7 ms·

Survival tips if you find yourself in the Middle Ages?

62 points by robg 18y ago

pg 18y ago
1000 plus or minus 200 years covers a huge range. 1000 was just about the fulcrum of the medieval period: life in 800 would have been a complete disaster, whereas life in 1200 was in some places a mini-Renaissance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_of_the_12th_century http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_of_the_12th_century If you really got dropped at a random place, it would probably be grazing land or forest, especially in 800. You'd have to find the nearest tiny village and convince them you weren't dangerous. The stuff you had on you would seem miraculously fine, so could be valuable in trade if it wasn't stolen from you first. But the best way to extract value from your stuff would be to give it as a gift to some powerful protector; money wouldn't be any use unless you could protect yourself against robbers. So it would be all about finding a powerful protector. In 800 you'd want to find the most enlightened bishop nearby, present yourself as a traveller from some obscure pocket of Nestorian Christians in the far east (drop hints about Prester John), and get work helping to administer his estates. This wouldn't work everywhere, though: a lot of Europe was still pagan in 800. If you landed in the north or the east, you'd have to try to find some enlightened local warlord instead. Hard to say what use you could be to him, though; probably your only hope would be that he'd keep you around as an adornment to his court. In 1200 you might still want to find a bishop, but if there was a town nearby (especially a great one like Florence or Venice) you could also find work in a bank or for one of the great wool merchants. Generally: Be compulsively clean, and keep your opinions to yourself.
- robg 18y ago
  What one invention would you introduce ahead of its time?
  - pg 18y ago
    Hygiene.
    - robg 18y ago
      How can you make money with that? Purveyor of scented soaps? ;)
      - bprater 18y ago
        One of the commentors at Kotte's mentions that you could sell boiled water as "de-sprited water", good for all menner of medical procedures. Unfortunately, another commentor recognized that firewood would be difficult to access, and cow poo doesn't fire hot enough.
        time_management 18y ago
        Why would firewood be difficult to find? I could be wrong, but I don't think the European deforestation had set in yet, at that time. Is the wood in most European forests not of sufficient quality?
        robg 18y ago
        Didn't the ancient Chinese mine coal? Not a bad map to bring with you: surface coal deposits. Still, start global warming 500 years early?
        inklesspen 18y ago
        It belonged to the nobles.
        pg 18y ago
        Depends where you were. In feudalized, agricultural bits of Europe, everything did, at least nominally. But especially in 800 there would have been large expanses of uncultivated and mostly depopulated forest.
      - gjm11 18y ago
        There might be reasons for doing it other than making money. For instance, (1) making life more pleasant for yourself and (2) saving a whole lot of lives. Perish the thought that anyone might think either of those more important than making money, of course...
  - russell 18y ago
    I would introduce the horse collar. It existed in Europe as early as the 10th century but was not widespread until around 1200. It enabled horses to pull plows and was much more efficient. In order to use my much increased grain production, I would introduce distillation and whiskey. Ah the riches.
  - bootload 18y ago
    "... What one invention would you introduce ahead of its time? ..." The fireplace chimney as it wasn't introduced before the 13th century and fire smoke is a major cause of lung ailments.
- markessien 18y ago
  I think your ideas about this period are similar to ideas that the chinese people have about the U.S - many think that the U.S is overrun by gangsters and terrorists and lots of other dangers. Why is that? Because people only write about the drama. If you actually travel to any existing country where there are small villages, you will see that strangers are always treated with great friendliness and respect. If someone walks in to break the monotony of your cow herding, your instinctive reaction will not be to kill him. It's the same with robbery - there are a lot of stories about robbery, but in reality, human societies don't function when people steal a lot. It's not true now anywhere, and I doubt it was true back then. So robbery will likely not be a problem. (Remember also, those who wrote history where those who rode in fine carriages, and such people likely thought a lot more about robbery than the common guy) Warlords in the north did not have an information apparatus - you could live for a while before they would become aware of you, and even then the interest shown in you would probably be more benign than not. Cleanliness is something you really would not be able to maintain. Imagine the process: 1. Wake up 2. Get a bucket 3. Walk a kilometer to the next well 4. Walk back holding 10 kilograms of water 5. Bath yourself with this freezing water (be careful not to catch pneumonia) 6. Somehow either invent soap or buy some expensive soap 7. Do the same, but for your clothes 8. Avoid being too close to any children or anybody who is in any way grubby, because they will instantly void your work 9. Be considered wierd for doing this everyday Cleanliness is not that easy in a cold climate, and it's not that neccessary compared to a warm climate.
  - pg 18y ago
    There are a lot of stories about robbery, but in reality, human societies don't function when people steal a lot. By present standards, society didn't function in most of medieval Europe, especially in 800. That's why the flourishing trade of the Roman era was replaced by subsistence farming. Banditry had replaced pax Romana. The rich didn't ride in carriages in the period we're talking about. The roads were too bad. Carriages didn't come into widespread use till centuries later.
    - biohacker42 18y ago
      This discussion is going of the deep end, but... are you sure? Pax Romana had little to do with common muggery. The Eastern Holy Roman empire, a.k.a Byzantine was still doing OK. And for that matter the barbaric peoples at it's border, like the ones I am descendant from were as the above poster described, mostly peaceful and friendly.
mechanical_fish 18y ago
Prediction is impossible, we all know that. What we don't know is that retrodiction is also impossible. History is a form of science fiction. The future is history that hasn't happened yet. History is the sensibility of one time, assessing another time, that it cannot possibly know. -- Bruce Sterling, http://www.viridiandesign.org/notes/1-25/Note%2000001.txt http://www.viridiandesign.org/notes/1-25/Note%2000001.txt
- icey 18y ago
  Superman can't really fly, but he's still fun to watch.
  - mechanical_fish 18y ago
    I'm sure Sterling, who has made his living writing SF, would never wish to suggest otherwise.
  - patio11 18y ago
    That depends... which Superman are we talking about? Lois and Clark Superman or get-her-pregnant-then-zoom-off-to-Krypton Superman?
time_management 18y ago
Two chicks (Marle and Lucca) at the same time.
- bd 18y ago
  Congratulations, you made a top Google search result for "Marle and Lucca": http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Marle+and+Lucca http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Marle+and+Lucca
  - time_management 18y ago
    I was standing on the shoulders of giants.
- Frabjous-Dey 18y ago
  Eponysterical!
dhyasama 18y ago
Funny, I've been daydreaming a lot recently about scenarios such as this. At first I thought it might be a sign of mental illness, but everyone had so much fun thinking up answers I'm pretty sure it's everyone else that is crazy :)
rglovejoy 18y ago
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lest_Darkness_Fall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lest_Darkness_Fall
- Caligula 18y ago
  I like(and hate) the author so I try to see if I can get a preview online before I buy and sure enough http://www.scribd.com/doc/8651639/LSprague-de-Camp-Lest-Darkness-Fall http://www.scribd.com/doc/8651639/LSprague-de-Camp-Lest-Dark...
fauigerzigerk 18y ago
What would you do to prepare if you knew the journey back in time would start in one hour?
- rsheridan6 18y ago
  I would print out plans or at least a description of something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_jenny http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_jenny This machine was not invented yet at the time, but could have been made by any decent medieval carpenter. I could probably do it with an axe and a saw. It would have been quite valuable at the time, and could make you rich if you played your cards right. Of course, that doesn't help solve the problem of immediate survival in a world where you don't speak anybody's language...
- swombat 18y ago
  Pray that I'll be transported to the Middle East, where it is warmer, and where the arabs of the time were vastly more enlightened and tolerant than most of Europe. They might keep me alive long enough for me to learn Arabic and learn to blend in..
- vaksel 18y ago
  Backpack full of seeds. Potatoes, corn, etc etc. The agriculture of that time was pretty much non-existent. You'd get something like 20x the output from your seeds.
  - russell 18y ago
    Commercial corn is a sterile hybrid. Potatoes are heavy, but you can carry lots of beet and turnip seeds, good for high volume food production.
  - nostrademons 18y ago
    Most modern crops have been bred or genetically engineered so that they physically cannot survive on their own. They need petrochemical fertilizers to grow, pesticides to fend off insects & fungi & disease, mechanized tilling to penetrate the ground, and artificial supports so they can stand up and avoid keeling over. In my sustainable agriculture course, I read that modern grain varieties put 60% of their photosynthesized energy into growing the fruit (the edible portion of the grain). Wild varieties put more like 3% into the fruit. There's your 20x difference in yield. But it comes at the expense of every other survival mechanism of the plant: modern grain varieties yield so much grain because they don't have working systems for anything, be it support, storm resistance, disease resistance, or general hardiness. They give us food because we supply them with a good amount of fossil-fuel derived work.
vaksel 18y ago
there are a few series that cover that area.(not exact mind you, but close enough) First you have the Assati Shards series(1632, 1633, 1634)...basically a town in Virginia get transferred to Germany in 1632. And then you have the Conrad the Engineer series, where you have a guy transported to 13th century Poland, just before the Mongol invasion. But chances are, no matter where you wind up...you'll be dead within a week. Why? Simple...language barrier. You won't be able to understand a thing....even if you wind up in the most civilized English speaking country. So you'll probably wind up getting burned as a demon who is speaking in tongues For example...this is what Beowulf's first few lines look like in original english. Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,
- lionheart 18y ago
  The language barrier is an interesting point. I wonder if there are any places with languages that haven't changed that much? Do you think I might be able to get along in the Middle East in 1000 AD if I knew modern Hebrew?
  - joeyo 18y ago
    I don't know about Hebrew but I bet Arabic would be the language to know in 1000 AD if you were in Spain or Persia or many points in between.
    - gaius 18y ago
      Arabic's a good bet because the Qu'ran is still written in the original Mediaeval Arabic and people learn it in order to read it in its original form. The accent might have changed over time but Arabic's going to be good for any time in the last 1300 years.
      - showerst 18y ago
        Modern Standard Arabic (The generalized approximation of what college-educated people speak nowadays) is fairly different from Koranic Arabic, but it'd still probably be at least somewhat mutually intelligible, so you could pass as being from some other part of the Arab world I suppose. Spain would've probably been the best possible place to land during the Ummayad/Abbasid Caliphates (before about 1085 or so), but it was a very rough place afterward (the Almoravid/Almohad Caliphates were not known for tolerance, and the reconquest was even worse)
davidw 18y ago
"Alright you Primitive Screwheads, listen up! You see this? This... is my boomstick! The twelve-gauge double-barreled Remington. S-Mart's top of the line. You can find this in the sporting goods department. That's right, this sweet baby was made in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Retails for about a hundred and nine, ninety five. It's got a walnut stock, cobalt blue steel, and a hair trigger. That's right. Shop smart. Shop S-Mart. You got that?"
- time_management 18y ago
  How much ammo would you carry? It'd be nice to have enough to make an impression on anyone who threatened you. Aside from that, you'd probably never have to use it.
  - davidw 18y ago
    It's just a quote from "Army of Darkness".
edw519 18y ago
I'd find a bookie and make a bet on the Battle of Hastings. The Normans are my lock of the week.
kirubakaran 18y ago
Have you read Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"? http://bulfinch.englishatheist.org/yank/86-h.htm http://bulfinch.englishatheist.org/yank/86-h.htm Audio book: http://librivox.org/a-connecticut-yankee-in-king-arthurs-court-by-mark-twain/ http://librivox.org/a-connecticut-yankee-in-king-arthurs-cou...
- nazgulnarsil 18y ago
  read Lest Darkness Fall for a MUCH more interesting account.
  - kirubakaran 18y ago
    Thanks.
ChaitanyaSai 18y ago
Teeth. I would show off my teeth as a start to my entrepreneurial apothecary business. Our average dental hygiene is way way better than what they had then, and consequently our teeth look like divine pearls in comparison. Hopefully, their amazement will allow a perceived transference of my expertise to other medicinal areas. Also, knowing more math might help me make coinage with some simple engraved code that needs to be combined with the name of the bearer in order to be verified (only feasible for inter-medieval banks). This would be impetus for trade across greater distances.
- nazgulnarsil 18y ago
  knowing some modern first aid would probably be your most valuable asset. you might be able to position yourself as doctor to some powerful noble.
nazgulnarsil 18y ago
you'll die of infectious disease. I'm almost 100% sure of this.
- crotu5 18y ago
  absolutely. and quickly. your 21st century immune system has had a lifetime to protect you and adapt to our hazards...it would offer you zero protection against viruses and bacteria of 1000ad.
- Tichy 18y ago
  Would it be much worse than traveling to a 3rd world country today, though? Granted, typically travelers get some vaccination, but overall, not that many (mostly Hepatitis?).
  - nazgulnarsil 18y ago
    my girlfriend just went to india and got more than 10 different vaccinations and still got sick.
  - hapless 18y ago
    Yaws and Smallpox, just to name two, are practically extinct today. You will have NO immunity. Rubella, mumps, chicken pox, lockjaw etc were all common diseases then. Today, we vaccinate against them, even in the third world. You, like all adults, have probably relied on herd immunity to compensate for your fading resistance. Intestinal disease was common in this era. It's very rare today. You would suffer from it for the same reason that modern tourists suffer in the third world. Tourists, soldiers, and aid workers grin and bear it in comfortable quarters with plenty of clean water. You would be bearing it... elsewhere. Disease might not take you out, but it would certainly be more of a problem for you than for the natives.
scott_s 18y ago
Step back into the time machine and poke the Back to the Future button until your finger bleeds.
bootload 18y ago
"... how many people living in the US know how to make gunpowder from scratch? Given enough time, I guess I could build a ... How would you survive if suddenly transported back to 1000 AD? ..." Well I'd hope I'd be pushed forward a few hundred years into the late 12'th - early 13th century and dropped into Western Europe. The UK or France. Why late 12th/early 13th century France or UK? Well for one thing the "Hundred Years' War" is just starting and it probably is the most turbulent time in UK/French history and with this comes warfare and opportunity. It turns out this period of history is where the linage of the French House of Capet was broken and King of England (John - Henry III) had gone from owning more land than the King of France to loosing almost the lot. The consequences of these new weapons meant that the nobility was no longer the deciding factor in battle; peasants armed with longbows or firearms could gain access to the power, rewards, and prestige once reserved only for knights who bore arms. But these were heady days for the English this is the time of the Longbow ( and by the way the 2 fingered salute favoured by those of English descent and a token to their weapons superiority ), the introduction of the cannon and the end of the era of chivalry, the introduction of Modern army, the introduction of the Magna Carta some 50-100 years prior, centralised government that had the authority to raise taxes & armies. So in terms of making your mark this was the era. The first problem you'd have is language. I'd either have to bring a book (latin) or wing it on my language skills but where to learn latin? Anything but a classical education makes me stand out as an uneducated heathen. As for a job if you are fit enough you could either join up as a foot soldier but a more lucrative path might be to hack the warfare technology of the time and work on improving them. One problem at the time was training enough archers to use the longbow efficiently. It took a lot of training from an early age - all English boys from the age of 12 years had to train to use the longbow & all men from the ages of 15-60 carried such weapons. I'd be looking out for Yeoman ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeoman#Middle_Ages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeoman#Middle_Ages
- bootload 18y ago
  The idea for this btw is not a new one. I remember this reading Micheal Crichton book called Timeline ~ http://www.crichton-official.com/books-timeline.html http://www.crichton-official.com/books-timeline.html which in itself is based on an idea by Leo A. Frankowski who wrote a book called Cross-Time Engineer ~ http://www.amazon.com/Cross-Time-Engineer-Adventures-Conrad-Stargard/dp/0345914392 http://www.amazon.com/Cross-Time-Engineer-Adventures-Conrad-...
lionhearted 18y ago
Fascinating to think about. I did some fencing in college, and some archery and horseback riding when I was younger. I think I'd try to survive and move over land until I got to a coastal trading city, and then convince the nearest Lord that I was shipwrecked from a distant, mystical land and try to enter into military or guard service. Then catch up on the local language and customs, do what I can to get land or a title, then try to figure out what modern process improvements I could invent to build a lot of wealth. If I was in a rigid caste system type place, I'd definitely recruit potential great men from non-aristocratic classes and get them working for me. Depending on which invention path I went down, take over in terms of commerce of have myself a mini-revolution displacing the aristocracy and becoming ruler and protector of the land. It probably wouldn't be a party, but it wouldn't be so bad either.
- crotu5 18y ago
  they would see the fillings in your teeth and have you put to death immediately as a witch actually that you have teeth at all past age thirty would show you up as a witch
rgrieselhuber 18y ago
If you're interested in this highly unlikely scenario, I highly recommend the Dies the Fire books by S.M. Stirling. I actually got a good education in feudal economics and have a much better appreciation for the concept of food as wealth.
crotu5 18y ago
there is a very high chance you would die rather quickly from illnesses to which the local (temporally speaking) would have been building immunities too. the advice in kottke's blog to have a "recent smallpox vaccine" is silly, the strains now and in 1000 would be in no way similar. by the same token the flu of 1918 would likely get you too, even if you got a flu shot in 2009
daniel-cussen 18y ago
How to make gunpowder, from Wikipedia. Warning, gross. "Historically, nitre-beds were prepared by mixing manure with either mortar or wood ashes, common earth and organic materials such as straw to give porosity to a compost pile typically 1.5 meters high by 2 meters wide by 5 metres long.[3] The heap was usually under a cover from the rain, kept moist with urine, turned often to accelerate the decomposition and leached with water after approximately one year. The liquid containing various nitrates was then converted with wood ashes to potassium nitrates, crystallized and refined for use in gunpowder. Urine has also been used in the manufacture of saltpeter for gunpowder. In this process, stale urine placed in a container of straw hay is allowed to sour for many months, after which water is used to wash the resulting chemical salts from the straw. The process is completed by filtering the liquid through wood ashes and air-drying in the sun. Saltpeter crystals can then be collected and added to brimstone and charcoal to create black powder.[4][5][6][7][8]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_nitrate#History_of_production http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_nitrate#History_of_pr...
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  I always just bought the saltpeter from the drugstore. I guess CVS isn't an option 1,000 years ago though.
- ksvs 18y ago
  "Government officials had the power to scrape up dried urine from beneath the boarded floors of Stuart stables because it contained saltpetre, a vital ingredient of gunpowder." http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PAL/is_/ai_n15630934 http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PAL/is_/ai_n15630934
- thwarted 18y ago
  Didn't they extract potassium from urine somewhere in The Baroque Cycle?
mattmaroon 18y ago
"I'm skeptical of this approach...how many people living in the US know how to make gunpowder from scratch?" What did this guy do for fun in high school? Saltpeter, charcoal, sulfur in a 75-15-10 ratio. Saltpeter + sugar in a 6-4 mix and then caramelized is more fun though. It would also aid your getaway when the angry knights came to hunt the heretic who just invented gunpowder.
est 18y ago
> Survival tips if you find yourself in the Middle Ages? It's simple. Go to China & learn KungFu!
Tichy 18y ago
Maybe one could start a lottery.
DanielBMarkham 18y ago
Hope for 1200. 800 wasn't that great. Be humble, mute, and helpful. If you know latin, work on learning the current dialect/script -- you'll have a shot at declaring yourself a "wise man from the east" and go for the job of physician. I would be careful with the Prester John references, your mileage may vary. As one commenter pointed out, you should be able to make aspirin from willow bark and penicillin from mold. These two alone, plus hygiene, should make you a miracle-worker. Be prepared to saw a lot of limbs off. You could also be the first to use opiates in medicine, which could alleviate a lot of suffering in that time. After 1100 or so, the crusades are well under way. Most of the nobles will be coming and going to the various crusades. They started in the Levant and ended up being next door as crusades were eventually preached against heretics. As physician, try to attach to the church -- they're on the ascent. Perhaps with some luck you can get noticed by the pope and end up with a (relatively) cushy job in Rome. Don't do the man-at-arms thing. You'll suck at it. Don't try for any kind of social revolution -- people were pretty tolerant during that time, but by 1200 the church was getting very sensitive about outliers. You don't want to show up on their radar. Stay away from southern France -- the Cathars were nice folks but trouble is on the way for them. If I had the choice of picking a city (besides the Rome-physician thing), I'd go for Genova, Pisa, or Venice. Great cities with fast growth and more of an open culture. They made out like bandits transporting nobles and supplies during the crusades.
- derefr 18y ago
  As to the "man-at-arms thing": if you could bring with you to the past a suitcase or so of initial supplies, what would be the best investment in the long term to become a unopposable warlord (or just an arms dealer with a technological monopoly?) Just "a bunch of guns" wouldn't help once you had given them away, and even specifications wouldn't help because no one could engineer to the required tolerances at the time. I'd think the best investment would be body armor, walkee-talkie radios, and surveillance equipment, personally.
  - Darmani 18y ago
    The big question is how to stop worrying about the need to personally fetch water and make clothes, and how to start worrying about implementing your overall plans. That is, how to get enough production going where you wouldn't be screwed when the solar cells powering your electronics (you didn't seriously consider bringing batteries, did you?) wear out. My basic plan would be: Convince a small village I'm God and chose them to build my kingdom, improve their farming and sanitation enough to produce some labor surpluses, and then work my way up the tech tree. The basic sketch of that would involve fireworks, a single assault rifle, and a low-power device storing lots of specifications.
hs 18y ago
i'll invent a search engine startup and conquer the wo ... wa ... wait a minute
keefe 18y ago
Sit still, breath and wait for the LSD to wear off (:
gur 18y ago
No need for the time travel. Try to survive nowadays within an isolated tribe in the amazonian forest.
biohacker42 18y ago
The most obvious and easy thing I can think of is Penicillin. If you can somehow identify which moldy bread is it, that with the basic knowledge of human health any modern person should have, will make a great healer. This is a time when people were still sealing wounds with boiling oil. So yes, even if you have no formal first aid training you can be a great healer.
makaimc 18y ago
Let's flip this around a bit. Who would have a better chance of survival, one of us transported back to the Middle Ages, or a person in the Middle Ages transported to 2009? I'd say we have a better shot at living a longer period of time (over a year) since we could take basic precautions against disease and germs. The Middle Ages guy/gal would probably die of our modern germs within a few days (similar to the Indians when they met European explorers).
- dag 18y ago
  As I recall, most of the Native deaths were from smallpox, measles, typhoid, diphtheria, and the bubonic plague. Not exactly common diseases these days. I don't think that the Middle Ages person would do too badly, though we would definitely do better as we have MMR and other mandatory vaccinations.

62 points by robg 18y ago

pg 18y ago

1000 plus or minus 200 years covers a huge range. 1000 was just about the fulcrum of the medieval period: life in 800 would have been a complete disaster, whereas life in 1200 was in some places a mini-Renaissance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_of_the_12th_century http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_of_the_12th_century If you really got dropped at a random place, it would probably be grazing land or forest, especially in 800. You'd have to find the nearest tiny village and convince them you weren't dangerous. The stuff you had on you would seem miraculously fine, so could be valuable in trade if it wasn't stolen from you first. But the best way to extract value from your stuff would be to give it as a gift to some powerful protector; money wouldn't be any use unless you could protect yourself against robbers. So it would be all about finding a powerful protector. In 800 you'd want to find the most enlightened bishop nearby, present yourself as a traveller from some obscure pocket of Nestorian Christians in the far east (drop hints about Prester John), and get work helping to administer his estates. This wouldn't work everywhere, though: a lot of Europe was still pagan in 800. If you landed in the north or the east, you'd have to try to find some enlightened local warlord instead. Hard to say what use you could be to him, though; probably your only hope would be that he'd keep you around as an adornment to his court. In 1200 you might still want to find a bishop, but if there was a town nearby (especially a great one like Florence or Venice) you could also find work in a bank or for one of the great wool merchants. Generally: Be compulsively clean, and keep your opinions to yourself.

robg 18y ago
What one invention would you introduce ahead of its time?
- pg 18y ago
  Hygiene.
  - robg 18y ago
    How can you make money with that? Purveyor of scented soaps? ;)
    - bprater 18y ago
      One of the commentors at Kotte's mentions that you could sell boiled water as "de-sprited water", good for all menner of medical procedures. Unfortunately, another commentor recognized that firewood would be difficult to access, and cow poo doesn't fire hot enough.
      - time_management 18y ago
        Why would firewood be difficult to find? I could be wrong, but I don't think the European deforestation had set in yet, at that time. Is the wood in most European forests not of sufficient quality?
        robg 18y ago
        Didn't the ancient Chinese mine coal? Not a bad map to bring with you: surface coal deposits. Still, start global warming 500 years early?
        inklesspen 18y ago
        It belonged to the nobles.
        pg 18y ago
        Depends where you were. In feudalized, agricultural bits of Europe, everything did, at least nominally. But especially in 800 there would have been large expanses of uncultivated and mostly depopulated forest.
    - gjm11 18y ago
      There might be reasons for doing it other than making money. For instance, (1) making life more pleasant for yourself and (2) saving a whole lot of lives. Perish the thought that anyone might think either of those more important than making money, of course...
- russell 18y ago
  I would introduce the horse collar. It existed in Europe as early as the 10th century but was not widespread until around 1200. It enabled horses to pull plows and was much more efficient. In order to use my much increased grain production, I would introduce distillation and whiskey. Ah the riches.
- bootload 18y ago
  "... What one invention would you introduce ahead of its time? ..." The fireplace chimney as it wasn't introduced before the 13th century and fire smoke is a major cause of lung ailments.
markessien 18y ago
I think your ideas about this period are similar to ideas that the chinese people have about the U.S - many think that the U.S is overrun by gangsters and terrorists and lots of other dangers. Why is that? Because people only write about the drama. If you actually travel to any existing country where there are small villages, you will see that strangers are always treated with great friendliness and respect. If someone walks in to break the monotony of your cow herding, your instinctive reaction will not be to kill him. It's the same with robbery - there are a lot of stories about robbery, but in reality, human societies don't function when people steal a lot. It's not true now anywhere, and I doubt it was true back then. So robbery will likely not be a problem. (Remember also, those who wrote history where those who rode in fine carriages, and such people likely thought a lot more about robbery than the common guy) Warlords in the north did not have an information apparatus - you could live for a while before they would become aware of you, and even then the interest shown in you would probably be more benign than not. Cleanliness is something you really would not be able to maintain. Imagine the process: 1. Wake up 2. Get a bucket 3. Walk a kilometer to the next well 4. Walk back holding 10 kilograms of water 5. Bath yourself with this freezing water (be careful not to catch pneumonia) 6. Somehow either invent soap or buy some expensive soap 7. Do the same, but for your clothes 8. Avoid being too close to any children or anybody who is in any way grubby, because they will instantly void your work 9. Be considered wierd for doing this everyday Cleanliness is not that easy in a cold climate, and it's not that neccessary compared to a warm climate.
- pg 18y ago
  There are a lot of stories about robbery, but in reality, human societies don't function when people steal a lot. By present standards, society didn't function in most of medieval Europe, especially in 800. That's why the flourishing trade of the Roman era was replaced by subsistence farming. Banditry had replaced pax Romana. The rich didn't ride in carriages in the period we're talking about. The roads were too bad. Carriages didn't come into widespread use till centuries later.
  - biohacker42 18y ago
    This discussion is going of the deep end, but... are you sure? Pax Romana had little to do with common muggery. The Eastern Holy Roman empire, a.k.a Byzantine was still doing OK. And for that matter the barbaric peoples at it's border, like the ones I am descendant from were as the above poster described, mostly peaceful and friendly.

mechanical_fish 18y ago

Prediction is impossible, we all know that. What we don't know is that retrodiction is also impossible. History is a form of science fiction. The future is history that hasn't happened yet. History is the sensibility of one time, assessing another time, that it cannot possibly know. -- Bruce Sterling, http://www.viridiandesign.org/notes/1-25/Note%2000001.txt http://www.viridiandesign.org/notes/1-25/Note%2000001.txt

icey 18y ago
Superman can't really fly, but he's still fun to watch.
- mechanical_fish 18y ago
  I'm sure Sterling, who has made his living writing SF, would never wish to suggest otherwise.
- patio11 18y ago
  That depends... which Superman are we talking about? Lois and Clark Superman or get-her-pregnant-then-zoom-off-to-Krypton Superman?

time_management 18y ago

Two chicks (Marle and Lucca) at the same time.

bd 18y ago
Congratulations, you made a top Google search result for "Marle and Lucca": http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Marle+and+Lucca http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Marle+and+Lucca
- time_management 18y ago
  I was standing on the shoulders of giants.
Frabjous-Dey 18y ago
Eponysterical!

dhyasama 18y ago

Funny, I've been daydreaming a lot recently about scenarios such as this. At first I thought it might be a sign of mental illness, but everyone had so much fun thinking up answers I'm pretty sure it's everyone else that is crazy :)

rglovejoy 18y ago

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lest_Darkness_Fall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lest_Darkness_Fall

Caligula 18y ago
I like(and hate) the author so I try to see if I can get a preview online before I buy and sure enough http://www.scribd.com/doc/8651639/LSprague-de-Camp-Lest-Darkness-Fall http://www.scribd.com/doc/8651639/LSprague-de-Camp-Lest-Dark...

fauigerzigerk 18y ago

What would you do to prepare if you knew the journey back in time would start in one hour?

rsheridan6 18y ago
I would print out plans or at least a description of something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_jenny http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_jenny This machine was not invented yet at the time, but could have been made by any decent medieval carpenter. I could probably do it with an axe and a saw. It would have been quite valuable at the time, and could make you rich if you played your cards right. Of course, that doesn't help solve the problem of immediate survival in a world where you don't speak anybody's language...
swombat 18y ago
Pray that I'll be transported to the Middle East, where it is warmer, and where the arabs of the time were vastly more enlightened and tolerant than most of Europe. They might keep me alive long enough for me to learn Arabic and learn to blend in..
vaksel 18y ago
Backpack full of seeds. Potatoes, corn, etc etc. The agriculture of that time was pretty much non-existent. You'd get something like 20x the output from your seeds.
- russell 18y ago
  Commercial corn is a sterile hybrid. Potatoes are heavy, but you can carry lots of beet and turnip seeds, good for high volume food production.
- nostrademons 18y ago
  Most modern crops have been bred or genetically engineered so that they physically cannot survive on their own. They need petrochemical fertilizers to grow, pesticides to fend off insects & fungi & disease, mechanized tilling to penetrate the ground, and artificial supports so they can stand up and avoid keeling over. In my sustainable agriculture course, I read that modern grain varieties put 60% of their photosynthesized energy into growing the fruit (the edible portion of the grain). Wild varieties put more like 3% into the fruit. There's your 20x difference in yield. But it comes at the expense of every other survival mechanism of the plant: modern grain varieties yield so much grain because they don't have working systems for anything, be it support, storm resistance, disease resistance, or general hardiness. They give us food because we supply them with a good amount of fossil-fuel derived work.

vaksel 18y ago

there are a few series that cover that area.(not exact mind you, but close enough) First you have the Assati Shards series(1632, 1633, 1634)...basically a town in Virginia get transferred to Germany in 1632. And then you have the Conrad the Engineer series, where you have a guy transported to 13th century Poland, just before the Mongol invasion. But chances are, no matter where you wind up...you'll be dead within a week. Why? Simple...language barrier. You won't be able to understand a thing....even if you wind up in the most civilized English speaking country. So you'll probably wind up getting burned as a demon who is speaking in tongues For example...this is what Beowulf's first few lines look like in original english. Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,

lionheart 18y ago
The language barrier is an interesting point. I wonder if there are any places with languages that haven't changed that much? Do you think I might be able to get along in the Middle East in 1000 AD if I knew modern Hebrew?
- joeyo 18y ago
  I don't know about Hebrew but I bet Arabic would be the language to know in 1000 AD if you were in Spain or Persia or many points in between.
  - gaius 18y ago
    Arabic's a good bet because the Qu'ran is still written in the original Mediaeval Arabic and people learn it in order to read it in its original form. The accent might have changed over time but Arabic's going to be good for any time in the last 1300 years.
    - showerst 18y ago
      Modern Standard Arabic (The generalized approximation of what college-educated people speak nowadays) is fairly different from Koranic Arabic, but it'd still probably be at least somewhat mutually intelligible, so you could pass as being from some other part of the Arab world I suppose. Spain would've probably been the best possible place to land during the Ummayad/Abbasid Caliphates (before about 1085 or so), but it was a very rough place afterward (the Almoravid/Almohad Caliphates were not known for tolerance, and the reconquest was even worse)

davidw 18y ago

"Alright you Primitive Screwheads, listen up! You see this? This... is my boomstick! The twelve-gauge double-barreled Remington. S-Mart's top of the line. You can find this in the sporting goods department. That's right, this sweet baby was made in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Retails for about a hundred and nine, ninety five. It's got a walnut stock, cobalt blue steel, and a hair trigger. That's right. Shop smart. Shop S-Mart. You got that?"

time_management 18y ago
How much ammo would you carry? It'd be nice to have enough to make an impression on anyone who threatened you. Aside from that, you'd probably never have to use it.
- davidw 18y ago
  It's just a quote from "Army of Darkness".

edw519 18y ago

I'd find a bookie and make a bet on the Battle of Hastings. The Normans are my lock of the week.

kirubakaran 18y ago

Have you read Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"? http://bulfinch.englishatheist.org/yank/86-h.htm http://bulfinch.englishatheist.org/yank/86-h.htm Audio book: http://librivox.org/a-connecticut-yankee-in-king-arthurs-court-by-mark-twain/ http://librivox.org/a-connecticut-yankee-in-king-arthurs-cou...

nazgulnarsil 18y ago
read Lest Darkness Fall for a MUCH more interesting account.
- kirubakaran 18y ago
  Thanks.

ChaitanyaSai 18y ago

Teeth. I would show off my teeth as a start to my entrepreneurial apothecary business. Our average dental hygiene is way way better than what they had then, and consequently our teeth look like divine pearls in comparison. Hopefully, their amazement will allow a perceived transference of my expertise to other medicinal areas. Also, knowing more math might help me make coinage with some simple engraved code that needs to be combined with the name of the bearer in order to be verified (only feasible for inter-medieval banks). This would be impetus for trade across greater distances.

nazgulnarsil 18y ago
knowing some modern first aid would probably be your most valuable asset. you might be able to position yourself as doctor to some powerful noble.

nazgulnarsil 18y ago

you'll die of infectious disease. I'm almost 100% sure of this.

crotu5 18y ago
absolutely. and quickly. your 21st century immune system has had a lifetime to protect you and adapt to our hazards...it would offer you zero protection against viruses and bacteria of 1000ad.
Tichy 18y ago
Would it be much worse than traveling to a 3rd world country today, though? Granted, typically travelers get some vaccination, but overall, not that many (mostly Hepatitis?).
- nazgulnarsil 18y ago
  my girlfriend just went to india and got more than 10 different vaccinations and still got sick.
- hapless 18y ago
  Yaws and Smallpox, just to name two, are practically extinct today. You will have NO immunity. Rubella, mumps, chicken pox, lockjaw etc were all common diseases then. Today, we vaccinate against them, even in the third world. You, like all adults, have probably relied on herd immunity to compensate for your fading resistance. Intestinal disease was common in this era. It's very rare today. You would suffer from it for the same reason that modern tourists suffer in the third world. Tourists, soldiers, and aid workers grin and bear it in comfortable quarters with plenty of clean water. You would be bearing it... elsewhere. Disease might not take you out, but it would certainly be more of a problem for you than for the natives.

scott_s 18y ago

Step back into the time machine and poke the Back to the Future button until your finger bleeds.

bootload 18y ago

"... how many people living in the US know how to make gunpowder from scratch? Given enough time, I guess I could build a ... How would you survive if suddenly transported back to 1000 AD? ..." Well I'd hope I'd be pushed forward a few hundred years into the late 12'th - early 13th century and dropped into Western Europe. The UK or France. Why late 12th/early 13th century France or UK? Well for one thing the "Hundred Years' War" is just starting and it probably is the most turbulent time in UK/French history and with this comes warfare and opportunity. It turns out this period of history is where the linage of the French House of Capet was broken and King of England (John - Henry III) had gone from owning more land than the King of France to loosing almost the lot. The consequences of these new weapons meant that the nobility was no longer the deciding factor in battle; peasants armed with longbows or firearms could gain access to the power, rewards, and prestige once reserved only for knights who bore arms. But these were heady days for the English this is the time of the Longbow ( and by the way the 2 fingered salute favoured by those of English descent and a token to their weapons superiority ), the introduction of the cannon and the end of the era of chivalry, the introduction of Modern army, the introduction of the Magna Carta some 50-100 years prior, centralised government that had the authority to raise taxes & armies. So in terms of making your mark this was the era. The first problem you'd have is language. I'd either have to bring a book (latin) or wing it on my language skills but where to learn latin? Anything but a classical education makes me stand out as an uneducated heathen. As for a job if you are fit enough you could either join up as a foot soldier but a more lucrative path might be to hack the warfare technology of the time and work on improving them. One problem at the time was training enough archers to use the longbow efficiently. It took a lot of training from an early age - all English boys from the age of 12 years had to train to use the longbow & all men from the ages of 15-60 carried such weapons. I'd be looking out for Yeoman ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeoman#Middle_Ages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeoman#Middle_Ages

bootload 18y ago
The idea for this btw is not a new one. I remember this reading Micheal Crichton book called Timeline ~ http://www.crichton-official.com/books-timeline.html http://www.crichton-official.com/books-timeline.html which in itself is based on an idea by Leo A. Frankowski who wrote a book called Cross-Time Engineer ~ http://www.amazon.com/Cross-Time-Engineer-Adventures-Conrad-Stargard/dp/0345914392 http://www.amazon.com/Cross-Time-Engineer-Adventures-Conrad-...

lionhearted 18y ago

Fascinating to think about. I did some fencing in college, and some archery and horseback riding when I was younger. I think I'd try to survive and move over land until I got to a coastal trading city, and then convince the nearest Lord that I was shipwrecked from a distant, mystical land and try to enter into military or guard service. Then catch up on the local language and customs, do what I can to get land or a title, then try to figure out what modern process improvements I could invent to build a lot of wealth. If I was in a rigid caste system type place, I'd definitely recruit potential great men from non-aristocratic classes and get them working for me. Depending on which invention path I went down, take over in terms of commerce of have myself a mini-revolution displacing the aristocracy and becoming ruler and protector of the land. It probably wouldn't be a party, but it wouldn't be so bad either.

crotu5 18y ago
they would see the fillings in your teeth and have you put to death immediately as a witch actually that you have teeth at all past age thirty would show you up as a witch

rgrieselhuber 18y ago

If you're interested in this highly unlikely scenario, I highly recommend the Dies the Fire books by S.M. Stirling. I actually got a good education in feudal economics and have a much better appreciation for the concept of food as wealth.

crotu5 18y ago

there is a very high chance you would die rather quickly from illnesses to which the local (temporally speaking) would have been building immunities too. the advice in kottke's blog to have a "recent smallpox vaccine" is silly, the strains now and in 1000 would be in no way similar. by the same token the flu of 1918 would likely get you too, even if you got a flu shot in 2009

daniel-cussen 18y ago

How to make gunpowder, from Wikipedia. Warning, gross. "Historically, nitre-beds were prepared by mixing manure with either mortar or wood ashes, common earth and organic materials such as straw to give porosity to a compost pile typically 1.5 meters high by 2 meters wide by 5 metres long.[3] The heap was usually under a cover from the rain, kept moist with urine, turned often to accelerate the decomposition and leached with water after approximately one year. The liquid containing various nitrates was then converted with wood ashes to potassium nitrates, crystallized and refined for use in gunpowder. Urine has also been used in the manufacture of saltpeter for gunpowder. In this process, stale urine placed in a container of straw hay is allowed to sour for many months, after which water is used to wash the resulting chemical salts from the straw. The process is completed by filtering the liquid through wood ashes and air-drying in the sun. Saltpeter crystals can then be collected and added to brimstone and charcoal to create black powder.[4][5][6][7][8]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_nitrate#History_of_production http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_nitrate#History_of_pr...

mattmaroon 18y ago
I always just bought the saltpeter from the drugstore. I guess CVS isn't an option 1,000 years ago though.
ksvs 18y ago
"Government officials had the power to scrape up dried urine from beneath the boarded floors of Stuart stables because it contained saltpetre, a vital ingredient of gunpowder." http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PAL/is_/ai_n15630934 http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PAL/is_/ai_n15630934
thwarted 18y ago
Didn't they extract potassium from urine somewhere in The Baroque Cycle?

mattmaroon 18y ago

"I'm skeptical of this approach...how many people living in the US know how to make gunpowder from scratch?" What did this guy do for fun in high school? Saltpeter, charcoal, sulfur in a 75-15-10 ratio. Saltpeter + sugar in a 6-4 mix and then caramelized is more fun though. It would also aid your getaway when the angry knights came to hunt the heretic who just invented gunpowder.

est 18y ago

> Survival tips if you find yourself in the Middle Ages? It's simple. Go to China & learn KungFu!

Tichy 18y ago

Maybe one could start a lottery.

DanielBMarkham 18y ago

Hope for 1200. 800 wasn't that great. Be humble, mute, and helpful. If you know latin, work on learning the current dialect/script -- you'll have a shot at declaring yourself a "wise man from the east" and go for the job of physician. I would be careful with the Prester John references, your mileage may vary. As one commenter pointed out, you should be able to make aspirin from willow bark and penicillin from mold. These two alone, plus hygiene, should make you a miracle-worker. Be prepared to saw a lot of limbs off. You could also be the first to use opiates in medicine, which could alleviate a lot of suffering in that time. After 1100 or so, the crusades are well under way. Most of the nobles will be coming and going to the various crusades. They started in the Levant and ended up being next door as crusades were eventually preached against heretics. As physician, try to attach to the church -- they're on the ascent. Perhaps with some luck you can get noticed by the pope and end up with a (relatively) cushy job in Rome. Don't do the man-at-arms thing. You'll suck at it. Don't try for any kind of social revolution -- people were pretty tolerant during that time, but by 1200 the church was getting very sensitive about outliers. You don't want to show up on their radar. Stay away from southern France -- the Cathars were nice folks but trouble is on the way for them. If I had the choice of picking a city (besides the Rome-physician thing), I'd go for Genova, Pisa, or Venice. Great cities with fast growth and more of an open culture. They made out like bandits transporting nobles and supplies during the crusades.

derefr 18y ago
As to the "man-at-arms thing": if you could bring with you to the past a suitcase or so of initial supplies, what would be the best investment in the long term to become a unopposable warlord (or just an arms dealer with a technological monopoly?) Just "a bunch of guns" wouldn't help once you had given them away, and even specifications wouldn't help because no one could engineer to the required tolerances at the time. I'd think the best investment would be body armor, walkee-talkie radios, and surveillance equipment, personally.
- Darmani 18y ago
  The big question is how to stop worrying about the need to personally fetch water and make clothes, and how to start worrying about implementing your overall plans. That is, how to get enough production going where you wouldn't be screwed when the solar cells powering your electronics (you didn't seriously consider bringing batteries, did you?) wear out. My basic plan would be: Convince a small village I'm God and chose them to build my kingdom, improve their farming and sanitation enough to produce some labor surpluses, and then work my way up the tech tree. The basic sketch of that would involve fireworks, a single assault rifle, and a low-power device storing lots of specifications.

hs 18y ago

i'll invent a search engine startup and conquer the wo ... wa ... wait a minute

keefe 18y ago

Sit still, breath and wait for the LSD to wear off (:

gur 18y ago

No need for the time travel. Try to survive nowadays within an isolated tribe in the amazonian forest.

biohacker42 18y ago

The most obvious and easy thing I can think of is Penicillin. If you can somehow identify which moldy bread is it, that with the basic knowledge of human health any modern person should have, will make a great healer. This is a time when people were still sealing wounds with boiling oil. So yes, even if you have no formal first aid training you can be a great healer.

makaimc 18y ago

Let's flip this around a bit. Who would have a better chance of survival, one of us transported back to the Middle Ages, or a person in the Middle Ages transported to 2009? I'd say we have a better shot at living a longer period of time (over a year) since we could take basic precautions against disease and germs. The Middle Ages guy/gal would probably die of our modern germs within a few days (similar to the Indians when they met European explorers).

dag 18y ago
As I recall, most of the Native deaths were from smallpox, measles, typhoid, diphtheria, and the bubonic plague. Not exactly common diseases these days. I don't think that the Middle Ages person would do too badly, though we would definitely do better as we have MMR and other mandatory vaccinations.