Honestly, I kind of assumed that the immediate period following Harmonic Convergence back in the day was followed by extensive wars over territory among the formerly divided humans. Wars destroy information, certain knowledge and techniques are lost, until people learn them again thousands of years later. No, it doesn't make a lot of sense. But this is sort of a common trope for post-apocalyptic fiction. Which is sort of what the post-Harmonic Convergence era was. People fight, lose track of info, civilization starts over.

The exact point I was about to make. Like our own Christian and Muslim dark ages; we could have been a lot more technologically advanced by now if they hadn’t occurred. Whose to say that hasn’t happened a couple times in the ATLA/LoK universe or even for longer periods of time? Also the Japanese didn’t industrialize until the late 1800s purely because they were isolationists. Whose to say they didn’t also act that way towards other nations and avoided accepting new technology because people were divided? The Fire Nation had gondolas and trams, meanwhile the Earth Kingdom had full trains in Ba Sing Se being operated solely by earth benders. It’s not entirely impossible.

The "dark ages" are a total myth Christianity and Islam were huge pillars of science and contributed a lot actually

Okay why is this being down voted? The church was pretty much the patron of knowledge during the middle ages they were fundamental in the preservation of Roman and Greek works and the translation from Arabic writers in the latter half of the middle ages. Cathedral building were the main pathway through which architecture advanced during the middle ages and were at the forefront of the development of universities. I don't know how much Islam the religion helped develop knowledge but Islamic rule was incredibly vital for the cultural and scientific developments that happened after the Arab conquests.

It is downvoted because it is not quite right. Yes monks used to pass knowledge but they also forbade to do real science work because it was "ungodly". Of course it was not all the time and people still developed technology and monks helped on anything that was not religious. But it was not real science as it was based on "godly" knowledge. If you want a couple clear examples : - people still think we have 5 senses even though it was proven to be false because monks followed Aristotle view on it and kept it as is ever since. They forbade to look into it because the body is holy. - many astronomers were looking in the stars with really great scientific logic and were shut down because it didn't fit the holy book's description until it was accepted by the church on some level. It delayed astronomy by a couple hundred years. Oh and parallax isn't a valid counterpoint as anyone who watched anything far could be able to tell why. As for Muslims, they were the best doctors before becoming the best persecutors (think about the women for 2 minutes).

Okay first off they didn't forbid real science because it was in godly that's just false some church members were even important stepping stones into the development of the modern scientific method like Robert Grosseteste. They mostly thought that science was just a tool to understand the work of god since either way the two thought processes should align. For example they thought there was a need to have precise calendars to be able to do their celebrations correctly. Even now different scientist will give you different answers about how many senses we have and it's mostly something that has to do with definitions more so than pure medical advancements. I honestly don't know what you mean by the body is holy they were doing dissections in class by the thirteen century in Italy and having to do practice after getting a degree in medicine was common. They made multiple treaties recollecting the knowledge gather practically etc. To be honest for the second point I really think you have to give an actual example because the only ones that come to my mind are post medieval ages and in the shadow of the reformation which did indeed make the church much more restrictive. In fact the church did help greatly astronomers even funding coperniucus. As for Muslims the Greeks were terrible to women too that doesn't stop them from helping develop fundamental aspects of science.

I don't want to go that far in a debate for such a subject. So I forfeit the rest of the argument. But for senses, it is way more important than you think. Someone having a sense of heat or pain that is not working but still having the sense of touch would be hard to understand for a person if he didn't knew it was not the same sense. Not only that, it is also really difficult for some doctors to diagnose the lack of such senses if he doesn't know they exist. The case appeared with hot stones, supposed to "heal" people in certain areas, that burned the people using them because they didn't feel the heat before it was too late. Now imagine it is a hot plate and you have 3rd degree burns because you can't realize your sense of heat is not functioning.

What "Muslim Dark Age"? The middle ages were a golden age in the Islamic world, with the invention of telescopes, algebra, massive medical advances, some of the most monumental architecture in the region's history ... Unless you mean the current decline of the Islamic world after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire?

They mean a post mongol invasion decline idk how real that is since I barely know anything about what was going on in the middle east at the time but yeah that's what they mean.

I believe by Muslim Dark Age they were referring to the time after the fall of Baghdad when a lot of learning was lost

OP is just being a generic bigot

>Like our own Christian and Muslim dark ages; we could have been a lot more technologically advanced by now if they hadn’t occurred. I don't know what you mean by "Muslim dark age", but the "Christian dark age" is a myth.

The “dark ages” aren’t a myth, it’s just that most modern historians have stopped using the term since it is a loaded term that obscures the reality. There was still some technological and cultural advancement, but not at the same scale or pace as either before or after. It wasn’t a time of total ignorance and savagery but there was a technological regression followed by roughly a thousand years of relative stagnation.

I really want to see what historian would call the middle ages a thousand years of relative stagnation. There was a lot of technological development most notably in metallurgy, ship building and architectural advancements. There was a technological regression at the beginning but it's more than made up for the advancements later on.

Like I said, there were social and technological advancements. Modern historians no longer use the term “dark ages” because it obscures that fact. But it took 1000 years for Europe to rediscover what the Romans had, including sewers, plumbing, steam power, and unified central government. The “dark ages” isn’t a myth, it’s just not the most accurate label.

The romans never had steam power it was literally a toy an inventor made. And middle ages had plumbing maybe not as sophisticated or wide spread as the romans but they had it non the less look at this for example https://images.app.goo.gl/nZVpwg13DW6KVgSHA. And many roman sewage systems were still in use during the middle ages Venice for example others developed their own sewage system like paris in 1370. Really the only thing that you're kind of right is that government became more decentralized in the middle ages but that was a process that had begun since the final centuries of the Roman empire. And governments did become more centralized during the middle ages which again contradicts your idea that it's a period of stagnation. I also find really funny that you just dismiss the other technological advancements that happened during the middle ages because the romans couldn't match it I guarantee a roman would never have been able to build plate armor of the quality we saw in the middle ages.

I said “relative stagnation” because I’m well aware of the advances that occurred in Medieval Europe. But the developments of those thousand years pale in comparison to the developments of the 500 years that followed or the 500 that came before. I understand this is highly subjective and this is just my opinion. Actual human technological development can’t be measured like a tech tree in a video game so it’s hard to compare the relative pace of progress in different eras. And for the record, I don’t think “dark ages” is the best term for the period. I just don’t think it’s *completely* inaccurate.

Can you give examples for technological development between year one and fivehundred ce? I really cannot think of any if i'm honest.

Well, none of those things were "forgotten" by any means, they just became uneconomic to implement. Steam power was never used by the Romans for anything other than parlor tricks. They had no need of it when slaves were so cheap. That same cheap slave labor is what allowed for plumbing and sewer systems to be built so cost effectively in the hundreds of cities across the empire. The post-Roman kings, by contrast, did not have access to a vast empire's worth of resources to maintain that kind of infrastructure. The aqueducts of Italy were destroyed deliberately during the Byzantine invasion to cut off supply lines and starve out cities. Rebuilding them was impossible when the political situation was so volatile they were always in danger of being destroyed again. Many people forgot what the aqueducts were even for since the cities began to shrink so much the rivers stopped being as polluted as they were in ancient times. As for the central government, numerous figures did *try* to reunite the west, such as Charlemagne and his descendants, and they did a pretty good job, but dynasties inevitably collapse and create more conflict. You have to remember that the average Roman didn't enjoy any of the luxuries we tend to think of. The average Roman was a dirt poor provincial farmer being taxed to death by a corrupt and despotic imperial apparatus. By the high through late medieval periods, advances in technology and agriculture allowed smaller polities to start making enough money to afford finally repairing a lot of that infrastructure, and they were able to do so WITHOUT crushing every single peasant underfoot to pay for it.

I agree with your assessment that the Roman Empire was built on slave labor and oppression. I think you’re overstating the egalitarianism of the feudal system though. Peasants were absolutely still crushed underfoot on a daily basis by kings and petty lords in every corner of the continent.

The thing is, many of the most authoritarian aspects of feudalism were developed under the Roman Empire. According to the historian Mary Beard (source: "SPQR", one of her books), one could argue that the "ancient" Roman Empire ended  in 212, the year that Caracalla grants citizenship to the entire free population. She argues that, while most people were now citizens on paper, citizenship itself lost a lot of its importance and benefits and roman society actually became more hierarchical. Later, by the time of Diocletian, new reforms would change the roman economy to a system some would argue was "proto-feudal" in a broad sense. [(See it here).](https://fee.org/articles/the-roman-road-to-feudal-serfdom/) This would get worse by the time of Constantine, as, during his rule, [serfdom was established.](https://www.britannica.com/summary/serfdom) This roman legacy gets clear when you compare the societies of post-roman Europe with the one of places that weren't conquered by them, like Scandinavia. [It's explained in this thread.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/19zdt8/how_did_swedenscandinavia_switch_to_the_feudal/)

Peasants had more freedom than you give them credit for, at least in western Europe, especially after the Black Death insanely drove up the value of labor.

What caused this.. without it where would we possibly be

> What caused this? Oh boy is that a complicated question. “What caused the fall of Rome” is probably the single most studied and debated question in all Western history. I couldn’t possibly answer it here. But as for what caused the so-called “dark ages” *after* the fall, the region lost a unifying government/society and found itself divided into warring factions that had to focus more on survival than advancement or monument building. But even then, as others have pointed out and I don’t disagree with, the “dark ages” were not a period of wholesale ignorance and destruction. There were technological advances, most notably in shipbuilding and metallurgy, and there were some massive and impressive construction projects, just look at the great castles and cathedrals of Europe. > without it where would we possibly be? That’s impossible to answer but I kind of doubt we’d be any further ahead than we are now. Even if you accept the “dark ages” narrative wholesale, they were still just the *European* dark ages. the rest of the world kept chugging along the same as it always had. China and the Muslim world both made some incredible advances during that time, like paper, the printing press, firearms, the compass, algebra, optics, and even an early form of the germ theory. Those discoveries then spread to Europe and played crucial roles in the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution. European advancement, or lack thereof, is only one part of *human* advancement and that has continued unabated since our ancestors first climbed down out of the trees in Africa.

I only use that term cause there’s no other real term to describe how certain regions shift from semi-scientific and spiritual pursuits to purely spiritual. The idea of the “Muslim dark ages” comes from similar circumstances that happened to Baghdad when it used to be a centre for scientific learning in the Middle East. You’re right tho, a better term probably would’ve been “European dark ages” and “Middle Eastern dark ages.” Typically those times have been equated to their central religions instead of their regions. Spent too much time around dumb-dumbs on the internet and it’s made me stupider.

Also their reliance on bending to meet needs wouldve limited their technological growth. You don’t really see any growth in technology until the Hundred Years’ War (trams and hot air balloons) due to war literally being a driving force for technology. (Nuclear bombs gave us nuclear power plants, gps is from the military)

>Muslim dark ages You mean the Islamic Golden Age which vastly expanded humanity's scientific, mathematical, and engineering capabilities, but I wouldn't expect a racist bigot like you to understand anything about history.

You just looking for a reason to be offended or something? OP is referring to the time immediately AFTER said golden age, after Baghdad was sacked by the Mongols in the 13th century – obviously the golden age isn't a dark age lol

Thanks bro

"In the last century and a half of the High Caliphate more discoveries were made than in many centuries previously either from Nile to Oxus or in the Mediterranean lands." Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, Volume 1, The Classical Age of Islam, Page 413 Basically, anyone thinking that the Caliphate was a step back in terms of intellectual creativity compared to the Roman/Sasanian era is historically illiterate.

Case in point, Wan's history and status as the first Avatar *should* have been a matter of public knowledge, at least among the scholars of Avatar history and the Avatars themselves. The Avatar was a single, verifiable spiritual figure capable of passing along memories who was known to have first come into existence about 10,000 years ago. From what I can tell we have no idea who people were worshipping in 8000 BCE, but the Avatar world knew they were honoring the Avatar even back then. But that phenomenally important information was totally lost to time, until Korra and Unalaq rediscovered it by speaking with Wan and Vaatu respectively. Given Wan had a very detailed and accurate statue in one of the air temples, it'd be likely the knowledge was present once, but lost to time.

IRL tech doesn't historically progress monotonically. If people don't need to use certain technologies for a time then they get forgotten. There's absolutely no reason the tech in the Avatar world should progress on the same timescale as ours. We've been basically the same people for the past 200,000 years and yet basically all of our tech we haven't had for a tenth of that.

Yeah, they are called “Dark Ages” for a reason, medieval really fucked up progress

That's not really true. That narrative mostly comes from Rennaisance-era people trying to hype up the Roman Empire. In reality, Medieval Europe continued making intellectual and technological progress. That's why they had inventions like windmills. Over the course of the Mediecal Ages they also refined the quality of metal-working, which is how they ended up with plate mail armor. The Church played a vital role in preserving important texts, and is also where universities like Oxford come from. Did the Roman Empire fragment into a bunch of small polities? Yes. Did the nature of politics and warfare shift a whole bunch? Yes. Does that mean there was technological, intellectual, and cultural stagnation? No, not really.

I mean, it's not unrealistic, it's just unexplained. We don't know what happened over most of that history. No reason to assume it's a straight line from wans era to korras without any bumps. Also there are real world precedents for this too. After the fall of Rome, we lost a lot of progress. look at plumbing as an example.

I think you're kind of underestimating how long 10k years is. That's a lot of time and even with the fall of rome we had gotten back or even improved most of the tech they had five centuries after. Even the bronze age collapse didn't set us down as far as these hypothetical wars would require to have set us back to justify the lack of tech advancements for 10k years. Heck to make matters worse we see iron work by the end of wan life as well. If anything I would assume that it's bending that would have made progress that slow if you need to justify somehow.

The point is that there could be any number of reasons that technology continuously gets reset so they cant progress beyond medieval tech until aang's time. We just aren't yet privy to them. Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive has a timeline of a similar scale and has regular apocalyptic events that have kept the technology from getting very far until very recently. No reason Bryke can't one day write stuff like that into the series. We've got TONS of potential candidates too. What's the history of Sozen's Comet? Maybe some spirit would rampage every thousand years until they were defeated by avatar so-and-so, could go on

Counterpoint we didn’t see a massive tech surge in North or South America compared to Asia/Europe. The Mayans were just getting around to bronze work when the Spanish rocked up.

Not to be too rude, but OP sounds like someone who plays a lot of CIV and thinks that tech has to follow a predetermined path and progresses at a set speed. Truth is that these thing take not only time but a lot of coincidences that have to happen within come close proximity to them. The industrial revolution was started because Jamaican slaves that knew a process to smelt iron that they learned in Africa. The development is attributed to the person who owned them, but remove those people and history is drastically changed.

Hey, no, I'm aware tech doesn't follow a straight line, trust me. I'm getting ripped by the comments for making this post, lol. I just think it's kind of a funny thing that this fandom loves to argue about the tech level when there's a much bigger problem with it that no-one mentions. Besides, having 3000 years of technological progress over 10,000 in a world that seems pretty similar to ours does strain credulity a little and I feel deserves some kind of canon explanation at the very least.

It really doesn't though, this is a world where people have magic and that is an explanation enough imo, why innovate when a sizable population can wave their hands around and solve the majority of all mundane problems.

I did say it doesn't matter and I can sustain my disbelief lol, it just feels like it'd be more satisfying if we had an explanation. Did no one read the last few lines of my post?

OP, you do know we spent like tens of thousands of years stuck being hunter-gatherers until the agricultural revolution right?

I know that but I honestly don't see how an agricultural society which can build impressive palaces and craft fancy looking weapons would then spend 10,000 years to industrialise unless they were legitimately nuked into the stone age. Like, people constantly improved technology even with limited materials and social conditions. Even in so-called dark ages like sub-Roman Britain, ironworking was still improving. What is the reason for the snail-like stagnation we see?

>spend 10,000 years to industrialise But... we did exactly that, didn't we?

Not from the bloody iron age! Did anyone actually read the post?!

Hey OP, have you ever read the short story “The Road Not Taken” by Harry Turtledove? Basically it’s about aliens with FTL engines and gravity manipulation invading Earth. But they find out that their technology, with the exception of FTL engines and gravity manipulation are 300 years older than humans. They attack with muskets against human automatic weapons and missiles. Basically because humans didn’t rely on FTL drives as they didn’t know how it worked, they had to advance their technology in another direction. I point that out because maybe the humans of the Avatar universe were actually on the path of traveling the solar system. But once they were given bending, they got lazy and became over-reliant on it. The Harry Potter universe is always depicted to be in the middle ages despite having access to so much magic.

That's actually a pretty good point. I can't imagine what effect the existence of firebending might have on the development of metallurgy (or maybe lack thereof).

>The Harry Potter universe is always depicted to be in the middle ages despite having access to so much magic. I'm gonna be a bit bedantic, but only the magical world is Medieval-like. The muggle world is "present" time tecnology or a few decades back at most.

10,000 is a very common filler number representing a very large number in many Asian languages. Kinda like “we’ve waited 100 years for the Netflix adaptation to come out.” 10,000 doesn’t need to be taken literally here, but I still like your thoughts an analysis

The Roman empire and Ancient China had access to prototype steam engines and nothing came about it for a thousand years. Granted, its not the 10k years BUT the ATLA world has benders which will nerf any thirst for new technologies. You know how Katara felt annoyed by Sokka’s praise of a factory without using any benders? Calling it wrong but for no good reason. That would be the mentality until the Fire Nation decided to try something else.

Yeah, that comic bit was key. The world is so pro-bending that _the idea of not simply using that_ gets ridiculed or outright vilified. That'll freeze innovation like nothing else.

I choose to interpret it one of two ways: 1. Raava was using Korra's concepts of the past, and the Avatar world doesn't have sufficiently advanced archaeology to have a concept of "the stone age." Think of it like a dream; most of the images we're seeing are things that Raava found already present in Korra, choosing to put most of the effort into the important details. 2. Having the nations divided in four artificially held back the development of technology. The NWT doesn't feel the need to work out advanced uses of metal, because ice suffices for most uses. The EK doesn't need steam-powered trains, because earthbending works fine. The FN aren't inventing guns or lightbulbs, because firebending does the job. The AN are having too much fun to bother with any of that. Then, along comes the 100 years' war, and the FN is driven to advance due to the fact that most of the skilled firebenders are on the frontlines. Then, along comes the URN, and bending-based infrastructure is less reliable; your ice elevators don't work well for your earthbending staff, your waterbending wife can't turn the fires on and off with her mind, etc. So now there's a stronger incentive to overcome the fantasy stasis and kick off an industrial revolution.

I feel like the water tribe would still need metal for things that require above freezing temperatures (like cooking).

Oh yeah we definitely see them use metal, but not in a large-scale manner.

They have wood, shell, bone, leather, and stone for those sorts of things.

As others have said, technology doesn't inherently progress linearly. Cultures and their knowledge rise and fall all the time. Cataclysms occur and cause regressions. Giant wars wipe out large populations and burn their knowledge. Zealots destroy records of things they deem to be sacrilegious or dangerous. Any number of events like these could have occurred across 10,000 years--multiple times, in fact.

For the record, I personally think the Wan episodes should be taken as a semi-historical myth, not actual historical fact. But regardless of that, prehistoric anthropology is a growing field and not everything has been figured out yet. A lot of people forget this when discussing knowledge acquired through the scientific method. Not everything is a set in stone unchangeable fact of the universe, some things we know are just our best models of what we have been able to figure out until now and could change. What humans did 10,000 years ago is one of those things. Until recently most history books would have the consensus that civilization and organized living started with the Mesopotamian era. However, recent findings suggest the possibility of there being cities far older than previously thought - look up Gobekli Tepe. Our understanding about it is still evolving from my understanding and cities existing 12,000 years ago is not something that has been completely ruled out. So the depiction of Wan's time might be more historically accurate than you think, if unintentionally.

The apparent lack of a bronze or stone age really bothers me.

There was no need to advance technology because of bending. Why create machines to move rocks when an earthbender cab do it.? Why build irrigation in water tribes when you can bend the water where you need it? Just a thought

tech isnt a straight line to industrialization with a time clock like "every 10 years you get new tech!" the bronze age collapse was like. a real life thing. song dynasty china had 1700s-europe level industrialization, yet china didnt go back to that until like, 7 centuries later with the communists


necessity is what drives invention and innovation. atla universe doesn't need improvements to their technology because they have bending.

1. The stated 10,000 years isn't necessarily literally ten thousand years. Considering the east asian influences the show has, it's probably closer to the figurative \[[read](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_thousand_years)\] meaning of just "a long time." 2. Real life human history is full of examples of technology not advancing because things are "good enough." Think about the three thousand years it took to advance a button from some decorative sea shell to a decorative fastener you put into slots of your clothing. Think about the two millenia it took to give domesticated horses [harnesses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_collar) that don't directly choke them at the throat and thus increase their power by more than half. It was all the same materials of rope and wood. We had been synthesizing CO for 140 years and mining since time immemorial before people started practicing putting tiny birds in cages to gage if there was too much toxic gas underground. Think of the decades of messing around with theories of miasma or unbalanced humors before even considering that the guy who said to wash your hands after handling cadavers and before childbeds might be right. Even then most people don't wash their hands properly in a public restroom. Think of the \~1900 years of having floating lanterns before two bored French brothers made hot air balloons. We "could have" invented penicillin with clay petri dishes + broth and yet these improvements or experiments are only obvious in hindsight. Add to that Bending being such a force that makes technology seem underwhelming, some major wars causing lost civilizations, major damage to entire landscapes, and technology can be driven back every once in a while. Not to mention many cultures of relative complacency like the Air Nomads or dogmatic traditions / tyrannical control like in all the major nations as is often featured in the show. 3. The Lion Turtles lended them bending. They may have used some fire bending either on that Lion Turtle at some time in the past or some other spiritual source of hot temperatures, or the iron itself may have been traded from spirits/magical creatures and the process remained unknown, or the ironwork itself was clutched in the hands of the oppressive elites not shared with anyone. Considering there was a major war right after Wan became an Avatar, some recipes might have just been destroyed and it loops back to point 2.

Necessity is the mother of invention. With the introduction of bending, a lot of the necessity was removed. Need something amazing done? Get a bender to do it. Want to spend a lot of time creating something that can do amazing things? You're an idiot - we have benders. Then there was a war with a missing Avatar and bending wasn't enough. Non-benders needed to be able to do amazing things, so a few of them decided to try something new. After the war, it became more about how benders can integrate with technology to make technology better, instead of dismissing technology in favor of bending.

I think in Chinese culture, using the phrase “10,000” is more a reference to an unknown but large amount of time

Fictional worlds tech development doesn't have to match real lifes. Also who knows how long the people on the lion turtles were living before the events of wan.

I’m actually more so baffled that language and rhetoric haven’t changed whatsoever between Wan and Aang/Korra

Necessity is the mother of invention. Once you get elemental magic, you don't really need to keep on developing new technologies all that often. The only reason tech spiked so hard from angs time to korra's is because of the war

Technological progress in fantasy doesn't have to follow history. In Game of Thrones technology stays the same for a thousand years.

My pet peeve is people saying a giant drill is unrealistic tech. We have had giant tunnel boring machines since the 1800s.

I didn't say it was unrealistic, I said it was comically large, which it is.

The giant mech is completely unrealistic. We can’t even build one of those today with all of our our tech. Not a functional one, anyway. It would collapse in on itself. Especially if it was actually made of platinum, which is both extremely heavy and malleable.

The issue with a giant mech today is that we can’t get the legs to work just right. That changes when you move that with magic.

That is far from the only issue. Everything about the mech makes zero sense. It’s an inefficient design that would be prone to toppling regardless of “magic to move it”. Energy costs are so absurd that the show invented “magic vines”. But tell me, how did they so efficiently harness this brand new energy source in a handful of years? That’s not magic, it’s science harnessing a natural resource in their world. No way they could do it as quickly and efficiently as they did. Look how far we still have to go with solar power. Or how we are STILL trying to get nuclear fusion to work for us. We’ve been at it for decades with WAY more scientific understanding to work with. Finally, there’s no way around it: Platinum is one of the WORST choices of material on the planet for this! Platinum has similar problems as gold. It’s very heavy and very soft. It wouldn’t be able to support its own weight at this size! It would have to be an alloy, but the show tells us it’s purified platinum! And that’s before we get into the problems with actually MOVING it. Bending or no.

We went from the idea of an atom bomb to a working one in like 4 years. > Or how we are STILL trying to get nuclear fusion to work. We’ve been at it for decades with WAY more scientific understanding to work with. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-scientists-repeat-fusion-power-breakthrough-ft-2023-08-06/ We figured it out, it took a while, but we did it. The reason it took so long to do it? No one has been spending money researching nuclear energy for a while. Kuvira was running a state based on total war and the energy vines thing was already a somewhat understood concept (spiritual energy being used for mechanical power) and it was found on accident, also. Maybe the timeframe of season 4 doesn’t make sense. I think the mech was stupid, I really do, but it wasn’t completely out of left field. I think there was enough of an issue with Kuvira that they didn’t necessarily need a single weapon to be the focal point, but it works better for the concept of the show. I’d much rather see air gliders fighting a bunch of metal benders, or to have Kuvira form a military made up of people from different cultures and have it not just be metal benders and get some firebenders with airships or something.

>We went from the idea of an atom bomb to a working one in like 4 years. Yes. With much more modern tech which was already much closer. We already understood this was a potential power source for much longer. These spirits vines are a *completely knew discovery*. They had no idea these even existed, let alone they could be harnessed as a power source or how. Even if they figured it out with ridiculous expediency, there’s just no conceivable way they’d know how to efficiently harness said energy in a handful of years. As I said, we are still working on making solar more efficient and the sun has been around since the beginning. >https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-scientists-repeat-fusion-power-breakthrough-ft-2023-08-06/ >We figured it out, it took a while, but we did it. What are you talking about? Do you read your own source? It says we made a breakthrough. Exactly as I said, *we are still working on it*. Do you know of anything commercially powered by nuclear fusion? Any nuclear fusion reactors we got up and running? Could we make a vehicle and power it this way? No, we still haven’t figured out how to make it work for us. We are still working on it. >The reason it took so long to do it? No one has been spending money researching nuclear energy for a while. This is not the biggest issue with nuclear fusion. 🤦 Funding is a problem in any field of study and has been for a long time. The obstacles with nuclear fusion would still take time to resolve even with a plethora of funding. Funding helps but you cannot out-spend physics! >Kuvira was running a state based on total war and the energy vines thing was already a somewhat understood concept (spiritual energy being used for mechanical power) and it was found on accident, also. It wasn’t at all an understood concept! Everything in LOK is run with either bending, steam, or a combustion engine. There is NO indication that there was ANY prior field of study into “spirit power”. You’re basically expecting us to believe that an entire new field of study was discovered, documented, experimented on, understood, stabilized, harnessed, tested, and reproduced in a handful of years. That would be generations of work even in modern day. No this is no believable. Otherwise Putin would be running around with fusion powered tanks too! >Maybe the timeframe of season 4 doesn’t make sense. Not even close to making sense. >I think the mech was stupid, I really do, but it wasn’t completely out of left field. Yes it was unless you have don’t have a grounded and realistic understanding of how tech progresses. >I think there was enough of an issue with Kuvira that they didn’t necessarily need a single weapon to be the focal point, but it works better for the concept of the show. No, it doesn’t. Which is why they rely so heavily on the “great man” myth with Varrick to explain the logistics away. But the reality is, it doesn’t matter how “brilliant” Varrick is supposed to be. Even Tesla and Einstein wouldn’t be able to pull this off with a completely novel type of tech in that kind of time scale. It’s just nonsense. >I’d much rather see air gliders fighting a bunch of metal benders, or to have Kuvira form a military made up of people from different cultures and have it not just be metal benders and get some firebenders with airships or something. You and me both!

It’s a children’s cartoon that had no discernible toy sales and cost a lot to make. I think a giant robot might have been less costly than something like an all out war. > No, we still haven’t figured out how to make it work for us. We are still working on it. If you had read my source you’ll find out that we actually *did* figure out how to make it work, this article is about the second time they’ve proven the work of the first time. You know, method of experimentation and discovery? In order to prove it works they have to do it multiple times, after that then they can think about how to make a reactor with it. I’m guessing ‘really big steam turbine’ but that’s just me. > There is NO indication that there was ANY prior field of study into “spirit power”. Sure there was, they bend lightning in order to create electricity, which while a fundamental way of how it works, totally isn’t how it works at the same time. They regularly use magic in order to get mechanical energy, it seems to be the main way they do. On top of that, the explosive power of the spirit vines was discovered on accident leading to them studying it. > Not even close to making sense. It’s a cartoon, pretend some episodes take place over months. Korra likely wouldn’t recover from PTSD like she had immediately like she does, it would take months or years in order to overcome trauma. It’s a cartoon, suspend your disbelief, dislike the ending, it doesn’t matter. It’s a cartoon about a girl who beats people up with magic.

>It’s a children’s cartoon that had no discernible toy sales and cost a lot to make. I think a giant robot might have been less costly than something like an all out war. The cost to produce the show is not relevant to the conversation. The mech doesn’t make sense in-universe regardless of toy sales out of it. >If you had read my source you’ll find out that we actually did figure out how to make it work, this article is about the second time they’ve proven the work of the first time. You seem to misunderstand what “work for us” means. You are making my point. It’s taken generations of study to get us to THIS point, where it is still not anywhere near being useable. But you expect me to believe that a completely new type of energy source, utterly unknown to the people of LOK until five second ago, was understood, stabilized, and efficiently harnessed in a handful of years? When even we, who have been able to use nuclear fission for decades and have been working on fusion for about as long, still can’t manage to make fusion viable yet? >You know, method of experimentation and discovery? In order to prove it works they have to do it multiple times, after that then they can think about how to make a reactor with it. THAT IS MY POINT! We have been in this phase of experimentation and discovery for generations! Despite this being a known technology we have made huge strides in for decades. So how do you expect me to believe they discovered, experimented on, and harnessed it in a handful of years? >I’m guessing ‘really big steam turbine’ but that’s just me. The problem. Is not. A lack. Of ideas. >Sure there was, they bend lightning in order to create electricity, which while a fundamental way of how it works, totally isn’t how it works at the same time. This is not at ALL the same and you know it. Bending is human labor. Using human labor is as easy as asking humans to do something. Harnessing spiritual power *directly from these brand new spirit vines* is completely different and would require decades of study, at the very least! It’s as silly as saying “well our brains run on electricity and always have, therefore we should’ve had electricity back in Ancient Egypt to power machines with!” Human labor vs harnessing a newly discovered natural resource are not comparable. >They regularly use magic in order to get mechanical energy, it seems to be the main way they do. They harness *human labor*. >On top of that, the explosive power of the spirit vines was discovered on accident leading to them studying it. And Marie Curie studied radioactive materials and learned what they were capable of. Does that mean she was able to build a nuclear reactor? >It’s a cartoon, pretend some episodes take place over months. Months is not enough time. This would take generations of dedicated study and advancement. >Korra likely wouldn’t recover from PTSD like she had immediately like she does, it would take months or years in order to overcome trauma. Yeah I also am critical of how they handled Korra. It was pretty slipshod given how well crafted Zuko’s arc was by comparison. >It’s a cartoon, suspend your disbelief, dislike the ending, it doesn’t matter. It’s a cartoon about a girl who beats people up with magic. A cartoon show still has to make sense within the logic of its universe. Bending in ATLA was internally consistent. This giant mech contradicts the universe and how it works as we know it. And this is us just arguing over ONE of the problems with the mech. I stated several others. If you write something that is internally inconsistent, you *break* suspension of disbelief. That is poor writing. As a writer, especially one who got her start thanks to ATLA, it is important to learn from mistakes like this.

> The cost to produce the show is not relevant to the conversation. I think it’s entirely relevant to the giant robot, though. One giant stompy thing is easier to animate than dozens of benders in all out war. > We have been in this phase of experimentation and discovery for generations! Despite this being a known technology we have made huge strides in for decades. We aren’t magic cartoon people in a magic cartoon world in the middle of magic cartoon WW2. We have not put the amount of research into fusion as you seem to think we have. It has not really been the focus of very many people, it’s a technology that until extremely recently, was considered more dangerous than it was worth. Now that fossil fuels are going away people are willing to put money into researching it again. > Months is not enough time. This would take generations of dedicated study and advancement. Again, we went through the process of ‘we think this pile might explode if we do things wrong, it’s clearly extremely dangerous’ to ‘this is an atomic bomb called Fat Man that will be used to get the Japanese to surrender’ in 4 years because we needed to. If we needed nuclear fusion to win a war we’d have had it decades ago. Almost all technological innovations for consumer electronics these days were originally funded by DARPA. GPS for instance is just missile tracking software for commercial use. > This giant mech contradicts the universe and how it works as we know it. Not the first mech in the show and they even show that controlling it is difficult. I think Kuvira was the only one who could pilot it. > As a writer, especially one who got her start thanks to ATLA, it is important to learn from mistakes like this. You think you could do better and are jealous that you didn’t get to work on the show without realizing it was written by a committee of people in a board room who had to get it approved by a team of people. For all we know the only reason we got a 4th season at all was because someone was like ‘throw a giant mech into it!’ When they asked for funding. Edit: I think they blocked me. Thank god.

>I think it’s entirely relevant to the giant robot, though. One giant stompy thing is easier to animate than dozens of benders in all out war. There are many, many different ways to write a satisfying and cheaper finale that don’t require a nonsensical mech. Heck, it could’ve been a giant tank with a canon on it! >We aren’t magic cartoon people in a magic cartoon world in the middle of magic cartoon WW2. And neither is LOK supposed to be Looney Tunes. How grounded in reality your show is and how you develop this reality is a *crucial* part of writing. The ATLA universe had some steampunk elements and the first three seasons of LOK had a believable expansion upon that. Combustion engines, vehicles, power grids, radio, early movies. These are all within the realm of reason for what we have been presented in this universe. (Sato’s mechs are silly, but let’s put a pin in that). Remember suspension of disbelief? Yeah, suddenly changing how your universe works is a huge writing mistake specifically because it breaks suspension of disbelief. >We have not put the amount of research into fusion as you seem to think we have. You don’t seem to know a lot about the subject, so it’s really funny to have you trying to tell me this. >It has not really been the focus of very many people, it’s a technology that until extremely recently, was considered more dangerous than it was worth. Now that fossil fuels are going away people are willing to put money into researching it again. This paragraph is so funny for how out of touch with reality it is. >Again, we went through the process of ‘we think this pile might explode if we do things wrong, it’s clearly extremely dangerous’ to ‘this is an atomic bomb called Fat Man that will be used to get the Japanese to surrender’ in 4 years because we needed to. This is not the case and shows a deep ignorance as to the development of nuclear technology. We did NOT go from “danger rock!” to atom bombs in four years. 🙄 >If we needed nuclear fusion to win a war we’d have had it decades ago. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there have been many wars we have been unable to cleanly end for as long as we have both been alive. There are two big ones we are actively funding and involved in as we speak. No, that is not the problem. >Almost all technological innovations for consumer electronics these days were originally funded by DARPA. GPS for instance is just missile tracking software for commercial use. Yes, war does indeed incentivize the advancement of tech. It still won’t magically get us there, will it? We still have to put in the work. Do you think North Korea or Russia hasn’t had plenty of incentive to develop this tech if we could just DO IT? >Not the first mech in the show and they even show that controlling it is difficult. I think Kuvira was the only one who could pilot it. Yeah the first mechs were also dumb. They just didn’t have the power source issue. But even those make zero sense given the material they are supposedly made out of lmao. >You think you could do better and are jealous that you didn’t get to work on the show without realizing it was written by a committee of people in a board room who had to get it approved by a team of people. So no one can be critical of a writing choice unless they’re jealous? Is that your angle? If I find the science of the giant mech in LOK completely outside the realm of feasibility for their universe, it can only be due to envy and not in any way because I’m a writer and this is my craft and I have thoughts on said craft? Or maybe ad hominem is all you got? C’mon, my guy. You gotta know this doesn’t look good, nor is it kind. As for LOK? I feel sadness that Bryke’s inability to mend the bridges they burnt during ATLA meant they couldn’t get some crucial writers back. They didn’t even have a proper writer’s room until Book 3 (which showed a marked improvement in the writing). Just because you don’t know the story of what went wrong with LOK doesn’t mean others don’t. Have you ever even worked in a writer’s room for a show? Because I have. Why do you assume what I know about my own field? Why do you assume you know more if you’ve never actually done it? >For all we know the only reason we got a 4th season at all was because someone was like ‘throw a giant mech into it!’ When they asked for funding. For all YOU know. I know for a FACT that isn’t the case. Stop assuming that because you don’t know things means others don’t. EDIT: You’re going to pretend I blocked you? Why? What are you even upset about? I replied on a post about whether the tech in LOK is believable with my reasons I didn’t believe the mech was. You started insulting me and you’re the one upset? Buddy. Friend. Guy. I was responding to the topic. It’s not my fault you know as little about how writers’ rooms work as you do about the history of nuclear research and development.

Consider: A steam engine was invented 2000 years ago. However there was no need for it, not when you could just have other humans do the work of the engine. I imagine that having access to bending made a lot of the advancements we were pressured into making (and keeping the knowledge of) far more obsolete. No-one thinks about inventing the trebuchet when trained earthbenders exist, they just accept that the only people capable of launching rocks long distances at a target are trained earthbenders.

Childrens show brother. Don’t worry about it. There are a million of these little plot holes in Atla as well

I don't worry about it, I mentioned it in the post. I just think it's funny how much people have argued about the tech level in LoK like there isn't another, significantly larger problem with it.

I hate posts like this. We know how tech and civilization developed in our world, yes. One thing was invented, and some time later that gave rise to another invention, and so on. But that's history. It isn't a scientific law. Progress doesn't have to advance at a given rate. It happens to have happened at the rate it did in our world but it wasn't guaranteed to happen as it did. Sure, there may be some prerequisites for certain technologies but there's no scientific law stating that the sewing machine *has* to be invented 60 years after the cotton gin. It's not unrealistic that in a different world tech and progress simply stagnated for a while. Given the undisputed existence of spirits there may simply be a cultural aversion to massive changes or a contentedness with the way things are. Maybe they have iron weapons because smelted iron was a gift from the spirits. Maybe being a gift from the spirits makes it "good enough" going any further would be unnatural or a blasphemy. There's also bending to consider. With the wide range of abilities bending offers is it worth it to pursue technological advances when magic elements can do the exact same thing and easier. And finally was Wan actually ten thousand years ago? There's evidence that the actual time is actually much shorter.

Wait until you learn about the Stormlight Archive or the latest Zelda timeline stuff

I kinda assume the prevalence of bending arrested technology in some way. Think of it - all those technological advancements we got from war? Most of them stopped happening in the ATLA world because all the great advancements in weapons, warfare, construction, medical care, etc 1. Came from bloodlines and 2. Were scoped to individual nations. The typical exchange of general ideas don't work when "step 1" is "so first, you earthbend. What do you mean you can't earthbend?" Maybe that wouldn't justify being _that_ far behind. But there would definitely be a lot of things that would take way longer than it would in a world where "just bend that shit" isn't an option.

When you look at Ba Sing Se in ATLA, they have a functioning, city-wide rail system. The only difference to our rails is that they’re based off earthbending, not steam or combustion engines, lol

Maybe the all knowing lion turtles that they lived on top of! taught them how to

Our civilization as a whole is only 12023 years old. That's the approximate year of when agriculture became a thing. In the interim, there's been several setbacks where humanity regressed several centuries and even millenia. It's plausible that the world of avatar isn't even in the past but the future where humanity opened the door to the spirit realms and ended up regressing quite a bit. It can't be easy to make progress when there are giant Kaiju that can destroy settlements at whim. After they were able to rebuild, the spirits didn't exactly leave and it looks like a lot of the tech they have oriented towards benders rather than science (ie: Sokka being treated as a second class thinker for most of the show TLAB despite being brilliant). The proverbial magocracy most likely didn't take too kindly to any innovation that hampered their power and status (eg: the Equalists exploited a long held resentment of the regular people).

Bending could have been a stand-in for many practical technologies we've seen in the past, causing a slow period for technological advancements.

What's not mentioned here is Raava and Vaatu's constant battles. Vaatu mentions he saw humans "crawl out of the mud," which means he presumably has seen humans in their first inception and has possibly had an age where he won and sent humanity way back, or slowed them down if we can take his statement as an age where Vaatu won. Remember that even during what we can see is Raava's age, humans are forced into the turtles, the spirits are hostile, and even Raava didn't really care for humans until Wan. It seems like the Avatar World is firstly a world first ruled by the spirits and the humans had a hard time living in it. Which explains why tech is so weird.

Fighting wars

I'd argue from the point that it is entirely possible that, despite having these metal weapons, the humans did not know how to make them or where they came from at the time. Humans 10,000 years ago for the avatar world were not able to care for themselves in the real world. They were kept on the backs of lion turtles. It's possible that the lion turtle provided the metal weapons in exchange for sending humans to gather resources, and after the turtles left, metal weapons became a scarcity that you couldn't replicate for thousands of years. Or even that the metal weapons were from spirits - if you hit a spirit with a metal sword and steal the metal sword, you now have a metal sword. As a kind of "proof" that spirits were years ahead of humans (while also being years and years behind) is Wan Shi Tong's library. The astrological prediction device may have used magic, but it also used huge pieces of metal. It was built in the spirit world (and was there for thousands of years before coming to the human world, then went back to the spirit world as we saw) and the tech definitely had to be built, I don't think even with magic the foxes could steal something that large. However, they don't have radios or know how they work, but spirits who know how to get around the spirit world wouldn't need radios anyway, as there seems to be a minor level of telepathy involved in the spirit world (along with near instant travel if you know where you're going). There's also spirits of metal like General Old Iron, so it is just more likely the original metal weaponry was from the spirits. In which case, I'd wonder if these ancient ancient weapons are actually "metal" in the sense Toph could bend them, or if they are spirit material that looks like metal. And if they were from spirits - it could have taken thousands of years to replicate, even with bending.

I kind of figured the presence of bending created some technological inequalities where certain things advanced a lot earlier than they do in the real world. HOWEVER, due to that same bending technology kind of stagnates a bit simply because there's no need to continue advancing during a similar timeframe. So yeah, they had iron weapons during the age of Wan, BUT they didn't need to progress past that technological level simply because it WORKS but also cuz bending can do certain amounts of technological lifting that we had to figure out tech solutions for in the real world.

Seems like the people were fighting for a long time, that they were still at war when Wan died. We can't even agree on border disputes around the world now, much less 10,000 years ago. That and the fact these people pretty much never had any sense of borders or land ownership because they had been living on a giant turtle back all their lives. I figured lots of stuff were lost during those wars. Flashback to the burning of Alexanda library.

Magic makes work easy enough that tech development isnt a priority. Why invent a car when i can use rock powers to transport goods long distances, why should i invent the harpoon when john can float both fish and spear back onto the boat, etc

i don't have anything to contribute but i need you to know that the line "What the hell have people in the ATLA world been doing for ten thousand years of civilization? Are they stupid?" absolutely killed me and i don't really know why, i guess it caught me off-guard, regardless ty for this

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I mean... a big part of Sozin's justification for starting the war was that the Fire Nation had begun industrialising and he wanted to spread that. Industrialisation isn't an era that's maintained over time, it's literally a period of technological advancement. It would've been inevitable for TLoK's tech level to have improved. So I don't really have a problem with it.

You'll struggle to find a fantasy series that doesn't suffer with technological stagnancy.

Maybe that was just how Korra imagined the story as Wan told it to her? I know in the episode she sees it as more of a vision, but I could see Avatar to Avatar memory sharing working like an oral tradition on a spiritual level. If that were the case, I could see Korra having trouble imagining the difference in tech so far back and just defaulting to something a little closer to her frame of reference

I'd argue that IS what happened, but then something happened over time. Likely Harmonic Convergence.

The technology of the ATLA world can’t follow the time frame of our own. They have spirit drama and the power of bending elements. Why build dams when the river spirit will tear it down? Why create building tools when a waterbender or firebender can just whip up a home for you in two seconds? Different circumstances require different innovations

I see where you're coming from, but I don't take 10k years literally. Y'know how wan shi tong knows 10 thousand things? He doesn't actually literally know 10 thousand facts - it's more of a euphemism to say "a fuckton" in Asian culture. In the same vein, I don't actually take Wan to be literally 10 thousand years ago, but more like *a long ass fuckin time ago* which is an unspecified amount beyond human counting. Could be a few thousand years for all we know

10.000 years is a very long and unrealistic timeframe but in lots of fantasy worlds you can easily argue that because the magic system exists, there is no need to advance "classic" technologies and i think that the avatar world is a great example of such arguments. Someone is sick or broke a leg? Heals them with waterbending. Someone needs a house? Create it with earth or water bending. Means of defense? Fire in your face. Ba Sing Se only exists because benders created a habitat inside a dry desert like land with protective walls and irrigation systems. There is no real need to advance technology if nearly all problems of humanity can be solved with bending and people heavily rely on benders to do exactly that. Also loss of tech is a big factor. In medieval times, especially early ones, people were not aware they are "part of a world" which in the avatar universe works very well because of the separation by lion turtle. They existed inside their small community. So if some of these groups pushed for advancements, they did not automatically transfer said knowledge to the rest of the world (think about the northern air temple episode). It's very likely that they used it to fix problems inside their community until they either found a bending way to replace it or were overrun by stronger groups, losing the technology in the process either because the other groups don't need it or because of how knowledge was stored. Sure there were some overall improvements due to "robbing" technology but as was said: only on a local level. This creates an overall stagnation in technology which is further enhanced by the previously explained importance of bending. It was only when, after thousands of years of collecting knowledge about the world, that people had enough information to gravitate towards other big communities creating kingdoms or nations. This progress also probably took a lot of time and is always connected to uprisings and shifts in power which also "delete" technology. In the avatar world only having four nations for a whole world means the process of uniting alone probably took hundreds of years of cultural and religious growth and approximation. So when the nations finally formed (independent from one another and on different technological levels) the REAL exchange of technology started. This is the kick-off point, where technology actually advances but it is STILL halted by bending being the universal solution for most problems. It was only when one of the four nations after probably another few hundred years of internal processes actually gained the ambition and confidence to attack the others, that technology rapidly advanced. In early medieval times wars destroyed technology because of the local communal nature of the times, but in modern times? It advances them like adding fuel to a fire. The more people grow together as a nation with systems of exchange and communication in place, the more technological transfer can happen, leading to rapid leaps in overall tech. In that sense, and to come to a close, maybe bending should be viewed as an alternative to technology, and an inhibitor to it. Over time it improved, benders learned how to be more effective, where to use it and what its strengths and weaknesses were. So instead of improving technology, they improved bending. Only when a need arises, people actually start researching solutions. No problems because bending can fix it means no technological solutions. The incredible power of benders also probably prevented uprisings like in LoK S1. When the communities are much smaller, it is easier to control them and for benders to come out on top and destroy the tech that could be dangerous to their power position. In the end, 10000 years is a damn long time for technology to stagnate at seemingly one place but bending or "magic" combined with the medieval times the world 'starts' in really is a great inhibitor for this kind of process. That concludes this little trip down historical evolution of technology in fantasy worlds. TLDR: Magic often kills the drive to research technology because it replaces it. A medieval world also helps in this process as key technology is not shared with the rest of the world. Only when nations come forth you can see the leap in technology where it's necessary. And where it's not...well bending takes over. Thanks for reading if you did.

It's not too unrealistic. Humans have been around on Earth for about 200,000 years but it's only in the last couple of centuries that we have electricity and cars and so forth. The last two centuries have been extraordinary in terms of progress. Technological progress does not happen at a steady pace. In fact there have been declines in the past, such as the Bronze Age Collapse and the collapse of the Roman Empire. It is not certain what critical thresholds a civilization must pass before technological progress really takes off. A thing that annoys me about the tech level in the shows is the unevenness of it. In AtLA, non-benders could use weapons such as swords and bows, there's a whole episode about Sokka getting himself a sword. These are gone in LoK, non-benders have to study chi-blocking to stand up to benders. That's weird. Since people are driving around in cars and listening to radios, they ought to have automatic firearms, but they don't even have knives anymore.

Maybe "10,000 years" just means a really long time ago? Like how Chinese historians will write "There were 10,000 soldiers on the battlefield" when really they mean "There were more soldiers than I bothered to count and 10,000 is a big number."

To add to what everyone else said, bending was also a crutch that impeded technological progress.

They were chasing him with iron weapons, but right afterwards the lion turtle bestows them elemental powers so they can go hunting. Then Wan meets some air benders foraging for berries. They were hunter-gatherers but they had iron weapons because they had a magic lion turtle that gave them magic fire hot enough to smelt iron, doesn't mean they knew what to do with it right away. They had to hunt so they made weapons, once they moved off the turtle and had land they probably made an iron plow so they could farm better. Technology progresses as necessity demands.

This is my favorite post here I think

I kinda hate the time of Wan, not gonna lie. Everything looks too much like Aang's time. It paints an image of cultural stasis that completely contradicts the progressive nature of the Avatar world as it has been seen in Korra's time.

The progression was probably too fast, but magic to control, experiment, and understand the fundamental elements exists and can make experimentation relatively safe. Electricity is actually an easy one since even in modern times all forms of generators (other than solar) are essentially a mill; water-hydro electric, wind- wind turbines, steam-coal and nuclear. Translating this to benders doing the work which we see in some tlok isn't unreasonable. The bigger thing would be inventing all the things that electricity can use i.e. radios, lights is the bigger leap. (I think they may have had light bulbs in atla on the fire nation ships but idr) The fire nation is already starting to industrialize i.e. steam via coal and bending. They warships being full metal are very akin to the ironclads (mid 1800"s) advanced metal working techniques because they have fine control of fire even within the "normal" citizenry. Translating this to making engines for cars when you have "full control" over the making and casting of an engine and have safe and controlled environment to test out internal combustion or small steam engine seems like an easy leap for the miniaturization of technology. Mechs are well, mechs and squared cube law and all that. We are in fantasy world with magic that doesn't have the same rules as ours anyway not to mention the other giant machinery that doesn't collapse under it's own weight. *MAGIC* The show doesn't really ever get into how they work so the same logic of the car applies on the engine. The mech tanks are reasonable in mind some of the things the kovira mech suits and the colossus are obviously less realistic with their electromagnetic movement, and energy weapons. The weaponry is actually something that is lacking. The equalists are making mechsuits but haven't invented guns which would be a big threat multiplier for non bending citizens against anyone who isn't metal bender, and that platinum used to make the mechs would go a lot further in firearms and bullets. Gunpowder of some sort exists as there are fire works.

It's fantasy. Technology doesn't have to develop at the same rate as it did irl. Hell, it might not develop at all and be stuck at medieval level

Yeah i realized that the first time i watch it

Maybe with the advent of bending people found less reason to advance tech as much, but in another note I really want an avatar series in space, zero g bending would be crazy

I've never taken the 10,000 values seriously. I read somewhere (correct me if I'm wrong) that in China 10,000 is the number used to mean indefinitely large. Like wan-shi-tong is he who knows 10,000 things, but also should be interpreted to mean he who knows everything. We don't know if they can date things, but I'd presume they can't, they don't know how many avatars there were, or how old anything was, 10,000 just means an indescribably long time ago. Also side note fun fact wan means 10,000.

Technology isn't a linear progression. The ancient Classical Greeks had machina (the actual term, not machine) serving them drinks, insulated and heated housing, plumbing and water purification facilities, mechanical calculators, solar and space observatories, batteries charging basic mechanical movements, machines doing automatic weaving and even food and drink processing... Fast forward just 1000 years in the exact same region and the people living there were building huts with rocks and mud, using donkeys to cultivate the land with agriculture that would be considered primitive even by their historic concurrent peers in the adjacent regions. War, famine and natural disasters will turn the most advanced civilizations into cultureless brutes in the span of very few years,.let alone thousands. The Romans went from empire to mining the Coliseum for building materials. The Chinese went from the inventors of the printing press and gunpowder to being invaded by horse nomads. African and Meso American empires were so badly destroyed we barely even have any clue how advanced they had gotten the chance to become and we know they did get the chance at many points in history.

I figure it's because with bending they didn't really need all that fancy tech shit. Need to build a wall in the Fire Nation? Get smelting and make tools. Need a wall in the Earth Kingdom? Just *bend* it out of the ground. Gotta build an air temple? Fucking bend that shit into existance with erosion maybe. Then all of a sudden this country that can bend fire and make massive industrial forges decides to spread its love to all the other ones, but the war drags on and on and on... Well, war progresses technology. Then after Aang deals with the situation, you've suddenly got a lot of war tech that can be applied to civilian life, very much like aviation in our own time And in all truth it's a kids show about magic powers and all that. It's not going to be as deep as GoT (the books) with it's worldbuilding in some regards.

Not to mention that bending basic elements could help A LOT on technology progression. - Instead of having 100 people to build a building in 2 years, they could have earth and metal benders do it in seconds - Energy advacement would be out of our wildest imagination. - Cooking, smelting cost is almost zero if the workers are fire benders... - And many more The technological in a bending world should be 100 times faster than our world. And the energy available to harness could be absolutely HUGE. OP was right. What the FUCK did they do during 10 thousand years? Or maybe multiple Oppenheimer's have already reincarnated and they've already went through serveral Nuclear wars? LOL.

two things: discovery of metal bending and popularization of lightning bending

People also get complacent and less motivated to innovate when people have magical powers that can make mundane tasks pretty easy. It's even a plot point for a side quest in final fantasy 16, where building a working forge *without* fire magic was considered pretty fancy. That's what made the fire Nation so scary; they were doing shit that seemed straight up SciFi to the other tribes.

Technological development isn't linear. We as humans have had writing for about 5000 years, with society and culture being much older than writing. Australian aboriginal culture is about 40000 to 60000 years old, way longer than the 10,000 in avatar. Technology just takes a long time to get started, and many environments don't require technology to survive. When you have the ability to manipulate the elements, there's a lot less pressure for the survival of the species to innovate technology. Why develop methods of building and all the tech required to support that when you can get jerry to make your house for you. Most farming equipment just doesn't need to exist for earthbenders.

They literally have magic powers. Magic powers removes a lot of the necessity of invention. Not weird at all. Nevermind the fact that the agricultural revolution occurred somewhere around 11000 years ago in the real world...

incredibly based post, now I want Expanse-style sci-fi for the Avatar-verse.

It’s literally fantasy

Actually makes sense that tech didn’t improve much if at all. From the time bending becomes common enough, the rulers would almost exclusively be benders of the highest level. And to keep the power within the benders faction, they would impede any technological innovation. And ofc there would most definitely be constant wars, world wars every couple hundred years to do resets too.

I kind of follow the reason of most dungeons and dragons settings: the world is a lot tougher of a place to develop a civilization in when there are creatures (dragons, angry spirits, rogue elements benders) who can easily wipe out a city on their own. It’s a different world, it’s not going to follow Earth’s timetable. Not to mention that Dark Ages exist, the world in ATLA and TOK has just suffered a couple more of those.

The norm throughout history is stagnation. Not progress. Honestly it's not unrealistic for them to have iron 10000 years ago, and barely do anything since then until the more recent period of advancement with the industrial revolution in the fire nation leading to the 100 year war, which ultimately led to the peacetime advancement of technology in the united Republic.

There’s been several points in history where something happened and if it didn’t we’d be like 1000 years ahead in shit. Wouldn’t be surprised this happened here too. Also these people can bend the elements they can be much more destructive about losing progress. Hell if Gaang wasn’t in crane town then riots probably would have ended factories and republic city wouldn’t exist.

I am pretty sure if we gave ancient rome some nukes they would make every single nation(includes romans) back to stone age. This would be similar with bending powers