> And that's another one I wish I had put in, now--why is it that every fantasy world seems to never get beyond the medieval level of technology, even after thousands of years of development? The real "dark ages" only lasted about 500 years. Think on this, fantasy novelists. Only two millennia ago, the Roman Empire ruled a large chunk of the world. They did it using bronze age technology, horsepower (literally) and some clever engineering (also lots of slaves). We went from that to walking on the moon (WITHOUT the benefit of magic, even!) in less than 2000 years. All of recorded history (which basically means from the start of true civilization to the present) encompasses about 10,000 years.
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> So if the "elves" have had basically the same civilization for the last 20,000 years in your novel, or if the great human empire has ruled for 1,000 years (and HAS the benefit of magic!) and hasn't yet progressed beyond feudalism and iron age technology, something is probably wrong.
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> -- Dave

It's probably because whilst in the real dark ages, the vast majority of people were peasants and spent their time growing crops and weaving things and so forth, the vast majority of people in fantasy novels spend their time struggling with the forces of darkness or whacking dragons with swords or living as slaves of Dark Lord Evilmore or something, and progress doesn't happen as fast under those circumstances.