Lost Ark Gives a Peek at the April Update, Including the Brelshaza Raid Hard mode, and Ancient Gear

Comments

• Angrakhan Member EpicPosts: 1,785

  March 2023

  Where did the trope about old thing are more powerful get started? Did Tolkien start that or does it go back further? I always laugh because it's the complete opposite of how real life works. You ever hear of some archeologist digging up a bronze dagger out of a mummy tomb and it's the most powerful weapon on the planet? Yeah me either.
• BrotherMaynard Member RarePosts: 647

  March 2023 edited March 2023

  Angrakhan said:

  Where did the trope about old thing are more powerful get started? Did Tolkien start that or does it go back further? I always laugh because it's the complete opposite of how real life works. You ever hear of some archeologist digging up a bronze dagger out of a mummy tomb and it's the most powerful weapon on the planet? Yeah me either.

  
  They go back way more than 20th century. It's usually explained as some form of more advanced or skilled civilisation leaving behind artefacts that are rumoured or even rediscovered by those that replaced them.
  
  Tolkien worked with this concept insofar as the most skilled crafters being dead for millenia and the later civilisations and cultures losing (or in some cases never having had) contact with the divine that had inspired and led to the creation of the mythical works of ancient days when the link was still very much present.
  
  Other fictional universes use this concept much more directly and strongly, the best example that I know of is Warhammer 40k, where one of the main premises is that humanity had reached its technological zenith millenia in the past and a very harsh fall from this peak followed, in which mankind came close to extinction. Fragments of the past technological glory can still be found, but humanity is rarely able to understand or use them. Anything we make 'currently' is of inferior quality and most of our knowledge has been lost, that's where 40k is.
  
  But you can find this concept going all the way back to ancient Greece, and maybe more. The whole idea of a past super-advanced civilisation to which we cannot compare is present in numerous civilisations and their myths, the Atlantis being the best-known example.