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?
“While he was a genius, he was also an asshole and created unnecessary resistance to his approach as a result.”
The norm was death from fever ranging from 10 to 35%. he reduced it to one. I suspect he was an “asshole” because the establishment doesn’t like being shown the error of their ways.
They say he couldn’t fully explain his success. But with that kind of results, it was obvious he had stumbled onto something very big.
You might enjoy this series which explores this very topic, although 1000 and 1632 were quite different.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1632_series
There is a bit of swearing, etc. in these books.
Interesting thought experiment.
Like most, I think our ability to introduce new technologies would be severely limited. While there may be a few “Basic” technological improvements any of us could introduce, the need for other people to not only help build but to convince others could take a lifetime.
Back in the late 1980’s or early 1990’s, there was a TV series called “Connections”. The original series, hosted by James Burke. He did an extraordinary job showing how many or most of our technological advancements have been the result of years and years of smaller achievements attained by many others. Burke, basically reverse engineered the “Knowledge” required and traced it back to, in most cases a disparate group of both ordinary and extraordinary individuals that were spread over hundreds of years.
With a basic first aid kit I’d be a doctor. :-)
“Problem solved?”
Probably! Ha ha good. As long as the local priests don’t think you have a method to avoid the punishment!
We gave the Japanese considerable help following our civil war as they fought their own.
I agree with you, and FTM with Ignacz.
But he was also an incredibly abrasive and annoying man. To be effective in this world one must not only know the truth but also be able to convince others to accept it.
One of my favorite SF books - “Lest Darkness Fall” by L. Sprague DeCamp. The protagonist finds himself stuck in ancient Rome just before it fell. He becomes a newspaperman to hold the darkness at bay.
Assuming we’re not taking anything with us the first order of business would be to obtain some type of work for a wealthy landowner. This would keep us fed and sheltered. While doing that we can then figure out inventions that will allow allow us to become wealthy landowners....
One thing about the Hippocratic Oath intrigues me.
The part about not cutting for stones but leaving it to a specialist.
They may have been better than we think.
Japan became a world power thanks to two atomic bombs that allowed the USA to modernize Japan and proved that the Emperor was a mere mortal.
A small WV town, for reasons unknown, suddenly finds itself in 1632 Germany, which is in the middle of the 30 Years War.
Hilarity ensues. Well, not really, but there is a lot of excellent extrapolation of how much those with advanced knowledge can and cannot change the past.
The guy that created that series is a commie. The heroes are a union thug, a feminist, a Negro doctor and his daughter, a feminist activist, etc. Read with discernment.
Nice, but for one small problem: I’m quite allergic to Penicillin....
Could you even drink the water or survive exposure to the average human? We may have an idea of what the bacteria was like then, but I doubt our immune systems could adapt to the slight variations that would be inevitable over the millennium.
Some medical advances.
And I would show them how to make a wheelbarrow. :)
My suggestion to the Romans would be, lose the lead pipes that carry drinking water and don’t invite everyone you conquer into the empire.
It was a great series.
I don’t know about that. Beating the crap out of the Russians in 1904 pretty much impressed everyone.
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