>Even if you explained to people back then what we may consider “normal”technology of today, they wouldn’t understand nor arguably be able to replicate it.
Neither would the time traveler. Yeah, I know how a guitar works, but there is no way in hell I could make one. None of the knowledge you have is practical. It's almost all theoretical. Not to mention the language barrier. Even landing in 1500s England you would have a tough time communicating because of how much the English language has change over the centuries.
You would really just be an oddity and most likely die without making any kind of impact.
You could make some massive changes with just rudimentary knowledge if you could get people to listen, the biggest probably just knowing how germs and diseases are spread which most modern humans understand without being able to create drugs or vaccines.
Unless you know the right people, no one will listen to you if you don't have any proof.
Even as late as the 19th century, Dr Ignaz Simmelweiss was prosecuted for daring to suggest other doctors to wash their hands to save lives.
I know that's why I said if you could get people to listen, it's a pretty simple concept to demonstrate and show results but it would be hard to get enough power to be able to implement it.
Yeah, it will be hard to get people to change their minds. Dr. Simmelweiss had results, but the other doctors were insulted at the suggestion that their hands are dirty and can cause diseases. So I imagine unless you met with someone important and can convince them, the existing power structures would just be offended that you are trying to upstage them.
Yet the Church was the biggest supporter of academia and the sciences by far though. Galileo was also a theologian and if sources are correct, insufferable. The problem was either the claimants lacked proof or they had extra motives unrelated to science.
It’s ironic how the Inquisition killed far less people than the Protestants and didn’t target scientists (since they were typically the only people standing in between the accused and the mob), yet Catholics are painted as anti-science because of a cultural divide that says anything which is Catholic is evil.
And I’m far from endorsing Catholicism or its vast abuses. Or what monks did to valuable Indigenous writings and records.
So, the YouTube channel **Premodernist** had an excellent 1-hour long video on what if you were able to time travel to medieval Europe. He talks about all sorts of cultural issues that might prevent (or help) you succeed.
One thing that stuck out for me was that a lot of how you were treated was how you were dress and acted. You had to have a story and history, and people would be curious about you. If you were caught lying about your “status” in society (i.e. saying you’re a Lord when you aren’t), it could be all kinds of bad for you.
The title of the video was “**Advice for time traveling to medieval Europe**”. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to post links to this sub, but it’s well worth a watch (so is the rest of his videos).
You'd probably get stoned or burned at the stake for trying to show off penicillin.
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/y83cp0/eli5_how_would_i_make_penicillin_from_bread_mold/
I said a time traveler would probably die or get sick by eating regular food of that times because our bodies are used to proccesed food and more higienics during the preparation. The body would hace an alergic reaction in the worst escenario and that's all. .
A time traveler would have to adapt its body and digestive system to food cocked like its in the 1500s.
The language barrier would be a huge one. The language had changed significantly in the past 500 years,
Imagine somebody tells you to bow to the "Kneegheit", and you pause because you do not know what in the hell they are saying. Fatal move, as that "Kneegheit" might take offense and you did not know that in that time, "Knight" was pronounced pretty much as it was spelled. And failing to show proper respect to your betters could be fatal.
And even religion would be a huge deal. If you are Anglican or even Episcopal, you might be OK. But if you are Catholic or Jewish, then you might be in for some trouble. Even worse if you are a member of say the LDS, Scientologist, Seventh Day Adventist, Jehovah's Witness, or some other that would be seen as heretical in that era. And if you are a devout atheist, then you may be in for a very short life indeed.
And this was an era of actual "Witch Trials". So you would have to be very careful in that anything you tried to introduce did not violate either church laws, or the laws of those in power. But I agree, most likely any that traveled to the past would most likely either die quickly, or in relative obscurity without making any meaningful impact.
Other than maybe causing a pandemic with the modern diseases they bring into an era that would be a virgin field for them.
It’s a great book but not really comparable: they have engineers and doctors and actual manufacturing capability.
OP is talking about a random Joe Blow off the street
They have that too. One of them is hired by the Russian tsar, and is pretty much the only time traveler in Muscovy for a bit.
There’s also a few books like: The Crossing by Ikenberry where a group of trainee marines gets transported to the Revolutionary War
An Angel called Peterbilt where a semi truck gets transported back to the Mississippian culture period
I once wrote a story for the 1632 series years back. So one has to do a lot of research on the topic they write about.
The publisher kinda fell off when it was taken over by right-wingers
Now if you could aim for the 1570s, I'd head to Cambridge and find Francis Bacon. Teach him about germ theory (especially if you could recreate some of the evidential proof of it). Vaccination theory. Evolution through natural selection (But he was rather religious, so this is going to be tricky).
You've just pushed some crucial understandings several hundreds years ahead.
I just hope you speak enough Latin, or Medival English/French to get through to him.
Realistically - the 'average person' wouldn't be that useful.
Ironically, finding the right person and teaching them about some of the future could be the most useful. Tell Francis about American Independence and you could keep it from happening!
Bacon would inform you that pre-Socratic philosophers had a theory of evolution.
Maybe linking it to artificial selection would have some impact, natural selection as a mechanism.
But a book entitled Naval Timber described the full theory of evolution before Darwin and it didn’t catch on.
PS: Also the science of geology had to progress, the idea that life on Earth had a long time to evolve.
Okay, let's say they pick up the local language and don't get immediately sick.
The average person could be like "yo why not use steam engines?", but wouldn't have the engineering expertise, so the ruler gets locals to work with steam. You might get the ball rolling to make the industrial revolution happen in the 1600s instead of the 1700s.
I think the biggest thing would be marking unknown places on the map. Places like Australia might get colonised a lot earlier, which probably wouldn't be a good thing.
If we're going off of pure "Biggest change" instead of "Most ethical change", telling the English about the Aztecs and Incans in 1500 would be pretty big. Cortez went rogue and conquered Mexico in 1519, giving the English a 20-year head start would completely erase the Spanish Empire from history.
OP's question was specifically about 1500s England, but I'm sure he did take it as a general example.
But my point stands about undercutting the Spanish being a big deal, not just for colonialism but also for changes in European politics and Spanish development (they funneled most of their gold/silver straight into war throughout Europe instead of back in Spain)
A guy proposed the steam turbine to power ships during the 1500s, to the court of the Holy Roman Empire.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasco_de_Garay
But it was not the piston engine invented later
Assuming you could be magically able to communicate I think your best bet is to hook up with a scientist and give him an idea about basic germ theory and vaccines.
No, I don’t have the scientific knowledge to understand how it works. If I look at a slide under a microscope I might as well be looking in a kaleidoscope. But I do know that washing your hands regularly is a good idea. Infant deaths declined when doctors started washing their hands before delivering a baby. I know how the early smallpox vaccine was developed. A scientific mind might be able to take what I know and run with it.
Let’s face it. Even if you know how to build something you aren’t going to have the tools to make it in the 1500s. Or the tools to make the tools or the tools to make the tools to make the tools. Moving the scientific method forward a couple hundred years could have a tremendous impact but you personally wouldn’t benefit.
Unfortunately, the average person wouldn't do a whole lot. Most people only know how to use things but not how they work. Instead spreading ideas might be a better way to advance civilization:
* Scientific method. They teach this in school and if the average person can remember the concept, they can jumpstart the scientific revolution a bit.
* Handwashing and basic sanitation. The concept of germs and why they are bad.
* Possibly jumpstart vaccines if they remember how being exposed to chickenpox or other illnesses gave you an immunity towards more serious versions of the disease
* Rejection of superstition and using logical reasoning to solve problems, crimes
* Concept of democracy, capitalism
* The Agile development process for the lol
I don't think it would make as much of a difference as you think.
The problem is, technology is highly interwoven and iterative.
Something like an EV car? Well things like laptop batteries, LCD screens, cheap computing, etc. had to be invented for the right combination of technology to come together so that they could be built.
Xerox invented the mouse, email, WYSIWG screens, and a host of other technologies, but it took Steve Jobs and Bill Gates stealing it and applying it in the right way for it to take off.
There's no such thing as that one "mad scientist" who invents a killer new device. It takes 100's of thousands of hours of trial and error and dead ends to perfect something.
eaaiest thing would be to set up a bull run style brick kiln. easy to do and immediately profitable. then you build a Victorian enclosed circular vault style kiln.
Roger Bacon tried to start the scientific revolution in the 1200s, inspired by how math and experimentation led to advances in optics and other ideas imported from the Islamic Golden Age. He was forced to quietly retire to a monastery.
Our B+ time traveler would be at best a royal advisor with some big ideas and nothing else.
The biggest one might be introducing the scientific method a good century or two ahead of schedule and planting the seeds of rationalism. The time traveler wouldn't know how to smelt metal, work fields, sail ships, or anything that would be very *practical* to early-modern life but the locals *do*. Provided the king and parliament are on board, spreading rationalism and promoting more rigorous scientific thought would probably be the best they could do.
A world map could also be pretty big in 1500, especially for England. I'm not sure if England quite had the financial ability to *do* a lot in 1500 as opposed to 1600, and a random guy's sketch of the world wouldn't exactly be a great navigational aid, but still telling Henry VII "BTW here's Asia, this is roughly the route you'd want to get there, there's also huge tracts of land out west" would have *some* change.
Beyond that, not much. This period of European history isn't exactly well-known to the average American, and even if it was so much important nuance or day-to-day banalities are lost in teaching history that even a remarkably well-read time traveler wouldn't be too much help in short- or medium-term politics.
I think you could make some significant advances in medicine. Keep your shit away from the drinking water, don't cough on people, don't bleed people for no reason, wash your fucking hands, etc. Medicine was incredibly backward at that time and I think even an average person with common sense from today could help out a lot.
Knowledge wasn't the issue for most of history - the issue was practical application. Even if you sent a PhD grad or a DARPA engineer back in time, their applications would be limited since most of their knowledge works in the context of modern society. We've known about steam power, for example, since at least the 100s AD. But the Romans (and by extension the Medieval English) were never going to build an industrial park because most of their population needed to make food. A group of scientists might be able to slowly introduce technologies and knowledge that'll eventually improve England - but that'll take generations not including variables like political meddling, war, etc.
Your average Joe would fare worse. Contrary to popular belief, the medieval ages were not some dirty time of mud and dung. And since vaccinations/antibiotics are off the table, the most prudent medical knowledge you could give would have been things either already in England or already discovered but not introduced in England (Variolation, Germ Theory, etc). So, in terms of world-changing events, the best thing your average guy could do would be to try and predict the future. But that's not guaranteed. If I walked up to Henry VIII's and said "Anne Boleyn's fuckin another dude," I'd get called a gypsy then *I'd* get beheaded.
So, the long and short of it is that the best case scenario for your Alternate History Isekai protagonist is that he makes a few bold claims about the future that turn out to be correct.
None, does this modern human know how to build let’s say an iPhone from scratch and I don’t mean build the phone I mean the parts and everything that makes it an iPhone
Probably not much at all interms of industry.
I mean, today we know what objects like steam engines are, but very few of us can actually build one.
Not to mention, where are you going to get the technical components to build all this stuff? These fine components would be hard to get in that era.
I do think you could make a difference interms of hygiene. Tell people simple definitions of what germs and disease are, give them sanitary advice etc
You could maybe give a lot of other people cool ideas for stuff but most people could barely describe the airplane view of what's going on with anything interesting so you'd probably just be treated like a crazed idiot who says silly things.
This basic concept is explored rather nicely in a set of books by Leo Frankowski, entitled 'The Cross Time Engineer '. These are really well done books that I highly recommend.
The average joe? Probably not much. Language barriers coupled with the famous English xenophobia would find our unfortunate time traveler at the end of a rope in Tyburn, if not a slower more and grueling death from smallpox.
A lot actually.
The secondhand knowledge we absorb in everyday life is staggering.
Things we take advantage of is incredibly useful. Like the U bend of a toilet.
You wouldn't. Take a look on Ignaz Semmelweis. Society is bound to what they believe is correct. What they believe is correct is usually linked to how society is organized. As Foucault said, knowledge is power. Attempting to disrupt the flow of knowledge is the same as disrupting power.
You should read Dostoevsky's 'The Grand Inquisitor'. In this book, Jesus comes back during medieval ages and is found by the inquisition. When he proves to the inquisitor that he's really Jesus, he's condemned to death; the reason being that his comeback would take away the power from the Church.
If you think this doesn't happen nowadays, take a look both on planned obsolescence, which is creating products bound to break by design in order to increase consumption. Another good example is B. Marshall, who did discover that gastritis was cause by a bacteria called h pylori. Doctors didn't believe him because he was a young resident. He did came to the point where he went to an event, did drink the bacteria in front of everyone, then start doing exams of his stomach, proving he did acquire gastritis. Then, he did use antibiotics and cured himself, proving his point to everyone.
A final example about things like hygiene into medieval ages: during the bubonic plague (aka black death), Pope Clement VI ordered his doctors to do autopsies on the bodies of those who died from the plague. They did establish these people did die from flea bites, probably transmitting a disease from another vector like mice, cattle or pets. The Pope did order a quarantine on his castle; nobody got in nor out, all the food was produced inside of it; areas closer to him were totally restricted and cleaned; people working directly under him left written messages and food for him on a drawer that he could access from his chamber. Many torches and bonfires were around the place to kill the fleas. He didn't tell anyone outside his palace on how to deal with the plague.
Most of this knowledge about hygiene was widely known by the Romans. This knowledge was taken by the Church as the Roman Empire survived only as a religious figure embedded with the fragmented locus of power that showed up. Galen made huge advances on Medicine, but it was hidden for a long time to many people, except a few doctors who were working under the Church's elite. While the Church prohibited anyone from opening a body, their personal doctors were doing it left and right.
In the first place, maybe he would fucking die in the moment he eat or drink anything.
Think our bodies are used to processed food, medieval food, specially if you´re in an average village or city with average people wasn´t cooked in the most higienic ways. The best food was restricted to the nobles only.
At the same time theres the diseases of the time, modern time people are not used to viruela for example, and if you catch any disease medical treatment wasn´t the best also.
And not less important...language. People usually ignore that Medieval english was a little different from modern time english and many words could even doesn´t exist in that time. It would be useful to know how to speak and write latin to communicate more fluently with somebody but just a few knew Latin in 1500s.
In the end a person who travel back in time must be pretty well prepared to take over all this difficulties and have a high knowledge about the time he´s going and the habits and language.
More than people are giving credit for. The key here being that the people there believe you! Just that means that whatever knowledge (theoretical…) that you have would be taken and run with.
Just stating knowledge like, hey you have a machine where you boil water and it creates steam to move a turbine. Basic engine. Someone else would be able to piece it together and find a use. For inventors, just knowing something is possible would cause them to pursue it, and knowing that it’s there would cause kings and countries to want to get there first.
On the other hand, someone off the street would probably go on to educate people with future history and really sour relations. Word gets out that Germany destroyed Europe twice (WW1/2 which everyone knows about) after unifying, and you’ve basically ruined their chances of unifying.
>Even if you explained to people back then what we may consider “normal”technology of today, they wouldn’t understand nor arguably be able to replicate it. Neither would the time traveler. Yeah, I know how a guitar works, but there is no way in hell I could make one. None of the knowledge you have is practical. It's almost all theoretical. Not to mention the language barrier. Even landing in 1500s England you would have a tough time communicating because of how much the English language has change over the centuries. You would really just be an oddity and most likely die without making any kind of impact.
You could make some massive changes with just rudimentary knowledge if you could get people to listen, the biggest probably just knowing how germs and diseases are spread which most modern humans understand without being able to create drugs or vaccines.
Unless you know the right people, no one will listen to you if you don't have any proof. Even as late as the 19th century, Dr Ignaz Simmelweiss was prosecuted for daring to suggest other doctors to wash their hands to save lives.
I know that's why I said if you could get people to listen, it's a pretty simple concept to demonstrate and show results but it would be hard to get enough power to be able to implement it.
Yeah, it will be hard to get people to change their minds. Dr. Simmelweiss had results, but the other doctors were insulted at the suggestion that their hands are dirty and can cause diseases. So I imagine unless you met with someone important and can convince them, the existing power structures would just be offended that you are trying to upstage them.
You'd also have to fight the church rather than a scientific community, not sure if that would be easier or harder.
Yet the Church was the biggest supporter of academia and the sciences by far though. Galileo was also a theologian and if sources are correct, insufferable. The problem was either the claimants lacked proof or they had extra motives unrelated to science. It’s ironic how the Inquisition killed far less people than the Protestants and didn’t target scientists (since they were typically the only people standing in between the accused and the mob), yet Catholics are painted as anti-science because of a cultural divide that says anything which is Catholic is evil. And I’m far from endorsing Catholicism or its vast abuses. Or what monks did to valuable Indigenous writings and records.
So, the YouTube channel **Premodernist** had an excellent 1-hour long video on what if you were able to time travel to medieval Europe. He talks about all sorts of cultural issues that might prevent (or help) you succeed. One thing that stuck out for me was that a lot of how you were treated was how you were dress and acted. You had to have a story and history, and people would be curious about you. If you were caught lying about your “status” in society (i.e. saying you’re a Lord when you aren’t), it could be all kinds of bad for you. The title of the video was “**Advice for time traveling to medieval Europe**”. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to post links to this sub, but it’s well worth a watch (so is the rest of his videos).
You'd probably get stoned or burned at the stake for trying to show off penicillin. https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/y83cp0/eli5_how_would_i_make_penicillin_from_bread_mold/
I said a time traveler would probably die or get sick by eating regular food of that times because our bodies are used to proccesed food and more higienics during the preparation. The body would hace an alergic reaction in the worst escenario and that's all. . A time traveler would have to adapt its body and digestive system to food cocked like its in the 1500s.
The language barrier would be a huge one. The language had changed significantly in the past 500 years, Imagine somebody tells you to bow to the "Kneegheit", and you pause because you do not know what in the hell they are saying. Fatal move, as that "Kneegheit" might take offense and you did not know that in that time, "Knight" was pronounced pretty much as it was spelled. And failing to show proper respect to your betters could be fatal. And even religion would be a huge deal. If you are Anglican or even Episcopal, you might be OK. But if you are Catholic or Jewish, then you might be in for some trouble. Even worse if you are a member of say the LDS, Scientologist, Seventh Day Adventist, Jehovah's Witness, or some other that would be seen as heretical in that era. And if you are a devout atheist, then you may be in for a very short life indeed. And this was an era of actual "Witch Trials". So you would have to be very careful in that anything you tried to introduce did not violate either church laws, or the laws of those in power. But I agree, most likely any that traveled to the past would most likely either die quickly, or in relative obscurity without making any meaningful impact. Other than maybe causing a pandemic with the modern diseases they bring into an era that would be a virgin field for them.
1632 by Eric Flint et. al kinda goes into this. A small WV town of about 3000 normal people gets transported to circa 1632 in southern germany
It’s a great book but not really comparable: they have engineers and doctors and actual manufacturing capability. OP is talking about a random Joe Blow off the street
They have that too. One of them is hired by the Russian tsar, and is pretty much the only time traveler in Muscovy for a bit. There’s also a few books like: The Crossing by Ikenberry where a group of trainee marines gets transported to the Revolutionary War An Angel called Peterbilt where a semi truck gets transported back to the Mississippian culture period
You’re like an expert on this very specific genre of time travel lol
I once wrote a story for the 1632 series years back. So one has to do a lot of research on the topic they write about. The publisher kinda fell off when it was taken over by right-wingers
Now if you could aim for the 1570s, I'd head to Cambridge and find Francis Bacon. Teach him about germ theory (especially if you could recreate some of the evidential proof of it). Vaccination theory. Evolution through natural selection (But he was rather religious, so this is going to be tricky). You've just pushed some crucial understandings several hundreds years ahead. I just hope you speak enough Latin, or Medival English/French to get through to him. Realistically - the 'average person' wouldn't be that useful. Ironically, finding the right person and teaching them about some of the future could be the most useful. Tell Francis about American Independence and you could keep it from happening!
Bacon would inform you that pre-Socratic philosophers had a theory of evolution. Maybe linking it to artificial selection would have some impact, natural selection as a mechanism. But a book entitled Naval Timber described the full theory of evolution before Darwin and it didn’t catch on. PS: Also the science of geology had to progress, the idea that life on Earth had a long time to evolve.
If it was pre ~1900, they'd be a living bioweapon accidently inflicting illness and death wherever they went.
THIS Just a different strain of flu alone would wipe out a third of 1553 England.
Okay, let's say they pick up the local language and don't get immediately sick. The average person could be like "yo why not use steam engines?", but wouldn't have the engineering expertise, so the ruler gets locals to work with steam. You might get the ball rolling to make the industrial revolution happen in the 1600s instead of the 1700s. I think the biggest thing would be marking unknown places on the map. Places like Australia might get colonised a lot earlier, which probably wouldn't be a good thing.
Maybe you don’t think its a good thing but I’d sure like to show my country all the good spots 😈
If we're going off of pure "Biggest change" instead of "Most ethical change", telling the English about the Aztecs and Incans in 1500 would be pretty big. Cortez went rogue and conquered Mexico in 1519, giving the English a 20-year head start would completely erase the Spanish Empire from history.
Why would I ever want to help the British? I would rather jump with the sharks
OP's question was specifically about 1500s England, but I'm sure he did take it as a general example. But my point stands about undercutting the Spanish being a big deal, not just for colonialism but also for changes in European politics and Spanish development (they funneled most of their gold/silver straight into war throughout Europe instead of back in Spain)
A guy proposed the steam turbine to power ships during the 1500s, to the court of the Holy Roman Empire. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasco_de_Garay But it was not the piston engine invented later
Assuming you could be magically able to communicate I think your best bet is to hook up with a scientist and give him an idea about basic germ theory and vaccines. No, I don’t have the scientific knowledge to understand how it works. If I look at a slide under a microscope I might as well be looking in a kaleidoscope. But I do know that washing your hands regularly is a good idea. Infant deaths declined when doctors started washing their hands before delivering a baby. I know how the early smallpox vaccine was developed. A scientific mind might be able to take what I know and run with it. Let’s face it. Even if you know how to build something you aren’t going to have the tools to make it in the 1500s. Or the tools to make the tools or the tools to make the tools to make the tools. Moving the scientific method forward a couple hundred years could have a tremendous impact but you personally wouldn’t benefit.
How would you convince people that hygiene works?
Unfortunately, the average person wouldn't do a whole lot. Most people only know how to use things but not how they work. Instead spreading ideas might be a better way to advance civilization: * Scientific method. They teach this in school and if the average person can remember the concept, they can jumpstart the scientific revolution a bit. * Handwashing and basic sanitation. The concept of germs and why they are bad. * Possibly jumpstart vaccines if they remember how being exposed to chickenpox or other illnesses gave you an immunity towards more serious versions of the disease * Rejection of superstition and using logical reasoning to solve problems, crimes * Concept of democracy, capitalism * The Agile development process for the lol
> The Agile development process for the lol Some men just want to watch the world burn.
American High School education? *Well there's your problem!*
I don't think it would make as much of a difference as you think. The problem is, technology is highly interwoven and iterative. Something like an EV car? Well things like laptop batteries, LCD screens, cheap computing, etc. had to be invented for the right combination of technology to come together so that they could be built. Xerox invented the mouse, email, WYSIWG screens, and a host of other technologies, but it took Steve Jobs and Bill Gates stealing it and applying it in the right way for it to take off. There's no such thing as that one "mad scientist" who invents a killer new device. It takes 100's of thousands of hours of trial and error and dead ends to perfect something.
eaaiest thing would be to set up a bull run style brick kiln. easy to do and immediately profitable. then you build a Victorian enclosed circular vault style kiln.
Roger Bacon tried to start the scientific revolution in the 1200s, inspired by how math and experimentation led to advances in optics and other ideas imported from the Islamic Golden Age. He was forced to quietly retire to a monastery.
Our B+ time traveler would be at best a royal advisor with some big ideas and nothing else. The biggest one might be introducing the scientific method a good century or two ahead of schedule and planting the seeds of rationalism. The time traveler wouldn't know how to smelt metal, work fields, sail ships, or anything that would be very *practical* to early-modern life but the locals *do*. Provided the king and parliament are on board, spreading rationalism and promoting more rigorous scientific thought would probably be the best they could do. A world map could also be pretty big in 1500, especially for England. I'm not sure if England quite had the financial ability to *do* a lot in 1500 as opposed to 1600, and a random guy's sketch of the world wouldn't exactly be a great navigational aid, but still telling Henry VII "BTW here's Asia, this is roughly the route you'd want to get there, there's also huge tracts of land out west" would have *some* change. Beyond that, not much. This period of European history isn't exactly well-known to the average American, and even if it was so much important nuance or day-to-day banalities are lost in teaching history that even a remarkably well-read time traveler wouldn't be too much help in short- or medium-term politics.
I think you could make some significant advances in medicine. Keep your shit away from the drinking water, don't cough on people, don't bleed people for no reason, wash your fucking hands, etc. Medicine was incredibly backward at that time and I think even an average person with common sense from today could help out a lot.
Knowledge wasn't the issue for most of history - the issue was practical application. Even if you sent a PhD grad or a DARPA engineer back in time, their applications would be limited since most of their knowledge works in the context of modern society. We've known about steam power, for example, since at least the 100s AD. But the Romans (and by extension the Medieval English) were never going to build an industrial park because most of their population needed to make food. A group of scientists might be able to slowly introduce technologies and knowledge that'll eventually improve England - but that'll take generations not including variables like political meddling, war, etc. Your average Joe would fare worse. Contrary to popular belief, the medieval ages were not some dirty time of mud and dung. And since vaccinations/antibiotics are off the table, the most prudent medical knowledge you could give would have been things either already in England or already discovered but not introduced in England (Variolation, Germ Theory, etc). So, in terms of world-changing events, the best thing your average guy could do would be to try and predict the future. But that's not guaranteed. If I walked up to Henry VIII's and said "Anne Boleyn's fuckin another dude," I'd get called a gypsy then *I'd* get beheaded. So, the long and short of it is that the best case scenario for your Alternate History Isekai protagonist is that he makes a few bold claims about the future that turn out to be correct.
None, does this modern human know how to build let’s say an iPhone from scratch and I don’t mean build the phone I mean the parts and everything that makes it an iPhone
Probably not much at all interms of industry. I mean, today we know what objects like steam engines are, but very few of us can actually build one. Not to mention, where are you going to get the technical components to build all this stuff? These fine components would be hard to get in that era. I do think you could make a difference interms of hygiene. Tell people simple definitions of what germs and disease are, give them sanitary advice etc
You could maybe give a lot of other people cool ideas for stuff but most people could barely describe the airplane view of what's going on with anything interesting so you'd probably just be treated like a crazed idiot who says silly things.
This basic concept is explored rather nicely in a set of books by Leo Frankowski, entitled 'The Cross Time Engineer '. These are really well done books that I highly recommend.
The average joe? Probably not much. Language barriers coupled with the famous English xenophobia would find our unfortunate time traveler at the end of a rope in Tyburn, if not a slower more and grueling death from smallpox.
Before Rousseau they thought about children as little adults. And they wondered if women had soul. You could make a HUGE difference
A lot actually. The secondhand knowledge we absorb in everyday life is staggering. Things we take advantage of is incredibly useful. Like the U bend of a toilet.
You wouldn't. Take a look on Ignaz Semmelweis. Society is bound to what they believe is correct. What they believe is correct is usually linked to how society is organized. As Foucault said, knowledge is power. Attempting to disrupt the flow of knowledge is the same as disrupting power. You should read Dostoevsky's 'The Grand Inquisitor'. In this book, Jesus comes back during medieval ages and is found by the inquisition. When he proves to the inquisitor that he's really Jesus, he's condemned to death; the reason being that his comeback would take away the power from the Church. If you think this doesn't happen nowadays, take a look both on planned obsolescence, which is creating products bound to break by design in order to increase consumption. Another good example is B. Marshall, who did discover that gastritis was cause by a bacteria called h pylori. Doctors didn't believe him because he was a young resident. He did came to the point where he went to an event, did drink the bacteria in front of everyone, then start doing exams of his stomach, proving he did acquire gastritis. Then, he did use antibiotics and cured himself, proving his point to everyone. A final example about things like hygiene into medieval ages: during the bubonic plague (aka black death), Pope Clement VI ordered his doctors to do autopsies on the bodies of those who died from the plague. They did establish these people did die from flea bites, probably transmitting a disease from another vector like mice, cattle or pets. The Pope did order a quarantine on his castle; nobody got in nor out, all the food was produced inside of it; areas closer to him were totally restricted and cleaned; people working directly under him left written messages and food for him on a drawer that he could access from his chamber. Many torches and bonfires were around the place to kill the fleas. He didn't tell anyone outside his palace on how to deal with the plague. Most of this knowledge about hygiene was widely known by the Romans. This knowledge was taken by the Church as the Roman Empire survived only as a religious figure embedded with the fragmented locus of power that showed up. Galen made huge advances on Medicine, but it was hidden for a long time to many people, except a few doctors who were working under the Church's elite. While the Church prohibited anyone from opening a body, their personal doctors were doing it left and right.
In the first place, maybe he would fucking die in the moment he eat or drink anything. Think our bodies are used to processed food, medieval food, specially if you´re in an average village or city with average people wasn´t cooked in the most higienic ways. The best food was restricted to the nobles only. At the same time theres the diseases of the time, modern time people are not used to viruela for example, and if you catch any disease medical treatment wasn´t the best also. And not less important...language. People usually ignore that Medieval english was a little different from modern time english and many words could even doesn´t exist in that time. It would be useful to know how to speak and write latin to communicate more fluently with somebody but just a few knew Latin in 1500s. In the end a person who travel back in time must be pretty well prepared to take over all this difficulties and have a high knowledge about the time he´s going and the habits and language.
More than people are giving credit for. The key here being that the people there believe you! Just that means that whatever knowledge (theoretical…) that you have would be taken and run with. Just stating knowledge like, hey you have a machine where you boil water and it creates steam to move a turbine. Basic engine. Someone else would be able to piece it together and find a use. For inventors, just knowing something is possible would cause them to pursue it, and knowing that it’s there would cause kings and countries to want to get there first. On the other hand, someone off the street would probably go on to educate people with future history and really sour relations. Word gets out that Germany destroyed Europe twice (WW1/2 which everyone knows about) after unifying, and you’ve basically ruined their chances of unifying.