The City of Atlantis and Ancient Technology

[Janus]

"Ladies and Gentlemen, we interrupt this thread for a special news report.
Over to our reporter on the scene."

*Image chances.*

"Thank you, Bernard.
I am standing here at the Gateworld Forum, In the thread 'Kiwi's are evil aliens' where Janus is about to make a shocking accounement.
Here he comes now."

Janus: Thank you all for being here.
I have something to admit, I was wrong.
I believed that Kiwi's were evil aliens trying to take over the world.
But I fact the were trying to protect it.
It is the peaches who(m) want to destroy our planet.
I applogize to all Kiwi's all over the world and all people who like them."

*Janus of.*

"There you have it, Bernard.
A shocking announcement."

*Image returns to studio*

"Thank you, James.*

We now return you to your on-topic thread.

[Jarnin]

Excellent posts Liquidblue, you touch apon a couple of subjects a friend and I were having the other day.

Basically, he was saying that Atlantis seems more like StarGate SG-1 than SG-1. The lack of exploration in SG-1 in season 8 has been, for the most part, non-existant, while the exploration in Atlantis has been pretty much the setting in each show. In other words, the shows seem to have role reversal issues.

yes only people who have the gene can use the chair or heal people with the knowlegde so Jack has the gene.And probably more than others because he is the only one who could heal Bra'tac.And Daniel said that he was a bit more special than the last time.

Ok, let me explain something about genetics really fast: You don't have "more of one gene" than others. You have one gene, and it has two states, dominate or recessive. If the gene is active, it's dominate. If it's not active, it's recessive.

O'Neill has a dominate version of the gene that allows him to interface with ancient technology. So does Sheppard and Dr. Beckett.
However, O'Neill also had the ancient repository of knowledge uploaded into his head, which changed his brain chemisty. More than likely, its the brain chemistry change that allowed him to heal Bra'tac, and not the knowledge of how to do it.

[keppiezbt]

maybe jack doesnt have the gene- they never say.

another possibility is that by recieving the ancient library into his brain it activated something inside allowing him to use the ancient tech and gain ancient powers w/o having the gene.

[airfro]

i think maybe the ancient libary did leave somethig with jack- how did he no how to use the weapon

[LiquidBlue]

Were the Ancients Culturally and Technologically Stagnant?

I ask this question becuase of the comparision between what we know and imagine of Ancient society and how things are progressing in actuality on earth. Most of all I ask this question because the ancient artifacts so far recovered seem to have been built to endure.

Take for example the stargates. Presumably it is more expensive to create stargates that do no break down. In our own culture, objects are created with the knowledge that they will be replaced. Often when purchasing some sort of technology, durability is sacrifced for decreased cost; especially when said technology is likely to be supplanted by something more advanced in fairly short order.

So why did the ancients create stargates that did not break down. I can see two possible reasons.

(1) The technology behind the stargates was mature to the point that no forseeable upgrades would be necessary or supplant the stargates deployed.

(2) The Ancients went through the effort necessary to create mantience free and "unbreakable" stargates as present to those that would find them useful but wouldn't have the technology to maintain the gates or create new ones.

Another hint that the ancients had stagnanted. We do not have any hint that the Ancients explored or settled any galaxies but the Milky Way and Pegasus. Admitably the Milky Way is a very large place. But why did the Ancients stay in a relatively small part of the Universe. Were there groups of Ancients that settled other parts of the universe? Apparantly the plague was able to wipe out a good part of the Ancients because there was easy contact between all of the communities.

Stagnation hint number 3: Atlantis apparantly remained the most advanced Ancient city over the course of millions of years. Certainly they could upgrade the city, but there is no cosmetic evidence that they did so. Even the puddle jumpers look the same.

Thoughts?

[LordAnubis]

Were the Ancients Culturally and Technologically Stagnant?

I ask this question becuase of the comparision between what we know and imagine of Ancient society and how things are progressing in actuality on earth. Most of all I ask this question because the ancient artifacts so far recovered seem to have been built to endure.

Take for example the stargates. Presumably it is more expensive to create stargates that do no break down. In our own culture, objects are created with the knowledge that they will be replaced. Often when purchasing some sort of technology, durability is sacrifced for decreased cost; especially when said technology is likely to be supplanted by something more advanced in fairly short order.

So why did the ancients create stargates that did not break down. I can see two possible reasons.

(1) The technology behind the stargates was mature to the point that no forseeable upgrades would be necessary or supplant the stargates deployed.

(2) The Ancients went through the effort necessary to create mantience free and "unbreakable" stargates as present to those that would find them useful but wouldn't have the technology to maintain the gates or create new ones.

Another hint that the ancients had stagnanted. We do not have any hint that the Ancients explored or settled any galaxies but the Milky Way and Pegasus. Admitably the Milky Way is a very large place. But why did the Ancients stay in a relatively small part of the Universe. Were there groups of Ancients that settled other parts of the universe? Apparantly the plague was able to wipe out a good part of the Ancients because there was easy contact between all of the communities.

Stagnation hint number 3: Atlantis apparantly remained the most advanced Ancient city over the course of millions of years. Certainly they could upgrade the city, but there is no cosmetic evidence that they did so. Even the puddle jumpers look the same.

Thoughts?

Every post that you have written thus far has been intelligent, engaging, and filled with exceptional questions. I look forward to anything you will post in the future. Your words flow like a novel that can't be put down. Thank you!

You've asked so many questions, so it's hard to answer them all, but I'll take a stab at this one, about stagnation. I'll combine your two questions into one unified answer. Are you a Star Wars fan? In the Star Wars universe, it has been asked, many times, how the Republic and Empire could possess space-faring technology, with hyperspeed, for tens of thousands of years, yet when you think about it, have progressed little in that time period. In other words, they haven't advanced that much over 10,000 - 15,000 years! Can you imagine having space-travel for that long?

Compare that with our own advancement on Earth. Fifty years, in 1954, there were no personal computers, rudimentary modems, no microchips, no digital clocks, no push button phones, no compact discs, no DVDs...in fact, many parts of the world barely had telephone service, running water, or electricity. Can you imagine that? We're not talking Africa or parts of the Third World -- we're talking about rural parts of Europe and the United States.

In 50 years, we have advanced much. In 100 years, we've advanced even more. In 200 years, we've gone from horse and buggy transportation to exploring the solar system! So, to us, it seems illogical or unbelievable that a civilization that has reached a miraculous level of advancement would stagnate with little progress over hundreds of years.

I used SW as an example, but going back to the Ancients, consider this question: Once you've reached a certain level of technology, what more is there to develop? What's the impetus to keep pushing ahead? Here are some things the Ancients, in the Milky Way and Pegasus, could do:

- bring back the dead by healing them instantly
- create flying cities capable of traveling to other galaxies
- seed galaxies with life
- build a vast network of stargates capable of instantly transporting living and non-living matter from one planet to another; from one galaxy to another
- time travel
- terra-forming
- genetic engineering
- ascending to god-like form

Think about that. Basically, the question is, what more could they want? Once you've reached a certain level of advancement, there is very little refinement to be done. For them, the next step was to become "gods", which they did. There wasn't much more for them to explore, develop, or create -- they basically did everything that they needed to or wanted to do.

The gates themselves were built of maintenance free and unbreakable materials. Unlike us, they didn't think in terms of economics; that is, cost was not relevant. We waste a lot of time and energy into worrying about things like cost. To a society like the Ancients, such things are trivial. Therefore, building the gates to last and be free from errors, flaws, and defects was their prime directive, which they accomplished.

They may, however, envisioned possible upgrades down the line, but never got around to it. Remember, they sorta died out, ascended, or blended into existing human populations.

Why upgrade something when it's built explicitly to last forever with exceptionally advanced technology. I mean, here's an example. If I own a wrist watch that I absolutely love and it is designed to last 100 years, which is probably longer than my life span, and the watch never breaks because it's indestructible, built to last, and never breaks down, why would I replace it? Why would I buy a new one?

You're thinking in terms of human technology. We build things cheaply more often than not. We build things that are designed NOT to last. We build things that need to be replaced or upgraded. You're thinking in human terms, not Ancient terms. They built things to last and not be replaced.

About the galaxies...who's to say they didn't go to other galaxies? They very well may have. Given their level of technology, I would say it's a fair bet that they have done much more than we know from the two shows.

Just my two cents

[Fox McCloud]

Some very illuminating ideas there.

I think i'd like to add about the stagnant thing. I beleive that the Ancients progressed so far, they had technology that was most likely the best in the galaxy, and they have pshed there own physical and mental abilities as far as they could go. There was no where else they could push. Everything was at peak, so the next form of advancement was through evolution. Which they succeeded in.

Right, about Atlantis andall this Ancient technolgy. I want to know why on earth (no pun intented) has the team not actually loooked at the gates and gone "wait a minute...theres something different about these gates".

[aAnubiSs]

The only thing the Ancients could do was to build bigger stuff, which they didn't really need. Who needs every person on the planet to have a private jet...

[Ancients Rising]

The only thing the Ancients could do was to build bigger stuff, which they didn't really need. Who needs every person on the planet to have a private jet...

Every person on the planet

Unlike us, they didn't think in terms of economics; that is, cost was not relevant. We waste a lot of time and energy into worrying about things like cost. To a society like the Ancients, such things are trivial. Therefore, building the gates to last and be free from errors, flaws, and defects was their prime directive, which they accomplished.

I inferred from your analysis that your thinking monetary cost. Economic cost is monetary cost + opportunity cost (OC).

I agree with the idea about the Ancients not adhering to ideas about monetary cost. They didn't have corporations, they weren't capitalist, there was no money, they were all communist in the truest sense of communism where everything was done for each other out of compassion for your fellow man/woman.

OC is the cost of foregoing an alternative. Say you used a chunk of naquadah to build a Stargate, but to do that you sacrificed the ability to make a FTL ship with a naquadah reactor.

The Ancients still had to worry about the OC's related to resources and maybe even time. So they weren't totally free from the idea of costs, no one can be unless you have unlimited resources, they still had to think about allocation of resources.

With regards to my last point, I do not mean allocation of resources in the free-market sense where equity is cast aside in favour of efficiency. The Ancients instead would have looked to promote equity over efficiency in their resource allocation since they, it seems, did not have individual based wants – instead they did things for the benefit of their race(society) and friends.

[PlaZ]

Hi

great read sofar. nice questions and theories!

i just wanted to throw in two thoughts:

1. About the "Where are the textbooks for young ancients, how do they gain their knowledge?" question: I'd say, considering their healing powers and their general advancement in *everything* they probably lived very long and didnt have the average 2 kids per family. So if they had offspring they would just hook em up to that repository thing. Why study hard if you can download your culture's wisdom via broadband? That way it would also only be compatible with your race only and safe of being stolen.

2. About the "They could figure out ancient technology soon and build ZPMs or other advanced toys" issue: Keep in mind that in the moment they find means of creating a ZPM or smth similar, their first objective will (or has to) be flying back home, taking the city with them of course. It would be the only reasonable (and military, even though its not, but it kinda is with earth being in danger, etc) thing to do. After that we would be seeing something like in the episode 'home' when the question is raised whether it would be wise to further intervene back in pegasus. They prolly decide to go back (with teyla's folks and all) but it would totally mess with the whole atlantis series concept.

[Wass]

1. About the "Where are the textbooks for young ancients, how do they gain their knowledge?" question: I'd say, considering their healing powers and their general advancement in *everything* they probably lived very long and didnt have the average 2 kids per family. So if they had offspring they would just hook em up to that repository thing. Why study hard if you can download your culture's wisdom via broadband? That way it would also only be compatible with your race only and safe of being stolen.

If only that was possible in reality I wouldn’t have had to study 4 years at university.

[aAnubiSs]

The thing is that curiosity and intuition and all other stuff comes from learning and experiencing things. If you had all knowledge from the start you'd be a human library without a personality.

[Wass]

The thing is that curiosity and intuition and all other stuff comes from learning and experiencing things. If you had all knowledge from the start you'd be a human library without a personality.

That reminds me of few people at university LOL

[Atlantis1]

One thing I have wondered about is there food source. We see the people from Earth having to trade with others for a new food source. How did the Ancients handle this especially when they first went to the Pegasus galaxy. It would seem to me they would have some kind of garden (for lack of the right word) in the city. Something possibly like we saw on the ship in the movie The Black Hole. There would have been no one to trade with in the beginning.

[aAnubiSs]

One thing I have wondered about is there food source. We see the people from Earth having to trade with others for a new food source. How did the Ancients handle this especially when they first went to the Pegasus galaxy. It would seem to me they would have some kind of garden (for lack of the right word) in the city. Something possibly like we saw on the ship in the movie The Black Hole. There would have been no one to trade with in the beginning.

The Ancients could probably rearrange particles. So they could make meat from iron.