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Message: <blockquote data-quote="adwyn" data-source="post: 1901971" data-attributes="member: 14083">As has been poited out already, there isn't any one reason. Technology is in so many ways inseperable from culture, from needs, and from other technologies. Gunpowder for example; First there needs to be the discovery of gunpowder. Its not that complex, but someone some where needs to mix it together for some reason. And then apply heat or flame to it. And survive. And then do it again and again, which means knowing how they did it in the first place, which eliminates a lot of accidental discoveries. Great, now one person some where knows how to make a powder that goes boom. Then they need to show it to others who might give a rats a** about it. This rules out most tribal societies, as boom powder doesn't make you warmer or fill your belly. To transition gunpowder to a weapon, there must be a way of delivering it to the right place at the right time. Guns/cannons are a great way of doing this, but they require the inspiration to do so and the metal working technology as well. Again if a society doesn't have both, then the whole things a write off and they're back to life the way it was. So lets say a society has 1) Discovered gunpowder. 2) Experimented with it enough to have something useful. 3) Been able to manufacture a firearm. Now what? Primitive cannons are cumbersome, slow to load, unreliable, expensive, and dangerous. They are generations away from being of use against massed troops in formations, much less a single foe, and even then bows will dominate for a while.So why do it? In Europe the cannons were not field weapons, they were siege weapons. Their use as a field gun evolved out of the expertise developed in shooting at huge non moving targets. Thus without castles the cannon doesn't need to be developed, which means guns aren't very likely either.</blockquote>

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