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Old 01-12-2011, 02:14 AM
 
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MacDonalds fast food cuisine would get an early birth
Burgers and fries would astound them..
Pizza
KFC
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Old 01-12-2011, 10:06 PM
 
Location: Victoria TX
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Quote:
Originally Posted by thecoalman View Post
I would amaze them with my skills to set fire to "rocks".
You would now have the source of heat for all other things to follow.
Coal was described as a burnable fuel by the Greeks 300 BC, and was used by the British in funeral pyres thousands of years before that.
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Old 01-12-2011, 10:09 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles22 View Post
Teach them how to spell.
You would almost certainly be burned as a heretic. The Catholic church didn't want common people to be able to read anything, especially the Bible. Even many nobles couldn't read or write, only the clergy,academics and scribes.
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Old 01-12-2011, 10:26 PM
 
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Originally Posted by jtur88 View Post
Coal was described as a burnable fuel by the Greeks 300 BC, and was used by the British in funeral pyres thousands of years before that.
Guess I should have been specific, set fire to anthracite coal.

Soft coal is easily lit, anthracite or hard coal needs specific environment. I could give 100 pounds of anthracite, 10 gallons of gas and a cord of wood and you might singe the edges.
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Old 01-13-2011, 11:03 AM
 
Location: North of Canada, but not the Arctic
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I'd teach them how to make a mouse/rat trap, and save them from the Black Plague.
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Old 01-13-2011, 01:42 PM
 
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If anyone would listen I'd try to talk them out of the Crusades and start sending ships west to find new lands instead.
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Old 01-14-2011, 05:28 AM
 
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Originally Posted by Bideshi View Post
If anyone would listen I'd try to talk them out of the Crusades and start sending ships west to find new lands instead.
You'd be promptly burned at the stake for such radical and heretical viewpoints.
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Old 01-14-2011, 12:51 PM
 
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It's tough one, isn't it?

Math, perhaps. How many people could do long division, multiply large numbers, that kind of thing? Sure, the peasants wouldn't need it, but perhaps the local lord or king?

Or - and this is a long shot, because the needed resources would be more than most would let an obvious madman have - distillation. A basic still can be made with relative ease. Teach a local power figure how to make booze in return for his protection. Then, use knowledge of germ theory and alcohol's disinfecting properties, and all of a sudden, your protector's army will start surviving wounds that would've otherwise killed them.

But getting somebody powerful to protect you would be the first step...
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Old 01-15-2011, 10:57 AM
 
Location: On the "Left Coast", somewhere in "the Land of Fruits & Nuts"
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Although the chinese already had both for awhile, gunpowder and cannons didn't show up in Europe 'til around the 12th or 13th centuries. So introducing those a century earlier would be huge, and not difficult to do. It would certainly get the attention, support (and protection) of anyone in power, then allowing the introduction of "other" advancements.

In fact, just knowing ahead of time who was going to be on the future "winning side" of any conflict, would be pretty useful too. BTW, there's a view among some historians and sociologists that it wasn't always the wars and battles that had the biggest impact on history. Instead it was oftentimes the introduction of relatively harmless things, like for example coffee being brought back from the middle east by Venetian traders.

Coffee was first sold on the streets of Europe by street vendors, in the Arab fashion. In fact the Arabs were the forerunners of the sidewalk espresso carts of today. But many sociologists credit coffee with the rise of European trading, finances, manufacture and even the industrial age, in part because it brought people out into the streets where it improved communication and the lively exchange of ideas and partnerships, plus the "energizing" effect helped stimulate production!
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Old 01-15-2011, 11:32 AM
 
46,968 posts, read 26,011,859 times
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Originally Posted by mateo45 View Post
Although the chinese already had both for awhile, gunpowder and cannons didn't show up in Europe 'til around the 12th or 13th centuries. So introducing those a century earlier would be huge, and not difficult to do.
I think you may be underestimating the difficulty of getting sulphur and saltpetre, to say nothing of the metallurgy involved in making cannon. 11th century, that's the Norman invasion or thereabouts - end of the Viking Age. Iron was still expensive enough that shipwrights kept count of individual nails.

Unless you're a skilled blacksmith in the 21st century already, that's a tough call.

5th century would have been easy: Stirrups.
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