User blog comment:MeDeoPal/On the Origin of Titans and Shifters/@comment-2191382-20140903232540/@comment-73.191.59.159-20140929002933

I just want to note, after reading through these, that everybody is pretty much going with the idea that AoT is in the past. But what if it's actually in the future? That's what makes the mose sense to me. Technological deterioration sounds right to me, based off the ODM gear, the Walls' inhabitants stating the lack of technology to fix the walls, the sudden appearance of the Titans (possibly, like others have stated, a DNA experiment), and perhaps a few inconsistencies among level of medicine and such.

The loss of technology could easily be a result of the Titan appearance. I mean, what we have today, if we lose access to all our electronic data, our technology could fall back a fair amount of time. In a situation like that with the Titans, it could also be that those with the knowledge to maintain the higher level of technology could have been wiped out. And if knowledge has to be passed by word of mouth, it's easy to lose a lot of it.