system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Lotr] how have the people of Middle earth not advanced more technically?

In real life, the first human civilizations started around 4000 to 3000 BCE, or around 5000 to 6000 years ago. In lotr, just the combined time of the 2nd and 3rd age is over 6400 years, not to mention the entirety of the 1st age, when men first awoke, as well as all the years of the trees when elves were around,  so why doesn't Sauron have tactical nukes and Gandalf an ak47 by now?
gpt
The elves and the Ainur are sort of static in the sense they already are what they are destined to ever be. You see this when they are unable to *recreate* something that has been destroyed. They are bound to the world, so it's impossible for them to recreate or even replicate a pattern that has left the world. Similarly, they can't make huge leaps of innovation and technological progress because they just can't. They are as advanced as they will ever be.

Once the elves, the Ainur and their influence vanish from Middle-Earth, the world becomes the dominion of humans. And the special gift of humans is precisely that they aren't bound to rigid patterns of fate like that; their role in the cosmos is active and dynamic, not static.