If I am in a literate town or city in the United States, Canada, or Mexico, after 1750 or so, well, there are going to be newspapers, and books, with dates. I would be an idiot not to use them in preference to my encyclopedic knowledge of men’s clothing fashions in the pretranstemporal period.
Now, out in the boonies, things change. If I ask some yokel for a look see at his flintlock, to determine if it has rifling, or a flash pan cover on a hinge, well, he might take that interest in some unintended manner. Let’s not even mention asking about the number of petticoats a lady might be wearing. If the Algonquin village has no horses, it’s sometime prior to 1650, more or less. (or they are poor Angonquins, who have eaten their horses.) Other than that, I couldn’t even begin to guess how long after fifteen thousand BC it might be.
Europe: If I am not in England, I am so screwed. If I am in England, how badly I can understand the better educated people I meet is a fairly good estimator. However, I can’t understand some of the less cosmopolitan accents of England in the twenty-first century, so this is a scale of limited accuracy. Dates on Papers, monuments, and such are a better clue, I can read roman numerals.
If I get out in the boonies here, I am toast. Unless someone mentions the king, by number, I am not likely to have even a clue. There are some very time specific events, but in my case, that mostly includes pleasantries like the black plague, the War of the Roses, or similar things which indicate beating feet (or clock ticks) the heck out of here anyway. Even a casual reference to Her Majesty is of limited use. Elizabeth ruled for a long time. Both of 'em, although I think I would be able to guess which one.
OK, now, assuming my universal translator is working, the rest of the world still remains a complete mystery to me, in all but a few celebrated locations and times. I should be able to tell the date in China by the relative level of completion or disrepair of the Great Wall, but I can’t. Not to within a century. Japan? Well, if someone decides not to cut my head off with one of those great big swords, it is sometime between 900, and 1800, give or take a hundred. A quick tricorder scan to reveal the metal content, and age of the sword might let me narrow that down a bit. It might make him change his mind about using that sucker though.
Most places in the world I can give you "some time before . . . " for a few general events, like British Colonial Expansion, or The Empire of Kublai Khan. The presence of the Romans is probably noticeable here and there, or Alexander. But if there isn’t a colonial presence in Africa, I could not begin to guess a date, unless I was actually in the court city of the Ashanti Empire, or some such place. If the Great Zimbabwe was currently occupied, I would not know the date.
However, if my tricorder can sight on planets, and the moon and stars, It should be able to read the date like a clock, leaving me with the task of deciding which 15,000 year long cycle of positions I am in. That close I can guess, most anywhere.
Tris
“The difference between a violin and a viola is that a viola burns longer.” ~ Victor Borge ~