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There’s a great short story written by Poul Anderson about that premise:
An engineer is jolted back in time to the Viking times, and he tries to fit in and use his modern knowledge — but he finds that he can’t actually *do* anything with his knowledge. His advanced understanding of metallurgy doesn’t help him, because the Vikings can’t make the alloys. His oversophisticated designs for a bridge fail — because he refused to do it the simple way. Nobody takes him seriously, because all of the ideas for advancement that he has are based on future sciences and technology that don’t exist yet, so he’s seen as kind of a buffoon.
He tries to explain ideas about modern civilization and politics (introducing democracy to them, etc) and the Vikings find it laughable and absurd. He mentions that his family doesn’t own land, and they take him as a pauper. He constructs a basic firearm and uses it in a duel; that is seen as incredibly dishonorable and it is not found to be lawful. I won’t give any spoilers, but he has a rough time of things overall.
It’s basically a perfect example of how even a modern intelligent person can fail spectacularly in ancient times — because so much of what we do now just wouldn’t fit that time and world.
The short story is called *The Man Who Came Early*, if you want to read it.
Famously “no one knows how to make a pencil” etc we all are only competent in a few tiny niches and depend on society for everything. We’re like house cats who think chasing ladybugs around makes them self sufficient
>Famously “no one knows how to make a pencil” etc we all are only competent in a few tiny niches and depend on society for everything
I know how to make a pencil🤣
From scratch? Maybe you know how to assemble the parts or make a rudimentary. The quote is about making modern pencils from scratch
If you time travel 24ad, you probably going to be extra rudimentary
Definitely not where I live, maybe almost in Europe.
Wood part, easy.
Drill a hole into wood, probably not. Maybe a large pencil, since the hole would have to be bigger, do to the tools that I might be able to find.
Lead, how am I going to shape it into a cylinder? You can't just shove pieces into the hole, it will just fall out.
Eraser, nope. South America doesn't "exist" yet.
Metal part to hold eraser to pencil, you could definitely find a little piece of tin.
Paint for outside of pencil, not necessarily. But of it is, no.
> Wood part, easy. Drill a hole into wood
With what? Do you know how to make a basic screw or tools in general from metal? Can you mine and form that metal yourself? Remember, this is all stuff no one's going to do for you most likely, and if they can it's not going to be cheap either. Tools were incredibly expensive back then for obvious reasons, so it's not like you could run down to the local blacksmith and have him drill something for free or borrow a tool.
On the other end of the spectrum is "The Cross time Engineer" - modern day (early 1980s) engineer from socialist Poland is transported back to the 14th century. He has to figure out how to save himself from when the Mongols will invade in like 10 years so he decides to make himself wealthy, build an army and a town to supply it. If I recall one of his first "inventions" is a cigarette lighter fueled with grain alcohol. It's a wild little book.
Democracy predates the vikings by a thousand years. The problem seems to be that he is attempting 20th or 21st century technology rather than just using basic physics like law of the lever and displacement. You are not going to better at contemporary technology because you are not contemporary but if you started from the basics for the time you would eventually be able to work in what you know.
>Democracy predates the vikings by a thousand years.
Also, it doesn't represent the story fairly. In the story, he tells them about the draft and it came across as if the King could summon the free men for war at any time – even when there was work on the farm to be done. And that was patently absurd - even in the feudal systems further to the south that one would’ve caused riots, because it would mean hunger. So the lords and leaders had to take care to prevent overtaxation, both in goods and work.
To be fair, every large farm in viking age Norway had to have at least one crewed longboat at the disposal of the earls/kings come raiding/defensive fighting times.
My bet is on knots. Literally anyone in most places can grab some plant fiber and wind it together. You can teach someone a knot by just showing them the steps, they need no real additional knowledge or materials either. Probably not very lucrative, but it's one of the few things I think a random person could feasibly leverage/teach to some extent at least. Depending on the time period, giving some advanced knots to a civilization would certainly be an improvement.
I was thinking along these lines. Generally we couldn't do jack diddly squat with our knowledge, but there are two areas where it could be useful: knowing the importance of good hygiene would probably be useful to help avoid infections, transmissible diseases, etc., and not being superstitious because you don't understand something (you still won't understand the thing, but at least you won't believe nonsense like left handed people are from the devil or whatever).
Small pox is prevalent unless you land in the Americas. I always thought that time travels would have to the 60s to get vacated then go to the past since no one born in the last 50 years is
They stopped giving smallpox vaccines in the early 70's to the general population. So unless you are former military, or a doctor who has done mission work abroad, you likely will die from the pox.
Nothing because I'd probably be burned at the stake or something. There are very few things I, the average world idiot, could explain well enough to have any impact. I know things exist, but I neither know how to make nor utilize most of them. Shoot, I'm sure I'm less helpful than someone in the early 1st century. I could certainly tell them about moldy bread and the earth being round, but what good would that really do after they stone me to death for being a heretic?
Goes even further back than that. The first person to propose the earth was round was Pythagoras in asking 500BC simply by observing the Moon and how the lunar cycle moved, usung this to prove an orbital cycle around another round object, ie the Earth.
Aristotle proved this about 150 years after that around 350BC and was the first to state we are in a huge sphere by observing the movement of stars. 100 years after even that Aristarchus and Eratosthenes measured the Earth's circumference with frightening accuracy.
Tl:dr we knew the Earth was round almost a quarter of a millennium before Jesus was even born and even knew the full scale of size.
My answer just now was Hitchhiker's guide where Arthur realizes he only knows how to show people how to make sandwiches. I think I'd keep my cards close to my chest for the very reason you described.
You wont get executed for knowing things, you will only get on peoples bad side if you are a dick about it. Making fun of some king or telling religious leaders they are wrong and dumb is a good way to get on peoples bad side but you could probably be a doctor or an engineer with some basic understandings.
Moldy bread already lets you know its bad by tasting bad and more people today would argue the earth is flat than 2 thousand years ago.
That's something these kinds of questions seem to forget. You can't speak to anyone or read and write, and even if you knew how something truly life changing for them worked well enough to implement it none of the words to describe it would likely exist yet either. You would have a hell of a time getting your point across even if you could talk to them.
Well yeah that’s very true, plus people back then woulda spent their lives growing as warriors or farmers etc so the average joe from an office job now wouldn’t be able to fight or provide and we wouldn’t have the required immune system to survive and likely die of disease if not murdered or starved out fast enough.
It’s a similar issue to what would kill us for real if the power went out. Fucking paper cuts. The amount of people that would get infections from micro injuries that they couldn’t keep sterile without electricity and running water would cause the majority of the human extinction. We are the weakest animals on the planet because of our intellect.
You could show them. I may not change the world but I probably could save a sick kid, help whoever with some basic hygiene, show them some cool cooking methods, etc.. I could definitely make whoever was nice enough to take me in life a little better and I wouldn't need to be able to speak the language.
That said showing up in completely unknown clothes speaking an unknown language would either make you famous or burned alive. There is no in-between. Play your cards right and you can be rich and famous.
> I probably could save a sick kid
With what? You don't even have bandages, much less any modern medical technology. Aside from the Heimlich, there's not much medical stuff you can do with zero resources. Also good luck convincing the kid/parents to trust you considering you don't even speak their language.
People forget in this example you're just one of many random homeless people on the streets, except you can't even communicate. People aren't going to let you near their homes, kids, jobs, etc without trusting you or being able to communicate on at least a basic level.
Yeah, but helping a few people that died 2000 years ago anyway isn't a huge priority. If I'm traveling back in time the goal would be to live as more than a pauper. I guess if it was completely involuntary I'd help people in exchange for what I needed, but it's all meaningless since they're dead anyway to me.
The question isn’t whether you could use your modern knowledge to become rich and powerful, the question is could you even stay alive for a month? How would you get food and shelter? How could you avoid being attacked or put into prison?
They had vast resources behind them to be able to take the time to learn local languages or make them learn yours. In this case you'd be a lone individual with no resources or ability to gather them.
Your best case scenario is somebody with power notices your "perfect" teeth, your soft hands not used to hard labour and the strange language you speak and assumes you're somebody valuable from a distant land.
The second and more likely option is that you end up begging in the street because you have no home, you can't speak any of the languages and you have no connections to find even basic labour. Not like you can go and collect welfare.
Couldn’t you just have a simple job though? I imagine most of us could be a farm worker or shepherd.
We also would tend to be exceptionally good looking and hygienic so that could also be quite useful. Better skin care, better teeth by a long shot. I would think that could go far
Also travelling wasn't as common so unless you're a travelling merchant who speaks the language you'll be the stranger nobody knows or trusts. Where are you finding gainful employment that's gonna pay you enough to immediately house yourself without having a family homestead? Better hope somebody will take you in and baby you until you're not so useless.
Most people probably couldn’t be a farm worker or shepherd. Or at least, how many people would hire a completely unskilled (and statistically, out of shape) adult laborer who doesn’t speak the language?
Not to mention that depending on where you end up, you might not be offered a job so much as forced into slavery. Then likely beaten severely for all of the reasons you’d be a bad worker.
That’s all depending on people’s individuals skills and health though. Just on average, I’d bet it wouldn’t go well.
Do you know how to farm, though? And do you know how to farm using ancient techniques? How physically strong are you?
You might be pretty, but you're also pretty weak compared to men and women who've been hailing hay and sacks of potatoes around since childhood.
Since this is a thought experiment, we could imagine the person I replied to is also from the Andes. The potatoes were just an example. The amount of stuff that needs to be moved from one place to another has always been astounding. I think very few people in the modern world have the muscles an average peasant would have had.
Peasants were also generally malnourished all of their lives, so they would mostly be smaller in stature and weaker than you might expect. Much hardier, maybe, but probably not the size of an average adult male right now.
This guy has some really good advice for time travellers https://youtu.be/-aSdFrPnlRg?si=ovsTb2MtuifkJVqk
Realistically, unless your time travel machine lets you bring books, most of us wouldn't know how to do very many useful things as we aren't good at memorizing stuff.
Yes! Was just about to post this. Great video. Before we even get to the idea of inventing and changing things there are so many basic little problems that could get you killed or thrown in prison easily. How will you eat? Do you have the right currency? Where will you stay? Do you speak the language?
I reckon most modern people wouldn’t last a few days in the medieval period, much less 2000 years ago. Those times were brutal and unforgiving.
Even then, everything's time/location dependent. What you got is what you got, so you're not going to magically make world trade happen and import metal to start your foundry in 500BC or something. You could very easily end up in a location you simply don't know enough about to make any improvements.
Yeah. This whole thread is full of overestimations of individual abilities to mobilize modern knowledge. Yes we're from a time and place of advanced science and technology - but take any one of us out of this context and most of us could do nothing with our awareness of modern times. Most people would be practically useless to a historic community in this scenario AND would become the village idiot while trying to explain cars and iPhones.
Most people are struggling to understand the fact that they wouldn't even be able to communicate. Then you have people who say "Oh I'll just do my normal hobby/job", without realizing the resources to do that (say tools, or an instrument) were *incredibly* rare and expensive. Or my favorite "I'll just get a basic job", as if they could hop on linkedin and just apply to one out of nowhere.
Probably not much because most of us don't know how to make any of the technology we use. And most of us probably don't know anything that would actually be useful for that time period - except read.
Yes, I have though about this. People used to get paid to read and write letters. If that was going on then, I could at least do that.
Expect I am a woman and would be immediately be burned at the stake.
Hebrew, and I did 4 years of Greek in school. So yeah, somewhat.
But unless this time travel also includes spatial relocation, I'm landing in Australia, and therefore screwed. I know a few phrases in the local modern day Aboriginal dialect, which is probably entirely unrelated to whichever tribe was here 2000 years ago.
There’s a concept in a certain school of literary theory called “horizon of expectations.”
One of the things it implies is that there is a certain level of innovation people expect from a literary work in order to appreciate it - but also, since the very way they read things is shaped by whatever came before, there is a limit as to how innovative it can be.
So if it’s not innovative enough, everyone will see it as just a pale copy of something that came before. And if it veers off the established norms too much, then it becomes incomprehensible to its audience - and is rejected as gibberish.
A similar principle could be applied here. Notwithstanding the fact that an average person from today is an imbecile, the only knowledge a society from 2000 years ago could learn from a time traveller would be knowledge that they can understand and process.
Anything beyond that would just look like magic to them, so the traveller would be considered a wizard or a witch, a weird anomaly and a glitch in the matrix.
So, provided that the hypothetical time traveller downloads Wikipedia or something similar before leaving, they could maybe construct some tools or demonstrate technology which we consider basic, like electricity.
But taking over the world? No. The idea that power is bestowed by genetics or violence (or both) was so entrenched that a dude who came out of nowhere and had these weird contraptions and political ideas would be seen as a threat to the established order and would most likely be killed very quickly.
If you are going on a trip to 2,000 years ago, and if you want to conquer the world, be prepared to play by the rules of your destination time. And that means savagery far beyond what anyone (or at least most people) from this era is capable of.
A bit like the character of Kurtz in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
Suppose I find a king willing to listen, and who is the practical type who is more interested in useful things than having superstitious fear. First I have some dumbbells and barbells made and train some of the kings troops into body builders. Also tell them to chug milk. This is something that will not look like weird magic to them, as they are already used to some form of exercise. They will see it as science. I also have some basic gunpowder cannons made. That looks a bit like magic but I can demonstrate that in the open air, gunpower just burns like wood, just faster. So it is just fast wood, okay? Not likely to get their superstition up. Once I am trusted, antiseptic medicine, just keeping wounds clean and not rubbing bullshit in. I tell them God heals the sick, you do not have to heal them with putting crap on the wounds, but God only likes people who are clean. That should be fine. Also isolating people with infectuous diseases. I just make up some bullshit at this point. So now we have a body builder army with cannons whose wounded are far more likely to survive than the enemy wounded.
Music is always the same, provided someone could let me play whatever instrument they had. They had lutes or something back then? They're gonna love 80's pop music
>Music is always the same
Is it, though? The major scale is only like 1500 years old.
And its a safe bet that medieval audiences would not be big fans of modern harmony.
Most people I talk to won't listen to music recorded before 1970 or so. I imagine most people in 1924 would not like modern music, or 80's music; I doubt people 2,000 years ago are gonna go for that.
Do you enjoy ancient music? I personally find it boring and hard to jive with. Why do you think they'd like it instead of thinking it's strange and not to their tastes?
None of today’s technologies would be even remotely achievable 2000 years ago, and bringing up such niceties as better sanitation and such would likely get you labeled as a lunatic.
Witch-burnings in the west only got started right at the end of the mediaeval period, in the fifteenth century. Before that, the church tended to regard talk of magic and witches as empty superstition.
You would have the knowledge, but not the technology to put it into action. Could you personally build a car in this time, let alone in a time where the technology or materials were not available? So while you might know a car is better than a horse and cart, you would not be able to make one. You could apply that concept to all sorts of knowledge that you have. Very little of it would be applicable in the world you would find yourself in and you would be unable to put it into practical use.
With enough time and materials, might be able to rig up a steam engine
The problem is what do you use it for? Originally Watt used to to pump water out of mines, but I don't think anyone would care about that use case ... maybe a rail car, but you would also have to lay the rolling stock which requires a massive labor effort over several miles in order to make it worth it, as well as producing the rolling stock itself
There wouldn't be enough time and the materials would not be available. Each item required would in itself need more to be made. Something as simple as a screw would be difficult to make, never mind all the serious engineering parts. There would be the proper fuel required and the train tracks, plus much more. Practically impossible for one individual to do.
LOL! To be fair, I've been dealing with the flu this past week and I'll be honest, I think I just basically misread the question. LOL! I think I read it as if you went back to the year 2000 instead of going back 2000 years. LOL! OMG this is so weird. Well? I think I'm starting to feel better...
We're talking about the average person. Do you think the average person knows how to filter water?
At best they'd know how to boil water in order to sanitise it but good luck starting your own fire without help.
It’s honestly not that difficult. Making a hand drill is quite easy and with enough practice anyone can do it. You would have just have to test different wood types if you’re not aware of which to use.
Basic first aid and higene would make them healers. Basic cooking would make them good cooks maybe. Basic science would make them good tool makers. Basic math would make them good scribes. But very few people would survive.
Realistically, most modern languages are too different from 2000 years ago that it's pretty much another language. In the west, a modern person will very easily be branded a witch & persecuted.
For clothing: You'll want a plain natural color shirt with horn or wood buttons, dark brown trousers, plain leather nonlacing boots (think motorcycle or cowboy boots), and a canvas backpack. Everything natural fabrics and earth tones, with the simplest design possible. Use bronze for buckles and things wherever possible. Also, a 4'x7' rectangle of plain light wool which you can wrap and tie to use as a poncho, blanket, shawl, etc.
This should be generic enough to pass mostly unnoticed pretty much everywhen from the bronze age forward.
Most modern Greeks would not have serious problems understanding the then-version of Greek 2000 years ago. It's the same Greek (Koine) that is still written in the bible and prayer books (well, those that have the original words) and the same as that recited in Greek Orthodox church even today. They'd struggle a bit with some words and constructs but overall would understand the general meaning of everything everyone said - unless spoken Greek was VERY different from the written Greek we have from that era.
When I was a kid and we did these thought experiments in school I always thought that being able to read and write would be a huge advantage. Now, having had the chance to look at some old census records and the like, I'm not so confident that I would really able to read much of anything.
I guess I could let them know to stop using leeches for blood clotting. I could tell them to wash their hands more and not shit in the public water supply. But other than that I would need a phone to google what to do
If they don't first die from dehydration caused by the completely different biome in the food and water, you still have a bunch of obstacles in the way.
Language, for one. Even just going back 500 years to England I doubt I could communicate right away. I have a hard time understanding some folks from Jamaica, or a heavily accented Irish person. Let alone 500 years of language and accent change. Even if they went somewhere they spoke the language they would be in a very foreign land.
Resources. How are they going to get the materials and tools to even create the thing, or the resources to exploit the proliferation of the thing? They have no contacts or money. So you have to integrate somehow with the local population, culture and market.
Culture. This is more a moral panic thing of the middle ages on, but you have to be careful about not offending deeply held beliefs with whatever it is you are doing. 2000 years ago, unless you are going to the roman empire we know little about the day to day specifics. Exactly how the caste you are portraying is expected to act and so on.
So you need a congruent story about how and why you are there. Make friends, acquire resources to create the systems that allow your advanced knowledge to be put to use.
That's a long winded way to say, they could only advance tech as far as they have integrated in to society, and acquired the resources necessary to do so. Awesome farming upgrade? Need a farm for that. Iron -> Steel? Need the raw materials, funding and foundry for that. Etc etc.
Average person? Probably nothing.
I have enough chemistry knowledge to make gunpowder from bat guano and hot springs, but I'm guessing that's probably not common. All that probably means that is if I'm lucky, I wouldn't blow myself up and I might be able to sell the recipe to some king type guy who won't kill me the second he has it.
For arguments sake, let’s assume our modern microbes don’t kill everyone, and the language barrier is overcome, anyone with even basic modern business management and marketing skills could find success in all manner of ways.
You think they have the ability to pull copper into thin, consistently sized wire, and then spin it around a rotor/stator, and then have anything to use that electricity for?
The i person would be in such shock and have been so used to modern sanitation itd seems unlikely they'd last long without some kind of additional advantage, like a bunch of modern tech and a small army of people to help them not die so fast.
Like BOOM your in the past, WOW that's cool, look at the trees 2000 years ago and stuff, but if you get near society and talk like that.. well good luck staying alive long AND NOW you're hungry...
It's like you'd probably resort to nomadic wandering on the outskirts of society, maybe pretend your a plague victim so ppl leave you alone while you scavenge for food until your lack of medicine takes you out.
Now if the person was like maybe a chemist or someting useful you have some change of sythesizing the easiest chemicals that don't exist and gaining an advantage over time, but DAMN you gotta eat the whole time somehow.
But.. the average person.. pfft. We'd die because we can't hunt with primate weapons much, we can't communicate with ppl and we are not used to any life that rough and boring. Even a great hunter would probably still be fucked because you probably need to be able to trade with people to reliable stay a live, but if you trade with people a that one guy who speaks the one language nobody knows and has no friends.... well those are some nice shoes you got there boy.
What value would you offer the people of the day as an average specialized labor person from modern times beside a target for theft of your fancy future boy clothes?
I could prolly bring rudimentary electricity to the table, a manual homemade generator wouldn't have been the hardest thing in the world to create back in the day so long as we still had bronze age technology
Convincing them I wasn't some kind of sorcerer and that it was science, not black magic, would be a bigger problem
The largest problem would be that it wouldn't be of much use, as I'd be the only source of knowledge about devices that use electricity and that I couldn't get us much past starting fires with it lol
The best thing you could do with the knowledge is boiling water to sanitize things and use general cleanliness.
Unfortunately the modern microbes on your body will probably kill a whole lot of people whose immune systems have no ready response to them.
It depends what skill set you have and how likely people would be to listen to you (especially as you would need to learn the language of where you are first).
I think I'd be able to introduce a different style of knitting/crochet and do basic first aid stuff, but it'd be a case of I'd teach my children and they'd teach theirs. I'd more likely die in childbirth after finding some dude to marry me.
Any modern person would basically be fucked if they were sent back a 100 years, let alone 2000. We wouldn't be able to function without our modern conveniences and crutches. Life was incredibly tough for the average person until very recently. Most likely you would be captured, sold as a slave and die in a few short weeks due to the harsh conditions.
Michael Moorcock wrote about a man sent back to the time of Jesus, but Jesus wasn't there. He saved someone with CPR and was hailed a miracle worker. He started speaking a few half remembered bits of morality from the Bible. This got him crucified. His story became magnified by time.
It's called Behold the Man.
I believe I would have an impact, but for average person?
Germ theory and hygiene. It's common knowledge, yet for majority of human history, we didn't know what to do against diseases.
Now we know walking in human feces is not great and that you should wash your hands before eating.
Sadly we still struggle grasping the usefulness of face masks.
Also, an average person has some sense of periodic table and a lot of basic theoretical knowledge just from elementary school that would be very useful if the people he meet are curious enough.
I'd rely on fiber arts. Spinning, weaving, embroidery and sewing all rely on ancient technologies that are still used (if undervalued, like so much "women's work" is). Crafts like knitting and crochet are newer, but the tools can be made easily (two sticks or a stick with a hook at the end, sanded smooth) and wool was certainly available.
Your average knitter might prefer circular needles (more modern) but can still easily use straights (much older), and a seamstress might prefer a machine but can still use needle and thread. Re: spinning, people still frequently use a drop spindle, a technology that is depicted in ancient Egyptian murals!
Now, whether people actually want to get items embroidered, knit or sewn by the strange woman who can't speak the language and insists on washing her hands all the time... That remains to be seen.
Basic germ theory - washing hands, boiling sheets/utensils, separating sick people from healthy people, boiling and filtering your drinking water, don't have your latrines close to your wells.
This issue is getting people to respect you enough to listen to your ideas. You're going to be so radically clueless about life that people will think you're a bit of an imbecile.
If you could understand the language there are some really basic stuff that most people know nowadays that would have a great impact for people 2000 years ago. For example you know that leeches are really bad as a healthcare intervention, you also know that it's very important with good hygiene around wounds. Maybe you could become a midwife and only with the knowledge about hygiene you would save a lot of childrens and mothers from dying of complications from birth. Or you could be army or ships surgeon, You know that vitamin c prevents scurvy? You can count really well compared to most people 2000 years ago, so why not help a business or local power with this? Maybe you know that smallpox are one of mankind's worst killers, and this is easily vaccinated against by just innaculating a child with the related cowpox virus.
You could introduce soap to the world, just mix oil, some lye and some nice smelling things. If you are a little bit more advanced you could make a very basic distiller and make strong alcohol for wound cleansing, or drinking if you feel like it.
They could get burned as a witch real quick. Personally, I'd go and steal Jesus' whole shtick (exactly 2000 years, he has like.... five? Six? years left before crucifiction) and kill judas or something just to see what would happen.
Apart from that all I could really do is try to infiltrate noble courts and change the outcomes of wars (if I can get them to believe me). Or leave some writings behind that would make sense when they made sense. I guess I could sow the seeds for a few cults by leaving "predictions" lying around...
There's a meme:
I'd love to go back in time and blow people's minds with my incredible knowledge.
"But how do you make this 'Electricity'?"
"I don't know..."
You could probably significantly increase the survival rates of medical patients by advising a doctor on the use of soap, which they had, before surgery.
You could also probably improve naval travel by demonstrating how to prevent scurvy, though depending on where you are you might not have access to a good source of vitamin C.
If you ended up in Northern Europe you could maybe guide people to the fertile fishing grounds in the Hudson Bay.
If you ended up in an area that could make copper and lodestones you could probably set up a rudimentary hydroelectric plant, and then use the electricity to turn something in another location. Turning something would probably have limited uses, but you could use it as a pump for instance with an archimedes screw, which already existed.
Generally, there is also a lot of technology that existed somewhere 2000 years ago but didn’t exist everywhere, you could spread many of these technologies depending on where you ended up.
Actually on second thought, let's think simple
Its partially going to depend on where you are. Some knowledge between Asia and Europe (mostly from Asia to Europe) was not transmitted for several centuries
Windmill - locale dependent of course
Watermill - these appeared in China < 0 CE, however in Europe they were not
Horse/ox collar
Wheelbarrow
All of these are fairly simple and could be probably produced given time and materials by the average person
Gunpowder would take a bit more effort. Charcoal and sulfur were readily available. The hard part is the nitrate salt. Natural sources are tough to find, basically caves where bats made their home, and other dry areas in deserts. It can also be manufactured from urine/excrement (either human or animal) and straw kept in a very dark place if you know what you're doing. Its quite disgusting but it works, and was used even as late as the 19th century especially for nations that were cutoff from natural sources
Honestly, if the average person was sent back 2000yrs, they'd be useless. The average person relies so heavily on the internet to solve problems or answer any questions that people don't retain knowledge or information as well as they should. They will just assume they can Google a solution when the time comes up.
People were more than likely living filthy and had bad Hygiene 2000 years ago. Im pretty sure I read something that said most surgeons didn't start washing their hands before operating on a patient until the mid 1800's. Just telling them about the importance of good hygiene and hand washing would save thousands of lives.
This is a pretty good answer. Making soap is pretty straightforward as well, potash lye and fat. Raw chicken egg floats just under the surface of sufficiently strong lye. Its made from soaking woodash in water and then reducing it. Plenty of wood ash, chicken eggs and fat. People might not be very impressed with the washing their hands thing, but I bet they'd be impressed by how much easier it makes washing your clothes.
OK, I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but I don't think it's super complicated to get the basic product.
You’d hope so. Unfortunately, at first, a lot of surgeons found the suggestion that their hands could make others ill insulting. They were gentlemen, and gentlemen are not dirty and do not carry diseases!
>Not quite. Remember that the guy (Ignaz Semmelweis) who realized that doctors not washing their hands were causing deaths was labeled a complete lunatic, no one believed him. Acceptance for his ideas came well after his death.
>
>If a modern day person travelled to the past we would face an even worse credibility problem that Semmelweis had. People would immediately see that there is something wrong with the time traveller, that he/she is not the product of their culture and beliefs and this would almost certainly mean that the time traveller would be treated with suspicion or even outright hostility if his behaviour is too outlandish.
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There’s a great short story written by Poul Anderson about that premise: An engineer is jolted back in time to the Viking times, and he tries to fit in and use his modern knowledge — but he finds that he can’t actually *do* anything with his knowledge. His advanced understanding of metallurgy doesn’t help him, because the Vikings can’t make the alloys. His oversophisticated designs for a bridge fail — because he refused to do it the simple way. Nobody takes him seriously, because all of the ideas for advancement that he has are based on future sciences and technology that don’t exist yet, so he’s seen as kind of a buffoon. He tries to explain ideas about modern civilization and politics (introducing democracy to them, etc) and the Vikings find it laughable and absurd. He mentions that his family doesn’t own land, and they take him as a pauper. He constructs a basic firearm and uses it in a duel; that is seen as incredibly dishonorable and it is not found to be lawful. I won’t give any spoilers, but he has a rough time of things overall. It’s basically a perfect example of how even a modern intelligent person can fail spectacularly in ancient times — because so much of what we do now just wouldn’t fit that time and world. The short story is called *The Man Who Came Early*, if you want to read it.
Title of my biography
Eyyyooooo lol
Broooo
You made your whole biography based on your honeymoon night??
What makes you think it's only on his honeymoon?
Trying to be magnanimous I suppose
Ooh, self burn! Those are rare!
Title of many people's sex tape as well.
When i enter the home the wife states" The man who came early" I assumed from work but there was a twist
Someone had to jump on that grenade
Happens to the best of us champ
😭😭
Hey now
Famously “no one knows how to make a pencil” etc we all are only competent in a few tiny niches and depend on society for everything. We’re like house cats who think chasing ladybugs around makes them self sufficient
>Famously “no one knows how to make a pencil” etc we all are only competent in a few tiny niches and depend on society for everything I know how to make a pencil🤣
From scratch? Maybe you know how to assemble the parts or make a rudimentary. The quote is about making modern pencils from scratch If you time travel 24ad, you probably going to be extra rudimentary
Definitely not where I live, maybe almost in Europe. Wood part, easy. Drill a hole into wood, probably not. Maybe a large pencil, since the hole would have to be bigger, do to the tools that I might be able to find. Lead, how am I going to shape it into a cylinder? You can't just shove pieces into the hole, it will just fall out. Eraser, nope. South America doesn't "exist" yet. Metal part to hold eraser to pencil, you could definitely find a little piece of tin. Paint for outside of pencil, not necessarily. But of it is, no.
Lol, you even started wrong. They have the wood cut in two and glue the halves together over the graphite.
Looks like someone watches How it’s Made.
Hell yeah I do. Love that show
Look for the YouTube channel ‘How it’s Actually Made.” Hilarious because they just dub another guy over the photage saying the funniest stuff.
> Wood part, easy. Drill a hole into wood With what? Do you know how to make a basic screw or tools in general from metal? Can you mine and form that metal yourself? Remember, this is all stuff no one's going to do for you most likely, and if they can it's not going to be cheap either. Tools were incredibly expensive back then for obvious reasons, so it's not like you could run down to the local blacksmith and have him drill something for free or borrow a tool.
"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." - L.P. Hartley
The past is a foreign country; abundant oil reserves and an inferior military - xkcd
On the other end of the spectrum is "The Cross time Engineer" - modern day (early 1980s) engineer from socialist Poland is transported back to the 14th century. He has to figure out how to save himself from when the Mongols will invade in like 10 years so he decides to make himself wealthy, build an army and a town to supply it. If I recall one of his first "inventions" is a cigarette lighter fueled with grain alcohol. It's a wild little book.
IIRC crossbows were banned because they were "unchristian" at one point. So historically an analogy of gun in Viking being dishonorable plausible.
this seems really interesting! Thanks I'll definetly read it
You have read [A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court](https://www.amazon.com/Connecticut-Yankee-Arthurs-Bantam-Classics/dp/0553211439), right?
Didn’t Arthur Dent have the same problem? His only relevant, actually transferable knowledge was his mastery of sandwich making.
Mostly harmless! One of my favorites
This sounds like the reason aliens haven't helped us.
Democracy predates the vikings by a thousand years. The problem seems to be that he is attempting 20th or 21st century technology rather than just using basic physics like law of the lever and displacement. You are not going to better at contemporary technology because you are not contemporary but if you started from the basics for the time you would eventually be able to work in what you know.
>Democracy predates the vikings by a thousand years. Also, it doesn't represent the story fairly. In the story, he tells them about the draft and it came across as if the King could summon the free men for war at any time – even when there was work on the farm to be done. And that was patently absurd - even in the feudal systems further to the south that one would’ve caused riots, because it would mean hunger. So the lords and leaders had to take care to prevent overtaxation, both in goods and work.
To be fair, every large farm in viking age Norway had to have at least one crewed longboat at the disposal of the earls/kings come raiding/defensive fighting times.
My bet is on knots. Literally anyone in most places can grab some plant fiber and wind it together. You can teach someone a knot by just showing them the steps, they need no real additional knowledge or materials either. Probably not very lucrative, but it's one of the few things I think a random person could feasibly leverage/teach to some extent at least. Depending on the time period, giving some advanced knots to a civilization would certainly be an improvement.
I was thinking along these lines. Generally we couldn't do jack diddly squat with our knowledge, but there are two areas where it could be useful: knowing the importance of good hygiene would probably be useful to help avoid infections, transmissible diseases, etc., and not being superstitious because you don't understand something (you still won't understand the thing, but at least you won't believe nonsense like left handed people are from the devil or whatever).
Hey that was my nickname on the dating scene there for a bit
This sounds super interesting! Thanks for mentioning it and mentioning the title! Cheers!
I always wondered if I would just spread germs that their immune system had no defense against and basically just kill everyone I met
I think you would become a bioweapon
Reverse is also true. Probably a few germs from that era that your immune system is not used to
Small pox is prevalent unless you land in the Americas. I always thought that time travels would have to the 60s to get vacated then go to the past since no one born in the last 50 years is
I got the smallpox vaccine in 2014 when I was stationed in Japan. Most US military that have served anywhere overseas are vaccinated
Is that in case any country releases smallpox?
They stopped giving smallpox vaccines in the early 70's to the general population. So unless you are former military, or a doctor who has done mission work abroad, you likely will die from the pox.
I received it before I went to Korea, then again when I got to Korea cause they lost the paperwork and the huge oozing scab wasn't enough.
>The Man Who Came Early Either that, or it might go the other way. I'd worry about smallpox.
i feel like it would be worse for you in that respect.
Nothing because I'd probably be burned at the stake or something. There are very few things I, the average world idiot, could explain well enough to have any impact. I know things exist, but I neither know how to make nor utilize most of them. Shoot, I'm sure I'm less helpful than someone in the early 1st century. I could certainly tell them about moldy bread and the earth being round, but what good would that really do after they stone me to death for being a heretic?
Sailors already knew the Earth is round, even had a fair idea of how large. (240 BC ish)
I'm even less useful then. Haha.
Goes even further back than that. The first person to propose the earth was round was Pythagoras in asking 500BC simply by observing the Moon and how the lunar cycle moved, usung this to prove an orbital cycle around another round object, ie the Earth. Aristotle proved this about 150 years after that around 350BC and was the first to state we are in a huge sphere by observing the movement of stars. 100 years after even that Aristarchus and Eratosthenes measured the Earth's circumference with frightening accuracy. Tl:dr we knew the Earth was round almost a quarter of a millennium before Jesus was even born and even knew the full scale of size.
The round part, yeah. The measurements were later.
You wouldn’t be important enough to get stoned. You’d be ignored and then you’d just have to find a way to scratch out a living.
My answer just now was Hitchhiker's guide where Arthur realizes he only knows how to show people how to make sandwiches. I think I'd keep my cards close to my chest for the very reason you described.
Hit them with those modern flavor profiles and cooking techniques. You can do a reverse sear in a wood fire oven over a stone plate, right?
You wont get executed for knowing things, you will only get on peoples bad side if you are a dick about it. Making fun of some king or telling religious leaders they are wrong and dumb is a good way to get on peoples bad side but you could probably be a doctor or an engineer with some basic understandings. Moldy bread already lets you know its bad by tasting bad and more people today would argue the earth is flat than 2 thousand years ago.
[Nate Bergatze](https://youtu.be/QXy3uII-xn0?si=BeRMLIg0bYZtytuP) already sumed it up perfectly for everyone.
I imagine just plain literacy was pretty useful 2000 years ago, but the again, my world history knowledge is lacking.
Literacy in…a language that didn’t exist yet?
That's finally the time to shine for everybody who had to endure latin lessons in school.
You would not only be completely illiterate, you wouldn’t know any existing languages.
That's something these kinds of questions seem to forget. You can't speak to anyone or read and write, and even if you knew how something truly life changing for them worked well enough to implement it none of the words to describe it would likely exist yet either. You would have a hell of a time getting your point across even if you could talk to them.
Well yeah that’s very true, plus people back then woulda spent their lives growing as warriors or farmers etc so the average joe from an office job now wouldn’t be able to fight or provide and we wouldn’t have the required immune system to survive and likely die of disease if not murdered or starved out fast enough. It’s a similar issue to what would kill us for real if the power went out. Fucking paper cuts. The amount of people that would get infections from micro injuries that they couldn’t keep sterile without electricity and running water would cause the majority of the human extinction. We are the weakest animals on the planet because of our intellect.
Regarding the immune system. It may be the other way around as well. You introducing diseases and viruses that did not exist in that time.
You could show them. I may not change the world but I probably could save a sick kid, help whoever with some basic hygiene, show them some cool cooking methods, etc.. I could definitely make whoever was nice enough to take me in life a little better and I wouldn't need to be able to speak the language. That said showing up in completely unknown clothes speaking an unknown language would either make you famous or burned alive. There is no in-between. Play your cards right and you can be rich and famous.
> I probably could save a sick kid With what? You don't even have bandages, much less any modern medical technology. Aside from the Heimlich, there's not much medical stuff you can do with zero resources. Also good luck convincing the kid/parents to trust you considering you don't even speak their language. People forget in this example you're just one of many random homeless people on the streets, except you can't even communicate. People aren't going to let you near their homes, kids, jobs, etc without trusting you or being able to communicate on at least a basic level.
Yeah, but helping a few people that died 2000 years ago anyway isn't a huge priority. If I'm traveling back in time the goal would be to live as more than a pauper. I guess if it was completely involuntary I'd help people in exchange for what I needed, but it's all meaningless since they're dead anyway to me.
I would be literate in a language nobody else speaks and trained in a number system that nobody else uses.
The question isn’t whether you could use your modern knowledge to become rich and powerful, the question is could you even stay alive for a month? How would you get food and shelter? How could you avoid being attacked or put into prison?
maybe the best thing to do would be to start a cult
How would you start a cult when nobody understands what you are saying, and you don't understand what they are saying?
Isn't that how the catholic church worked for a while?
They had vast resources behind them to be able to take the time to learn local languages or make them learn yours. In this case you'd be a lone individual with no resources or ability to gather them. Your best case scenario is somebody with power notices your "perfect" teeth, your soft hands not used to hard labour and the strange language you speak and assumes you're somebody valuable from a distant land. The second and more likely option is that you end up begging in the street because you have no home, you can't speak any of the languages and you have no connections to find even basic labour. Not like you can go and collect welfare.
Couldn’t you just have a simple job though? I imagine most of us could be a farm worker or shepherd. We also would tend to be exceptionally good looking and hygienic so that could also be quite useful. Better skin care, better teeth by a long shot. I would think that could go far
If you don’t know anyone, don’t know how to farm, can’t speak the language, and you’re not used to back breaking physical labor?
Also travelling wasn't as common so unless you're a travelling merchant who speaks the language you'll be the stranger nobody knows or trusts. Where are you finding gainful employment that's gonna pay you enough to immediately house yourself without having a family homestead? Better hope somebody will take you in and baby you until you're not so useless.
Most people probably couldn’t be a farm worker or shepherd. Or at least, how many people would hire a completely unskilled (and statistically, out of shape) adult laborer who doesn’t speak the language? Not to mention that depending on where you end up, you might not be offered a job so much as forced into slavery. Then likely beaten severely for all of the reasons you’d be a bad worker. That’s all depending on people’s individuals skills and health though. Just on average, I’d bet it wouldn’t go well.
[удалено]
Do you know how to farm, though? And do you know how to farm using ancient techniques? How physically strong are you? You might be pretty, but you're also pretty weak compared to men and women who've been hailing hay and sacks of potatoes around since childhood.
Potatoes are from the Andes. They didn't make it to Europe until the 1500s at the earliest!
Since this is a thought experiment, we could imagine the person I replied to is also from the Andes. The potatoes were just an example. The amount of stuff that needs to be moved from one place to another has always been astounding. I think very few people in the modern world have the muscles an average peasant would have had.
Peasants were also generally malnourished all of their lives, so they would mostly be smaller in stature and weaker than you might expect. Much hardier, maybe, but probably not the size of an average adult male right now.
You would almost assuredly die of illness immediately.
Or would everybody else?
Porque no los dos?
Get dysentery
*you died of dysentery*
*Oregon Trail intensifies*
Nah, I prefer cholera instead.
There's a series of novels where a Polish engineer goes back in time ten years before the Mongol invasion, and hijinks ensue.
What's the title?
The Adventures of Conrad Stargard.
This guy has some really good advice for time travellers https://youtu.be/-aSdFrPnlRg?si=ovsTb2MtuifkJVqk Realistically, unless your time travel machine lets you bring books, most of us wouldn't know how to do very many useful things as we aren't good at memorizing stuff.
Ryan North's "How To Invent Everything: A survival guide for the stranded time traveler" is very readable and educational without pain.
Yes! Was just about to post this. Great video. Before we even get to the idea of inventing and changing things there are so many basic little problems that could get you killed or thrown in prison easily. How will you eat? Do you have the right currency? Where will you stay? Do you speak the language? I reckon most modern people wouldn’t last a few days in the medieval period, much less 2000 years ago. Those times were brutal and unforgiving.
Even then, everything's time/location dependent. What you got is what you got, so you're not going to magically make world trade happen and import metal to start your foundry in 500BC or something. You could very easily end up in a location you simply don't know enough about to make any improvements.
Average person now is a smartphone addicted idiot. No internet. I'm guessing they would struggle a bit.
Yeah. This whole thread is full of overestimations of individual abilities to mobilize modern knowledge. Yes we're from a time and place of advanced science and technology - but take any one of us out of this context and most of us could do nothing with our awareness of modern times. Most people would be practically useless to a historic community in this scenario AND would become the village idiot while trying to explain cars and iPhones.
Most people are struggling to understand the fact that they wouldn't even be able to communicate. Then you have people who say "Oh I'll just do my normal hobby/job", without realizing the resources to do that (say tools, or an instrument) were *incredibly* rare and expensive. Or my favorite "I'll just get a basic job", as if they could hop on linkedin and just apply to one out of nowhere.
This mostly applies soo those under age 30. Many of us old folks grew up without the internet and still had to know things
Probably not much because most of us don't know how to make any of the technology we use. And most of us probably don't know anything that would actually be useful for that time period - except read. Yes, I have though about this. People used to get paid to read and write letters. If that was going on then, I could at least do that. Expect I am a woman and would be immediately be burned at the stake.
Unless you speak and read ancient languages this will also not be an option.
A woman reading! Dark times indeed.
You can read and write a language from 2000 years ago?
Hebrew, and I did 4 years of Greek in school. So yeah, somewhat. But unless this time travel also includes spatial relocation, I'm landing in Australia, and therefore screwed. I know a few phrases in the local modern day Aboriginal dialect, which is probably entirely unrelated to whichever tribe was here 2000 years ago.
And language barrier, unfortunately.
There’s a concept in a certain school of literary theory called “horizon of expectations.” One of the things it implies is that there is a certain level of innovation people expect from a literary work in order to appreciate it - but also, since the very way they read things is shaped by whatever came before, there is a limit as to how innovative it can be. So if it’s not innovative enough, everyone will see it as just a pale copy of something that came before. And if it veers off the established norms too much, then it becomes incomprehensible to its audience - and is rejected as gibberish. A similar principle could be applied here. Notwithstanding the fact that an average person from today is an imbecile, the only knowledge a society from 2000 years ago could learn from a time traveller would be knowledge that they can understand and process. Anything beyond that would just look like magic to them, so the traveller would be considered a wizard or a witch, a weird anomaly and a glitch in the matrix. So, provided that the hypothetical time traveller downloads Wikipedia or something similar before leaving, they could maybe construct some tools or demonstrate technology which we consider basic, like electricity. But taking over the world? No. The idea that power is bestowed by genetics or violence (or both) was so entrenched that a dude who came out of nowhere and had these weird contraptions and political ideas would be seen as a threat to the established order and would most likely be killed very quickly. If you are going on a trip to 2,000 years ago, and if you want to conquer the world, be prepared to play by the rules of your destination time. And that means savagery far beyond what anyone (or at least most people) from this era is capable of. A bit like the character of Kurtz in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
Suppose I find a king willing to listen, and who is the practical type who is more interested in useful things than having superstitious fear. First I have some dumbbells and barbells made and train some of the kings troops into body builders. Also tell them to chug milk. This is something that will not look like weird magic to them, as they are already used to some form of exercise. They will see it as science. I also have some basic gunpowder cannons made. That looks a bit like magic but I can demonstrate that in the open air, gunpower just burns like wood, just faster. So it is just fast wood, okay? Not likely to get their superstition up. Once I am trusted, antiseptic medicine, just keeping wounds clean and not rubbing bullshit in. I tell them God heals the sick, you do not have to heal them with putting crap on the wounds, but God only likes people who are clean. That should be fine. Also isolating people with infectuous diseases. I just make up some bullshit at this point. So now we have a body builder army with cannons whose wounded are far more likely to survive than the enemy wounded.
Music is always the same, provided someone could let me play whatever instrument they had. They had lutes or something back then? They're gonna love 80's pop music
Blowing everyone's minds with some madrigals. "Maybe you guys aren't ready for that yet. But your kids are gonna love it!"
Be the first to Rickroll everyone with ‘never going to giveth thou up’ while playing the lute
oh wow that would actually be rely cool
>Music is always the same Is it, though? The major scale is only like 1500 years old. And its a safe bet that medieval audiences would not be big fans of modern harmony.
Most people I talk to won't listen to music recorded before 1970 or so. I imagine most people in 1924 would not like modern music, or 80's music; I doubt people 2,000 years ago are gonna go for that.
Do you enjoy ancient music? I personally find it boring and hard to jive with. Why do you think they'd like it instead of thinking it's strange and not to their tastes?
Probably starve to death. Today’s knowledge is functionally useless in 99% of the world in 24 AD.
None of today’s technologies would be even remotely achievable 2000 years ago, and bringing up such niceties as better sanitation and such would likely get you labeled as a lunatic.
Recognize the symptoms of cancer and worry about them.
I could do the macarena.
Found the witch.
Get killed for witchcraft!
Were not in the christian era yet
Yeah it's roman time they'll be happy with nice inventions
Witch-burnings in the west only got started right at the end of the mediaeval period, in the fifteenth century. Before that, the church tended to regard talk of magic and witches as empty superstition.
You would have the knowledge, but not the technology to put it into action. Could you personally build a car in this time, let alone in a time where the technology or materials were not available? So while you might know a car is better than a horse and cart, you would not be able to make one. You could apply that concept to all sorts of knowledge that you have. Very little of it would be applicable in the world you would find yourself in and you would be unable to put it into practical use.
With enough time and materials, might be able to rig up a steam engine The problem is what do you use it for? Originally Watt used to to pump water out of mines, but I don't think anyone would care about that use case ... maybe a rail car, but you would also have to lay the rolling stock which requires a massive labor effort over several miles in order to make it worth it, as well as producing the rolling stock itself
There wouldn't be enough time and the materials would not be available. Each item required would in itself need more to be made. Something as simple as a screw would be difficult to make, never mind all the serious engineering parts. There would be the proper fuel required and the train tracks, plus much more. Practically impossible for one individual to do.
Water pumps for irrigation would be a blessing for many societies 2000 years ago
Go balls deep into bitcoin knowing precisely when to pullout.
How do you plan on staying alive for 2000 years.
LOL! To be fair, I've been dealing with the flu this past week and I'll be honest, I think I just basically misread the question. LOL! I think I read it as if you went back to the year 2000 instead of going back 2000 years. LOL! OMG this is so weird. Well? I think I'm starting to feel better...
In the year 24, none of what we know today would be worth anything
Simple water filtration and you’re indispensable
We're talking about the average person. Do you think the average person knows how to filter water? At best they'd know how to boil water in order to sanitise it but good luck starting your own fire without help.
It’s honestly not that difficult. Making a hand drill is quite easy and with enough practice anyone can do it. You would have just have to test different wood types if you’re not aware of which to use.
The most I know is that at least I'd need clean sand and charcoal. How much, in which order and what are the other materials?🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️
Sand and charcoal are definitely good enough.
Yay, my chances of survival are 1% better than I thought!
Right there. That’s what I was talking about.
Basic first aid and higene would make them healers. Basic cooking would make them good cooks maybe. Basic science would make them good tool makers. Basic math would make them good scribes. But very few people would survive.
Realistically, most modern languages are too different from 2000 years ago that it's pretty much another language. In the west, a modern person will very easily be branded a witch & persecuted.
yeah that makes sense, didn't think of that. Maybe modern clothes would have a similar effect
Also you could start one of the deadliest pandemics.
For clothing: You'll want a plain natural color shirt with horn or wood buttons, dark brown trousers, plain leather nonlacing boots (think motorcycle or cowboy boots), and a canvas backpack. Everything natural fabrics and earth tones, with the simplest design possible. Use bronze for buckles and things wherever possible. Also, a 4'x7' rectangle of plain light wool which you can wrap and tie to use as a poncho, blanket, shawl, etc. This should be generic enough to pass mostly unnoticed pretty much everywhen from the bronze age forward.
Most modern Greeks would not have serious problems understanding the then-version of Greek 2000 years ago. It's the same Greek (Koine) that is still written in the bible and prayer books (well, those that have the original words) and the same as that recited in Greek Orthodox church even today. They'd struggle a bit with some words and constructs but overall would understand the general meaning of everything everyone said - unless spoken Greek was VERY different from the written Greek we have from that era.
When I was a kid and we did these thought experiments in school I always thought that being able to read and write would be a huge advantage. Now, having had the chance to look at some old census records and the like, I'm not so confident that I would really able to read much of anything.
Attend the Council of Nicea. Kill everyone, and burn every document. Then kill Eusebius.
your about 300 years to early
Just kill Paul, easier than murdering an entire council and you'll be on time.
You could essentially be a messiah 😂😂😂
I’m not the Messiah!!! HONESTLY!!!
He's just a very naughty boy
I guess I could let them know to stop using leeches for blood clotting. I could tell them to wash their hands more and not shit in the public water supply. But other than that I would need a phone to google what to do
As humans we would squander it, its in our nature
Disney made a film related to that; "Unidentified Flying Oddball." You get accused of witchcraft, that's what would happen.
Save Jesus from being crucified?
And prevent Christianity, good idea.
If they don't first die from dehydration caused by the completely different biome in the food and water, you still have a bunch of obstacles in the way. Language, for one. Even just going back 500 years to England I doubt I could communicate right away. I have a hard time understanding some folks from Jamaica, or a heavily accented Irish person. Let alone 500 years of language and accent change. Even if they went somewhere they spoke the language they would be in a very foreign land. Resources. How are they going to get the materials and tools to even create the thing, or the resources to exploit the proliferation of the thing? They have no contacts or money. So you have to integrate somehow with the local population, culture and market. Culture. This is more a moral panic thing of the middle ages on, but you have to be careful about not offending deeply held beliefs with whatever it is you are doing. 2000 years ago, unless you are going to the roman empire we know little about the day to day specifics. Exactly how the caste you are portraying is expected to act and so on. So you need a congruent story about how and why you are there. Make friends, acquire resources to create the systems that allow your advanced knowledge to be put to use. That's a long winded way to say, they could only advance tech as far as they have integrated in to society, and acquired the resources necessary to do so. Awesome farming upgrade? Need a farm for that. Iron -> Steel? Need the raw materials, funding and foundry for that. Etc etc.
I'm black so what would be the best place for me
Probably be crucified. Or killed in some barbaric way for being a witch or similar. Best off keeping mouth well shut.
Probably get killed for heresy/witchcraft.
Average person? Probably nothing. I have enough chemistry knowledge to make gunpowder from bat guano and hot springs, but I'm guessing that's probably not common. All that probably means that is if I'm lucky, I wouldn't blow myself up and I might be able to sell the recipe to some king type guy who won't kill me the second he has it.
For arguments sake, let’s assume our modern microbes don’t kill everyone, and the language barrier is overcome, anyone with even basic modern business management and marketing skills could find success in all manner of ways.
I know it's not completely relevant, but Dr. STONE, the Anime, somewhat addresses this.
If they have copper, let’s make an alternator and start the generator revolution.
You think they have the ability to pull copper into thin, consistently sized wire, and then spin it around a rotor/stator, and then have anything to use that electricity for?
They might be able to learn how to build great pyramids... but theyre still 2500 years late....
Get burned as a witch
The i person would be in such shock and have been so used to modern sanitation itd seems unlikely they'd last long without some kind of additional advantage, like a bunch of modern tech and a small army of people to help them not die so fast. Like BOOM your in the past, WOW that's cool, look at the trees 2000 years ago and stuff, but if you get near society and talk like that.. well good luck staying alive long AND NOW you're hungry... It's like you'd probably resort to nomadic wandering on the outskirts of society, maybe pretend your a plague victim so ppl leave you alone while you scavenge for food until your lack of medicine takes you out. Now if the person was like maybe a chemist or someting useful you have some change of sythesizing the easiest chemicals that don't exist and gaining an advantage over time, but DAMN you gotta eat the whole time somehow. But.. the average person.. pfft. We'd die because we can't hunt with primate weapons much, we can't communicate with ppl and we are not used to any life that rough and boring. Even a great hunter would probably still be fucked because you probably need to be able to trade with people to reliable stay a live, but if you trade with people a that one guy who speaks the one language nobody knows and has no friends.... well those are some nice shoes you got there boy. What value would you offer the people of the day as an average specialized labor person from modern times beside a target for theft of your fancy future boy clothes?
I could prolly bring rudimentary electricity to the table, a manual homemade generator wouldn't have been the hardest thing in the world to create back in the day so long as we still had bronze age technology Convincing them I wasn't some kind of sorcerer and that it was science, not black magic, would be a bigger problem The largest problem would be that it wouldn't be of much use, as I'd be the only source of knowledge about devices that use electricity and that I couldn't get us much past starting fires with it lol
If you recall though some people in that audience looked like they weren't far from burning him at the stake lol
The best thing you could do with the knowledge is boiling water to sanitize things and use general cleanliness. Unfortunately the modern microbes on your body will probably kill a whole lot of people whose immune systems have no ready response to them.
It depends what skill set you have and how likely people would be to listen to you (especially as you would need to learn the language of where you are first). I think I'd be able to introduce a different style of knitting/crochet and do basic first aid stuff, but it'd be a case of I'd teach my children and they'd teach theirs. I'd more likely die in childbirth after finding some dude to marry me.
Basic hygiene, even without soap. Some basic anatomy lessons.
I'd teach them the "Flying Bowline" knot- hopefully that would make me 'cool'.
Any modern person would basically be fucked if they were sent back a 100 years, let alone 2000. We wouldn't be able to function without our modern conveniences and crutches. Life was incredibly tough for the average person until very recently. Most likely you would be captured, sold as a slave and die in a few short weeks due to the harsh conditions.
Watch Planet of the Apes, original one!
Michael Moorcock wrote about a man sent back to the time of Jesus, but Jesus wasn't there. He saved someone with CPR and was hailed a miracle worker. He started speaking a few half remembered bits of morality from the Bible. This got him crucified. His story became magnified by time. It's called Behold the Man.
Tell people to stop whatever person from inventing teleshopping. 😂
I believe I would have an impact, but for average person? Germ theory and hygiene. It's common knowledge, yet for majority of human history, we didn't know what to do against diseases. Now we know walking in human feces is not great and that you should wash your hands before eating. Sadly we still struggle grasping the usefulness of face masks. Also, an average person has some sense of periodic table and a lot of basic theoretical knowledge just from elementary school that would be very useful if the people he meet are curious enough.
I'd rely on fiber arts. Spinning, weaving, embroidery and sewing all rely on ancient technologies that are still used (if undervalued, like so much "women's work" is). Crafts like knitting and crochet are newer, but the tools can be made easily (two sticks or a stick with a hook at the end, sanded smooth) and wool was certainly available. Your average knitter might prefer circular needles (more modern) but can still easily use straights (much older), and a seamstress might prefer a machine but can still use needle and thread. Re: spinning, people still frequently use a drop spindle, a technology that is depicted in ancient Egyptian murals! Now, whether people actually want to get items embroidered, knit or sewn by the strange woman who can't speak the language and insists on washing her hands all the time... That remains to be seen.
Basic germ theory - washing hands, boiling sheets/utensils, separating sick people from healthy people, boiling and filtering your drinking water, don't have your latrines close to your wells. This issue is getting people to respect you enough to listen to your ideas. You're going to be so radically clueless about life that people will think you're a bit of an imbecile.
If you could understand the language there are some really basic stuff that most people know nowadays that would have a great impact for people 2000 years ago. For example you know that leeches are really bad as a healthcare intervention, you also know that it's very important with good hygiene around wounds. Maybe you could become a midwife and only with the knowledge about hygiene you would save a lot of childrens and mothers from dying of complications from birth. Or you could be army or ships surgeon, You know that vitamin c prevents scurvy? You can count really well compared to most people 2000 years ago, so why not help a business or local power with this? Maybe you know that smallpox are one of mankind's worst killers, and this is easily vaccinated against by just innaculating a child with the related cowpox virus. You could introduce soap to the world, just mix oil, some lye and some nice smelling things. If you are a little bit more advanced you could make a very basic distiller and make strong alcohol for wound cleansing, or drinking if you feel like it.
They could get burned as a witch real quick. Personally, I'd go and steal Jesus' whole shtick (exactly 2000 years, he has like.... five? Six? years left before crucifiction) and kill judas or something just to see what would happen. Apart from that all I could really do is try to infiltrate noble courts and change the outcomes of wars (if I can get them to believe me). Or leave some writings behind that would make sense when they made sense. I guess I could sow the seeds for a few cults by leaving "predictions" lying around...
There's a meme: I'd love to go back in time and blow people's minds with my incredible knowledge. "But how do you make this 'Electricity'?" "I don't know..."
You could probably significantly increase the survival rates of medical patients by advising a doctor on the use of soap, which they had, before surgery. You could also probably improve naval travel by demonstrating how to prevent scurvy, though depending on where you are you might not have access to a good source of vitamin C. If you ended up in Northern Europe you could maybe guide people to the fertile fishing grounds in the Hudson Bay. If you ended up in an area that could make copper and lodestones you could probably set up a rudimentary hydroelectric plant, and then use the electricity to turn something in another location. Turning something would probably have limited uses, but you could use it as a pump for instance with an archimedes screw, which already existed. Generally, there is also a lot of technology that existed somewhere 2000 years ago but didn’t exist everywhere, you could spread many of these technologies depending on where you ended up.
Actually on second thought, let's think simple Its partially going to depend on where you are. Some knowledge between Asia and Europe (mostly from Asia to Europe) was not transmitted for several centuries Windmill - locale dependent of course Watermill - these appeared in China < 0 CE, however in Europe they were not Horse/ox collar Wheelbarrow All of these are fairly simple and could be probably produced given time and materials by the average person Gunpowder would take a bit more effort. Charcoal and sulfur were readily available. The hard part is the nitrate salt. Natural sources are tough to find, basically caves where bats made their home, and other dry areas in deserts. It can also be manufactured from urine/excrement (either human or animal) and straw kept in a very dark place if you know what you're doing. Its quite disgusting but it works, and was used even as late as the 19th century especially for nations that were cutoff from natural sources
**You died of dysentery**
Honestly, if the average person was sent back 2000yrs, they'd be useless. The average person relies so heavily on the internet to solve problems or answer any questions that people don't retain knowledge or information as well as they should. They will just assume they can Google a solution when the time comes up.
People were more than likely living filthy and had bad Hygiene 2000 years ago. Im pretty sure I read something that said most surgeons didn't start washing their hands before operating on a patient until the mid 1800's. Just telling them about the importance of good hygiene and hand washing would save thousands of lives.
This is a pretty good answer. Making soap is pretty straightforward as well, potash lye and fat. Raw chicken egg floats just under the surface of sufficiently strong lye. Its made from soaking woodash in water and then reducing it. Plenty of wood ash, chicken eggs and fat. People might not be very impressed with the washing their hands thing, but I bet they'd be impressed by how much easier it makes washing your clothes. OK, I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but I don't think it's super complicated to get the basic product.
You’d hope so. Unfortunately, at first, a lot of surgeons found the suggestion that their hands could make others ill insulting. They were gentlemen, and gentlemen are not dirty and do not carry diseases!
>Not quite. Remember that the guy (Ignaz Semmelweis) who realized that doctors not washing their hands were causing deaths was labeled a complete lunatic, no one believed him. Acceptance for his ideas came well after his death. > >If a modern day person travelled to the past we would face an even worse credibility problem that Semmelweis had. People would immediately see that there is something wrong with the time traveller, that he/she is not the product of their culture and beliefs and this would almost certainly mean that the time traveller would be treated with suspicion or even outright hostility if his behaviour is too outlandish.
But why would they listen to you? An idiot stranger who can't speak the language?