Quote Originally Posted by Lyth View Post
I think the state of education and society's survival demands are often linked. For example, following the Fourth Umbral Calamity (of Earth), there was a dark age of sorts in which people were generally distrustful of knowledge and technology on account of the fall of Allag. This persisted until the Fifth Umbral Calamity (of Ice) forced society to develop magic again in order to fend off the cold and have a means of growing crops in the harsh environment. After the War of the Magi and the Sixth Umbral Calamity (of Water), there was yet another dark age in which magic was forbidden, libraries were burnt, and spellcasters were hunted down. So this very much seems to have been a cyclical thing simply because people didn't fully who was at the root of these Calamities.
This kind of brings up another good point. Eorzea never started as the first civilization. It already had precursors with certainly higher literacy rates, as well as methods for intercontinental travel and route planning. Better technology and life expectancy. Floating continent and computers and what not. As well as robots and advanced automation. Eorzea got to leapfrog off of that and disseminate the knowledge. It also had shadowy villains wanting it to advance to flourish to make another calamity possible. Hard to really say what age they're in, compared to ours