(Asking Too Much) Are the Tollan Technologically Superior to the Ancients

Both factions debut different verities of matter manipulation.

The Ancients developed rapid travel over great distances.

The Tollan warp matter so that they could pass through.  The warping technology has the benefit of being portable on someone's person, but apparently is too unwieldy to safely be turned on one's self so that no danger comes to them (which would have saved them from the Goa'uld).

Both boast weapons which can destroy a Goa'uld mothership in a single shot and bypass said shields to do so.  They just take a slight different form since apparently the Ancient drone can be reused and doesn't have to explode upon impact; as often depicted wastefully during Atlantis' run.

But the Ancients didn't appear to possess this warping technology, which might have made Wraith ship's thick hides meaningless.  And with a little prompting from the Nox the Tollan were able to fashion their own Stargate.  The Tollan are also shown to have near-instaneous communication, which by the time we know more about the Ancients probably comes down to simply the vague notion of subspace.

True enough, the Tollan never created self-contained city ships, but neither did they seek to go anywhere.  None of the Omeycan-seeded worlds possessed the drive to venture out from their home.

I find that the Tollan are decidedly versatile in their technology and have in their arsenal attributes that the Ancients surely would have wished for (mostly that matter warping technology) but both saw their downfall at the hands of a technologically inferior species.

Were the Tollan superior?  Their designs that correspond to the Ancients (most notably Stargates) are more efficient but also start with someone to copy from and help from the Nox; who for all we know aided in the design improvements of the Stargate.  And the Tollan had to catch a bus to their resettlement with no evidence of ships for even orbital defense.


In the end the Tollan were at least as arrogant as the Ancients, but technologically superior is hard to say.  Personally, I think the Tollan developed to the exact extent they thought would be necessary to suit themselves whereas if nothing else can be said for the Ancients they never stopped exploring new technologies.  Most likely, we have seen what the Tollan can produce whereas the Ancients are a treasure trove of untapped technology waiting to be revealed.