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?
Going back to the early fifteenth century to tell indigenous people worldwide to use fire arrows against every European ship they see and to organize regular patrols to keep an eye on the ocean at all times. You can also inoculate people against smallpox just by sticking dried smallpox sores into their bloodstream. (The Chinese, Turks, and Africans already know about this at the time.) These two cool techniques could save tens of millions of lives and destroy the historical nightmare the world has been experiencing for the last five centuries before it even begins. Major issues are: organizing people and learning their languages.
how would you convince them of that? killing all strangers isnt something many people are willing to do. or getting injected by a stranger to no perceived ill or positive effect
It wouldn’t be easy, but I know it could be done, since it was done.
i don't think any population has permanently dedicated itself to ultraviolence on outsiders. i assumed you'd be innoculating before the euro diseases show up, but if they're already there and killing people people would take it for sure
Edit I think they are actually joking (as it happened cause altered timeline?)
they had decades of hostile colonial contact from the british with which to learn a relatively harsh policy toward outsiders, but even so it is not one universally enforced. and that's a tiny group of people. i don't think you could replicate it even on another bigger island like haiti
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one key point is to tell them how the ships / settlements contain limited food, ammo, and other supplies, and that they can use siege tactics against them
And how the Europeans will use divide-and-conquer to take advantage of indigenous divisions and either annihilate or enslave them.
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And also teach the vikings how to not be huge fucking assholes. They called the Native Americans “skraelings,” which means “wretches.”
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I think that was mostly an Aztec thing. The indigenous people the Vikings met were nicer to their kids than most people are today and AFAIK they didn’t do slavery or human sacrifice.
There are remnants of slave labor camps by what pop culture would call Vikings.
I think they mean the Viking human sacrifice, which did happen.
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I remember a decent timeline on AH.com (sadly can't find it) where a viking colony in Vinland loses contact with Europe, intermingles with the locals, and becomes the bedrock of a distinct nation.