What are the skills and knowledge you could actually bring & fully realize at some point in the past?
And we’re taking this in the strictest, nerdiest, materialist lense. I don’t care how smart you are you ain’t making a steam engine the in bronze age, for instance.
So what could you create, with just your knowledge & period tools? What kind of institutional, technological, philosophical innovations could you realistically recreate? How would you interface with the social fabric of society to not be some crazed pariah who never positively influences the place they went?
thats just a doohickey :the-doohickey:
you need something that can outshine a mule or ox for it to be a useful transformative thing. and a kind of incentive structure that makes it exploding people every so often acceptable
It’s pretty trivial to make one or direct someone to make one if you already know it can be done (and, of course, have a common language)
Even the layperson’s understanding of a steam engine could lead to crude trains being developed in the classical era provided access to necessary materials and engineers
provided access to necessary materials
That’s going to really limit the kind of places you could do it.
Depends on time frame, but most places in the old world would have access to bronze from, well, the bronze age and onwards. New world would be trickier unless you know mining and metal refinement to teach, or rely on native metals.
But yeah if I’m sent back to the stone age I don’t think I’ll be able to do too too much
AFAIK, there were already sophisticated trade networks in place. To make bronze for instance, you need tin and copper, which are rarely found in the same place. The development of these alloys already required the extraction, smelting, and trade of these materials.
