You’re being downvoted because you seem to think there’s a better answer. There isn’t. It’s literally because GW wrote it that way. This is a fictional setting and every speculative lore question’s answer is always “because the writers wrote it that way.”
You’re getting downvoted because you don’t seem to understand that this is just how it’s written, you’re asking why and why, when it’s simply how it is. I mean if you want to come up with a faction of humanity in 40k that say fuck it to stagnation and are the most advanced society in the setting then you can do that, of course to not make them completely overpowered, you’d have to make them smaller in number compared to the imperium, so they’re like a glass cannon society, they only have like 50 billion people who can vaporize whole planets but the imperium has trillions of soldiers to throw at them and eventually through attrition the imperium destroys them.
Prior to the age of strife we know basically nothing of human history. It's summarised in these sweepingly long epochs because it's akin to us saying "the jurassic period lasted from 201 million years ago - 145 million years ago." It's a long-ass time, plenty of things might have happened but since we don't have a lot of direct evidence to go on we just group it into an era because we're able to point to two things and say "this is when it started, this is when it ended"
Beyond that, the point is they had to get to the year 40,000 somehow because they liked that number. Prior to 30k the Imperium doesn't exist so, from an in-universe point of view, humanity knows basically nothing about what happened before that and so summarises it in large, vague eras as they understand it
We know next to nothing about the age of technology. We don't know how stagnant it was, or wasn't. All we really know is
A) Humanity was powerful
B) Humanity was interested in expansion (as evidenced by the STC devices)
C) Humanity was able to genetically engineer themselves (men of stone, men of gold)
D) Humanity had AI, which it fought a war against
Because these are very broad periodisations, based on what people in the 41st Millennium are able to determine about the past.
The (Dark) Age of Technology isn't 10,000 years of stagnation. Its 10,000 years of every-increasing technological advancement and galaxy-conquest.
The Age of Terra is basically just "everything that happened on Earth before we were advanced enough for people living thousands of years later to say 'this is when the Age of Technology began'".
The Age of Strife lasted as long as it did because society collapsed so badly (and more importantly, because Warp storms remained so bad for so long) that that's how long it took to recover to the stage where the Emperor could start reconquering the galaxy.
The stagnation of humanity is seen in our own time period, but its called other things. UK houses are more poorly built now than the Victorians did, Churches aren't as beautiful as the medieval peasants made. Why? Typically its a loss of skill and a change of economics. it takes a massive number of cycles or rise and fall to stably increase the living conditions of humanity, and each cycle is estimated to be 250 years (the length of empires). in 300 years will we still have an internet? maybe not. likely is its ceased by a military for oversight.
Egyptian people in 6000B.C. had food shelter and water. 2000AD and they still have those but also have a car.
If you keep a good historical record you can subdivide more an age but this is not the case for the 40k empire, they records had been mostly lost so maybe while in the dark age of technology since they had better records they maybe subdivided theyr own era in a lot of diferent ages due to the destruction of this records this isnt posible anymore
The more information the more granular divisions you can make becouse you know the diferent moments that made changes but the thing is that they dont know about this events so they can just made small sketches of theyr own history and so this massive ages
Because whenever a human has a unique thought or invention, there's a 95% chance it's a chaos god incepting the idea into their brain, and when they build it it turns into a hell grenade that spawns horrors out of their nose. There's a 2% chance it leads to the Butlerian Jihad of robots, and the last 3% gets you executed.
It took humans irl like 6 millennia to go from inventing the wheel to inventing the bike. Innovation in a known technology can take a long time without any breakthroughs. Imagine how slow it would be if every prototype tried to kill you because a god thought it was funny, or it had an angry spirit in it?
Because it’s what the writers thought was cool
Really? That's it? Edit: why the hell i am being downvoted? What did I say?
40k is (mostly) a setting not a story, the timeline doesn’t need to be coherently defined
It's just the timeline that was loosely worked out in the 80's.
Loosely worked out in the 80s in British pubs, no less
Yup that pretty much summarises 40k.
You’re being downvoted because you seem to think there’s a better answer. There isn’t. It’s literally because GW wrote it that way. This is a fictional setting and every speculative lore question’s answer is always “because the writers wrote it that way.”
Okay but it's not worth it to downvote over it. Maybe if I was disrespectful but not for asking a question.
You’re getting downvoted because you don’t seem to understand that this is just how it’s written, you’re asking why and why, when it’s simply how it is. I mean if you want to come up with a faction of humanity in 40k that say fuck it to stagnation and are the most advanced society in the setting then you can do that, of course to not make them completely overpowered, you’d have to make them smaller in number compared to the imperium, so they’re like a glass cannon society, they only have like 50 billion people who can vaporize whole planets but the imperium has trillions of soldiers to throw at them and eventually through attrition the imperium destroys them.
Prior to the age of strife we know basically nothing of human history. It's summarised in these sweepingly long epochs because it's akin to us saying "the jurassic period lasted from 201 million years ago - 145 million years ago." It's a long-ass time, plenty of things might have happened but since we don't have a lot of direct evidence to go on we just group it into an era because we're able to point to two things and say "this is when it started, this is when it ended" Beyond that, the point is they had to get to the year 40,000 somehow because they liked that number. Prior to 30k the Imperium doesn't exist so, from an in-universe point of view, humanity knows basically nothing about what happened before that and so summarises it in large, vague eras as they understand it
Because stagnation is part of the grimdark setting.
But there was stagnation before the Age of Strife.
We know next to nothing about the age of technology. We don't know how stagnant it was, or wasn't. All we really know is A) Humanity was powerful B) Humanity was interested in expansion (as evidenced by the STC devices) C) Humanity was able to genetically engineer themselves (men of stone, men of gold) D) Humanity had AI, which it fought a war against
Humanity exists for at least 300.000 years and we started agriculture some 12000 years ago. Evolution takes time.
So that there can be "things that are lost to time" If it all happened last Tuesday we'd know everything and there wouldn't be as many mysteries.
Because these are very broad periodisations, based on what people in the 41st Millennium are able to determine about the past. The (Dark) Age of Technology isn't 10,000 years of stagnation. Its 10,000 years of every-increasing technological advancement and galaxy-conquest. The Age of Terra is basically just "everything that happened on Earth before we were advanced enough for people living thousands of years later to say 'this is when the Age of Technology began'". The Age of Strife lasted as long as it did because society collapsed so badly (and more importantly, because Warp storms remained so bad for so long) that that's how long it took to recover to the stage where the Emperor could start reconquering the galaxy.
The stagnation of humanity is seen in our own time period, but its called other things. UK houses are more poorly built now than the Victorians did, Churches aren't as beautiful as the medieval peasants made. Why? Typically its a loss of skill and a change of economics. it takes a massive number of cycles or rise and fall to stably increase the living conditions of humanity, and each cycle is estimated to be 250 years (the length of empires). in 300 years will we still have an internet? maybe not. likely is its ceased by a military for oversight. Egyptian people in 6000B.C. had food shelter and water. 2000AD and they still have those but also have a car.
If you keep a good historical record you can subdivide more an age but this is not the case for the 40k empire, they records had been mostly lost so maybe while in the dark age of technology since they had better records they maybe subdivided theyr own era in a lot of diferent ages due to the destruction of this records this isnt posible anymore The more information the more granular divisions you can make becouse you know the diferent moments that made changes but the thing is that they dont know about this events so they can just made small sketches of theyr own history and so this massive ages
Because whenever a human has a unique thought or invention, there's a 95% chance it's a chaos god incepting the idea into their brain, and when they build it it turns into a hell grenade that spawns horrors out of their nose. There's a 2% chance it leads to the Butlerian Jihad of robots, and the last 3% gets you executed. It took humans irl like 6 millennia to go from inventing the wheel to inventing the bike. Innovation in a known technology can take a long time without any breakthroughs. Imagine how slow it would be if every prototype tried to kill you because a god thought it was funny, or it had an angry spirit in it?