You are dropped into 1,200 CE.
They've got zero, and the windmill. Longswords and plate armor are in the future. The mechancal clock is about to be invented.
You're you: Modern sensibilities, a product of a western democracy and modern educational system. You know the story of Luke Skywalker, Hermione Granger, and know about capitalism.
Which is most likely:
-- You have died of dysentery.
-- You are burned at the stake or beheaded or in some other way killed for being a witch
-- You skills, knowledge, and abilities change the world.
If that third one, tell us more!
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Step One: Find theatre or lowbrow show. Use my for-the-period freakish size to earn money playing at being a monster while I learn to speak the time and get materials for...
ReplyDeleteStep Two: Make and sell gunpowder. With the proceeds...
Step Three: Printing press. This will take me years of getting it right.
Step Four: Write and sell books of general know-wots. Also a New Testament, but not a full Bible, because what the hell, may as well mess with that.
likely the first one, but if I managed to avoid dysentery which I may know enough to avoid, it'd likely be starvation or another disease. If somehow I do make it, I'd probably be burned for witchcraft or just being a jew.
ReplyDelete(This is likely interrupted by witch-burning or dysentery, but hey.)
ReplyDeleteMost likely, I'd look for a way to acquire a decent amount of untraceable money to buy my way into a convent. I feel my academic brain and writing skills would be useful, and as a woman with neither family nor spouse, I don't have a lot of options for leveraging them.
ReplyDeleteThis also largely depends on where have I been dropped? Italy? England? China? Montana? 1200 CE has a lot of variety to choose from. At least in England, I can read, write, and more or less speak the language. Plus I speak French, so I have options. 1200 China and I am kind of hosed. 1200 Italy, and I really don't know-- it would depend a lot on chance.
I find an armorer and work for a while mailling. Once I've got the language and some coin, I make my way to the Maghreb, Toledo if it's closest, get myself a scholar's coat, and spend the remainder of my life adding ideas to translations of classical works, and doing what I can to stem the impact of the Crusades and the rise of militant Christianity.
ReplyDeleteOoh, change the world! Penicillin looks like tiny hands. You can totally harvest effective doses from moldy bread. Eat it and put it directly on wounds. You're 700 years ahead of schedule!
ReplyDeleteThis is 1,200 CE in Europe, right? One thing to look out for is, if you wash your hands as much as you're used to, people will think you're Muslim. You should be far more worried about being killed for a Muslim or a Jew than you are about being killed for a witch: witchcraft is something you mostly accuse your neighbors of, not strangers.
Stephanie Bryant You can choose where! In my head, it is Britain simply because I am a native English speaker. I'd find it very hard to be anywhere else.
ReplyDeleteLevi Kornelsen So the Printing Press. Not bad. What one item that you could hike with do you bring to make that easier?
ReplyDeleteDavid Rothfeder This may be unintentionally insensitive, but: is there anything obvious about you that would make it obvious you are jewish? Or, is it a general "I'm going to be honest about this" sort of thing?
ReplyDeleteAndrew Ragland Minimizing Christanity. Nice. What artifact from now, if any, would help you with that?
ReplyDeleteVincent Baker I'm always a little shocked that so many people survived with such poor sanitation.
ReplyDeleteInstead of witchcraft, I should probably have said "being too clever by half", especially knowing that my recent public participants have tended male.
But, yes. Medical treatments, sounds like. What one person would you want to bring with you, and how would Meg help?
[ And if it isn't Meg, I'll be surprised. ]
I was raised Jewish and definitely have some of the classic facial features. Without having any support I may be forced to use my experience to integrate into a Jewish community in order to survive (though since my family was reformed and I've had limited to do with the religion since I was 13). I also have little experience with Christianity and back then there isn't really such a thing as being raised atheist, so it'd be easy to come to the right conclusion for the wrong reasons.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, compared to our 13th-Century counterparts, we have incredibly robust and cosmopolitan immune systems. You know those diseases that every infant gets, where you have a fever and spots and the pediatrician says that maybe it's roseola, maybe some other mild virus, and not to worry about it? Those used to be deadly fevers.
ReplyDeleteYou and I can safely hang out with people with mumps, measles, chicken pox, rubella, we won't get tetanus (for a while)... In the 13th Century, we're healer saints.
Now Meg though was an EMT. She's stitched cuts and set bones and stuff. She actually knows which diseases we should worry about and which we're safe from, like she'd be able to tell whether someone has rubella and we're fine or tuberculosis or whatever and we should steer clear. She'd be like a superhero.
I change the world because my microfauna starts a plague. Probably I also die from the microfauna in existence.
ReplyDeleteItem? Gaaa. It would almost certainly be a steel hand-cranked rotary mechanism - one I could refit and recase as a whetstone, drill, lathe, and circular saw motivator, variously.
ReplyDeleteFor instance, Meg tells me now that if we have that penicillin handy, we should try to treat the tuberculosis sufferers, but there's probably nothing we can do for the rubella sufferers but help make them as comfortable as we can.
ReplyDeleteRight. I change my answer to "I find Meg and it all works out."
ReplyDeleteI can't find it now, but I remember watching a video talking about how one of the easiest, and most effective technologies to develop in the distant past would be pasteurization.
ReplyDeleteYeeesh. 1200, huh? Really hit or miss, geographically, whether a prescient genius can get any leverage.
ReplyDeleteI mean... I can reconstruct calculus, which means I can reconstruct a pretty huge amount of Newtonian physics, accurately derive celestial motion, revolutionize engineering on any number of levels, and in many places in the globe in those days they were working similar geniuses to death in the fields, because of various immutable caste systems, so ... wouldn’t much matter.
Wonder how I’d do raising funds as a mercenary and/or bandit. That was one way to jump social ranks.
In fact, let me phrase that more pointedly: You are dropped into the start of the twenty-first century. You don’t remember historical details enough to predict any specifics, but you have the genius and intuitive insights of a modern twenty-fifth century colonial citizen. The problem is, you’re poor, and modern 25-c skin reads as minority to the authorities of the 21st. Do you end up:
ReplyDelete(1). Dead in the mass incarceration system,
(2). Discarded after a few of your insights are monopolized and perverted by capitalism into means of social control, or
(3). Get your genius recognized and revolutionize the primitive age.
Pretty sure I’d be #1.
Tony Lower-Basch That is almost a TNG episode, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteLevi Kornelsen Huh, if it were me, I'd bring a useful book. Information I don't need in my head. I've got a copy of Newton's Principia Mathematica, so maybe I'd bring that.
ReplyDeleteKimberley Lam She does seem super!
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols ds9 did have that episode
ReplyDeleteYanni Cooper Oh yeah! Safe nearly shelf stable milk would be huge!
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch You can choose where -- anywhere in the world, 1200 CE.
ReplyDeleteThe two most useful bits of random knowledge in my head are the usefulness of cowpox vs smallpox and the fact that fruit (vitamin c) is needed to stave off scurvy.
ReplyDeleteI mean, millions of sailors died of scurvy over centuries while carrying literal boatloads of ginger and other stuff which could have saved their lives. They overcrewed ships by an order of magnitude just so hopefully enough of the crew would survive long enough to return with the cargo.
And of course, the death toll from smallpox makes scurvy look like a minor inconvenience.
But I don't know how that useful knowledge could be effectively disseminated. Maybe I'd try to develop the printing press and introduce "mistakes" in printed bibles to ensure these useful bits of information are discovered.
So, the first step is to try and get hired on as a scribe copying and illustrating manuscripts.
Sadly it's no longer available as a shirt/poster, but Ryan North has a pretty nice Time Travel cheat sheet: i2.wp.com
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols - That's fair. In my case, the choice is dictated by "Fastest first step into a form of skilled work, to minimize likelihood of whatever form of effectively-forced labour forever."
ReplyDeleteThe metric system -- more importantly, the consistent use of a standard base system and measurement size. The length of a solar year, and the number of moons per year.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many mental technologies we take for granted, which if introduced well could radically alter the world.
Levi Kornelsen Fair.
ReplyDeleteI know this story about accounts and spreadsheets -- namely, when an accountant first had a digital spreadsheet (rather than paper), what would take all weekend took instead an hour.
I think that's along the lines you're thinking, and it makes perfect sense -- tools and labor multipliers.
William Nichols the English you speak was not spoken in 1200. How good is your Chaucer?
ReplyDeleteStephanie Bryant Better than my 12th century Italian. :-)
ReplyDeleteI understand"Trudging"; that's Chaucer, right?
ReplyDeleteI'd probably end up dying of variant of 2, because I'm super atheistic and would end up showing a lot of disdain for the church.
ReplyDeleteI can take one item that is easily carry-able on a hike? Maybe a printed laminated version of this.
gizmodo.com - Time Travel Cheat Sheet
Or perhaps a more comprehensive book, but I don't have one in mind off hand though there are a number of good candidates.
Edit: Wow, apparently I took way to long to draft this post and a bunch of people came through, and one of them posted this as well...
William Nichols: So, I think what I’m groping toward expressing is this: I think this question subsumes two distinct questions:
ReplyDelete(1). What insights changed the world, and how could things turn out differently if they gained prominence at different times, or in different order.
(2). How does presence/absence of resources and opportunity change the ability of a person to effect change.
I feel like time-travel fiction often dodges the second, because it has uncomfortable truths about inequality in modern life, whereas #1 is just a fun mental romp... but the “how would I bridge the gap” fictions often distract me with their hand-waving.
A time-traveler starts out beyond poor. No identity, no community, no resources. If I couldn’t convince somebody to extend me an awful lot of charity, I don’t think I’d make it long enough to die of dysentery. Hypothermia or starvation would get me first.
Vincent Baker Penicillin was also my first thought.
ReplyDeleteTo Tony Lower-Basch 's point, as a woman I would probably get killed by bandit gang rape before dysentery.
And, yeah, my "Take a quasi-power-tool" is at least partly to Tony's point. I have, if I'm lucky, a couple days to begin getting money or food.
ReplyDeleteMy skillset and body basically mean brute labour, being gawked at as a giant, or trying to be a no-community artisan.
So if I could turn myself into a tinker, I'd aim for that as fast as possible, with a toolset that could grow towards a shop or other installation.
Not minimizing Christianity, per se, but minimizing its aggressiveness and the damage it did. Essentially trying to head off some of the conflict and genocide and burning of libraries. While it's tempting to think of a long range item that would assist in the primary quest, I'd be better off bringing a pouch of rings and rivets and a finished piece of riveted maille, so that I could find employment without knowing the language.
ReplyDeletehttps://plus.google.com/photos/...
ReplyDeleteYes, absolutely: Being another mouth to feed would be tremendously difficult. And the more limited the technology in place, the more difficult feeding another person is.
ReplyDeleteAt least, I think so -- we've got shelters and food on shelves.
My guess is surviving without assistance is essentially impossible, no matter the time period.
I'm sick. We've both got a cold.
ReplyDeleteWhich means: mild fevers, upper respiratory congestion, and a general malaise.
So, we went across the street to the grocery, buying candy and juice and crap.
Also, sudafed. Both on ibuprofen.
So, I guess the point is: Fun as it is to think about technologies to change the past, the sheer infrastructure we have in the modern world is shocking.
What does tomorrow look like?
William Nichols
ReplyDeleteThis is similar to the Prerequisite Problem, when trying to establish the infrastructure for an interstellar colony.
projectrho.com - Colonization - Atomic Rockets
I bet I could sell talk therapy in 1200 CE. If nothing else, concrete methods of dealing with PTSD symptoms for war veterans.
ReplyDeleteIf I'm allowed a bit of equipment, changing history might be easier than long term survival. It just takes a bag of potatoes.
ReplyDelete1200 Ce England there is a war on with France. Best to use my literacy to get either a government job doing paperwork or hide out at a monastery (where at least the food is sufficient when the famine breaks out in 1205).
ReplyDeleteSuper interesting podcast that addresses this: https://www.on-soap.com/medieval-history-for-fun-and-profit-1/2017/7/7/episode-6-time-travel
ReplyDeleteon-soap.com - Episode 6: Time Travel