Guilds always shared knowledge, but within the profession (master to apprentice, and from one shop to another as people moved around); “guilds won’t share” was more a complaint from people trying to do a job for which they weren’t officially qualified than some sort of deep secrecy; often, people who refused to accept that it took more than possession of a hammer and chisel to call oneself a master mason. Even nowadays when a lot of information one would get during professional training is publicly available in books, videos etc. a lot of that material needs specific training before you can understand it, simply because of specific vocabulary. I expect that there would be more of a problem due to “everybody is busy looking for food and doesn’t have time for fancier training” than due to any obsession with secrecy.
I just checked back on them. They’re all gone. The only sign they were ever there is the word “croatoan” chiseled in a tree. Just as well, it is clear this wasn’t going to go as I expected. Croatoan, by the way, is a guy who invented a similar machine to mine. He’s done this before, I think.
Yes, there are skills that can be learned from multiple years of work. Especially something like working with iron/steel, where tiny differences in the way things are mixed, heated, tempered, etc make the difference between a useful tool and a brittle piece of garbage. It is like if you baked a cake for 20 minutes it would turn out perfect but if you baked it for 19:58 or 20:02 it would turn to poison.
In current CONUS the most ‘perfect’ climate for lounging lazily centers on San Diego. But if I were to drop 15k Carolingians (hopefully a few net-weavers and wood-hewers among them) where they might survive in an un-peopled CONUS, I’d likely choose a river mouth on the Ecotopian coast between Monterey Bay and the Columbia - potlatch country. A few grizzly b’ars would be the main pests.
Yes, they’d find food to survive, though they’d have to spread out a bit. No, they would not rebuild a European-type civilization anytime soon, like within centuries. As noted, trading networks and specialized skills and resources are needed.
Fierce competition also drives the process. Civilizations are complex machines lubricated with blood. ‘Civilized’ means “living in cities” and cities were build inside walls to protect against raiders. Let’s divvy those 15k Carolingians into 3 groups of 5k people each. Drop each ‘tribe’ at their own lush home port. Will they fight their way to civilization?
I think being in a dark age is to their advantage. People who have always been able to just buy bread at a corner shop will not fare as well. Having lived in hard times, even if these folks were guild members, they might still have foraged in the woods for food at some point in their lives.
We found a bunch of quartz arrowheads in the woods behind my Mother’s old house near Fredericksburg, VA. The local historian told us they were most likely not from the Patawomecks, but from Civil War soldiers hunting deer to swell their rations. Apparently they weren’t allowed to use ammunition for hunting any lesser animals.
My point being, that people find a way with what is at hand. We are very resourceful omnivores. The first hide you scrape out will be stiff and uncomfortable, but it’ll keep you warm while you sleep. The first time you butcher a deer, you might not think to keep the horns and bones for tool-making, or the guts for sewing. But it just doesn’t take us that long to get there. With fish to supplement missing game in the Winter and even small amounts of grain to round out the diet, they’ll be fine. They don’t have to bake bread every day for those grains to be useful. A handful of wheat berries thrown into a stew pot is a valuable addition.
Speaking of, are there any natural beans growing in the US at this time? Or did they all get carried up from Central America? I know they had rye up North, is there any in the SC area? I think I read once that cattails have complex carbohydrates, and they’ll surely have tons of those around. . .
Legumes are super-widespread, but like teosinte/corn don’t expect a lot of good eatin’ on them. I’d have to be pretty hungry to try to make a meal out of Beggar’s Lice, for example. (Plenty of that in SC.)
They would have to use trial and error on much of the food. Sure, strawberries are the same on both continents, but things they are familiar with- wheat, oats, apples, cabbages, etc. - are unknown in the New World. I suppose nuts would be an obvious choice but berries would be a huge risk.
On the other hand they would probably - as long as they weren’t dumped into the Llano Estacado - love all the timber.
Actually, humans don’t really look, act or smell like any kind of predator they have encountered before. We don’t really trigger a predator response in animals that don’t know us.
Thats good and bad of course. Things like lions are very adaptable hunters, and there is no reason to suppose cave lions were not, just because they were bigger. If we registered as predators, they’d be more leery of us. Even large predators don’t really want to risk damage. But there will be a lot of megafauna that might make a meal of us, and have no particular instinctive restraints.
Also, look at the issues with agriculture and elephants. Mastondons and mammoths might be even worse.
Plus depending on where they’re dumped grain might not do well. Wheat smut or the like. And that’s ignoring whether the soil is good for crops. Depending on where they’re dumped they might be able to domesticate turkeys.
They won’t have to worry about other humans, but of course they won’t know that. So I imagine they’ll keep a military force.