You would still have the same age, gender, personality, skin color, etc. and you would be able to speak at least one local language and would know basic information of the era and place. Your family, social standing, and such would be randomly picked.
bstix ( @bstix@feddit.dk ) English31•7 months agoNew Zealand 800 years ago. The rest of the question doesn’t matter because there were no other humans there.
Deceptichum ( @Deceptichum@kbin.social ) 30•7 months agoI pick NZ, 801 years ago
livus ( @livus@kbin.social ) 7•7 months agoAre you and @bstix forgetting that there were giant eagles that probably ate humans?
Nepenthe ( @Nepenthe@kbin.social ) 12•7 months agoIn that case, I also choose NZ 802 years ago.
prowess2956 ( @prowess2956@kbin.social ) 5•7 months agoThere are now no humans there 799 years ago.
Pietson ( @Pietson@kbin.social ) 4•7 months agoAnd people ask why Gandalf didn’t call em up to fly to mount doom.
Deceptichum ( @Deceptichum@kbin.social ) 4•7 months agoOh you mean the ones that went extinct not longer after meeting us?
livus ( @livus@kbin.social ) 3•7 months ago@Deceptichum pretty sure that was because humans ate the eagles’ main food source, the giant moa, to extinction.
I don’t think you
twothree citizens of the fediverse are going to single-handedly defeat them.Edit: forgot @Nepenthe is now arriving before you.
BlueÆther ( @BlueEther@no.lastname.nz ) 2•7 months agoAs I’m from NZ atm I would choose here about 800 years ago as well - 800 years ago is about when the first Maori arrived - give or take a few
FoundTheVegan ( @FoundTheVegan@kbin.social ) 28•7 months agoDec 31st 1949.
I’m a queer woman, so these sort of time travel questions boil down to preserving as many rights as I can.
zero_gravitas ( @zero_gravitas@aussie.zone ) English7•7 months agoWhere, the U.S.? Seems like there’s gotta be other times and places that were more woman- and queer-friendly, right?
Seraph ( @Seraph@kbin.social ) 5•7 months agoYou’d think places like San Francisco would be better, but 20 years later the Stone Wall riots happened. It was pretty rough all around to be gay in that time, though I’m sure some places were worse than others.
What is the significance of that date?
EmptyMusic ( @EmptyMusic@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 10•7 months agoIts as close as possible to now before the 50s
Fair enough, though at that point you’d probably get better results if you went further back. The 50s were…really bad.
EmptyMusic ( @EmptyMusic@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 2•7 months agoTo be entirely fair I’d probably just ⚡ 🧑🏿🦱 ⚡ myself either way. Not willing to try and survive without my meds.
Pringles ( @Pringles@lemm.ee ) 1•7 months agoI think you would’ve been fine in the Roman empire during the Pax Romana.
Rome would kinda suck for a woman, especially a queer one.
Herbstzeitlose ( @Herbstzeitlose@feddit.de ) 27•7 months agoJust kill me
guyrocket ( @guyrocket@kbin.social ) 15•7 months agoGiven that there were 2 world wars in the early 1900s and that I like tech in general I would also choose 12/31/1949. At least I might have a PC sometime in my lifetime and I’d probably live to use it and not be a corpse on some beach somewhere.
vlad ( @vlad76@lemmy.sdf.org ) 9•7 months agoJust pick Switzerland.
ArcaneSlime ( @ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 1•7 months agoHave fun in 'Nam!
guyrocket ( @guyrocket@kbin.social ) 3•7 months agoYeah, I was thinking after I posted this what other wars I might get drafted into.
IninewCrow ( @ininewcrow@lemmy.ca ) English11•7 months agoThe location, geography and placement is randomly picked?
Then like the other guy said December 31, 1949 11:59 pm
To be born before this time randomly anywhere in the world means that there is a high chance you’d be dropped into an impoverished hell hole with nothing, no chance and no help … God help you if you are female.
navigatron ( @navigatron@beehaw.org ) 7•7 months agoI have a whole rant on this topic, but the short version:
It’s dentists.
The gnarliest mountain man, who hunts bears with his bear hands, can be brought to his knees with a toothache. The toothache never sleeps, can’t be fought, and always eventually wins. Even basic dentistry is life saving - even another human with a pair of pliers and some moonshine - but I’d much rather have novocaine.
IninewCrow ( @ininewcrow@lemmy.ca ) English3•7 months agoDental problems a hundred years ago were not as problematic as we think. I’m Indigenous Canadian and my parents were born and raised in the bush and judging from family photos I’ve seen from a hundred years ago … most people had decent teeth. I have photos of my grandmothers parents who must have been in the 60s or 70s and they all had full teeth, probably not the best but they had obvious white teeth.
Cavities and tooth problems are a modern problem from wealth … we eat too much starch and sugar and generally just eat way too much of everything. Before the modern era, up to about the mid 1800s, the average person ate about five pounds of refined sugar a year - today the average person consumes about 100 lbs of sugar a year. … and those are the averages! Back a hundred years ago, you were wealthy if you could get sugar … most people just couldn’t afford to eat it … most people couldn’t afford to eat! And they ate more simple diets and less often.
The biggest fear I have about going back to the past is just getting a flesh wound, a hang nail or a scratch that could fester into an infection and either take a limb or kill me.
sethboy66 ( @sethboy66@kbin.social ) 6•7 months agoDental problems aren’t about them looking good; teeth used to kill. Dental disease used to be the 5th leading cause of death. Your great-grandparents aren’t the best bar for dentistry in the past as modern dentistry began in the 18th century.
You can pick the place too.
SnokenKeekaGuard ( @SnokenKeekaGuard@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 10•7 months ago1600 India. I’m royalty and get to meet my ancestor and favorite historical figure Akbar. And yes the mughal empire is my roman empire
edric ( @scytale@lemm.ee ) 6•7 months agoSocial standing is random though based on OP’s rules. It would be terrible to end up as part of the lowest caste.
roguetrick ( @roguetrick@kbin.social ) 1•7 months agoI think the only caste Mughals did was your clan.
Quik ( @Quik@infosec.pub ) 10•7 months ago1940, as there are crazy things that will be going on in the world of computer science (and science in general) over the course of the next few decades and that would be really cool to experience. Kind of sad though to not be alive once we achieve human-level artificial intelligence, would be interested in seeing how that will turn out. I would probably chose America, as I wouldn’t want to spend WW2 in Germany where I live in the present.
Alternatively I think I would very much enjoy visiting Ancient Greek, although I’m not too sure when would be the best time for that; maybe at the peak of Athen.
Icalasari ( @Icalasari@kbin.social ) 9•7 months agoAbout 4 to 6 million years ago. Choosing biological history of humans, see what I can mess up when humans first started
TheaoneAndOnly27 ( @TheaoneAndOnly27@kbin.social ) 9•7 months agoThe surgery that kept me alive at birth wasn’t invented until the late '80s. So I guess I would just be fucked no matter what. So put me wherever they want, any time before 1950 is going to suck ass for me.
Now assuming that part of my time travel comes with being able to fix my heart stuff. I would like to be born in the early 1900s. I can’t think of a single time where I’m not going to fight both war and awfulness in the general world. But at least then I could be around for some cool developments.
DeltaTangoLima ( @DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.com ) English2•7 months agoYou’ll be right - OP said your age and a bunch of other things would be preserved. You won’t be born there - just transported to the chosen time, to spend the rest of your days.
MudMan ( @MudMan@kbin.social ) 9•7 months agoI mean, tune it just right and you can get the Industrial Revolution started a couple millenia early and maybe bypass the whole colonialism nonsense. Middle ages is too late, too much theocracy. Common knowledge gets you in grecorroman spaces, but maybe you can overshoot a touch and get some nice Phoenician traders to bankroll your plan to mass produce bycicles or Ikea-style furniture and ship it all over the Mediterranean.
Just… hope you stay healthy or that the rules let you pack a bunch of antibiotics. Or maybe learn a bunch of modern medicine before you go. Maybe prioritize the whole “discovering penicillin” thing when you get there.
livus ( @livus@kbin.social ) 8•7 months agoProblem with that plan is you don’t know if you will be a slave.
MudMan ( @MudMan@kbin.social ) 3•7 months agoNot necessarily insurmountable, but still a good point.
You may still have an easier time getting things up and running as a slave in antiquity than as a serf in the Middle Ages, depending on where you end up. Pretty sure you’d have a better shot as a slave in antiquity than in the US or other colonial areas, both because colonialism reeeeally sucked and because you’d have relatively more valuable skills.
livus ( @livus@kbin.social ) 3•7 months ago@MudMan I think the odds are much better if you’re a non-chattel kind of slave, for sure.
MudMan ( @MudMan@kbin.social ) 2•7 months agoDon’t get me wrong, you could also just materialize chained up to the bottom of a mine or in the middle of a war campaign lasting 40% of your lifespan and die in a week.
It’s just since the premise doesn’t say you get to refuse at least this way you’d have a good chance at just absolutely smashing it and maybe bypassing some of the real nasty stuff on the way to technological advancement.
livus ( @livus@kbin.social ) 2•7 months ago@MudMan totally. Nowhere’s completely safe. This kind of thought experiment is always going to be a numbers game.
rwhitisissle ( @rwhitisissle@lemmy.ml ) 8•7 months ago1870s in the Southeastern United States. I’m gonna make goddamn sure Reconstruction doesn’t just end and Jim Crow functionally re-invents slavery.
Grayox ( @Grayox@lemmy.ml ) 1•7 months agoo7
rothaine ( @rothaine@beehaw.org ) English7•7 months agoMaybe ancient Athens? Just sit around eating grapes and talking about triangles and shit. And even if I get rng’d into slavery, I could draw the Pythagorean theorem in the dirt, and a passing scholar would be like “holy shit, come with me dude”
DozensOfDonner ( @DozensOfDonner@mander.xyz ) 5•7 months ago'49?
fiat_lux ( @fiat_lux@kbin.social ) 4•7 months agoI’d die pretty quickly without modern medicine, so I might choose the era with the easiest access to strong opiates to make the process less painful.
mke_geek ( @mke_geek@lemm.ee ) 4•7 months agoBack in time if you’re gay? Or trans? Or a woman? Or a person of color?
No thanks.
pruneaue ( @pruneaue@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 6•7 months agoIf you go further back in time you can get back to fairly queer friendly societies
magnetosphere ( @magnetosphere@kbin.social ) 5•7 months agoGay? Ancient Greece. Person of color? Just pick someplace that won’t have significant contact with different races during your lifetime.
Greg Clarke ( @Greg@lemmy.ca ) English4•7 months agoThe way your society currently discriminates and segments humans is not universal
MudMan ( @MudMan@kbin.social ) 4•7 months agoRight?
We’re going on a tangent here, but I feel like Western progressives, particularly with anglo backgrounds, tend to think the entire world runs by their parameters and always has. There is nothing intrinsic to the current kinds of bigotry in their societies. It’s pretty arbitrary and specific, in fact.
livus ( @livus@kbin.social ) 3•7 months ago@MudMan yeah this. Threads like this make me really wish more non-western ancient history was taught in schools.
magnetosphere ( @magnetosphere@kbin.social ) 2•7 months agoAs an American, I wholeheartedly agree. I often wish I had a sturdier foundation in world history.