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Its true, anyone know why in fantasy its allways more magical in the old days?
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Comes directly from mythology. Magic is anything you don't know how to explain. So the farther away something is in time or space, the more of it is "magic".
The classic example is Beowulf's thistle shirt. At the time of his actual exploits, thistle was simply something that people made cloth out of (you soak it first, it doesn't sting or anything). In fact, the mentioning of his thistle shirt is there to show how completely ordinary his equipment was. Over time, techniques of making other cloth improved and people stopped wearing thistle and wore linen or cotton even if they were poor. The people stopped using thistle and the techniques of making it into cloth were lost.
But the mentioning of the thistle shirt persisted. And as people grew up so rich in linen that they never had to wear thistle, they also grew up without the knowledge of what thistle was like to wear. And well, if you poke a thistle with your hand it
hurts. So that line of poetry began to mean to people that he was wearing some sort of
magical shirt that was woven out of pain spines somehow.
What was at the time a perfectly ordinary list of clothing and equipment eventually transformed into a depiction of a man decked from head to toe in powerful magic.
And that's why the past is more magical. Technology isn't only discovered over time, it is also lost. So the ancients demonstrably did things different than you do. Everything you do is technology (not magic) and everything they did was magic. Therefore, the ancients had a lot more magic. By definition.
-Frank