Posted on 04/12/2015 6:20:17 PM PDT by MNDude
If you time traveled back to 1015, would you have enough modern knowledge and education to improve your llfe?
I mean like could you invent gunpowder or serious medical advancements, etc?
“I stand by my point though, that it isn’t as easy as carrying our knowledge back, it takes a sales pitch too.”
Also, one going back should know who the power was. Carefully avoid public credit, and lets popes, kings, etc have credit for your “ideas”. Technology is one thing, but one should know how to avoid the roadblocks of that era too.
Perhaps, DaVinci was a time traveller stuck in that time doing as well as he could with the available resources at hand.
That was one thing they did know how to make and use.
The problem was the dung all over the place made it nearly impossible to keep wounds clean.
We’ve gained a lot of technical knowledge, but in the process we’ve lost some valuable insights. I think we’d be surprised at how much those “primitive” people from 1,000 years ago could teach us.
Right. Negro doctors are by definition suspicious characters.
A little unionism and feminism would be entirely appropriate in the 1630s.
Some medical advances.
Some folks would still need to be bled.
"...there are bred certain minute creatures which cannot be seen by the eyes, but which float in the air and enter the body through the mouth and nose and cause serious diseases."
Marcus Terentius Varro, died 27 B.C.
Of course not!
Even if antibiotics work, they still take some time to perform their effect.
The part that (may be) removed, is of course, the death.
Probably the best thing one could do for the Incas and Aztecs and other pre-Columbians would be to show them what a wheel is and how it works.
Probably the best thing one could do for the Incas and Aztecs and other pre-Columbians would be to show them what a wheel is and how it works.
I had also heard that “American Indians” never discovered the “wheel”.
Not sure if that is true?
But that did not become common, regular practice for a long time. Imagine Varro as a time traveler from the late 19th century trying to explain this. It cropped up in the 1500’s and again in the 1600s but was not really acted upon until the late 1800s.
If Varro had been accepted, the Black Plague might have been mitigated.
You could invent the flush toilet, and we’d all be visiting the Vince every morning.
precisely correct....there would be no electricity, no modern chemistry, no modern materials or processing. Anyone who thinks that things can just be MacGyvered into existence has NEVER spent time developing a new (or just improved) product
The problem is, we’re viewing it from a modern perspective, where feminism and guilds/unions are a total train wreck.
Not to mention that the Negro doctor may not be fully qualified: cf. Mindy Kaling’s brother—got into med school passing off as a Negro, for whom admissions standards were lower than for other races...ladies and gents, Affirmative Action! (/s)
I would also invent double entry book keeping.
Yes, I know that is something only an accountant knows about but it really did revolutionize business.
If you knew history well you might be able to take advantage of knowing the future as it were. It will still be rough goings.
For a while... then I’d buy a boat and head to America before Europe inevitably descended into unrelenting poverty and war.
What would you call the “New World?”
Maybe if we changed the question a little to give some more perspective. Lets say you had been living 100 years in the future and the United States had suffered a severe decline. The constitution had been shredded. Muslims outnumbered Christians, white people were a hated minority, global cooling had caused mass famine and tens of millions of people had starved to death in the United States alone. Advanced technology was being used to enslave rather than help people. Would you do to help our future generations to avoid this living hell?
One can live three seconds without a brain; three minutes without a breath; three hours without shelter; three days without water; three weeks without food; three months without a friend; three years without job.
Modern technology is the bane of man. Goibg back 1000 years would end techno man in three days.
They had the wheel but without any beasts of burden the wheel was not considered of much use and so was used only in toys and things like that.
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