Tech Level 1

Tech Level 1:

Early TL 1:

Tools that are too large to be carried (sledge, dugout canoe, oar, travois) are made. Clothing is tailored and stone tools are polished. Symbols are designed to represent ideas, leading to rational number mathematics. The kiln is invented and used to bake pottery.

Middle TL 1:

Bronze working defines this TL. Tools, weapons, and art objects can all be made of worked metal (Copper, Gold, Silver), leading to the development of the sword, the plow, and molds. The ability to work softer metals, such as gold, is also present. Medicine includes the absolute basics of surgery – a limb can be cut off. Kilns bake clay into bricks, allowing the construction of large buildings, though the lack of mathematics and engineering knowledge limits builders to trial and error. Nothing on the scale of the Pyramids is possible, though they will be by the end of the TL. Animals are domesticated for food, as riding beasts, and as muscle power, though the primitive harnesses mean that maximum efficiency is not gained. The loom is invented (weaving, cloth, small sails). Structures are built with solid frames (stone or wood frame huts, frame canoe). Masonry develops using mud, bricks and stone may be quarried. Non-vocal signals are developed. Tools in general improve (sleds, small saws, double-sided axe, reflex bow, hoe, pit silo). Astrology may appear and rule of thumb techniques are used for building processes. Primitive water wheels may appear. Tools invented for agriculture include dams, crude plows, and stone sickles. Weapons include knives and bows. Stirrups are possible. The wheel is invented and used to shape pottery, as a time-keeping device (the sundial), and as a pulley. The idea of representation instead of symbol leads to the beginnings of writing and representational maps.

Late TL 1:

Metals are combined to create metal alloys, and other substances are manipulated. This leads to bronze, glass, composite bows, metal bow-drills, vegetable presses for oil, fired brick, and wood planking. Architecture includes stone domes, barrel vaults, and corbel vaults. Metal tools are made from bronze and include large saws, mason's pick, multiple sails, animal harnesses (if animals are tamed), bronze blades, and socketed axe-heads. Siege weaponry is created. Black powder may be discovered, but typically remains a curiosity. Stone rollers and wooden wheels are common. Large-scale technological projects exist – irrigation, the construction of walls and public buildings, the forming of armies. Simple arithmetic is used to tally taxes and count citizens. Writing is evolving out of pure iconography, but phonetic or complex iconographic alphabets do not yet exist. Paper or analogs for it do not exist; writing is either painted on walls or pressed into clay. Machines with multiple moving parts, such as windmills or water wheels, are far in the future. Chariots do not exist; the ability to make vehicles which are light enough to move quickly without falling to pieces is still generations away. Riding tackle is basic, and fighting while mounted is limited to ranged weapons. Civil Engineering and astronomy are developed, as are the first sailed vessels, and boiled leather armor. Tools are made from copper, and agriculture may lead to water-raising devices, canals, and dikes. The first stringed instruments are created at this time.