> Depends on the area of Glorantha.
Sure... I have a hard time seeing Bronze Age in the monotheist west, although a point can be made for the Dawn Age and the first half of the Imperial Age (before the Abiding Book was spread).
> And for what it is worth the Central European Bronze Age was likely richer than you are giving it credit for (one of the players in our gaming group is an archeologist with the Neues Museum here in Berlin and has dramatically changed my perspective on the Central European Bronze Age - which happens to be her speciality).
Oh, I'm far from underestimating Bronze Age central Europe in terms of artistry, knowledge, or ease of life. There were no great cities, city states or empires that we know of, though, unlike the Fertile Crescent. Climate and the lack of need for irrigation made the clan the perfect social unit. (Now where have I heard this before?)
The closest to Fertile Crescent communities with strong specialisation were the salt mines of Hallstatt and nearby settlements, requiring an amount of organisation and probably bureaucracy equivalent to those regions that relied on irrigation.
Looking at Glorantha, we find that regions that rely on irrigation farming are a lot more centralized and organized than those hill-scratching Orlanthi (or Lodrili dry farmers). This includes the river valleys of Esrolia, Oroninela and Dara Happa, quite probably the Arcos valley as well.
>> The architecture is Iron Age, even Roman Iron Age. Pelorians and God Learners both used the same type of concrete which enabled the Romans to produce all their prestigious buildings, never mind the facades of marble, natural stone or brick.
> Are you sure of that? I'm certainly not.
I read this in a source by Greg (not sure whether published), and it took me some research to stop unbelieving.
Classical Dara Happan construction is mud bricks, or baked mud bricks. Lunar arenas aren't.
>> Gloranthan roads are Roman, too – Sartar with its dwarf-taught masonry even outshining the Pelorian network of highways, with the possible exception of the Daughter's Road (which should be considered one of the miracles of contemporary Gloranthan architecture, along with a number of really incredible (nonmagical) bridges elsewhere).
> A few magically constructed roads are comparable to what the Romans had (or are even more impressive). But most are not different from the roads of the Bronze Age (which were no different from most roads of the Iron Age or the Medieval Age for that matter).
I have seen impressive oaken roads both across the Shannon swamplands in Ireland or in boggy forests in our region. I work next to the "Ochsenweg", the main overland road between Denmark and Germany for millennia, and I am acutely aware of the lack of road construction there prior to the 18th century. Most major roads were basically half a mile wide stretches of untilled land full of mudholes. I have seen interesting "furrows" on the flank of a wooded hill in Bavaria that were the results of centuries of finding alternate dry paths across that flank, 3 to 4 meters deep.
>> Transportation has at least the standard of the middle Ages, if not Roman (note that Roman standards are higher than those of subsequent times well after the Renaissance). You get roads suitable for wagons, and you get wagoners even where the roads are dubious. You get mule caravans (also a very Roman Age invention).
> Are you sure of that? Again, I am not.
Wagon transport is fairly recent in central Europe. Systematic breeding of mules is not found north of the Alps in animal bones prior to Roman times, as far as I could find out. The fertile crescent may have had mules earlier (or donkey-onager crossbreeds), but also had the camel as beast of burden.
>> Shipbuilding is up to classical Mediterranean and Dark Ages Atlantic quality. (If you want Bronze Age shipbuilding, look at the Hjortspring boat, or Minoan and Sea Folk boats and simple low-board penteconters. Instead we get longships, triremes and complex rigging.)
> You get boats "comparable" to longships and triremes. Comparable for rules purposes at least.
Oars: invented in the Mediterranean around 1300 BC, arrived in the Baltic area around 100 BC. Square sails are part of the upriver glyph in Egyptian writing.
Atlantic and Baltic sailors used paddles throughout their Bronze Age, and the ship types of 5000 years old Helleristninger in Norway are no different from the Hjortspring boat.
Having talked to the experimental archaeologists who built the Hjortspring boat in Hjemsted Archaeological center, I know that the original builders probably were better woodworkers than later generations, using material with fairly advanced properties only recently reached by petrochemical synthetics.
The Saxons ruled the Atlantic coasts without sails. Masts are only found in the Viking Age. Roman biremes did have sails, and presumably the Venetian (those of northern France and Britain, not of Venice) boats had them too, but neither were able to suppress the Saxon boats of the Nydam type.
>> In a sense, Glorantha is downright mediaeval in its technology, taking into account that the Imperial Age saw great mechanical (as well as mechamagical) wonders constructed by the Zistorites.
> Are you talking about the Third Age in Central Genertela? Then you are likely dramatically overstating the case. And those Zistorite wonders are confined to the Machine Ruins, warded by spirits and ghosts and curses.
The Jrusteli had fairly advanced naval technology, not all of that based on Zistorite mechamagic. Quite a lot of western sorcery (materialist stuff) translates as technology, without necessarily being Zistorite in origin.
>> Metallurgy isn't quite Bronze Age, either. Orlanthi bronze swords and Seshnegi iron swords have the same quality as the steel swords of the Iliad, and Pelorian bronze blades aren't far inferior.
> Why do you imagine that Pelorian bronze blades are so superior?
They survived centuries of neighborhood to the Orlanthi. Their blades will have been inferior to Orlanthi blades (or bought from them), but not so much that the Orlanthi had a significant technological advantage.
>> Metal nails and clamps will be used (sparingly) in construction. Admittedly Gloranthan bronze rather than iron, but hardly weaker than in Roman or mediaeval buildings. Foundries can produce bells and could theoretically produce cannons (though with the dwarf monopoly on non-magical explosives, these are unlikely to happen).
> Again, are you sure of that? As I keep saying, I'm certainly not.
Royal Sartarite buildings are more advanced than e.g. the fortifications of Manching - and those used significant amounts of metal.
A reason why bronze bracing wasn't used in Iron Age or subsequent period architecture is that iron was more available. Given the quality of such iron, bronze needn't be much inferior in our history, either.
>> The Lunar Empire may not be up to Roman standard in technology, but certainly up to the standard of Alexander's successor states.
> Joerg - one thing that I have been impressed upon by folk who actually make a career in this is that there was not really much of a technological revolution between 500 BC and 100 AD.
Roman engineering was quite innovative with regards to roadbuilding, aquaeducts and building material (the concrete I talked about above). I may be no student of architecture, but I do work in water systems and have read quite a bit about Roman water systems, both fresh water and waste water, and the developments in Roman times. Some of the 2nd century books on water systems still were standard literature in the 18th century. This may be an esoteric subject for archaeologists, but Roman engineering really took off. Of course, we also get Archimedes and Ptolemaian artificers doing interesting prototyping, but the Romans were fiends at applying their advances in engineering.
> The proposition that the metal-work found at the Hochdorf grave (circa 6th century BC) is inferior to the metal-work found at the Limes just can't be supported (and I'll be an eyewitness to that since I was at both last week).
The difference is that the metalwork at the limes is mass-produced for the Limitati, not unicates produced for important rulers.
Besides, there always is the question of the material properties of the metal. Unless experimental archaeologists or students of ancient engineering did material testing on replicas, most archaeologists are prone to judge the style of the art rather than the applicability of an object found in a royal grave.
> As an aside, the Hochdorf vase was likely made by Greeks, but includes replacement pieces crafted by a local smith (at least by a non-Greek).
Yes, that's basically another difference between Glorantha and the Bronze Age. The Bronze Age had trade routes across the distance between the North Sea and upper Egypt, between Cornwall and Persia. We get a rare exception with the Third Eye Blue smith in Gringlestead where the Bronze Age saw long distance travel of craftspeople (e.g. Bavarians in Stonehenge).
> The same thing is true in Glorantha. Population numbers are far greater in 1600 S.T. as in 100 S.T., but I am not sure that the best metal-work of 1600 S.T. is any more technologically advanced than that of 100 S.T.
Neither am I. As I said, there was a peak in the God Learner-held regions, and subsequent decline.
I'm not exactly sure I am buying completely into the dragonbone technology of the EWF, but then I don't see a great conceptual difference between the bones of gods and the bones of dragons. Either may display metallic material properties, the methods of working the material may differ from redsmithing or blacksmithing. I would guess that about one third of the EWF population in 1042 escaped the Dragonkill (ok, their direct descendants) simply by fleeing the Golden Horde or going into hiding while they took over upper the Oslir Valley. The drive to use dragonbone may have been killed along with the leaders of the EWF, and the magics required may have collapsed along with the draconic dream projected by those leaders.
In the conflict between Slontos and the EWF, equipment doesn't appear to have played a decisive role in the outcome of the land battles. The fight against the Zistorites or the God Learner navy was a different proposition.
> Then again, the best metal-work in any age belongs to the dwarfs (who are marvelous and can craft things unimaginable and impossible for humans to duplicate).
I agree that dwarven technology is at the stage of Sheffield steel works rather than Bronze Age, and that there is very little leakage to human civilizations in that quality.
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