A bag of GOLD will certainly allow you to live a wealthy lifestyle in both 50BC Egypt and in 1787 Prague, you can buy all the food and beverages you want in either place and you will be able to stay in the finest inns.
As far as the American midwest in 1200AD, as a stranger in indian land, you probably will not live long enough to need any money.
As a foreigner, not speaking the language, and not familiar with the customs, I would imagine that you’d lose your gold very quickly in any of these places. A month, tops, before you’re robbed and/or murdered.
Imagine, if you will: you arrive in rural Nigeria tomorrow, speaking only (say) Dutch, and carrying a kilo of gold. Anyone care to take odds on your still having that gold in a week?
Well, I am sure you would bury/hide most of it the main stash, and only carry a few pounds of it with you at a time. Paid bodyguards should protect you from most of the riff raff criminals, and also, with a bag of gold, you wont be staying in the bad parts of town.
I wouldnt worry about not speaking the language in either Egypt nor Prague, they both had a lot of travelers/traders constantly passing thru.
But yeah, not speaking the language nor being familiar with indian customs, you will be dead in less than a week after landing in 1200AD Ohio/Minnesota.
For Egypt: Needles
America: Knives (and a gun for personal protection)
Prague: Ballpoint pens
There’s something wring with this post.
GOLD
There, fixed it for you.
You neither speak the language, nor know the customs, right? How do you find these bodyguards, and how can you determine that they aren’t just local thugs who’ll beat you until you give up your gold, and perhaps even to death that they might avoid the rope? Gold isn’t magical. It doesn’t overcome the fact that you are a complete idiot in your new cultural context.
None of the three relevant societies had police or the rule of law according to anything like modern standards. I ask again: You arrive in rural Nigeria tomorrow, speaking only (say) Dutch, and carrying a kilo of gold. Anyone care to take odds on your still having that gold in a week?
Well given your itinerary prolly the most valuable thing you can take is an immunity to smallpox so get vaccinated or get a booster. Though you may want to get some scaring simulated, lest attract attention. Further with your modern diet you’re probably the height of royalty back then. You may want to get vaccinated for a other nasties too.
Plus given your knowledge of germ theory you could prolly make a decent wage as a wound healer, you don’t need to tell them why you’re successful. No one could steal your knowledge, and you’d be able to get a good enough wage to live pretty comfortably.
Knowledge is your best bet… You today can be the king of yesterday. Forget even trying to fit in knowing their language and what not, it’s over-rated anyway. Grunting with whos and has would get the point across. You shouldn’t have any problem understanding people as long as you understand body language and their tones perhaps. Focus on finding your tribe (friends) as soon as you arrive. You could pretty much choose who you roll with as it shouldn’t be to hard to relate with groups of the past.
If your playing dumb just to fit in and avoid interrupting the present, you probably won’t be able to fake it very long. You would soon realize the power and no human turns down power OR others will recognize your advancements and who knows where that leads to.
This could make a good story for a rpg game somehow or maybe a movie. SO yeah, take a loaf of bread and some hamburger seasoning, ketchup and a BBQ grill. Make your own old currency money. And remember, WHOOOOO HAAAAAAAaaaaa
You are off topic. If you want to start a new topic, then start a new one. This topic is not about cultural differences, languages, laws, crime, etc.
This topic is about what can be used as money in nearly any society in any time period, and GOLD is the only!!! thing that can be used in so many different time periods and in so many societies in the history of the world.
Unique in the history of mankind,** GOLD** as money, as something that is considered valuable, is…has been…and will always be… universal.
Not even Glenn Beck believes this
The OP didn’t want to change history, so anything beyond small bets is out. (Small bets, placed apart, both to avoid mention in history and the attention of the gentlemen running the betting).
If the OP doesn’t want to upset history, he should also avoid becoming too rich, because that attracts not only attention, but gives a lot of power that could skew things.
But printing a text onto modern paper using a printer, binding it in the next copy-shop would mess up history once it’s found. (Unless you did a lot of research to make sure that the monastery/ library this book ends up in is burned, but your book not part of the loot or stolen before).
And printing a book on real cloth-paper and having it bound by hand the old-fashioned way today is not cheap.
Like the railroad bond or a bunch of gold or huge amethysts, this would mess up local economy, and thus, history.
A horse needs feeding and caring for. A modern breed is far too big for ancient times (like Egypt), and not everybody can afford one (one of the reasons money was invented was to make change for small purchases). You could also get into trouble if possession of a horse implies a certain station in society, but the rest of your outfit and manners don’t fit that station - you’d be assumed to have stolen that horse.
While it’s true that ancient Empires like Rome or Egypt were cosmpolitan, there is one problem: you aren’t looking for a translator from Ancient Egyptian to Old English, because you don’t understand that, you need a translator to Modern English, and you won’t be able to find that.
The best bet is to find a translator to Latin, which is unchanged, and learn that, or take a student of latin from today with you, so it goes Egyptian -> latin (local) Latin-> modern English (student).
Huge mess of history - silk as rare export stuff had huge influence on trade politics. Breaking that monopoly early is rewriting history.
I doubt that in most of history, people paid any attention to fossils (people took apart the Colosseum to build houses, that’s how little they regarded their own history). Only if you hit the time of the fossil race in the 19th century and know some collectors.
**Egypt **- I’ll grant some small quantities of gold for this location - but not as a cash substitute. What you want to do is create gold works of art - jewelery, plaques, gold braid, gold wire for hair/clothing, gold cloth (yes you can do this), gold leaf for gilding things. Bonus points for getting things created ahead of time that are exceptionally finely worked and detailed. Double bonus points if it is an appropriate cultural reference to relevant deities or political figures of the time. A well-managed “gift” to the priesthood or to the local governing agent can go a long way towards keeping you relatively safe and protected while you visit.
Healing is a bad idea here - it’s the province of the priesthood and linked to their deities. If you go in and steal their thunder, you’re not going to last.
**America **- large hand-sewing needles (especially curved ones) and wire. You’d be very well liked. Make sure you create a cache to keep most of your stash, and don’t get followed when you return to it. Be very clear that you only have on your person the little you’ve sold or bartered.
If you don’t mind fucking up history, bring lots of kitchen matches. If you really want to screw things over but be very rich, find out from geologic surveys where those minerals are found and show them how to use them to create matches for themselves. Not having to cart around banked coals for firestarting would be an immensely valuable thing to them.
Don’t go for the healing here either, for much the same reason as Egypt.
**Prague **- Here is where gold as “cash” will come in handy, however, you still don’t need much. Before you leave, go hit up a large library and research merchants and guilds and make lots of small but targeted investments in the sucessful ones.
Other useful small things - medical needles are extremely hard to make and very useful - you could set yourself up as a medical supply dealer with just various bore needles.
On that note, you could try your hand at healing here, but be VERY careful about what you do, and who you deal with - you don’t want to fail with a notable patient (you’ll be accused of killing them on purpose) and you don’t want to be too successful overall (you’ll be accused of witchcraft). If you can balance your number of poor people killed and not take important patients, you should be ok.
No changing history, remember? And making the local population angry without backup is not a smart plan.
I think that would mess up history badly, esp. given the longetivity of plastic.
You might do ok just taking a bunch of filigree costume jewelry. It wouldn’t have the precious metals, but I think the intricacies of design that are possible today would be beyond any but the most accomplished silver smith.
It’s a horse. You sit on it and it gets you away from trouble.
Besides, strange manners and weird clothes wouldn’t identify you as a bandit, but as a foreign merchant. Especially if you’re riding a variety of horse no local has ever seen before.