5 ms·

If an intelligent modern person with some knowledge of history was sent back to 70,000 years ago (70 kya) we'd probably be able to bring significant help to the

If an intelligent modern person with some knowledge of history was sent back to 70,000 years ago (70 kya) we'd probably be able to bring significant help to the group - assuming we were accepted into the group and not immediately killed by our ancestors in peak physical condition. Personally, I'd attempt to introduce: - art and culture from the far future (flutes, 42 kya; figurative art, 40 kya) - Simple ovens (29 kya) and pottery (20 kya) - Rope and various ways to use rope (nets, clothes, bags) 26-28 kya - Saws (20 kya) - Dugout canoes (8 kya) - Basic knowledge of health and disease (concept of potable/non-potable water, "fertility awareness" method for contraception, warm clothing, prevention of injuries, etc) - Food preservation (salting and drying meat, fermented foods, perhaps sealing things with pitch?) - Wheeled carts (3 kya) - "Water bottles": animal skins sealed with pitch Each of these can probably be made/demonstrated over a period of days or weeks and would likely impress the group. If I was really successful and managed to lead the group, I'd probably try to at least get us on our way to these things (would likely take generations): - Attempt animal domestication (13 kya) - Cultivation of barley and wheat (10 kya) - Water wheel (2 kya) - Migration to fertile region (Fertile Crescent perhaps?)

arp242 5y ago
I've sometimes wondered about this as well. We can all understand how saws work; but can you actually make one from scratch? How about a rope? Do you know where to find the right kind of fibre, how to correctly process it, and then make it in to a functional rope? Do you have the know-how to functionally domesticate wild animals and cultivate crops? I'd consider myself a pretty handy guy, but if I were whisked away to 70k years ago this very minute then I'd probably struggle with a lot of that, even though I roughly know how to do it. And that is ignore the obvious communication barriers, that you also need to spend time on basic survival, and things like that. A lot of these crafts developed over generations partly because while the concepts aren't all that complex, the actual doing of it in a way that's effective is a lot harder. I certainly think it'll take a lot more than "days or weeks".
- drran 5y ago
  Primitive saw is just a rope + sand + water. The problem was not to make things, ancients were able to produce few very advanced tools, mechanisms, and technologies, but to save them and pass knowledge of making them to future generations. To make a dent, you will need a tool for mass spreading of knowledge en masse: a church, a library, a copier, or a book making machine.
raattgift 5y ago
Please teach them how to make durable records!
silisili 5y ago
Interesting thought experiment. Language/communication barrier and that whole getting murdered for looking different aside...if you were able to accomplish such things, I'd imagine the world you came back to -today- would look much, much different.
zzt123 5y ago
One wonders if the concept of language 70kya was sufficiently advanced for you to transmit ideas beyond the immediate and concrete. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d have better luck with water wheels than animal domestication, despite the latter preceding the former.
AlotOfReading 5y ago
I knew a professor that loved getting freshmen classes because he could disabuse them their Yankee in king Arthur's court ideas about how easy it'd be to bring technology back to the past. He had a whole slew of experiments that would explore path dependence and the difficulties of creating technologies with the available resources. Nominally this was to help them not underestimate the intelligence of early humans, but I think he enjoyed it. These things are easier if you have an idea ahead of time of what you're making, but that has to work in a cultural context and that still doesn't mean they're easy. For instance, how would you would you build a useful saw out of stone? Can you recognize the wild ancestors of wheat and convince someone to keep at the process of domestication for thousands of years? It's likely that ancient humans were adept at many of these things, like salt preservation, warm clothing, contraception, spun fibers, and boats. Many of the others (agriculture, wheels, etc) simply wouldn't make sense outside their native cultural contexts. In the meantime, you'd probably have to learn from them the basics of survival.
- j9461701 5y ago
  I feel like the pendulum has swing too far in the other direction on this topic, actually. Yes people in the past weren't dumb, and shouldn't be under-estimated, but even a normal person could provide huge gains to any pre-modern society. Their understanding of mathematics, biology, evolution, medicine, astronomy, economics, reading+writing, organization, etc. are immeasurably valuable. I don't think people appreciate how much "ideas" are, in some sense, a kind of technology in themselves. Yes you probably couldn't make yourself a queen of the land with your advanced knowledge, but you could massively improve this society in fundamental ways. Like get infected with cowpox if you want to get vaccinated (a term meaning of or from cows btw!) against small pox. >It's likely that ancient humans were adept at many of these things, like salt preservation, warm clothing, contraception, spun fibers, and boats. Many of the others (agriculture, wheels, etc) simply wouldn't make sense outside their native cultural contexts. For people this primitive, even elementary metalworking would be revolutionary. Yes you'd have to do a bit of tinkering to work out the kinks, but iron ore pre-modern-extraction was everywhere, and once you have the foreknowledge that heat special rock -> smash into shape -> better-than-rock tool it's not hard to figure your way to something groundbreaking. I do think you'd be limited in how much you could change things by how far back you go, but mostly due to human life span. The more new technologies you need to personally 'invent' the longer this stuff takes, as you'd need to experiment with on-the-ground resources and techniques until you can successfully realize your conceptual understanding. I know what a blast furnace is, and because I have the key concepts I can eventually build one with some trial and error. But it would take years if I had to start from just sticks and sand.
pawelmurias 5y ago
> peak physical condition A lot of our ancestors where not in a particularly good physical condition because of how horrible their nutrition is.
- owenversteeg 5y ago
  Look at prisons with bad nutrition and you’ll notice a large amount of people with some serious muscle mass. If you’re getting regular, very intense exercise (as you would need to as a hunter-gatherer) you’re in the top x% of the world population by fitness, no matter if you’re slightly nutrient deficient. Furthermore, we have at least some reason to believe that prehistoric populations weren’t so badly fed that it led to physical issues - they regularly reached heights equaling that of humans in recent years, far taller than the poorly fed people in e.x. medieval Europe. Furthermore, modern humans have plenty of disease and issues caused by our modern environment that would render us far weaker 70 kya. Near/farsightedness, teeth issues, diabetes, obesity, repetitive stress injuries, etc. are entirely modern issues. Then look at the comforts we’ve gotten used to (shoes, clothing, soap, a too-clean environment for our immune system etc) - and I have no doubt that a modern human would be in far, far worse shape for the prehistoric life than your average person 70 kya.
  - watwut 5y ago
    Prisons with low calories nutrition have weak thin people in them. Muscles don't grow of you don't eat protein and sacharids - no matter how much you exercise. You can have sucky nutrition for lack of vitamins etc and those will eventually leave you in bad physical condition. Even if you gain muscle mass temporary, damage to health will be real. Hunter gathrer also don't have reason to bulk up unlike those prison guys.
SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
> - "Water bottles": animal skins sealed with pitch Where would you get pitch? Isn't it only found in a very few locations?
- owenversteeg 5y ago
  You can make pitch by burning certain woods like pine and collecting the stuff that drips from the fire. Also, maybe I’ve been particularly lucky, but I’ve found bituminous deposits in the wild before that would probably be usable. Barring that, tree sap or beeswax would also be very useful for sealing.

arp242 5y ago

I've sometimes wondered about this as well. We can all understand how saws work; but can you actually make one from scratch? How about a rope? Do you know where to find the right kind of fibre, how to correctly process it, and then make it in to a functional rope? Do you have the know-how to functionally domesticate wild animals and cultivate crops? I'd consider myself a pretty handy guy, but if I were whisked away to 70k years ago this very minute then I'd probably struggle with a lot of that, even though I roughly know how to do it. And that is ignore the obvious communication barriers, that you also need to spend time on basic survival, and things like that. A lot of these crafts developed over generations partly because while the concepts aren't all that complex, the actual doing of it in a way that's effective is a lot harder. I certainly think it'll take a lot more than "days or weeks".

drran 5y ago
Primitive saw is just a rope + sand + water. The problem was not to make things, ancients were able to produce few very advanced tools, mechanisms, and technologies, but to save them and pass knowledge of making them to future generations. To make a dent, you will need a tool for mass spreading of knowledge en masse: a church, a library, a copier, or a book making machine.

raattgift 5y ago

Please teach them how to make durable records!

silisili 5y ago

Interesting thought experiment. Language/communication barrier and that whole getting murdered for looking different aside...if you were able to accomplish such things, I'd imagine the world you came back to -today- would look much, much different.

zzt123 5y ago

One wonders if the concept of language 70kya was sufficiently advanced for you to transmit ideas beyond the immediate and concrete. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d have better luck with water wheels than animal domestication, despite the latter preceding the former.

AlotOfReading 5y ago

I knew a professor that loved getting freshmen classes because he could disabuse them their Yankee in king Arthur's court ideas about how easy it'd be to bring technology back to the past. He had a whole slew of experiments that would explore path dependence and the difficulties of creating technologies with the available resources. Nominally this was to help them not underestimate the intelligence of early humans, but I think he enjoyed it. These things are easier if you have an idea ahead of time of what you're making, but that has to work in a cultural context and that still doesn't mean they're easy. For instance, how would you would you build a useful saw out of stone? Can you recognize the wild ancestors of wheat and convince someone to keep at the process of domestication for thousands of years? It's likely that ancient humans were adept at many of these things, like salt preservation, warm clothing, contraception, spun fibers, and boats. Many of the others (agriculture, wheels, etc) simply wouldn't make sense outside their native cultural contexts. In the meantime, you'd probably have to learn from them the basics of survival.

j9461701 5y ago
I feel like the pendulum has swing too far in the other direction on this topic, actually. Yes people in the past weren't dumb, and shouldn't be under-estimated, but even a normal person could provide huge gains to any pre-modern society. Their understanding of mathematics, biology, evolution, medicine, astronomy, economics, reading+writing, organization, etc. are immeasurably valuable. I don't think people appreciate how much "ideas" are, in some sense, a kind of technology in themselves. Yes you probably couldn't make yourself a queen of the land with your advanced knowledge, but you could massively improve this society in fundamental ways. Like get infected with cowpox if you want to get vaccinated (a term meaning of or from cows btw!) against small pox. >It's likely that ancient humans were adept at many of these things, like salt preservation, warm clothing, contraception, spun fibers, and boats. Many of the others (agriculture, wheels, etc) simply wouldn't make sense outside their native cultural contexts. For people this primitive, even elementary metalworking would be revolutionary. Yes you'd have to do a bit of tinkering to work out the kinks, but iron ore pre-modern-extraction was everywhere, and once you have the foreknowledge that heat special rock -> smash into shape -> better-than-rock tool it's not hard to figure your way to something groundbreaking. I do think you'd be limited in how much you could change things by how far back you go, but mostly due to human life span. The more new technologies you need to personally 'invent' the longer this stuff takes, as you'd need to experiment with on-the-ground resources and techniques until you can successfully realize your conceptual understanding. I know what a blast furnace is, and because I have the key concepts I can eventually build one with some trial and error. But it would take years if I had to start from just sticks and sand.

pawelmurias 5y ago

> peak physical condition A lot of our ancestors where not in a particularly good physical condition because of how horrible their nutrition is.

owenversteeg 5y ago
Look at prisons with bad nutrition and you’ll notice a large amount of people with some serious muscle mass. If you’re getting regular, very intense exercise (as you would need to as a hunter-gatherer) you’re in the top x% of the world population by fitness, no matter if you’re slightly nutrient deficient. Furthermore, we have at least some reason to believe that prehistoric populations weren’t so badly fed that it led to physical issues - they regularly reached heights equaling that of humans in recent years, far taller than the poorly fed people in e.x. medieval Europe. Furthermore, modern humans have plenty of disease and issues caused by our modern environment that would render us far weaker 70 kya. Near/farsightedness, teeth issues, diabetes, obesity, repetitive stress injuries, etc. are entirely modern issues. Then look at the comforts we’ve gotten used to (shoes, clothing, soap, a too-clean environment for our immune system etc) - and I have no doubt that a modern human would be in far, far worse shape for the prehistoric life than your average person 70 kya.
- watwut 5y ago
  Prisons with low calories nutrition have weak thin people in them. Muscles don't grow of you don't eat protein and sacharids - no matter how much you exercise. You can have sucky nutrition for lack of vitamins etc and those will eventually leave you in bad physical condition. Even if you gain muscle mass temporary, damage to health will be real. Hunter gathrer also don't have reason to bulk up unlike those prison guys.

SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago

> - "Water bottles": animal skins sealed with pitch Where would you get pitch? Isn't it only found in a very few locations?

owenversteeg 5y ago
You can make pitch by burning certain woods like pine and collecting the stuff that drips from the fire. Also, maybe I’ve been particularly lucky, but I’ve found bituminous deposits in the wild before that would probably be usable. Barring that, tree sap or beeswax would also be very useful for sealing.