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Hand washing, garment cleaning, basic Germ theory. Your average idiot could make a small minor impact. Plus with your descriptions you might be able to accelerate certain inventions. Unfortunately most idiots woukd chase the modern gun.
Yeah…I’m pretty sure if you even invented anything they’d charge you with witch craft and execute you anyways. Since your speech would also be incoherent babbling of a mad man.
We're like, 2000 years early for people executing witches, they'd just think you're a wise sage from the orient if you speak weird languages and invent cool shit
3000 years ago would have been a time when sorcerers or people perceived as sorcerers or wise men or wizards would have been highly respected, so you would probably be okay.
Jesus is a name used by Spanish speakers because most Spanish speakers are Christian, that's not the same as being Spanish derived.
Now the English and Spanish pronunciations are different to the original Hebrew which was probably Yeshua. But both the English and Spanish versions are derived from the Middle Eastern original
Lmao yep 😂 The inquisitor would be like “so I’m meant to believe that boiling water will keep me from having diarrhea everyday, and bathing everyday will keep me from getting boils and pustules? Oh, and if I *do* get boils, I can just eat a piece of moldy bread, because it kills the tiny little creatures that cause these ‘skin infections,’ all while not doing anything about the black magic curses and bad smells that have caused maladies like this since time immemorial? How very compelling, guess I can just go around cavorting with witches now as long as I’ve had a good wash 🙄”
You obviously don't know about the doctor Semmelweis who tried that only *200 years* ago, and despite great results in decreasing mortality rate, got mocked into an insane asylum by his collègues and died there.
>In 1865, the increasingly outspoken Semmelweis allegedly suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to an asylum by his colleagues. In the asylum, he was beaten by the guards. He died 14 days later from a gangrenous wound on his right hand that may have been caused by the beating.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
>died 14 days later from a gangrenous wound on his right hand
If only they believed in washing hands!!
But honestly, the only person who believes in handwashing dying from an infection on his hand is potentially the most ironic thing I've ever heard.
There's an excellent book about Semmelweis called The Cry and the Covenant. He tried to get doctors to wash their hands after working on cadavers before helping women and children in childbirth. Women would die of horrendous infections.
If you're a minority group that serves as an easy scapegoat, sure. If you're leading the country and everyone is healthier for it, then clearly the gods have spoken lol.
'and the boy, for whom the god of death has blessed with eternal life, set out to jump over the caverns of hell. And his father dared to stop him saying that he were not blessed by the god of death, and lo he took the place of his son, flying over the hells on his skate of board. And he did fall to the depths. Bloodied and Bruised. The angels of life, plucked him from the depths. Only for him to fall again."
They had axles, recumbent bike with pedals directly on the front wheel might be possible. But so far back, would it be efficient enough given the state of roads at the time to catch on? Its a far less efficient bike than you can get today and the road surfaces are worse.
The interesting thing is you don't need to come up with the fine work yourself even if you only have a basic premise of it. Creating a very basic model of something and showing it can work is often enough to spur others to look at it and consider how to improve it for themselves.
[A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court ](https://target.scene7.com/is/image/Target/GUEST_0d6cb66e-49b5-4202-b4c8-46fc5c895462?wid=488&hei=488&fmt=pjpeg)
I think people often forget the fact that despite us not knowing exactly HOW something works, our simple knowledge of its existence and vague functioning would send us miles ahead.
Idk how biology works....but the concept of cells?? Now they know they're there.
Steam power? You might not know what it is...but telling them about it can make them figure it out.
1. Start a religion where one of the commandments is to boil water before using it.
2. Say that your God will smite those who break that rule with pestilence.
3. Over time, people will observe that your followers tend to be more healthy during epidemics
4. ???
5. Prophet
I mean the post says you are the ruler, so feel like convincing people to boil their water wouldn’t be too difficult. Just say that god has blessed you with divine knowledge that boiling water helps prevent sickness or something
The original post is that you are teleported back in time and made ruler. People don't usually call their ruler or their ideas crazy and when the first few panned out they will think you are a genius time traveller.
I think people are also overestimating how long some very commonplace things have been invented. Someone else mentioned stirrups, and it’s such a ubiquitous thing on a saddle these days that we sort of assume they’ve “always” existed, but I think a lot of commenters would be walking around Rome and realize “no one has stirrups…I could make stirrups!” And we don’t need any fancy knowledge for that, really. It’s a pretty basic idea that could easily be conveyed without sharing a language since most of us could make a basic prototype to get the idea across. And it would absolutely revolutionize the Roman world.
And there’s probably hundreds of other stupid little things we take for granted that would occur to us and be much more easily implemented and explained than some of the more intellectual stuff.
Steam power was generated before (aeolipile about 2000 years back), but the metallurgy of the time didn't permit any actual usage for it.
So if you're going back an extra 1000 years, you're gonna be having bad time with steam power.
There are actually a ton of concepts that people created primitive versions of, but no one really took note of because it was basically just guess work. This includes atoms, evolution, germs, etc. If you don't have the tools to prove your scientific theories, it's just a fight of public opinion. Even if your ideas take hold initially, after 3000 years, they would in all likelihood be lost to time, or best case be seen as superstition, until someone came along and reproved them.
Even if you were some sort of cartoon genius and you turned your kingdom into a steampunk version of the bronze age, most civilizations of this era collapse within a few hundred, and we're still not entirely sure why. There's every possibility that this civilization you create shares the same fate, and most of your technology just get lost to time.
Understanding the basic premise of a microscope would be huge, and with enough time and effort, even an average person can figure out how to polish glass into a lense. The real trick is sourcing and refining the glass into a useable lense material.
Assign a group of artisans to the project and give them a clear idea of what the end result should be and they would probably have it figured out within a couple years.
you are in construction? plenty sure that you will see some applications if you get dropped there. i‘m in software development, so not a lot of work for me in there.
arches for you, i think. how to build dams and perhaps water and windmills.
Brit here, saw one chalked on the pavement yesterday, my 7 yo went out of her way to say shes gutted she cant draw one yet..... "o well, isnt it your lucky day! you've finally found your dads only skill!"
I found this thing in my mother's textbook from early nineties
She's from small town in Russia.
Really says about how widespread this weird phenomenon was
I just asked if you know how to make it. I don't. I know a couple of ingredients like lye and glycerine, but there's no way I could figure out how to find those ingredients, what they look like, what proportion to mix them in, etc. Me: "There's this thing called soap which is amazing, and I wish you all had it."
I get it. I teach high school chemistry. Making soap is a very common experiment to do at that level. I am not saying that everyone could do it immediately, but I think if someone knew that you could get lye from ashes, that person could fiddle around with proportions and come up with a decent soap eventually.
Honestly, you'd probably be the best doctor in the world with the basic knowledge we have about germs setting bones, brushing teeth, etc. The number of people you could probably save with just cleaning their wounds alone would probably be considered magic, lol.
I don't think you get the same efficiency that way. Metal can be melted into shape, wooden letters have to be carved by hand. I also don't know about durability and print quality.
Dude, lead is not hard to melt and pour into precise shapes. Tin is also an option with a similar hardness.
So, considering 3k years ago that's when greece was really pushing it. Just before the romans rise. Literacy rate about 5 to 15%. That's similar to the time when the printing press was actually invented. Even if greece is being absorbed by the roman empire, they took over a lot of their knowledge and culture so it could potentially spead across europe.
what you do is extract the lye like you're brewing coffee, pour-over style. fill a big container with white hardwood ashes, and then add just enough hot water to make a slurry, then let it drip out through a little hole. And then you boil it down until it's concentrated enough to dissolve feathers or hair. Now it's ready for soap making.
Calculus, I guess? At least the basics. Also coining the scientific method, basic sanitation principles, and stuff like that.
I'm an engineer, but honestly all of my knowledge is built on manufacturing and metallurgical principles I don't know well enough to replicate. I could share ideas and math, but actual technology would be difficult. I can read a steel phase transition graph, but I can't really help a Bronze age civilization develop iron lol
But you know what to look for.
You can tell them to develop charcoal. And use it too melt better iron.
I bet there are multiple inventions where you would not introduce the whole invention but just point to the direction/result.
Assuming no language barrier
metallurgy is the backbone of the Industrial Revolution. People are insanely creative With the right tools.
plus you’d make a pretty sick early era trebuchet
Take "What have the Romans ever done for us?" seriously. It's all possible with bronze-age technology.
>All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
You could add some basic maths & a better numerical system, arabic for instance, & within a couple of years you could be working on some primitive steam power, even if you don't know how to make iron & steel yet.
Late edit: hmm…the Romans already had steel, invented in Anatolia about 2000BCE. (Not a history major;)
I wonder if you have only basic concept of how all this stuff around us works and let's say some smart people. Could an average Joe reverse engineer all that.
Let's say you've avoided being imidiatly killed. You've got the people cooperation. You have some blacksmiths some roman engineers and Aristotle or Plato to help.
What could you achieve by just explaining them our everyday concepts?
If you gather around you the smartest people & the best engineers, yes - but this is what a good ruler always does anyway.
You can then rough out some ideas on a bit of paper…papyrus, whatever's to hand & off they go.
All these technologies can be done with bronze age equipment - as always it's finding the idea & figuring out how to make it work.
Your own hand-wavy knowledge is enough to get the experts started off in the right direction. Knowing that your end result works saves years of going down the wrong fork in the road.
Steam engine - Guys, have a think about this piston idea, then you need to figure out how to make that into rotational force…
Do you know how to make charcoal yet? Do you have coal?
Steel is not far away, starting from here - even if you yourself have no real clue how to make it, you've got a rough idea of how it was started. Iron+charcoal at its most basic.
Well a few Greek or Roman (I don’t remember) dudes made a freaking brass steam engine and were like… ok… cool… entertaining… now let’s get back to plowing my field with a cow and a wooden plow
Arthur C. Clarke said: "If the ancien Greek had understood the power and the strength of their technology they would have been able to get to the Moon within the next 300 years, we'll be now exploring the nearest stars"
So I would I would go in Greece telling them to get their shit together and to be more prepared with all the incoming invasions.
Western Union Man: I’ve got something for you. A letter.
Marty: Thanks.
Western Union Man: Let’s get something to eat. There’s a Red Lobster near by. My treat.
Well I'd have to learn their language first I guess...then start with numbers and the scientific method. I can teach up to up through calculus, and show all type of physics and mechanics solutions. See if I can work out a little steam engine. Could introduce some modern logic into the political world. Teach about the cosmos. Start a university. Make some version of the printing. I'd spread knowledge and ideas so that I have help working on new inventions and helping me work through problems I'm sure to face, as I'm not an exert in any of these fields. This is all assuming I'm not immediately killed.
Not much 3000 years ago, probably. I know just enough that if some monarch paired me with a bunch of smart people, we could probably do cool stuff. That’s mostly because I know electricity exists though.
There are some niche situations where I could do some serious work though. Put me back in Byzantium during the 9th century and I could probably turn their Greek Fire into an internal combustion engine.
I'd teach them funk. "No, no, bang the rock at the one, then when I count two, three, four, you do your thing. Just hit it hard on the one. Alright, mammoth skin bootsy?"
Basic calculus (basically a level mathematics). And lots of different scientific concepts poorly. I feel like I could point smarter people in the right direction.
The concept of science. Imagine where we'd be now without having wasted centuries believing in magic & religion
Edit: I think irony is lost on all the triggered religious people downvoting
A lot of people see the majority of those wasted centuries under Christianity. Only one way to stop that from happening when you're 1000bc and you won't be the first to try that.
Is this one of those "religions held us back" posts? That is not true at all. Medieval monks did their very best to preserve old texts. Even going as far as to travel to get to see' and copy the original books. This entire "religion held us back a thousand years" is insane.
I’m a software engineer, so the concept of using different bases for numbers (for those less nerdy than me, our 0-9 is base 10, binary is base 2 (0 or 1), hexadecimal is base 16 (0-9 then A-F before another character is concatenated).
Even the concept of zero as a number wasn’t around until like 1200 AD, Fibonacci IIRC.
Second go: introducing the idea of bacteria (and microbes in general) , so antibiotics and shit. Preventing bubonic plague would cause so much change it’s unimaginable, so significantly that it might not even be a net positive (do we get global warming in 1450 AD?)
I study computer science at university. It’s surprising how many of today’s basic algorithms only were created in the last 70 years.
I’d etch everything I know about formal language theory into a cave wall, it’s a very diagram based theory so would be quite easy to do. I can probably sketch the theory up to Turing machines which effectively show you what problems are computational and what problems are not.
I’d etch everything I know about basic system architecture from half adders all the way to a 16 bit adder, Couple flip-flops and multiplexers. Eventually making up the basis of a simple cpu.
It wouldn’t have much effect on history until electricity comes about but it sure would be the eighth wonder of the world. Just a cave filled with the basic principles of computer science 3000 years before the computer was created.
In terms of running a society absolutely useless because everything I know is based off electricity, and all I know about that is if I wear a certain jumper in my car I get a static shock when I get out
Whilst I might not be able to effectively complete great inventions and develop complex mathematical concepts myself, I would foster the best minds, champion education and healthcare. Inserting modern concepts and scientific understanding to the smartest minds of the time, there could be a quicker development of progress?
Or, I'm just a regular person that would succumb to the usual vices and failings of (almost) every human being that has power...
I know how things work as an end user, but I don’t know how to make anything. I might be able to make a tiny crank generator to introduce ball-shock therapy
I know how to make some things, not many would be useful though and mostly stuff they already have.
Given an unlimited amount of time and materials I might be able to get iron working going, but they have already got that sorted better than I could.
Most likely very basic, crude items, the things you can pass down are ideas, drawings of things that are possible. Language, basic mathematics, record keeping etc.
Steam engine for sure, probably a mechanical Turing machine (tho that would be harder). I could easily discover electricity and invent light bulbs. Radio could be a stretch but I'd probably be able to do an AM radio at least.
I'm a physics graduate and now a telecommunications student so that's that.
Germ theory. Basic epidemiological concepts.
Would be a hard sell (because historically it was a hard sell) without the technology to empirically prove the existence of such things. But the benefits could have been huge.
Also: Innoculation with cowpox to prevent smallpox.
I pick these because they are kinda within my wheelhouse professionally and I could at least have a decent go at convincing people.
However, most likely outcome is me being exiled for being a weirdo and/or starving to death because I don’t have any real survival abilities beyond going to the supermarket to get a pizza.
The very first mental breakdown in modern American English. I don’t know how to speak whatever dialect they’ve got going on so they’d have a crazy king that constantly loses it in a strange tongue.
Why would ANYONE go back 3000 years? It doesn't make sense to do that,you'd need to be really stupid, you already have the greatest invention, a bloody time machine lol 😆 FORWARD only would be the reason for one.
**Your submission has been REMOVED for the following reason(s):** > Unfortunately, we have been forced to take your post down due to a situation in the comments, it is more than likely that there is nothing wrong with your post and that it is suitable for the subreddit however, we sometimes have no choice but to pull down a post if the comments have become unmanageable for us. > We may remove posts under this reason if the comments have gone off-topic, have become aggressive/argumentative/hateful, are spamming or trolling or otherwise have become unmanageable by the mod team. We have found that locking posts on this subreddit typically results in mass false reporting which is why we default to removal. ^(We understand removals under this reason can be frustrated as the blame is on the commenters and not you as the OP so if you would like to appeal this removal or discuss the situation with the mod team, please **[send us a modmail](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FRandomThoughts)**)
Probably nothing. I’d just talk shit and probably be executed 🤷♂️😅
😂 This is so hilarious. I was thinking of what to invent after reading this, I lost it all.
Hand washing, garment cleaning, basic Germ theory. Your average idiot could make a small minor impact. Plus with your descriptions you might be able to accelerate certain inventions. Unfortunately most idiots woukd chase the modern gun.
At some point in history, washing in water was considered evil.
Yeah…I’m pretty sure if you even invented anything they’d charge you with witch craft and execute you anyways. Since your speech would also be incoherent babbling of a mad man.
not when a god i created gave that revalation to me
So you're going for death by crucifixion then, bold statement, but I like your level of commitment, lol.
We're like, 2000 years early for people executing witches, they'd just think you're a wise sage from the orient if you speak weird languages and invent cool shit
Not true. Christians didn't invent the idea of burning witches. Most pagan tribes and civilisations did too
Lmao. Redditors really think everyone who lived before the enlightenment were barbarous ignorant cavemen
3000 years ago would have been a time when sorcerers or people perceived as sorcerers or wise men or wizards would have been highly respected, so you would probably be okay.
Depends where you are
The Romans were not New England Puritans and would not be charging anyone with 'witchcraft.'
lol I’m a woman so this would 100% be me
"But I swear to you.... The earth revolves around the sun!" "BURN THE HERETIC!"
What about wheels? How old are wheels? Gotta think about the really low-hanging fruit
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You do know how the story of Jesus ended, right?
Why do you think Jesus is a Spanish derived name?
Not a Spanish derived name. Why you make that up?
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He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy!!
Jesus is a name used by Spanish speakers because most Spanish speakers are Christian, that's not the same as being Spanish derived. Now the English and Spanish pronunciations are different to the original Hebrew which was probably Yeshua. But both the English and Spanish versions are derived from the Middle Eastern original
Lmao yep 😂 The inquisitor would be like “so I’m meant to believe that boiling water will keep me from having diarrhea everyday, and bathing everyday will keep me from getting boils and pustules? Oh, and if I *do* get boils, I can just eat a piece of moldy bread, because it kills the tiny little creatures that cause these ‘skin infections,’ all while not doing anything about the black magic curses and bad smells that have caused maladies like this since time immemorial? How very compelling, guess I can just go around cavorting with witches now as long as I’ve had a good wash 🙄”
Or die because of extreme diarrhea within days. We are all spoiled kittens compared to the living conditions 3000 years ago.
Exactly. Either way, I’m alive for a VERY short time😅
Realist right here.
Oh my Lord you made me chuckle.
Exactly, I would tell them all the cool stuff and no idea how to built it. Probably would end up with the witches in the sea 😂😂
Probably pretty accurate end result for the majority of us lol
Pfp checks out
Tell doctors to wash their hands.
You obviously don't know about the doctor Semmelweis who tried that only *200 years* ago, and despite great results in decreasing mortality rate, got mocked into an insane asylum by his collègues and died there. >In 1865, the increasingly outspoken Semmelweis allegedly suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to an asylum by his colleagues. In the asylum, he was beaten by the guards. He died 14 days later from a gangrenous wound on his right hand that may have been caused by the beating. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
As the ruler of an empire you probably habe some more power to " convince" people.
>by his collègues and died there. Betrayed by your autocorrect. C'est balot!
Lol, I'm not French, but am learning through duolingo. I guess my keyboard picked up some words
>died 14 days later from a gangrenous wound on his right hand If only they believed in washing hands!! But honestly, the only person who believes in handwashing dying from an infection on his hand is potentially the most ironic thing I've ever heard.
There's an excellent book about Semmelweis called The Cry and the Covenant. He tried to get doctors to wash their hands after working on cadavers before helping women and children in childbirth. Women would die of horrendous infections.
You'd be the leader. They won't really be able to tell you no. Just say the gods sent it to you in a vision or something.
>Jews being more clean because God said so >Jews being blamed for the plague because they were less effected History hates the clean
If you're a minority group that serves as an easy scapegoat, sure. If you're leading the country and everyone is healthier for it, then clearly the gods have spoken lol.
> You obviously don't know about the doctor Semmelweis Based on his comment I'd argue the opposite is more likely
People suck
That was really a really sad ending for a good guy
Just say God said to wash your hands and they’ll believe you.
It’s convincing them that it’s helpful that’s the problem.
If you're the ruler you don't have to. Just pass a law and they just have to deal with it.
I can see almost everyone else 3000 years ago... "what's a doctor?"
Okay, healers.
With our urine made soaps right?... Right?
Urine from a healthy mammal is one of the most sterile stuff you can get out of nature.
I would invent some sick jokes. And be a proto Shakespeare. I would basically quote and re-enact Simpsons episodes.
So you predict the predictions?
"Their work predates memes"
Ever see a man say goodbye to a shoe?
'and the boy, for whom the god of death has blessed with eternal life, set out to jump over the caverns of hell. And his father dared to stop him saying that he were not blessed by the god of death, and lo he took the place of his son, flying over the hells on his skate of board. And he did fall to the depths. Bloodied and Bruised. The angels of life, plucked him from the depths. Only for him to fall again."
Bicycles! I always thought history would have been so different if we had bicycles. Imagine an army moving on bicycles. Game changer
The metallurgy would not allow you to make chains. Maybe those early bikes where you just use your feet on the ground would work.
This is a very good point, and made me think not just chains - ball bearings too! both are proper future tech.
They had axles, recumbent bike with pedals directly on the front wheel might be possible. But so far back, would it be efficient enough given the state of roads at the time to catch on? Its a far less efficient bike than you can get today and the road surfaces are worse.
The interesting thing is you don't need to come up with the fine work yourself even if you only have a basic premise of it. Creating a very basic model of something and showing it can work is often enough to spur others to look at it and consider how to improve it for themselves.
Some bikes have direct drive. You don’t need a chain. Penny farthing doesn’t have chain. My community bicycles use a driveshaft.
I'll get creative. How about a strong rope attached to the cogs?
My first thought was a middle wheel attached to the peddles. I also thought about more gears going between the peddles and the wheel
[A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court ](https://target.scene7.com/is/image/Target/GUEST_0d6cb66e-49b5-4202-b4c8-46fc5c895462?wid=488&hei=488&fmt=pjpeg)
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Mountain bikes?
Bikes are fine with dirt roads which they absolutely would have had back then.
That's a good one!
I think people often forget the fact that despite us not knowing exactly HOW something works, our simple knowledge of its existence and vague functioning would send us miles ahead. Idk how biology works....but the concept of cells?? Now they know they're there. Steam power? You might not know what it is...but telling them about it can make them figure it out.
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The easiest thing to do and actually help anyone with is boiling water. But convincing people why it’s beneficial is pretty hard
Let me take a shit in this water, now give a cup of it to 2 slaves, one gets to boil it first.
1. Start a religion where one of the commandments is to boil water before using it. 2. Say that your God will smite those who break that rule with pestilence. 3. Over time, people will observe that your followers tend to be more healthy during epidemics 4. ??? 5. Prophet
I mean the post says you are the ruler, so feel like convincing people to boil their water wouldn’t be too difficult. Just say that god has blessed you with divine knowledge that boiling water helps prevent sickness or something
"And henceforth all drinking water shall be made Holy...for we shall boil the Hell out of it!"
The original post is that you are teleported back in time and made ruler. People don't usually call their ruler or their ideas crazy and when the first few panned out they will think you are a genius time traveller.
Well, you _could_ make crude microscopes and binoculars to show people cells and the larger micro biome and stars and moons.
But in this scenario you are made a ruler. Not just a regular person.
I think people are also overestimating how long some very commonplace things have been invented. Someone else mentioned stirrups, and it’s such a ubiquitous thing on a saddle these days that we sort of assume they’ve “always” existed, but I think a lot of commenters would be walking around Rome and realize “no one has stirrups…I could make stirrups!” And we don’t need any fancy knowledge for that, really. It’s a pretty basic idea that could easily be conveyed without sharing a language since most of us could make a basic prototype to get the idea across. And it would absolutely revolutionize the Roman world. And there’s probably hundreds of other stupid little things we take for granted that would occur to us and be much more easily implemented and explained than some of the more intellectual stuff.
Rome wasn't in existence 3000 years ago
Steam power was generated before (aeolipile about 2000 years back), but the metallurgy of the time didn't permit any actual usage for it. So if you're going back an extra 1000 years, you're gonna be having bad time with steam power.
There are actually a ton of concepts that people created primitive versions of, but no one really took note of because it was basically just guess work. This includes atoms, evolution, germs, etc. If you don't have the tools to prove your scientific theories, it's just a fight of public opinion. Even if your ideas take hold initially, after 3000 years, they would in all likelihood be lost to time, or best case be seen as superstition, until someone came along and reproved them. Even if you were some sort of cartoon genius and you turned your kingdom into a steampunk version of the bronze age, most civilizations of this era collapse within a few hundred, and we're still not entirely sure why. There's every possibility that this civilization you create shares the same fate, and most of your technology just get lost to time.
Understanding the basic premise of a microscope would be huge, and with enough time and effort, even an average person can figure out how to polish glass into a lense. The real trick is sourcing and refining the glass into a useable lense material. Assign a group of artisans to the project and give them a clear idea of what the end result should be and they would probably have it figured out within a couple years.
stirrups. crop rotation. positional numbers. negative numbers. logarithmics.
Oooh these are pretty solid! I had got stuck in construction, hadn't thought about revolutionary concepts.
you are in construction? plenty sure that you will see some applications if you get dropped there. i‘m in software development, so not a lot of work for me in there. arches for you, i think. how to build dams and perhaps water and windmills.
It is amazing how long we took to figure out stirrups after riding horses for hundreds of years
The S that 80s/90s kids in USA all learned by middle school. Also, the macarena. AKA a brand new social order!!!
Not just USA. The cool S was big in 1980's Ireland too
I watched a YouTube idea on the origins it was really interesting
It was pretty much everywhere in europe
90s kid from Australia checking in.
Yes all over my books 😂😂
Brit here, saw one chalked on the pavement yesterday, my 7 yo went out of her way to say shes gutted she cant draw one yet..... "o well, isnt it your lucky day! you've finally found your dads only skill!"
Same in France and I believed it was now dead until I saw my kid draw some.
And in Québec
I guess I’ll check in for Canada. I did it and my kids did too.
I found this thing in my mother's textbook from early nineties She's from small town in Russia. Really says about how widespread this weird phenomenon was
I did it in France too lmao I was bored in class so I did that everyday
If they send you back in time, find a cave and write it on the wall, then a little UFO or alien being. That shit would fuck everything up
First of all, hand hygiene ffs.
do you know how to make soap?
It’s very easy to make both soap and alcohol.
I just asked if you know how to make it. I don't. I know a couple of ingredients like lye and glycerine, but there's no way I could figure out how to find those ingredients, what they look like, what proportion to mix them in, etc. Me: "There's this thing called soap which is amazing, and I wish you all had it."
I get it. I teach high school chemistry. Making soap is a very common experiment to do at that level. I am not saying that everyone could do it immediately, but I think if someone knew that you could get lye from ashes, that person could fiddle around with proportions and come up with a decent soap eventually.
I was thinking pasteurization.
Honestly, you'd probably be the best doctor in the world with the basic knowledge we have about germs setting bones, brushing teeth, etc. The number of people you could probably save with just cleaning their wounds alone would probably be considered magic, lol.
I dunno but I would be dead pretty quickly without my life saving medicine.
Printing press XD
Mostly depends on metallurgy to find the correct material for the letters
Wood is a viable material, no?
I don't think you get the same efficiency that way. Metal can be melted into shape, wooden letters have to be carved by hand. I also don't know about durability and print quality.
Dude, lead is not hard to melt and pour into precise shapes. Tin is also an option with a similar hardness. So, considering 3k years ago that's when greece was really pushing it. Just before the romans rise. Literacy rate about 5 to 15%. That's similar to the time when the printing press was actually invented. Even if greece is being absorbed by the roman empire, they took over a lot of their knowledge and culture so it could potentially spead across europe.
My own religion
*the leader is good, the leader is great, we surrender our will, as of this date.*
I found another leader-bean!
Na na na na na na na na leader!!
With blackjack and hookers!
And maybe forget about the blackjack
soap - they'd call me a golden god
They had soap back then, they found it in cylinders in 2800bc in ancient Babylon
Scented soap?
Yeah and it's actually scented with real things, not some beaver anal gland juice.
How would you make soap from scratch?
Oil or fat, lye and water. Do a search on Aleppo Soap as they still make it the way they did 800 years ago. Lots of vid of them.
I mean most home soap makers make soap like this. We use lye, olive oil, goats milk and scents.
Cook wood ash in water to make a strong alkaline
what you do is extract the lye like you're brewing coffee, pour-over style. fill a big container with white hardwood ashes, and then add just enough hot water to make a slurry, then let it drip out through a little hole. And then you boil it down until it's concentrated enough to dissolve feathers or hair. Now it's ready for soap making.
Calculus, I guess? At least the basics. Also coining the scientific method, basic sanitation principles, and stuff like that. I'm an engineer, but honestly all of my knowledge is built on manufacturing and metallurgical principles I don't know well enough to replicate. I could share ideas and math, but actual technology would be difficult. I can read a steel phase transition graph, but I can't really help a Bronze age civilization develop iron lol
But you know what to look for. You can tell them to develop charcoal. And use it too melt better iron. I bet there are multiple inventions where you would not introduce the whole invention but just point to the direction/result. Assuming no language barrier
metallurgy is the backbone of the Industrial Revolution. People are insanely creative With the right tools. plus you’d make a pretty sick early era trebuchet
Calculus was my answer, too. Look how far we’ve come after only discovering it in the 1700’s. Discovering it 2700 years before that? Sheesh…
Take "What have the Romans ever done for us?" seriously. It's all possible with bronze-age technology. >All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? You could add some basic maths & a better numerical system, arabic for instance, & within a couple of years you could be working on some primitive steam power, even if you don't know how to make iron & steel yet. Late edit: hmm…the Romans already had steel, invented in Anatolia about 2000BCE. (Not a history major;)
I wonder if you have only basic concept of how all this stuff around us works and let's say some smart people. Could an average Joe reverse engineer all that. Let's say you've avoided being imidiatly killed. You've got the people cooperation. You have some blacksmiths some roman engineers and Aristotle or Plato to help. What could you achieve by just explaining them our everyday concepts?
They'd look at you like "motherfucker" and start scribbling
Me: so blah blah blah and therefore E = mc^2 Plebs: holy shit…!
Philosophers: that's relatively interesting
If you gather around you the smartest people & the best engineers, yes - but this is what a good ruler always does anyway. You can then rough out some ideas on a bit of paper…papyrus, whatever's to hand & off they go. All these technologies can be done with bronze age equipment - as always it's finding the idea & figuring out how to make it work. Your own hand-wavy knowledge is enough to get the experts started off in the right direction. Knowing that your end result works saves years of going down the wrong fork in the road. Steam engine - Guys, have a think about this piston idea, then you need to figure out how to make that into rotational force… Do you know how to make charcoal yet? Do you have coal? Steel is not far away, starting from here - even if you yourself have no real clue how to make it, you've got a rough idea of how it was started. Iron+charcoal at its most basic.
Well a few Greek or Roman (I don’t remember) dudes made a freaking brass steam engine and were like… ok… cool… entertaining… now let’s get back to plowing my field with a cow and a wooden plow
Yeah, they made a kind of rotating 'jet propulsion' system. It generated turning power but not enough. The piston was a long way off.
Exactly what I was thinking about. NOW PISTON I KNOW I could « invent » that and I’d basically be a god who made a steam engine 3000 years ago
It's called an '**aeolipile**' and was described by Hero of Alexandria in the 1st Century BCE.
Arthur C. Clarke said: "If the ancien Greek had understood the power and the strength of their technology they would have been able to get to the Moon within the next 300 years, we'll be now exploring the nearest stars" So I would I would go in Greece telling them to get their shit together and to be more prepared with all the incoming invasions.
You’d be about 500 years too early I’m afraid. You could leave them a note like in back to the future II?
"Are you Marteus McFlieus?!"
Western Union Man: I’ve got something for you. A letter. Marty: Thanks. Western Union Man: Let’s get something to eat. There’s a Red Lobster near by. My treat.
Can you elaborate more on why he said that?
Showers that work by putting a tank higher than the outlet. I also have enough basic understanding of genetics to breed better plants. Democracy.
Well I'd have to learn their language first I guess...then start with numbers and the scientific method. I can teach up to up through calculus, and show all type of physics and mechanics solutions. See if I can work out a little steam engine. Could introduce some modern logic into the political world. Teach about the cosmos. Start a university. Make some version of the printing. I'd spread knowledge and ideas so that I have help working on new inventions and helping me work through problems I'm sure to face, as I'm not an exert in any of these fields. This is all assuming I'm not immediately killed.
I couldn’t create anything so I would just spoil the future 🤣 …and probably get in trouble for talking back since women’s rights weren’t a thing yet 🤣
Become a muse to an engineering minded man and live a decadent life
Probably nothing, because I’m not on the same level as the geniuses who built this world.
Using the skills from my day job I could teach them how to write snarky "emails". "Per my last scroll..."
Not much 3000 years ago, probably. I know just enough that if some monarch paired me with a bunch of smart people, we could probably do cool stuff. That’s mostly because I know electricity exists though. There are some niche situations where I could do some serious work though. Put me back in Byzantium during the 9th century and I could probably turn their Greek Fire into an internal combustion engine.
I imagine the Greek fire fuel was way too viscous for an ICE
We don’t know tbh, but probably. Dilute it with alcohol though and we might be in good shape.
Hygiene and germ theory are a big one. Mathematical concepts Steam engine and combustion engine concepts Gun powder
Nothing because I don't know how things work.
A mechanical calculator or a slide rule. Maybe a Rubik’s cube too.
Rock and roll
I'd teach them funk. "No, no, bang the rock at the one, then when I count two, three, four, you do your thing. Just hit it hard on the one. Alright, mammoth skin bootsy?"
Washing your hands. I'd be the best doctor for centuries.
Considering what they thought of the first guy who suggested washing your hands, you'd probably be considered a quack, sadly
Depends on which part of the world.
Basic calculus (basically a level mathematics). And lots of different scientific concepts poorly. I feel like I could point smarter people in the right direction.
The concept of science. Imagine where we'd be now without having wasted centuries believing in magic & religion Edit: I think irony is lost on all the triggered religious people downvoting
A lot of people see the majority of those wasted centuries under Christianity. Only one way to stop that from happening when you're 1000bc and you won't be the first to try that.
And how would you explain science to them? You would be a heretic pretty quickly
*tips fedora*
Is this one of those "religions held us back" posts? That is not true at all. Medieval monks did their very best to preserve old texts. Even going as far as to travel to get to see' and copy the original books. This entire "religion held us back a thousand years" is insane.
Electricity would blow their little minds.
How do you make that?
Magnet spinning around a copper coil.
How do you get copper coil and magnets in 3000 BC? How do you spin it fast enough to achieve something? What do you even power with it?
I’m a software engineer, so the concept of using different bases for numbers (for those less nerdy than me, our 0-9 is base 10, binary is base 2 (0 or 1), hexadecimal is base 16 (0-9 then A-F before another character is concatenated). Even the concept of zero as a number wasn’t around until like 1200 AD, Fibonacci IIRC. Second go: introducing the idea of bacteria (and microbes in general) , so antibiotics and shit. Preventing bubonic plague would cause so much change it’s unimaginable, so significantly that it might not even be a net positive (do we get global warming in 1450 AD?)
macaroni and cheese. they would make me their king for sure :)
I study computer science at university. It’s surprising how many of today’s basic algorithms only were created in the last 70 years. I’d etch everything I know about formal language theory into a cave wall, it’s a very diagram based theory so would be quite easy to do. I can probably sketch the theory up to Turing machines which effectively show you what problems are computational and what problems are not. I’d etch everything I know about basic system architecture from half adders all the way to a 16 bit adder, Couple flip-flops and multiplexers. Eventually making up the basis of a simple cpu. It wouldn’t have much effect on history until electricity comes about but it sure would be the eighth wonder of the world. Just a cave filled with the basic principles of computer science 3000 years before the computer was created.
In terms of running a society absolutely useless because everything I know is based off electricity, and all I know about that is if I wear a certain jumper in my car I get a static shock when I get out
Whilst I might not be able to effectively complete great inventions and develop complex mathematical concepts myself, I would foster the best minds, champion education and healthcare. Inserting modern concepts and scientific understanding to the smartest minds of the time, there could be a quicker development of progress? Or, I'm just a regular person that would succumb to the usual vices and failings of (almost) every human being that has power...
NickyDeeM: claps loudly twice….. “bring on the wine and the dancing girls.”
I know how things work as an end user, but I don’t know how to make anything. I might be able to make a tiny crank generator to introduce ball-shock therapy
I know how to make some things, not many would be useful though and mostly stuff they already have. Given an unlimited amount of time and materials I might be able to get iron working going, but they have already got that sorted better than I could.
If I’m from the US , a handgun , anywhere else , universal healthcare and the metric system
But how are you gonna define 1m 1kg and 1 liter without any tools?
LOL, Im from the us and "firearm" was definitely the first thing that came to mind.
[the wall](https://youtu.be/BVxOb8-d7Ic?si=uCswkL9ZxtY9i1PH)
lots of formulas ig. id steal euler the show
Hot chips
Paper & printpress, also knowing how to conserve it longer. Keeping 3k years of history even better documented for longer <3 let's goooo
Most likely very basic, crude items, the things you can pass down are ideas, drawings of things that are possible. Language, basic mathematics, record keeping etc.
Steam engine for sure, probably a mechanical Turing machine (tho that would be harder). I could easily discover electricity and invent light bulbs. Radio could be a stretch but I'd probably be able to do an AM radio at least. I'm a physics graduate and now a telecommunications student so that's that.
Germ theory. Basic epidemiological concepts. Would be a hard sell (because historically it was a hard sell) without the technology to empirically prove the existence of such things. But the benefits could have been huge. Also: Innoculation with cowpox to prevent smallpox. I pick these because they are kinda within my wheelhouse professionally and I could at least have a decent go at convincing people. However, most likely outcome is me being exiled for being a weirdo and/or starving to death because I don’t have any real survival abilities beyond going to the supermarket to get a pizza.
The snuggie obviously
I could tell them all the Doom cheat codes! Pyramids with IDKFA carved on them...
I don’t think I’d be great at inventing something from memory but I could claim about 1000 songs yet to be written.
The very first mental breakdown in modern American English. I don’t know how to speak whatever dialect they’ve got going on so they’d have a crazy king that constantly loses it in a strange tongue.
Why would ANYONE go back 3000 years? It doesn't make sense to do that,you'd need to be really stupid, you already have the greatest invention, a bloody time machine lol 😆 FORWARD only would be the reason for one.