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[–] 2 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (2 children)

I absolutely agree (I didn't say it wouldn't change things), but the first decades/generation would still be pretty basic, much of the knowledge wouldn't be applicable until you build your tools, get basics sorted, build safety nets, etc.

For everything you need a willing society bcs one individual can't do it all - it's either you dig/build one well & others feed you or you do the efforts communally. Same with metalwork, that's a whole specialisation in the most basic sense (you need a workforce & resources for them to gather ore, work it, and forge anything of useful size - metalwork to produce a few grammes of metal per year isn't worth it, so you need a city-sized community at your disposal, and you need to get to that point ... unless maybe as an expensive way to just pass the knowledge for later gens to put it to good use, which might be successful, unless forgotten or the community doesn't survive).

Animal domestication can take generations too in some cases (bovids), you need to first focus on docile females, and once they stay in a designated area (either like a valley or even fenced fields), you need the resources (food) to keep them alive there. So you need to build up agriculture at scale first. That why we found the first real domestication evidence around ancient cities, not random villages.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 hours ago (1 child)

    Yeah, if I was going to jump start domestication, I'd start with chickens or sheep/goats. Chicken and goats can eat just about anything, so can be fed scraps and quickly become a net positive. They're also smaller and easier to manage than cows. Goats can be troublesome, but their risk is limited by their size.

    Domestication on both those species started about 10000 years ago, so it would only speed things up by 2000 years.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 hours ago*

    Smart, but you would need to be in specific area to get chickens (south Asia?) & goats (middle East?) suitable for domestication, which would still take several human generations to achieve - so in your lifetime you would just pass the knowledge (in case someone was interested) but otherwise live your life without seeing the results.

    It's not like livestock domestication didn't start about asap after there were conditions for it (cities, stable food production, some bureaucracy/specialisation/trade, etc)etc.

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