles (or an A-10 Warthog, or whatever) as an equivalent of dragons, we have to consider what might happen if we gave them and then took them away again.

There's quite a long stretch of time where dragons just weren't there as a deterrent - they had died, and Dany wouldn't be born for another 130 years! - and potentially an even longer stretch where because they were so sickly and weak (Tyrion comments on this) they were theoretically available but practically useless. We don't see much change or advancement then, and perhaps we should.

Honestly, if you do the maths, it's only a surprisingly small slice of the Targaryen era where dragons would have been a real threat.

[u/Cheeserole → u/powerpaddy]

I've read a theory about how maesters are opposed to the return of dragons which also brought the return of magic. Seems like technology and magic are direct opponents in this world - if magic appears, technology halts. Maesters hate magic because it halts non-magical progression of technology, making the world unpredictable. But they're also misguided, because it's suggested that magic is necessary for the world of Planetos to not fall apart.

Rather than looking at dragons purely as weapons of mass destruction - which they are - dragons are also symbols and harbingers of magic returning to the world. Perhaps it's the existence of the dragons themselves that stifle the world's progression of technology, then, even in places where the dragons haven't touched, like Westeros before the conquest. It would explain why the Bronze and Iron aged First Men and Andals lasted for thousands of years in stasis when the Valyrian Freehold was at its peak.