Why didn't Roshar get any significant technological breakthroughs?

[Lyncias]

So I've been thinking, from from the original mistborn trilogy to the wax&wayne books Scadrial went through some pretty big technological advances, and it's only been around 300 years. Judging from Dalinar's vision in village, Roshar didn't really get any "new inventions." So I'm thinking, is it because Roshar didn't have their version of the Words of Founding? Or is it because Roshar don't have the capability to achieve technologies like cars?

 

Sorry if this had been posted before.

[Khyrindor he/him]

The other Shards have all been held by the same Vessel for thousands of years (that we know of). On Roshar, the Spren act as Honor's 'agents' and it is likely that He has an agreement with Odium as part of the Oathpact that prohibits him gheating and giving a ton of free technology to the people.

 

And Dalinar's vision saw people with Bronze Age technology, while current Roshar has basically Renaissance tech without gunpowder. The way most people interpret the Oathpact is that the ten Heralds would be tortured in Braize until one of them breaks. When they do, a Desolation comes and wipes out most of the planet, and they start over from the Bronze Age. This time, there was only one Herald being tortured: Taln. He took much longer to break than the other Heralds, and this time around, the humans have much more technology at their disposal. Fabrials are being invented and re-invented constantly, and there is a whole Devotiary "devoted" to science, and history.

 

Harmony, on the other hand, is a brand new Shard. He felt the need to tell the humans a lot of what He knew when he Ascended. There are arguments for and against His decision, but I won't get into that. 

[natc]

Roshar began with bronze age and now has fabrial heaters, near-instant messaging via spanreed, and proximity alarms, with levitating platforms being a recent thing.

Northern Scadrial has a lot of Earth tech, but no wireless communication whatsoever, proper irrigation techniques, or any exploration of their planet. Some of feruchemy is still not well understood, hemalurgy is almost uncharted territory, and the intricacies of combining all three arts is almost untouched (the South is a different story entirely).

You're just looking at the wrong things. Different environments and cultures, leading to different fields of science, and different techniques. All of Scadrial science is mostly grounded in, well, "real" science, and they still lack in some areas. Their magical development is far behind. Roshar's tech is almost exclusively centered around the magical elements of their world, which is so rich in stormlight and spren.

Besides, Scadrial was actually academically pretty advanced before and during the Empire. As far as the religion list goes there is enough research data for the Keepers to have salvaged regarding human physiology, zoology, microbiology (no ash for microbes to metabolize anymore, must fix them), geology (ditch the ashmounts and terraform the Basin), ocean cartography (a whole religion based on that), and astronomical charts detailed enough to calculate planetary orbits and the advanced mathematics you'd probably need for doing so. And most of it was plain lost. Ancient Scadrial is smart.

Edited March 10, 2016 by natc

[king of nowhere]

Also, we live in a time of constant tehnological progress, and we tend to take for granted that a human society, left on its own, will progress. While that's true on a general base, said progress is exceedengly slow and mostly unnoticeable for most of history.

Humans separated from the other apes 5 millions years ago.

They invented fire 125000 years ago.

Agriculture arrived some 11000 years ago.

Bronze working arrived a few millennia after, and iron working after some more millennia.

The wheel is around 5000 years old.

Construction techniques evolved slowly over millennia.

 

So you see, before the scientific revolution in the last 400 years, it was perfectly normal that human technology would evolve at snail pace. You could observe an ancient culture over centuries and see only very limited differences. It's not surprising that roshar advanced so little, but that scadrial advanced so much. In fact, scadrial could only advance so fast because they were helped along the way.

 

Also, as others pointed out, roshar has advanced in a different direction. We think scientific progress always follow roughly the same progression, but that's not the case. The aztecs knew astronomy at least as well as the europeans, possibly better, but they didn't knew iron; in europe iron predates an accurate calendar by what? 3000 years? more?