this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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Its the 14th century and you've had no time to prepare, after you're done reading this post you are snapped. What do you do?

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[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago
  1. establish a new culture in the Americas that will unify and kill European settlers on sight.
  2. teach the native Americans about the future they're preventing
  3. teach them European science, politics, history, economics, etc
  4. give them a technological advantage that will set them ahead of Europe by 650 years by teaching them manufacturing skills.

basically, I want to destroy white colonialism. we have a toxic culture that honestly doesn't deserve to exist on a planet it wants to destroy.

I'm also curious to see how North America would turn out after 650 years have passed after I have achieved my goals.

[–] altphoto@lemmy.today 1 points 1 hour ago

I'm building a boat to go find the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria to sink them real good. Then nuke China and Ruzzia at their palaces. Same to every "kingdom". That's what they all deserve. Complete erasure from history. Instead people would just know that there used to be an asshole who wanted everyone to work and give him all the money.

[–] thermal_shock@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

Well I be naked, so would need to make/steal clothing very quickly

[–] AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 4 points 4 hours ago

Probably not the answer you thought, but succeed by knowing there are wild animals that could easily kill me. It's either I die by that, or wait until the lack of my blood thinners kills me, sl I'd definitely take the quicker death than the slower one.

[–] ChillPenguin@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

I would make an IT startup.

[–] RandomVideos@programming.dev 7 points 6 hours ago

Use all the science i know from school to helpfully quicken scientific progress and spread trans propaganda

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

What place do I get teleported to? If I'm teleported to the same place on Earth, then I just fell down several meters into a swamp and am probably going to die here.

[–] Kookie215@lemmy.world 5 points 8 hours ago

You teleported to somewhere safe and private, you won't fall to your death and nobody will see you lol.

[–] P00ptart@lemmy.world 7 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I would teach London children the most obnoxious brain rot slang from today as a laugh.

[–] Kookie215@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

The butterfly effect of that would be weird because all of our brain rot slang would change then.

[–] P00ptart@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago

Exactly, that's the fun part. Would it get worse, or swing the other way, having kids talk like uppity old money aristocrats?

[–] LordWiggle@lemmy.world 21 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I would kill everyone I meet with the plagues I carry which I'm immune to.

[–] ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 5 points 5 hours ago

You might have a bad time with all the plagues that have gone extinct since then.

[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Double entry accounting system.

I'm an accountant by trade. The double entry system wasn't invented until the 15th century.

I could account for any lords various assets, goods, and livestock in an efficient, reliable and accurate manner

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 6 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Being too early to market something also leads to failure

[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 10 hours ago

It's never too early to efficiently count your sheep!

[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 12 points 10 hours ago

Wouldn't I be in like empty space?

[–] yessikg@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

I would warn the Native Americans about the Europeans

[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 8 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Europeans would show up and my Native American homies would be armed with cartridge rifles, six shooters and a crank rotary machine gun.

I would try for better, but I think there just wouldn't be the time for fine tooling more advanced fire arms would require. Even getting all that going before I croak is going to take a lot of ambition.

Also assuming they don't think I am some evil spirit that they quickly kill when I demand industrial metal facilities be constructed.

Oh, they would probably also have penicillin before the white man, so that would be a major advantage.

[–] macaw_dean_settle@lemmy.world -1 points 4 hours ago

Not native, just 1st to migrate. 1st Americans or Amerindians.

[–] MajorMajormajormajor@lemmy.ca 1 points 9 hours ago

Congratulations, you just brought diseases to the new world.

[–] MisanthropiCynic@lemm.ee 24 points 12 hours ago

Die because my medications haven’t been invented yet.

Or be murdered because I’m not christian

[–] RBWells@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago

1375? Die from malaria, I guess? Be eaten by an alligator? Or oh no, hasten the demise of the Tocobaga with my exotic biology? Either they would kill me or get me sick, or vice versa. Also, fall on my ass when my house disappeared.

I would follow the river to the bay, I guess, and see if I could find anyone, or anything I might be able to eat.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 12 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Die as you forgot to teleport me to where the earth was at the time.

Otherwise I guess my main knowledge that could be useful is some basic first aid. Secondary to that, a little bit of electrical stuff.

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[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 5 points 11 hours ago

This is very A Connecticut Yankee in King Author's Court

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Connecticut_Yankee_in_King_Arthur%27s_Court

I hated that book. So pretentious.

[–] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 14 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I know thousands of songs. Also, musical instruments like the saxaphone haven't been invented yet.

[–] Kookie215@lemmy.world 5 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Oh I think you're the first person to suggest music! That is a really good idea, provided you don't die of dysentery of course.

[–] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Here are some good time travel stories.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/to-say-nothing-of-the-dog-or-how-we-found-the-bishop-s-bird-stump-at-last-connie-willis/7282193?ean=9780553575385&next=t

To Say Nothing Of The Dog. In the future, time travel is organized like the Army. The problem is that the actual travel causes a serious case of 'jet lag.' All the agents act like they are half-drunk and sleep deprived.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-big-time-by-fritz-leiber-science-fiction-fantasy-fritz-leiber/693820?ean=9781606644874&next=t

The Big Time. Two alien races are fighting a time war that spans all planets in the universe. Earth is a minor backwater, but the fighting is just as deadly as anywhere else. A few soldiers and entertainers are catching a few moments respite in a R + R center when the War crashes in on them.

https://youtu.be/-FcK_UiVV40

Predestination. A man is offered a chance to find and kill the guy who ruined his life. All he has to do is trust the stranger who is making the offer.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

I have to disagree with To Say Nothing Of The Dog. Time travel is organized by, and exactly like they would, university historians.

half-drunk and sleep deprived.

I don't remember that?

But that one and Blackout/All Clear are a great pair. And having looked her up, I see I've missed quite a few!

The Domesday Book is pretty tight. Our time-traveling student is trying to get back before the black plague hits her village.

She also has one about the Titanic sinking. Great books, wild rides.

She has won eleven Hugo Awards and seven Nebula Awards for particular works—more major SF awards than any other writer.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 29 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

I'm on the Gregorian calendar, 650 years ago is the year 1375. I'm in North Carolina, so if I were to snap back in time at my present location I would be a blue eyed white guy in pre-contact North America. And while I think I'm an above average candidate for the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court scenario I'm not realistically able to start "from scratch." I'd probably make it the summer on forage and my own body fat. I don't picture encountering the natives going particularly well, for me or them. I'm not sick and I'm vaccinated against a lot of shit but watch I'll give them 6 centuries worth of influenza updates.

I don't think it would help that much being plunked down in 14th century England; we're talking Geoffrey Chaucer's lifetime here, to them I'd sound insane. Modern English is a few hundred years off. If they didn't trepan me to let the demons out of my skull and I didn't die of smallpox, I'd try to invent the electric motor 500 years early and be burned for heresy or some shit.

[–] lagoon8622@sh.itjust.works 11 points 14 hours ago

The only non-delusional answer lol

[–] RebekahWSD@lemmy.world 6 points 13 hours ago

Yeah, I'm here thinking my ass in America pre Columbian exchange is not doing well. Maybe if I make it clear somehow I do not want to do anything but help I could...idk, be part of a native tribe and maybe give them a slight help to the upcoming horrors for them?

It's not going well for anyone.

[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Well, staying in the same location? I'm in the US, so... I'd probably try to get writing invented. To my knowledge, besides some of the Central American empires, there's no evidence or even claim of there having been any kind of writing or system for making information durable. I know there's a lot of clay here, I'm pretty sure we could bake clay tablets to store down information. There's also tule reeds here that were already being extensively used, and those could probably be made into a kind of paper as well. As to whether the people would accept that, I have no fucking idea at all; what we know of the California tribes suggests they were always semi-nomadic, but that's all very well into the post-contact period and much of what we know was written down by the Spanish while being the biggest bastards they possibly could to the locals. I dunno how useful record-keeping would be to a nomadic people. It's also entirely possible the people would be like "uh, yeah, we know how to write, dummy", and it was just lost in the multiple waves of pandemics.

I think probably something that -might- be achievable is figuring out glass. I'm mostly sure that if the native Americans had glass, we would have seen some sign of it in the archeological record by now. I'm sure some smarty pants is going to come along and tell me "you can't just throw sand in a kiln and make glass, you need a special kind of sand blah blah blah and here's 99 reasons why that won't work". Yeah, you're probably right, but I don't know any better, so I'd still definitely try. I also remember reading that clear glass was a thing figured out near Venice when they started adding grass ash or some shit to the sand, so I'd definitely experiment with that, too. Glass is just dead useful -and- pretty, so I'm fairly confident I'd get some acceptance that way.

I would say metal smithing, but the only metal deposits nearby that I know of are mercury and gold. You can't make nails and tools out of mercury and gold.

Also, maybe water wheels? To my knowledge, we have no record of native Americans using water wheels for work (I.e. grinding corn or acorns into flour). I think if I managed to put a basic water wheel together, I'd be pretty popular.

[–] amino@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

there's no evidence or even claim of there having been any kind of writing or system for making information durable

sigh it's called oral history and it was working just fine before the settlers showed up

[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 1 points 44 minutes ago (1 children)

Yes, 100%, I don't at all want to give the idea that no history was ever remembered, and I don't want to sound like I'm shitting on oral history either. I just... really wish someone had written some stuff down. There's so much that's lost to time because of the pandemics that swept the post contact world and all of colonization that followed.

[–] amino@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 32 minutes ago* (last edited 25 minutes ago)

yes a lot of cultures went extinct but not because they didn't have writing. it's because there was no one left to pass on the knowledge.

if we think about it from the perspective of contemporary indigenous people, they know how to read and write English but that's a side effect of boarding schools. and it's led to more intensive cultural extinction because of forced assimilation.

tldr: some tribes had writing before Columbus, some didn't. cultural genocide is effective in both oral and written traditions

[–] biofaust@lemmy.world 27 points 18 hours ago (8 children)
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[–] Tudsamfa@lemmy.world 12 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

This is something I often wonder about, what could one person even do with all of today's common knowledge? You can't very well just invent the printing press and have the same impact as Gutenberg - you need something what the few people who can read would, and most people can't translate the bible from Latin into renaissance German and/or don't know enough about the catholic church to write scathing remarks on it like Luther.

You can write and read - that's something. Maybe more importantly, you can do math with arabic numerals - boom, easy accounting job. With a bit higher education, you may even just invent calculus once more. You know how long it took for people to figure out you can put pi on the number line? Proving all the formulas in your head is the hard stuff, but you have a head start just by knowing them. We all clown on the wormhole explanation with the paper, but it does prove Euclid wrong 400 years early.

Ah, and you can just become a medical genius by using soap and bandages - "do no harm" is better than most.

[–] Kookie215@lemmy.world 8 points 15 hours ago (4 children)

Heres the thing though, you can write, but can you write and read Middle English from the 1300's? There are some similar words but its a very different language than what you and I are used to, it's another 200 years before Shakespeare and most English speakers struggle with even as far back as that.

I just asked AI to write my above comment in Middle English

"Lo! Her is the thinge, but thou mayst writen, canstow yet writen and reden in the Englissh of the thrittene hundred yere? Certes, ther ben som wordes ylich, but it is ful divers from that which thou and I ben y-used to. Two hundred wynters yet moot passen er Shakspere shal come, and fele folk that speken now Englyssh han gret strif to undirstanden that tyme."

[–] EtnaAtsume@lemmy.world 11 points 13 hours ago

Even that is very modern-looking to this Chaucer enjoyer.

[–] Tudsamfa@lemmy.world 6 points 14 hours ago

You probably can read middle English sooner than you can speak it. Like writing with a feather on parchment, I assume you don't just die and have time to learn.

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[–] PahdyGnome@lemmy.world 30 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

As an Australian I would struggle significantly unless you were to also transport me geographically.

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[–] njm1314@lemmy.world 10 points 16 hours ago

Probably die

[–] pan0wski@infosec.pub 14 points 18 hours ago

I'd die pretty quickly.

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