Breath of the Wild Hyrule's 10,000 year medieval stasis

[Delegrade12678]

How was that kingdom able to remain in medieval stasis for that long without undergoing an industrial revolution within that timespan.

Somehow i get this strange impression that during those times, the Hyrule Royal Family had some kind secret police that seeks out and silences any intellectual thinkers who pushed people to ask questions and seek answers, as well as people who tried to innovate and bring hyrule out of it's medieval state into the industrial age all just to ensure Stability and the king's "peace".

Like someone invents firearms then mysteriously disappears the next day with all his research destroyed.

 

[Azure Sage]

I was under the impression that Hyrule was very technologically advanced when Calamity Ganon first appeared. The people in Kakariko Village say that the king 10,000 years ago feared the Sheikah’s technology after seeing what it did to Ganon and ostracized them along with their tech, which eventually lead to the Yiga Clan forming out of spite. I may be remembering that wrong though.

 

[Cfrock]

Tech only advances when it needs to. It was canons which transformed medieval Europe into the more centralised/less feudal states which eventually became industrial powers. Hyrule seems to have no foreign enemies to compete with econmically, or who would invade, and the lack of walls around many settlements suggests the land exists in relative peace. It's entirely likely that Hyrule never developed because it just didn't need to. Look at Japan in real life for an example of stasis. Japan was a feudal society until the 19th century. These things can happen.

There's no cosmic rule that says societies have to develop along a linear path of technology, with clearly defined eras that last for set amounts of time. Technology develops according to a society's needs. Take the Aztecs, marvellously advanced astronomers, incredible engineers, yet they never invented the wheel. They simply didn't need them. Wheels are labour-saving devices and the Aztecs took enough enemies as slaves that wheels just weren't a thing they ever thought to create.

10,000 years seems like a long time to be static, tech-wise, but if there's no need to develop then it basically won't happen. With Ganon's threat contained to the Castle and no foreign enemies, Hyrule could easily fall into a status quo with no pressing reason to alter it.

 

[Castle]

As Cfrock said, Necessity is the Mother of Invention... or something like that.

What gets me is Hyrule's inconsistent technology. TLoZ is down right prehistoric. AoL has some medieval villages and some advance engineering in their palaces that appear roughly comparable to Greek and Roman construction engineering. OoT is purely medieval. Interestingly, Termina has some pretty advanced mechanical and hydraulic work. Wind Waker's technology appears similar to our 18th century, including sail boats and cannon technology. And Twilight Princess has some super advanced technology from large scale building to complex mechanical engineering to cannon technology to whatever's going on in the Temple of Time. Overall I'd say it's roughly comparable to the late middle ages.

Generally speaking Hyrule appears to experience a small but measurable uptick in technological advancement throughout the series chronology. The "canonical" timeline, however, would suggest numerous dark ages where technology is in decline. For instance, the most primitive game in the series is the second to last game in Hyrule history, but TLoZ's Hyrule appears to be an "old" seemingly abandoned Hyrule with a slightly more advanced and populated Hyrule to the north. And despite it being lost tech the Hylians of the game are unfamiliar with, the technology of Skyward - to date the earliest game in canonical history - is far in advance of the rest of the series.

But Hyrule never really did manage to invent its way out of its medieval technological era... until BotW, which explicitly depicts the games technology as having been lost and abandoned after Calamity (blerk) Jane Ganon's apocalyptic destruction of Hyrule. Suckward also depicts its advanced technology as having been forgotten by Hylians after Demise's destruction of Hyrule. So these eras of technological down turn would appear to coincide with the appearance of Ganon any time he's allowed to run amok, Hylian civilization gets wrekt and any technological developments are lost.

 

[Terminus]

In any sufficiently advanced fantasy world with magic, technological stagnation is not only likely, but a near-inevitable result. Magical solutions will as a result of their nature be faster and "better" than early mundane workarounds, so the need for new technology is lessened. After all, a "cure" spell instantly gets rid of broken bones or illnesses, so why spend the time developing advanced mundane medicine? Additionally, if there is a slightly higher barrier to entry to learning magical skills (i.e. a decade or more of dedicated learning), the common people will be unable to readily solve their own issued. While this might sound like a recipe for technological innovation, the ruling classes would want to keep their monopoly on power, and having a bunch of clever peasants MacGyver-ing their way around a lack of magic would threaten their power. Additionally, the skilled magic users would want to retain their own power and superiority. This would, I think, inevitably lead to wide-scale technological suppression to eliminate threats to the status quo. Or maybe I'm talking out of my ass to explain how a lot of "medieval" fantasy worlds have histories longer than human civilization by millennia.

Or, in shorter form;

• Magic solves problems that would require invention
• Ruling class holds power over magic users
• Magic users in turn have power/superiority over common folk
• Technological advancement is suppressed to keep power

This is more a thought experiment on magic-using societies in general rather than Zelda in specific, but I think it does hold here (unless I'm missing a huge bit of lore from BotW).

 

[AncientPoe]

Considering the damage dealt to our world by modern technology, it could almost be considered a form of wisdom that they haven't.

I would also consider it feasible that Ganon's curse never lets Hyrule truly move forward, as there always seems to be an eventual age of success for Ganon, at least for a time, that reduces the faculties of the nation back to a medieval status.

Terminus, I would refute your claims. For one, Breath of the Wild's backstory stated that the Royal line worked in conjunction with the Shiekah to produce magic and technology, then equitably distributed the resulting gains to all. Second, suppression leads to revolution. To borrow an ideal from Fight Club, on a long enough timeline the survival rate of all oppressive regimes is zero. Also, necessity breeds invention: if people in society are not innovating, then it's likely because they have no unmet needs, and this "stasis" is actually the result of a society that optimally takes care of everyone. If I had to conjure a reason for this, I'd posit that Hylains by nature live more in tune with their goddess, and thus do not possess the consuming greed that humans do. This in turn means that they don't try to progress for the sake of progression, and feel no desire to consume more than they require to function and live happily.

 

[Delegrade12678]

Considering the damage dealt to our world by modern technology, it could almost be considered a form of wisdom that they haven't.

I would also consider it feasible that Ganon's curse never lets Hyrule truly move forward, as there always seems to be an eventual age of success for Ganon, at least for a time, that reduces the faculties of the nation back to a medieval status.

Terminus, I would refute your claims. For one, Breath of the Wild's backstory stated that the Royal line worked in conjunction with the Shiekah to produce magic and technology, then equitably distributed the resulting gains to all. Second, suppression leads to revolution. To borrow an ideal from Fight Club, on a long enough timeline the survival rate of all oppressive regimes is zero. Also, necessity breeds invention: if people in society are not innovating, then it's likely because they have no unmet needs, and this "stasis" is actually the result of a society that optimally takes care of everyone. If I had to conjure a reason for this, I'd posit that Hylains by nature live more in tune with their goddess, and thus do not possess the consuming greed that humans do. This in turn means that they don't try to progress for the sake of progression, and feel no desire to consume more than they require to function and live happily.

And then a technologically superior nation comes in and steamrolls hyrule

 

[YIGAhim]

I don't think it was completely that way. The towers and runes and such are a great example. They had many tech advances

 

[AncientPoe]

And then a technologically superior nation comes in and steamrolls hyrule

Unlikely. Apparently, Hyrule has canonically existed for upwards of 10,000 years. Statistically speaking, if no other nation has shown themselves by now, then they don't exist.

 

[Cfrock]

And then a technologically superior nation comes in and steamrolls hyrule

What nation? As far as we know there's Hyrule and nothing else.

 

[Castle]

There are other nations. Labrynna and Holodrum. Link left on a voyage of enlightenment in LA presumably to somewhere. And the possibility exists that perhaps the way to Termina was discovered someday especially if Link returned to Hyrule from there. Lands beyond Hyrule are seldom mentioned and rarely depicted, but there's nothing to say they don't exist.

But contact with other nations seems sparse and Hyrule appears to be separated by other lands by geographical barriers. Of course, in Ocarina it could also be argued that the Gerudo were foreign and that the desert was beyond Hyrule's sphere of influence at the time, at least politically even if the desert was considered part of Hyrule geographically.

On the subject of magic in Hyrule. Magic never seems to be very wide spread or common. It appears to be the domain of a select few. The sages, the royal family, the sheikah and practitioners of dark magic like Ganon, Twinrova and most of the series' enemies. Magic doesn't appear to be utilized for general quality of life improvements, although one could speculate that magic is what accounts for stuff like the self sustaining torches in places that obviously haven't been seen in years and any of the other "video gamey" eccentricities we gamers take for granted. But this is never explicitly stated.

Point is, magic in TLoZ series doesn't appear to be a sufficiently advanced science. At least not one that extensively benefits Hyrule like modern technology does.

 

[Delegrade12678]

There are other nations. Labrynna and Holodrum. Link left on a voyage of enlightenment in LA presumably to somewhere. And the possibility exists that perhaps the way to Termina was discovered someday especially if Link returned to Hyrule from there. Lands beyond Hyrule are seldom mentioned and rarely depicted, but there's nothing to say they don't exist.

But contact with other nations seems sparse and Hyrule appears to be separated by other lands by geographical barriers. Of course, in Ocarina it could also be argued that the Gerudo were foreign and that the desert was beyond Hyrule's sphere of influence at the time, at least politically even if the desert was considered part of Hyrule geographically.

On the subject of magic in Hyrule. Magic never seems to be very wide spread or common. It appears to be the domain of a select few. The sages, the royal family, the sheikah and practitioners of dark magic like Ganon, Twinrova and most of the series' enemies. Magic doesn't appear to be utilized for general quality of life improvements, although one could speculate that magic is what accounts for stuff like the self sustaining torches in places that obviously haven't been seen in years and any of the other "video gamey" eccentricities we gamers take for granted. But this is never explicitly stated.

Point is, magic in TLoZ series doesn't appear to be a sufficiently advanced science. At least not one that extensively benefits Hyrule like modern technology does.

I'm saying here that if a technologically superior industrial nation existed, Hyrule would have been steamrolled and its natural resources stripped.

 

[Fierce_Deity]

It’s a creative choice really since there is no rule that a civilization has to have technological advances. It’s a similar situation to Middle Earth.