I’m not convinced that introducing new technology is going to work out well. I mean, almost every society today has access to bullets, but there are plenty that still fight with pointy sticks. There are some specifics conditions that led to the adoption of most technology.
Probably your best bet would be to introduce something that was adopted a short time later, but be the first and find a way to profit from it.
As for me, I’d get married quick quick. I don’t know how to farm, so I probably wouldn’t last too long without being attached to someone who knows what they are doing. I’d be a clumsy homemaker at first, but hopefully I’d have enough novelty that it wouldn’t matter too much.
After you make a red and green Christmas sweater that reads “King Cnut” on it, you’ll be home free. Incidentally, though, is knitting really more efficient that whatever these people were doing with wool in 1008? Would wool be extremely expensive or cheaper than animal hides (asking anyone, not just wunderkammer)?
I came in here to say something to the effect that the Norman Invasion of England would likely be resisted by local troops armed with flintlock muskets if I ever found myself in England 1000 years ago.
Making gunpowder isn’t that hard, assuming you manage to find sulphur, saltpetre, and charcoal, and can mix it without blowing yourself up (hint: wooden shoes and mix it in a wooden bowl will really help. Static electricity is not your friend.)
Actually making a functioning gun that won’t explode on the user as they fire it will be the challenge; finding something that can be used as a barrel, getting projectiles made, carving a stock, and manufacturing the lock would be the tricky part. Actually trying to train the locals to use such a device would be an epic quest in itself.
FWIW, H. Beam Piper’s Gunpowder God (AKA Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen) is one of the definitive “Someone with a knowledge of modern firearms technology ends up several centuries in the past” stories, and is quite readable. Unfortunately, it’s the only one of Piper’s works not on Project Gutenberg, as far as I can tell, so you’ll have to track a copy down on your own…
So how do you guys reckon someone from South India would fare in ye olde England? I honestly have no idea how they would have reacted.
I guess ports would have some interaction with North Africa, which suggests some racial diversity.
And I’m a mono-lingual pol-sci student. I’d probably make a decent scare crow or something, what the hell did landless uneducated people do back then anyway? I’m fit and healthy enough to plough some fields I guess…
I can’t locate the article online, but a Nat Geo article on the vikings suggested that the average height and weight for a norseman of the time was about 5’7/ 155-165 lbs. They were considered to be rather tall, burly guys. It follows that the rest of them weren’t midgets, but the peasant men probably ranged from 4’11-5’6, with similar weight. What you probably would see is that the sexual dimorphism between men and women in the peasant class would not be as pronounced as you see today. The sexes would be closer together in height and weight. We know that there were men in the six foot range and above around, so the distribution is probably heavily weighted to the short end, with the usual height range for a contemporary man present but extremely under represented. Remember, considered globally, six foot plus men are still tall despite Americans skeweing towards the large side.
Even sven has a good grasp on this, I feel (as an archaeologist / ancient crafts specialist), no doubt due to his experiences in Cameroon.
Making printing presses, firearms, superior tools etc. in a 1000 AD North European society would be highly unlikely. The realities of living a subsistence lifestyle are such that time and energy is spent on keeping fed, hydrated, and warm. Making new stuff, instead of plodding on with what’s already available would be a fantasy, especially to a time-machine victim in a huge culture shock / constant physical and mental discomfort. Also, knowing how something works or is put together is a faaaar cry from being able to construct that from scratch, even in modern surroundings. How about in a crowded, smoky, dimly-lit log cottage with app. 15 square meters of dirt floor space?
Craft specialists are set in their ways. You’d have a hard time getting the local smiths or carpenters do oddball, exacting projects for you amidst their real work of producing knives, sickles and plow blades. An epic quest, as Martini Enfield put it. Also, the modern-day recreator would fare poorly in any contemporary craft, compared to professional tanners, weavers, basketmakers, blacksmiths etc. of the day. I have tanned app. 50 deer-, goat- and mooseskins. I have built app. 200 wooden bows. I have weaved willow baskets. I have cast bronze in period (clay & horseshit) moulds. I wouldn’t be able to make a living at any of these industries in 1000 AD (maybe as a bowyer, once gotten familiar with local raw materials and tools).
Entertainment would be the best bet, IMO, and not a very good one, at that.
I think building firearms would be way beyond my abilities. I’d stick to petards and maybe work my way up to siege cannons or rockets. I understand the concept of how a matchlock works, but I’d be scared silly that I’d kill myself trying to get a working model. But show the local bigshot what a petard can do when placed at the gates of an enemy castle and he’s going to be impressed.
Toxylon, I disagree. While Blacksmithing is tough it would be far easier to get up and running as a carpenter. It appears many basic simple mostly wooden items could be constructed that would show immediate benefits to other carpenters and once you get a reputation as an innovator you may well get a patron for more ambitious works like a printer press. The Schnitzelbank I mentioned is very easy to make and yet is an invaluable tool for carving. I have seen wooden band saws and drills and I know I could make the pedal saw with little effort and the drill press with only a little more. Neither of these are great inventions but beat hand drilling and sawing by quite a bit. Same thing with the spinning wheel. All basic wooden machines that would help quite a bit.
BTW: I have used a home made Schnitzelbank to make oars by hand and a new sprit for a sprit rig sail boat. I have also made chain mail before but I doubt I could make a living or even break into the trade with my meager skills. As I don’t have a clue how to draw wire, I doubt I could make any improvements in these areas. So carpentry is the way for me.
I know a brief smattering of Latin, so I’d probably try and feign being some sort of lost foreign clergyman. My guess is most of the peasantry would understand what Latin sounded like, if not the meaning, since (correct me if I’m wrong) all Catholic sermons would have been in Latin.
After that I’d try and get housed in a monastery (which would be relatively clean…or cleaner than staying in a peasant hovel) and get my bearings. I pick up languages fairly quick, so after I have a working knowledge of Old English I’d try and become a doctor, even a passing knowledge of modern medicine and common hygiene practices would likely make me more useful than the best physicians of the day (who, even hundreds of years later were banging on about ‘bad air’ and bloodletting and suchlike).
And hence (depending on exactly where in Spain that is) was also not in “Christian Europe.” Paper as we know started to be imported into Europe from Islamic areas in larger amounts only in 1380s or so, and production in Europe was on a small scale for some time-- the press and the increase in paper production were very much related. But paper was initially about as exorbitant as parchment was.
Also, they were hand-printing in Europe for about 60-80 years before the press, for about 30 with text as “blockbooks”.
I’d like to say I’d pitch myself as a brewer or illuminator or something, but as a woman I’d have few avenues, except at abbeys. Would probably head to a monastery, try to improve my Latin. . . yeah, actually. Those scribes didn’t have great spelling so I could give it a shot. Some sort of abbey job would suit me fine. I know enough liturgical Latin that I’d come across as a holy-prodigy-idiot. Could always start speaking ‘in tongues’ fluently with little bits of Latin tossed in.
Did they have distillation in 1008? I could invent brandewijn, which would make me a hot commodity, I suspect. A ceramic still couldn’t be too hard to put together.
Oh, and why are we all assuming that we get dumped off in the middle of Europe? God, wouldn’t Chang-an in 1008 be a hoot? Or Cordoba in the Caliphate?
I simply don’t believe it could be done. Getting the gunpowder’s going to be harder than you think, and manufacturing the guns ten times harder than that. The metallurgical skills involved are certainly beyond most people now, much less with the tools of 1008 AD, and again, you’re going to be very occupied staying alive. Nobody’s going to want you spending all your time frittering away with dungpiles and looking for sulphur (and where do you find sulphur in the English countryside?) They’re gonna want you to learn to use a plough.
Even if through some tremendous degree of hard work and luck you got one working, so what? You need hundreds for it to be of any use, and the history of the introduction of gunpowder to warfare suggests the nobility will not like your little invention.
And why would you WANT to resist the Norman invasion? For one thing, you’ll be dead by the time it happens - it’s 58 years after you step out into the English countryside - and for another, it brought a lot of good things to England.
Knitting had to compete primarily with weaving (heavy, not portable) and naalbinding (an immense pain in the ass).
Weaving is obviously still around, as neither knitting nor naalbinding is very efficient at producing broad lengths of cloth.
There is a niche, though, for elastic, form-fitting, shaped garments that can be made while walking or watching sheep or huddling up by the fire, and which can be manufactured as a cottage industry with very little overhead (like big, expensive looms). Turns out knitting is simply faster than naalbinding at this, otherwise Madame Defarge and Mrs. Weasley would have ended up as famous fictional naalbinders and knitting would be an obscure craft practiced mainly in the SCA.
The first guns (handgonnes) were basically iron pipes sealed off at one end with a touchhole, and mounted on a wooden pole. Well within the technological capabilities of people in 1008 AD
Fortunately I’d be very busy working on crossbows as well, which are easier to make, and just as effective at short range. And Sulphur can be obtained from Bath; which is the site of a Roman era thermal bath. Lots of sulphur there (I’ve been there).
I’m not silly; I’d be seeking patronage from the King or the local Baron before I made too many of them.
I personally wouldn’t want to resist the Norman Invasion. The point I was making is that I’d have taught the inhabitants how to make firearms and 58 years later, when the Normans arrive, the locals would be fighting them with guns as well as swords and spears.
The problem with this idea is that those early firearms were as likely to kill the poor sucker holding it as the person he was aiming at. I dread to think what the metallurgy of 1008 would do for your chances of crafting a survivable firearm.
Although it is amusing to imagine the nobles reaction to a demonstration.
“So, it’s some kind of suicide stick?”
at 6’3" and 225# I imagine I would definitely stand out. I know a little about a lot of stuff but as has laready been pointed out anyone already doing this would be much much better at it. I can make soap and while I havent made it from ashes I have studied the technique and could probably work it out pretty easily. I can cook, carpentry, some metal working, and not a whole hell of a lot else I can think of that would be handy back then. I do have a back ground in teaching so i might find some use there if I could come up with something worth teaching them.
I have it, I will introduce Pot in Pot!!! that and maybe some building techniques.
The first models would be mounted on wheels (like a 19th Century cannon) and fired with a very, very long taperstick, most likely by the village Baldrick.
Let’s see, I can’t speak Latin, I don’t know squat about farming, I can cook but I’m sure it would be very different since things wouldn’t come in nice easy packages. I can’t sing or play any musical instruments. People of 1000 years ago wouldn’t be interested in computer programming…
Um, honestly, I’d just take off all my clothes and start talking (in modern english) to anyone that walked past. Everyone would figure I was a village idiot, especially since I knew some words but not enough to carry on a conversation. What I’d probably do is work as a beggar or something for a while until I picked up enough of the language to carry on a conversation. Assuming I got that far (which I probably wouldn’t), I’d immediately move to another city (to get rid of my village idiot status) and try to figure out how to do something creative for money. I might be able to do some carpentry or blacksmithing if I could get someone to apprentice me, or maybe do some cooking. I can learn and adapt pretty fast, so once I got past the original difficulties, I’m sure I could survive.
However, the original question wasn’t “Could you survive 1000 years ago?” It was “What could I teach people 1000 years ago?” Erm, probably not much. Most of my knowledge is pretty rooted in this century. Trying to convince someone you were from the future would be pretty useless.
However, if I had, say, a year to prepare that would be a different story. Make some clothing similar to what would be available at the time, learn some of the language for starters, then I could do some research on what kind of technologies were and weren’t available at the time. For example, say you’re going to land 50 years from a revolution in ship building or building construction design. You go back and come up with some amazing ideas I’d be wary of introducing anything from too far into the future unless I was confident I could work it in a 1k environment. Basically stealing ideas from 800 years ago and taking them back to 1000 years ago.
If Mrs. Bricker and I could make a joint trip back, we’d be sitting pretty. She could introduce crochet and amaze the nascent pre-knitting community, and I could do black powder explosions and clay pot stills to turn bad weak wine into potent passable brandy… in fact, I could create pure alcohol for a variety of disinfectant purposes as well as feeding a new addiction amongst the villagers.
