What are the skills and knowledge you could actually bring & fully realize at some point in the past?

And we're taking this in the strictest, nerdiest, materialist lense. I don't care how smart you are you ain't making a steam engine the in bronze age, for instance.

So what could you create, with just your knowledge & period tools? What kind of institutional, technological, philosophical innovations could you realistically recreate? How would you interface with the social fabric of society to not be some crazed pariah who never positively influences the place they went?

    • moujikman
      ·
      2 years ago

      I could become a ship captain- armed with my knowledge that Vitamin C prevents scurvy, I could build a sextant and navigate the globe, striving to put right what once went wrong.

      • boboblaw [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Yeah but where do you get the vitamin C? Isn't half the problem that it breaks down easily, and fruit can't be kept fresh for very long?

        It's questionable whether this knowledge will spread or persist that well. The British navy figured out how to prevent scurvy and then forgot again.

        • moujikman
          ·
          2 years ago

          I wouldn't tell anyone out of fear of accelerating imperialism or the slave trade. But I hear sauerkraut was the historic solution. It keeps and its full of vitamin c.