I’d give laser pointers to Neanderthals. Even if they did figure out some useful application for them (maybe hunting?) they’d run out of batteries eventually.
I always thought it would be funny to take aluminum foil back in time to see the reaction. I mean, imagine if a time traveler showed you a roll of platinum that they use to bake cookies. That’s basically what aluminum was for almost all of history.
Antibiotics
Talk about butterfly effect lol. I wonder where we would be today if antibiotics were readily available before plagues became plagues.
Me, too. That’s why I wanna do it!
If we’re including eras where people are able to read and write, a history book. They will see their future and will attempt to change it, for better or for worse.
Let’s give some ancient peoples a couple books on modern maths and calculus. Really fuck with the development of tech.
Fuck yeah, just give the ancient Greeks hindu-arabic numerals and watch them lose their minds. Teach Zeno calculus and watch him try to prove it wrong.
Pretty sure the greeks knew about the hindu number system, they were neighbours for centuries. They just thought zero was of the devil and geometry was better that algebra and never adopted it.
You would probably be surprised at how quickly they would figure out how it worked, save maybe some things that have a ton of prerequisite knowledge. If they had the proper materials/tools, they might even be able to reproduce it.
The modern human brain evolved a long time ago, so on average they are just as intelligent as people today (more so in many respects due to necessity). The things that hold us back technologically are usually lack of resources and discovering/making new materials that unlock new categories of tools.
To answer the question: It really depends on how “ancient” we’re talking, but antibiotics have been invaluable to humanity. So literally just teaching early humans how to cultivate the molds that can kill bacteria would change the trajectory of human history.
So literally just teaching early humans how to cultivate the molds that can kill bacteria would change the trajectory of human history.
Shit just teaching them the concepts behind science and (present day) basic stuff (“no the volcano is not erupting because the gods are angry”) could probably head off religion entirely…SOMEBODY GET ME A DAMN TIME MACHINE
There are always gaps in scientific knowledge, and religion is very eager to fill those gaps. I think religion is a human inevitability as it is a shortcut to feeling a sense of purpose and belonging, which humans will always seek.
Those little Roman devices nobody can figure out.
Imma come out and say it: they’re old timey versions of copper coils or orgonite pyramids. Gnosticism got kinda big for a while and people were buying curses and prayers and stuff from people to write on little bits of broken pottery like little curses you’d write on scraps of paper in middle school. Somebody out there figured out how to weld little metal sacred geometry figurines and people were buying them because they look cool and some of them probably thought they’d cure dysentery or whatever.
I figured it was a game
Antikythera mechanism?
That’s Greek and we have a pretty good understanding of them.
I think the person you’re replying to is referring to these odd little dodecahedrons that we keep finding in former Roman provinces, but for which we’ve found no documentation as to what they were for, if anything.
It’s how the Greeks played Minecraft.
No, those little dice things nobody can figure out at all. They’re octagonal with a little ball on each corner.
Nuclear bombs.
That would fuck with them so hard.
Give them a 1/2 meter cube of stuff. Tell them its a device that summons god. Only true believers can do the ritual, heretics will die.
I pretend to pray, my partner flies in with the FG 204, 2nd Edition Ver. 2.31, I leave.
Its just a block of plutonium. Trollolol
(Sorry, my evil alter ego took control, I wouldn’t actually do that, that’s so fucking chaotic evil)
Slinky
Rubiks cube.
A copy of Windows Vista
Toothpaste. Try making that out of saltpeter and bronze!
Meth
A cube of pure tungsten. So when they pick it up they cant believe how heavy it is.
Go to that greek dude who invented the steam engine and give him the idea to make a train
Humanity - civilised Greeks or not - didn’t have the metallurgical knowledge to be able to build locomotives and rails out of strong enough materials yet. Ancient Greece basically coincides with the Bronze age.
You’d have to not only bring (knowledge of) steam locomotive tech, but also every single bit of iron tech required to build one. You could skip the requirement for rails by opting for a steam traction engine, not a full locomotive, but those are far closer together in technological ability.
None of this factors in the propensity for steam boilers to explode, which you may or may not consider important.
There’s a reason we were still using beasts of burden (horses, oxen, etc.) for traction until the 19th century.
