1000 bc

[Souron]

Yeah I don't think I could build a train. Not at first. I was just pointing out that it would not be a hard sell.


Gunpowder's biggest advantage was that it's scary. The shear fear effect of hearing a loud boom just before your comrades beside you start falling besides your was the reason why the first handguns were a hit. Cannons and mortars are indeed easier. But probably the easiest and most effective use for it would be sapping.

Dynamite offers similar advantages.

But I don't know how to create either black power or nitroglycerine. Wikipedia is helpful so with some research making a viable explosives could be done.

 

[Dachs]

You can always find counter-examples to anything, especially if it relates to studying humanity. Doesn't mean it isn't a useful concept or an interesting perspective. Whenever someone comes up with something like that, a thousand others will start nitpicking and mocking it, usually jealous it didn't occur to them first. So please, spare me.

Jealousy?? LEAVE JARED ALONE!!!! LEAVE HIM ALONE!!!!

Yes, Vic, I'm sure that historians who emphasize wie es eigentlich gewesen are just bitter that they didn't think up some incorrect overarching trend to which they can fit their data. It's the same reason they don't keep to slavishly reusing Marxian analysis everywhere to the exclusion of all other tools: they're just jealous of the guy who looked like Fred Douglass. Clearly.

there's always going to be exceptions to tendencies.

At what point do they cease to be "tendencies" and become "a few examples in unrelated locations that seemed kinda similar on the surface"?

 

[GoodSarmatian]

And how are you going to build railways? With what? By whom? Where are you going to get trains to use it?

Face it, most of the tech we take for granted today builds on many other technologies, which build on other technologies, which in turn build on still other technologies, and so on.

(EDIT: I see you realized that and ninja-edited your original post )

You'd have to replicate the whole tech-tree (so to speak) to get to modern stuff like locomotives, cars, etc.

By far the easiest world-changing stuff would be firearms, but it is questionable these barbarians would even want to use them. They are more difficult to produce than bows and arrows, require gunpowder, take forever to load for another shot, and the range of early arquebuses wasn't that great (and their accuracy was pitiful). Maybe siege guns would be of more use to take down city walls.

To say it more eloquently:
"Technological advance is an inherently iterative process. One does not simply take sand from the beach and produce a Dataprobe. We use crude tools to fashion better tools, and then our better tools to fashion more precise tools, and so on. Each minor refinement is a step in the process, and all of the steps must be taken."

That's why I'd go with mass produced steel swords and improved agriculture and hygiene.. Much easier than to build a gun.

 

[Flying Pig]

That's why I'd go with mass produced steel swords and improved agriculture and hygiene.. Much easier than to build a gun.

Hygene perhaps, but I wouldn't feel confident teaching anything but hte most basic of farming techniques that they almost certainly know already. As for weapons, I think that's a terrible idea, as I've already said.

 

[Synobun]

... but I wouldn't feel confident teaching anything but hte most basic of farming techniques that they almost certainly know already.

Why?

5chars

 

[Silurian]

You do not require locomotives to run a railway.

You can use hard stone such as granite for rails and oxen to pull the trucks.
This greatly increase the load that the animals can pull as long as it is not up a steep hill.

From wiki

The Haytor Granite Tramway was a unique granite-railed tramway running down from Haytor Down, Dartmoor, Devon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haytor_Granite_Tramway

So you can improve mining etc.

You could do a lot of simple things like this if you could get on the good side of the local king.

 

[Flying Pig]

Why?

5chars

Because I don't know them! I have no experience at all in farming! Beyond the very broad, such as crop rotation, I know very little about growing food on a large scale.

 

[Synobun]

Because I don't know them! I have no experience at all in farming! Beyond the very broad, such as crop rotation, I know very little about growing food on a large scale.

Oh! I thought that you were for some reason against it. My bad

 

[Silurian]

With crop rotation you have a bit more food which allows people to do other things.

There are lots of things that people know that they think have been known for ever and are quite simple.

 

[Luckymoose]

I'd just find the guy selling drugs and hang out with him until I die of old age.

 

[Verbose]

Me, I'd try to somehow sell them the concept of "legal person". Might potentially jump-start some interesting developments about two milenia early. If it would take...

Oh, and I might try simple mass printing. I'd draw porn and keep the printing process damn secret.

Though really I'd probably have to spend my time trying to convince some big bastard not to kill the weird stranger outright.

 

[uppi]

I would probably try to convince them of the existence germs, though I don't how I could do this without microscopes. At the very least I suppose I could show the benefits of proper sanitation in relation to public health.

If I could find someone to make me glass (which should be possible in some locations) I could build a simple microscope. And I could probably make a telescope even without glass.

 

[Monsterzuma]

By far the easiest world-changing stuff would be firearms, but it is questionable these barbarians would even want to use them. They are more difficult to produce than bows and arrows, require gunpowder, take forever to load for another shot, and the range of early arquebuses wasn't that great (and their accuracy was pitiful). Maybe siege guns would be of more use to take down city walls.

problem with firearms is that the goal of this exercise is to advance society rather than to make everyone blow eachothers' brains out.

 

[Flying Pig]

If I could find someone to make me glass (which should be possible in some locations) I could build a simple microscope. And I could probably make a telescope even without glass.

If you could grind a lens, whihc is quite a skill.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

You need a way to defend your society though.
I foolishly picked the middle east and didn't take into account that I'd probably have to deal with the Assyrians at some point.
And I'll want to bring the blessings of my rule to as many peoples as possible.

 

[Syterion]

Like any of them would listen to us.

 

[uppi]

If you could grind a lens, whihc is quite a skill.

Yes, that would be a challenge but I don't think it would be impossible.

Of course it would take much longer than the few hours it takes to build a microscope from stock lenses which I can order.

 

[Mise]

Reverse cowgirl.

 

[Synobun]

Like any of them would listen to us.

Well I doubt anybody would go back in time and immediately begin "spreading their seed" so to speak. You would probably have to integrate yourself into the society first (language, culture, clothing, etc).

 

[classical_hero]

How do people know that such learning won't be lost? We know that the ancient Romans had running water and yet a thousand years later they did not. So society can go backwards when an advanced civilization is destroyed.