@Pinto Bean
I believe that at some point between G4 and G5, there was a massive, apocalyptic level catastrophe that shattered Equestrian society. Whether that was a natural disaster, a war, or the nefarious act of a villain, the end result was that Equestrian civilization as we knew it collapsed.
In the aftermath, there was probably infighting amongst the survivors, who slowly but inevitably separated themselves by tribe in order to survive. The disturbing thing is that with this being a post-apocalyptic situation, the stories Sprout and other Earth ponies told about the Pegasi and the Unicorns (that they snatched ponies up, fried their brains, and ate them) may not entirely be false. Pegasi and Unicorns probably did fight and kill Earth ponies (and each other), and there may have in fact been cases where they did engage in cannibalism. However, this of course was not due to any inherent evil nature of the Unicorns and Pegasi, but due to the fact that they had been pushed to edge by an utterly desperate situation.
I’ve actually been watching the
Fall of Civilizations channel on YouTube in the past months, and seeing the profiles of Empires and civilizations in our own world that collapsed has given some food for thought. There probably was a slow decline in the power and stability of Equestria in the centuries following the events of G4 (especially after Twilight Sparkle passed), small cracks and fissures started to appear in society and they were never fully addressed by the powers that be and they inexorably grew to become serious problems, and then whatever the apocalyptic event was occurred and it broke the proverbial camel’s back.
What punctured the whole thing is something as simple as that the pegasi, the unicorns and the earth ponies did not know everyone had lost the magic. Everyone would have noted it if the pegasi could not fly, if the unicorns could not use magic, and it would have been remembered long after the wars ended. Queen Haven had a clue about this, but she would not admit it until Sunny revealed it to everyone. How could the ponies be so strongly unaware of each other’s weaknesses that they could take advantage of? Sprout’s response in the face of the news about this shows that he wanted to take advantage of this.
When Zippy remarked that no one could remember the airship hangar “as if they had forgotten”, and despite the large collection of objects from the G4 period collected by Argyle, it is clear that most ponies were very deeply affected by not knowing their past. From EqG we know about the Memory Stone, which should have been destroyed, yet we saw a picture of this in the lighthouse. It is possible that the mysterious sorceress not only had a single example, there may be others. If the loss of the memories becomes permanent, new constructed memories will fill the gaps. It will be easy to plant false memories.
Lack of forest around the Harmony tree that had re-emerged as a tree house, indicates that something very dramatic had happened in the valley that was the very heart of Equestria, Canterlot and Ponyville had disappeared. One theory I have is that the largest concentration of raw magic in the entire world found in the Everfree in the G4, may have exploded and thus drained the world of all magic. That is the only explanation behind the harmony tree’s shift to a normal tree, it was the Ground Zero for what took away the active magic.
Since neither of the ponies was aware of each other’s loss of magic, it must mean that the loss of memory and the loss of magic may have happened at the same time, a confusing time of memory loss, anger and mistrust may have created the false memories that make ponies very afraid of each other . By establishing themselves in separate enclaves isolated from each other, they begin to build a historical retrospective based on myths, bits of history and the false memories. It is possible that they simply forgot 2000 years of history in a short time. We have historical examples in our own world where descendants could misunderstand their history from the worst to the unrecognizable.
It is possible that the false memories are what made the ponies convinced of each other’s barbaric misdeeds and bodily defects such as “the stinking earth ponies with little brains” and “foal-eating violent ponies”, while the unicorns were “murderous horn users”. They may have been planted there to create fear and prevent the three tribes from reuniting.
There was no conflict. But it was perhaps even worse; it was a forced breakup of a large country into separate societies that then lived in isolation from each other, it is possible that everyone had the same access to technology and services as in Zephyr Heights when the magic disappeared. It does not take long before the various societies begin to separate, the pegasi that behaved unitedly due to their militaristic traditions and the earth ponies with their collective social ideals will be able to survive while the unicorns were disorganized, scattered and without expertise in technology as a function of society. Bridlewood may have been the resort for the aristocratic ponies of Canterlot.
How many isolated societies may have disappeared?