History

23101 readers

35 users here now

Welcome to c/history! History is written by the posters.

c/history is a comm for discussion about history so feel free to talk and post about articles, books, videos, events or historical figures you find interesting

Please read the Hexbear Code of Conduct and remember...we're all comrades here.

Do not post reactionary or imperialist takes (criticism is fine, but don't pull nonsense from whatever chud author is out there).

When sharing historical facts, remember to provide credible souces or citations.

Historical Disinformation will be removed

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Materialist Time-Traveller (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

61 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Going back to the early fifteenth century to tell indigenous people worldwide to use fire arrows against every European ship they see and to organize regular patrols to keep an eye on the ocean at all times. You can also inoculate people against smallpox just by sticking dried smallpox sores into their bloodstream. (The Chinese, Turks, and Africans already know about this at the time.) These two cool techniques could save tens of millions of lives and destroy the historical nightmare the world has been experiencing for the last five centuries before it even begins. Major issues are: organizing people and learning their languages.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

one key point is to tell them how the ships / settlements contain limited food, ammo, and other supplies, and that they can use siege tactics against them

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

And how the Europeans will use divide-and-conquer to take advantage of indigenous divisions and either annihilate or enslave them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

how would you convince them of that? killing all strangers isnt something many people are willing to do. or getting injected by a stranger to no perceived ill or positive effect

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It wouldn’t be easy, but I know it could be done, since it was done.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

i don't think any population has permanently dedicated itself to ultraviolence on outsiders. i assumed you'd be innoculating before the euro diseases show up, but if they're already there and killing people people would take it for sure

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Maybe some math. People were really interested in tracking movement stars, planets etc. So if you learned their system of notation you might be able to speed up the development of certain mathematics since they’d see the "practical " value in it for astrological or religious purposes.

Edit I think they are actually joking (as it happened cause altered timeline?)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

they had decades of hostile colonial contact from the british with which to learn a relatively harsh policy toward outsiders, but even so it is not one universally enforced. and that's a tiny group of people. i don't think you could replicate it even on another bigger island like haiti