Assuming I could get some money together, I’d go to the past. Do I have to supply my own shipping container? I’ve never camped in my life, but in a week I could get my hands on a year’s supply of food and camping equipment and tools (including one of those long fire-starting lighters) and figure it out. Heck, you could sleep in the shipping container if you had to.
Now, then, where in the world to go? I want to stay away from violent humans and the larger predators, and I probably want to be some place warm. A Caribbean island? I don’t even know what civilization was like back then.
I really think the future would be more dangerous or harder to adapt to for a year’s time. It would be physically and mentally exhausting.
Assuming I survived a year in either location, I’d gladly hop to the future. In addition to, you know, getting to see THE FUTURE, if I were lucky enough to be able to understand anything I saw, I could bring that knowledge back and make a fortune.
10,000 B.C would be cool to see, but I have more questions about the future than I do about the past. And since transportation would be limited, I wouldn’t really be able to answer the questions about the past that I’m interested in. Like, let’s say I find a good spot out in east Africa, the happening place for humanity (at least in theory). Alright, this is cool for a while, but eventually I want to check out India and east Asia to see what the peeps are doing out there. But how am I gonna get there? An elephant? I just won’t get to survey the world the way I want to. My interest in history that old is more on a general global scale, not particular villages or tribes or cultures.
At least in the future, I’d find out some basic things fairly readily. If I’m still in the US, I’ll be able to find out how this culture has changed. Assuming that future North Americans have not regressed technologically, I’ll be able to see their fabulous inventions and discoveries. So just in a single day, tons of questions will be answered.
AD, no question. Quite apart from the fact that a year in 10,000 AD is probably going to be easier than a year in 10,000 BC, I’d also get more out of the former than the latter. Eight thousand years of scientific advancement is worth a hell of a lot more than social data twelve thousand years out of date.
If you manage to communicate with people in 10,000 BC, you might be able to convince them you’re a god, depending on what kind of knowledge and technology you have with you. That would be a lot more fun if the timeline maintenance program didn’t prevent your followers from having a lasting historical influence. :smack:
Very interesting, seems like we have a lot more optimists here than I initially thought, I was expecting a lot more “We’ll have rendered the planet uninhabitable by 10,000 A.D., take me back to when the world was prestine.”.
For my own part, going that far back is incredibly tempting but to see what humanity would become is more tempting.
As for taking things back - the box is a one way trip only. You’ll still have the ideas in your head though…providing you actually find someone to peacefully interact with.
Past. Either way I go, I’m not going to be able to speak or read any of the local languages. So that means no useful communication for at least 6 months. And even then, if the future, reading technical things and remembering them for when I come back is probably going to be beyond me.
My box contains a rifle and as many bullets as will fit. I figure that will help to get my point across.
10,000 AD. If it were BC, I’d be poleaxed almost immediately as some gibberishing devil incarnate, or at least sold into slavery. At least there’s be someone in AD who could speak English, even if it were only an ancient-languages prof. And it would be good to see which diseases have been cured. I’d be expecting a muchmore pleasant life in AD.
If it turned out we had a dead planet by 10,000 AD, then whoops.
Wow–I sure wouldn’t count on that. How many languages from 8000 years ago have any current speakers? I’m going to go with ‘none’. A better chance, I suppose, of some of today’s languages surviving at least academically that long–but which ones, and how much of a chance there is, I’d have to say there’s insufficient data to make a prediction … At the very least, it’s incredibly unlikely to find someone you can successfully verbally communicate with in English; at best, I’d hope to find a professor somewhere who can read it.
I think 10,000 BC is a safer bet. I’d research a place where the living conditions are relatively good, meaning no harsh winter and a decent source of fresh water and then I’d find the place like that which modern archaeology has found to be very sparsely populated. Potentially a larger island somewhere that man hadn’t reached yet and that would have some fresh water on it.
With water most people can successfully fish, and you’d ideally be packing a lot of survival food. You can survive for over a year on 1000 calories a day (average, meaning some days maybe you’d get 3,000 and some days 0), so I’m not worried about starvation.
Lots of freshwater, totally uninhabited in 10,000 BC, enough flora/fauna to survive relatively easily. No large carnivores or such lived there back then.
The worst that happens are typhoons, however in my readings about Guam I’ve always heard that up in the hills in the center of the island even non-block (I beleive most homes on Guam aside for a few higher up are made 100% of concrete blocks) homes have survived them. So I imagine if one happens to hit in 10,000 BC you can just walk into the hills and dig a survival shelter until it passes. The whole island certainly isn’t going to be submerged or anything like that.
Today’s languages – in fact, the entire world of today – will be much better understood 10,000 years from now than the world of 10,000 years ago is now. Assuming there will still be anyone around, that is. 10,000 years ago was in no way documented as thoroughly as today is. At the very least, I’m betting Conan the Barbarian is much less likely to be cleaving me in two with his broadsword 10,000 years from now no matter what language the language situation.
I’d pick Neolithic times and go straight to the world capital of prehistoric times, Les Eyzies in the south of France. It was a thriving community back then. Ayla, Jondalar and Zelandoni, here I come!