system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Fantasy] Why is society always in a medieval stasis?

I don't mean why are most fantasies medieval, I mean, frequently in fantasies mankind was created and immediately moved to the medieval period. Why? Humans didn't evolve with the complex societal structures and knowledge of the medieval era, even if humans were explicitly created they'd still need to learn such things. Why are there never hunter gatherers? Why immediately knights and kings?
gpt
In many cases, the only evidence for the history of human societies that we have in these quasi-Medieval settings are those written by people within that setting, and *interpreted* and *imagined* by people within that setting.

Technological and social progress was not something that happened at an obvious rate during much of *our* Medieval period, and there was no expectation of it: people broadly expected things to continue much as they were or even that things were in decline since, in Europe at least, they had the evidence of great Roman structures that their own economic and technological abilities could not recreate, and the overall theme of Christianity was the tale of the Fall from grace and of a former Golden Age.

As a result, people tended to imagine the past as being much the same as things currently were too - and many Medieval illustrations of historical scenes reflect this - with ancient Greek or Roman scenes being shown in typical Medieval costume, and with Medieval equipment etc.

We can expect a similar worldview in other quasi-Medieval societies, and that their histories would be written in expectation that things were much the same thousands of years ago, when in reality, they may not have been at all.