whoeverlovesDigit on Nostr: I think the ancient world had only magical people, and the society at some point ...

I think the ancient world had only magical people, and the society at some point decided they needed to undergo a mass Obliviate spell where the majority of witches and wizards agreed to join power to make everyone forget about the most powerful magic. Muggles are those who remain impacted. This is why they don't notice kids disappearing into Platform 9 and 3/4, for example; they haven't overcome the ancient spell.

This will wear off eventually.

Muggles actually do lots of magic, they just don't notice.

Muggles who learn about magic as adults do even more magic, and they notice, but it's still small stuff compared to what people can do after learning from childhood - the real witches and wizards.

At some point, a witch or wizard must have come along who was very talented in occlumency, the skill of resisting this kind of spell, so they were able to notice when they did something magical.

That kept happening with more people until one of them was able to keep noticing, and hone the craft, and find others with the gift, and help them see it too.

By the events of the books, there are 3 ways to escape being a muggle:

1. You're so talented at occlumency that you just notice magic happening at a young age (very rare)
2. You're so talented in some area other than occlumency that you accidentally do magic powerful enough to be noticed by yourself or another witch or wizard who recruits you at a young age
3. Your family have already done one of the above so you're raised in the wizarding world, not effected by the mass Obliviate from ancient times

This is how we ended up with prejudice over "blood purity" - the most powerful witches and wizards are in fact the first-gens that break out of the mass Obliviate as kids on their own, while folks born into the wizarding world may or may not be powerful enough to have made it without their family's help. Purebloods are insecure about how noticeably good at magic muggle-borns are, and they project the insecurity with prejudice.

When Dumbledore says words are the most powerful thing in magic, he knows the fragile balance that's slowly fading away as people slowly spread knowledge of magic to their loved ones.

Nobody ever explains all this because it's an infohazard. The more people know, the sooner the world falls into chaos and another mass Obliviate is needed.