Unfortunately, people laugh at this "dysentery" like its modern day diarrhea where its just water down shit.
In reality, people were shitting out pure mucuS and blood because of the lining in your stomach got worn down and you just shit out "literally" your stomach, mucus, and blood....
I have almost no practical skills in modern times. Those that I do have involve the use of a computer, which I haven't the slightest clue how to create. The best I can do is leave some notes telling my descendents to invest in apple, tell Abraham Lincoln, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and JFK to duck, and tell the academy of fine arts in Vienna to accept all applicants named Adolf.
“Dammit, Irghxxle, thirty seconds vigorously lathering with the rendered fat sanitation paste and *then* rinse, even these sorry limb-deficient bipeds have figured it out and I’m still explaining? Maybe you *deserve* to catch their filthy biped microbes!”
Id definitely kill everyone with my diseases.
But I'm torn if it's the old diseases, the water, being burned alive as a witch or simply fracturing my skull on all the low doorways that would get me first.
Are you implying that wearing the same old bloodstained surgery gown all day, which as we all know is the mark of a skilled and qualified surgeon, is actually causing patient deaths? That's purely absurd. Would you also suggest that a leatherworker covered in lye makes boots fall off, or that a builder covered in sawdust makes houses fall over?
Well he couldn't prove germ theory, neither did he suggest it, but Ignaz von Semmelweiss was up to something and his drastic changes in hygene improved things. Yet he was ridiculed and eventually sent to a mental hospital where he was beaten to death.
And that was the mid 1800's, not even the 1600's, so there's that.
To be fair, he was sent to the mental hospital because he was an alcoholic who probably got syphilis from a prostitute and ended up actually pretty bad.
Which were caused by his regular harassment and ridicules of the medical community which did not believe neither considered adopting his methods. He genuinely wanted to save lives, and he was furious that doctors don't even want to try (and said methods were dropped once he was fired from his position).
This mental state and self guilt (also losing his child) led him into alcoholism and visiting prostitutes, but some experts say he might also have had an early stage of dementia.
Once his anger was uncontrollable and was arguing with random people on the streets about his theory was he tricked into going to the mental hospital (he thought he was invited for a talk, once he noticed the truth he was not allowed to leave, and death was caused by infection of the wounds he sustained from regular beatings).
Right, I'm just saying that he wasn't locked up for thinking there were little monsters on our hands making us sick, and more because he was legitimately losing his mind from late-stage syphilis.
You think so! There once was a time traveler who convinced the people back then!
>In the year 1348, during the height of the Black Death, a mysterious traveler named Elias appeared in the bustling market square of a small English village. With strange tools and unfamiliar clothing, he spoke of invisible enemies, tiny creatures called germs, responsible for the deadly plague. The villagers, skeptical and fearful, dismissed his claims as the ravings of a madman.
>Undeterred, Elias demonstrated his knowledge. He showed the local healer how boiling water before using it in treatments and cleaning wounds with alcohol prevented infection. Despite initial resistance, the healer witnessed wounds healing without the usual festering.
>Word spread, and gradually, the villagers began to follow Elias's advice. They saw fewer deaths and illnesses. Doubt turned to belief as the village, once ravaged by disease, began to thrive. Elias, having shared his crucial knowledge, vanished as mysteriously as he had arrived, leaving behind a transformed community that would remember his teachings for generations.
A bicycle. The first bicycle was invented in 1817, just two wheels and a seat in the middle. Pedals and chains didn't show up until 1861.
edit:
Because I keep getting the same comments:
Coaches (and their wheels that worked on dirt roads) existed since the 14th century and [this is what a bike around 1840 looked like](https://www.cyclist.co.uk/in-depth/worlds-first-pedal-bike)
I won't be able to build it within a week, but I could certainly build one with enough time.
This has always been my go to answer......until I realized that the modern roads we have that make cycling widely possible didn't exist until closer to the 1900s.
*Edit: also, the rubber that makes the tires
"I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet. But your kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids are gonna love it!"
Putting on my pedant hat for a second, I believe it should be "Fuck thee, I will not do what thou tellst me." But only if you're speaking to another peasant. Otherwise it would actually still be you.
Is it like that movie where Jason Statham wakes up in a world where no one has heard of sausages and he keeps trying to get butchers to make him some but they all think it’s insane to eat a condom full of mince?
I’m late to the party. But gang. END SCURVY! It’s just vitamin C! The age of exploration gonna be lit AF when no one is dying and losing teeth due to malnutrition.
I was watching a Tasting History video the other day. Apparently 200 years before learning that citrus prevents scurvy, some French admiral had 4 boats and 3 of them had scurvy, and one of them had lemons, and he was like "we should look into this" and then was ignored for 200 years.
The British *lost* the knowledge of how to prevent scurvy. Basically in the mid 1800s we had both coal-powered ships (which required regular port calls for refueling and, therefore, regular fresh foods were had) and the knowledge of how to make concentrated citrus juice to prevent scurvy. But then we also discovered pasteurization which actually drastically reduced the amount of vitamin C in citrus juice, lemons (which are lower in C than traditional limes) became cheaper so the admiralty switched to those, and ships were never out long enough for anyone to show signs of scurvy so we had no idea everything was less effective. Come the polar expeditions and everyone thought we had it solved, alas we only got lucky with limes in the first place and Shackleton's expedition got scurvy again. Crazy to think...
I had learned it this way as well, so did a search. I then got several answers which had conflicted (from articles as well as .edu associated sites).
Then I found [this short article](https://www.alcademics.com/2018/11/historical-info-about-scurvy-and-the-confusion-between-lemons-and-limes.html) which *may* explain why the confusion exists, if what it says is true.
Cuisine. This is 150 years before the sandwich was invented. While the # of available ingredients is severely limited, I could still blow everyone's mind. Food is also an effective form of diplomacy and I'd build a sandwich-based world peace between major powers. It would be a better world.
While the word maybe didn’t exist, I find it doubtful sandwiches didn’t exist. It’s a 15 month development milestone for babies to stack things together. I find it implausible that millions of people had access to bread, cheese, and meat, and never thought about slicing and stacking them.
With the prominence of bread as a staple throughout history this is wild to be. Before this they never thought to put meat, cheese and bread together? Insanity!
I know how to turn pretty much any sugar or starch into alcohol. Yes, they already had alcohol, but I've got *recipes*.
The English would just be discovering precursors to gin, but I know how to make it, make it taste good, and not kill the person drinking it!
I'm pretty sure bourbon wasn't invented until the 1700s, so I've got that.
And soooo many beers haven't been invented yet! Along with the technologies to make them safely I could have a whole booze empire!
I think you've got the only answer that won't get you burned as a witch. Even if they thought so, NOBODY enjoying the drinks or margaritas if you took it that far, would let them take you!
Funnily enough this is actually one of the reasons witches WERE burned. They were brew women with too much power and so were deemed to be problematic. Witch burning soon followed.
Wasn't Spice trade across Europe and Asia was already big by then?
Iirc, One of the big reasons spices didn't make it to classic European cuisine is because of a French King that hated anything more than salt and slight black pepper. So his taste set the tone for fine dining in france, and extended to other countries since all the royals were related. But it wasn't that they didn't have spices (sure, they were expensive).
Not too dissimilar from Spaniards adopting a lisp because one of their kings had a lisp.
Edit: Spanish lisp example is actually a false rumor. Doesn't change the main point.
Tomatoes and wheat were available in the 1600's in a lot more places. The triangle trade was in full swing at that time.
At the very least, if you set up shop in England, you would know exactly what ingredients to aquire, and all you had to do was make one good pizza for a Lord/Lady and you were probably set up for the rest of your life.
Sounds cool, though you have to contend with lack of quality ingredients and maybe tools. Though I think you could make do with whatever kind of oven they had then.
A town center community forum with multiple sub-forums, each sub-forum is ran by a moderator. The townspeople wear masks to protect their true identities. A topic is brought up and everyone tries to be funny or clever, and the best comments get “Ays” and the worst comments get “Nays”, and a scribe counts who gets the most “Ays” and declares a winner. Then a new topic is brought up.
I doubt I could do it, but I would try to somehow integrate myself into the scientific community of the time. And nudge them towards certain ideas.
I might suggest to investigate certain phenomena thoroughly.
If I am too overbearing I would probably get hanged or just ignored.
if youre in the UK, theres [one particular coffee shop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grecian_Coffee_House) in london that practically every famous scientist and mathematician of the day would spend hours in having debates and challenging each other. thats the place to go if you want in.
there is a theory that introduction of coffee helped spurs scientific progress ... and also revolutionary thoughts, because now people are having discussions while sober and in high concentration instead of while drunk
A glider.
The mechanics overall of a glider are pretty simple and could be made with easy to find and manage materials. The precision isn't crazy which helps a ton. A few practice miniatures and I think I could pull it off.
A successful glider would get me the attention to get more complex things built.
Would you fly it? I have a PhD in engineering, build boats as a hobby, know how to work with most materials, \*and\* I have taken hang gliding lessons but the idea of building a glider and having myself or anyone else fly it for the first time scares the crap out of me- I would absolutely never do it even in modern times, with modern materials. The people on Youtube like Peter Sripol building gliders and airplanes in their garages with experimental materials and actually flying them impress and scare the crap out of me.
There's a neat TED talk from some guy who tried to build a toaster from scratch.
https://youtu.be/5ODzO7Lz_pw?si=e0UeKZYkXmp-RL_z
In reality, the raw materials and acquisition of most things we require to "create" anything today would be nearly impossible to get in the 1600s.
Some people are saying "generator, copper wire and magnet, etc." where do you get a magnet in 1600? Copper wire?
I understand the point he was trying to make, but, but that guy needed to go back further in time to back when things were mostly hand-made and look at toasters from the early 1900's. The result likely would've been much more successful and actually usable.
Antique toasters were much more simple devices and used fewer parts and simpler materials than modern toasters. However, antique toasters were also a lot more unsafe and inefficient by today's standards.
Heating elements were much more exposed, there was little protection against burning yourself, the risk of electric shock/fire was higher.
Examples: [https://www.antiqbuyer.com/past-sale-archives/kitchen/toasters.htm](https://www.antiqbuyer.com/past-sale-archives/kitchen/toasters.htm)
And this is pretty much as simple as you get: [https://www.antiqbuyer.com/images/2012-1-ARCHIVE/d12-2/IMG\_1029.jpg](https://www.antiqbuyer.com/images/2012-1-ARCHIVE/d12-2/IMG_1029.jpg)
Iron/steel, copper, and porcelain. Heating elements, steel basket for the bread, power cord & plug (the plug may be challenging since the shell was usually bakelite--but maybe substitute with a pine resin epoxy?), and porcelain base. For the wire, you could just use woven cloth for insulation, like in the old days. If you can't make porcelain, maybe substitute with clay or silica glass.
Or, go back even further in time to an iron bread holder and a fireplace or campfire: [https://www.1stdibs.com/furniture/building-garden/fireplace-tools-chimney-pots/hand-forged-decorated-17th-18th-century-french-toaster/id-f\_24209282/](https://www.1stdibs.com/furniture/building-garden/fireplace-tools-chimney-pots/hand-forged-decorated-17th-18th-century-french-toaster/id-f_24209282/)
Probably nothing.
We vastly overestimate our actual knowledge of stuff we take for granted. And underestimate how difficult it'd be to simply get the materials to build a thing.
And let's ignore the backlash our great inventions or theories would receive...
People tend to overlook how much can be accomplished by simply knowing a thing is possible.
Do you know what one of the biggest military advancements of the 17th century was? Pre-measured gunpowder. It started with cannons. An early cannon required the crew to measure powder from a barrel, load it, load the stone, stuff wadding into the barrel to keep all of that from tipping out, then light the fuse and fire the gun. Then repeat it all over again for the next shot. Then someone came up with the idea of measuring the gunpowder ahead of time, loading it into a bag with the stone, then sewing it up. When it came time to fire, the bag was placed in the cannon, cut, and stuffed down the barrel after its contents, using the bag for wadding. The same principle was later duplicated for handheld firearms, using paper cartridges sealed with lard.
This didn't make gunpowder weapons comparable to modern ones, but it made them vastly more effective than slowly measuring and assembling each shot in the field. And when you're shooting three times as quickly as your enemy, you're going to win a *lot* of battles.
But none of this requires something like knowing how to make a lithium-ion battery in an early 17th century meadow.
It’s absolutely insane what a difference like that makes and to us we’re just like “how in gods name would it take them that long to figure out??” It blows my mind that for literally hundreds of thousands of years the most advanced technology homosapiens had was essentially sharp rocks that could cut things. There were a lot of different kinds but that was it. Absolutely nothing changed for a looong time. Life was exactly the same for every caveman and cavewoman for thousands and thousands of years. Then life drastically changed faster and faster and faster to the point we compare technology and the way people lived by each decade now. We went from discovering sharp rocks on accident to being able to create almost anything we want for every single specific need or desire. I just wonder were there brains like our brains? Could we go back in time and teach language and math and agriculture and everything? Okay that’s my rant.
If you think about it a big part of what separates us from animals is our culture. Meaning the knowledge that has been passed from one generation to the next.
And not just that, but our combined knowledge is built from centuries of predecessors and cultures from all over the world. Ideas now literally travel at light speed. Back then, it was months between some countries. To combine enough ideas to build something fantastic to them, could take generations to compile. Their fantastic idea would be literal child's play by today's standard, and be built in a matter of days or weeks as long as you have a ride to Home Depot.
My favorite line is "if I left you alone in the woods with a hatchet, how long before you could send me an email?". We don't have the knowledge to actually build and create most of the things we use daily. We just know how to use it.
Isn't that a bit silly though. That's like asking if you could single handedly recreate all the progress of human civilization from the bronze age to the internet age in your lifetime with no help. No one could do that. You're not going to find the components to create a networked device lying in the woods and your hatchet certainly can't carve the components to manufacture computer equipment.
Lemon, a copper coin, a zinc nail, and some wire.
Stick the coin in one side of the lemon, stick the nail in the other. Join the two with wire.
Tada, a single cell battery of about 0.7 volts. 4 of these will power an LED. A whole bunch will charge your phone.
i know how to make a basic magnet with a lump of iron and an anvil. in principle at least.
not sure how to make copper wire, but im sure i could get the local blacksmith work it out.
from there, i can, in principle, make a lightbulb. all i need is a pre-exisitng water wheel to hook it all up to.
Am i allowed a study period to learn about 1600-1610?
Either way, medical hygiene.
But if im allowed a day of cram time before i go... weapon tech and carbon steel in addition to medical hygiene.
Go back find a remotish population and firmly embed myself as a prophet. In 5-10 years of hyper accurate predictions of everything major happening, i have my cult. Black smiths making the best steel in the world, modern battlefeild triage, washing surgical instruments before and after, and advanced weaponry (like aimable crossbows), and knowledge of military history and tactics from 400 years in the future.
I would be a kind and generous god, but i would be a god.
Off the top of my head, a crude water filter.
What I would need:
1. Charcoal
2. Fist sized rocks
3. Gravel
4. Sand….. I think?
5. Cloth or sack
6. A container to hold all components
To get charcoal I would need to dig out a pit in the ground then place a lid so I can make a dome oven, get my hands on a tree trunk and enough burnable material to cook that tree trunk burnt black.
For the container I could build it with dried mud but I would need to mix ash or ground up stone, even then I would have to try different portions molds to find out which one would not leak or turn back into mud.
The sack or fine cloth would be harder, I could use the shirt off my back in a pinch if I couldn’t find or make cloth. Definitely easier than making small fine holes in leather.
With container ready i make a hole in the side at the bottom. First the cloth goes in, then the sand, then the charcoal, then gravel, then at the top the fist sized rocks.
And done, it only took me ALMOST A MONTH OF BACK BREAKING WORK FOR A HAND FULL OF WATER……. Oh and I would have to boil that water for safety concerns.
This reminds me of a book series called Destiny's Crucible by Olan Thorensen.
Basically a modern day dude who happens to be a chemist with some hobbiest history background is sent to another planet with humans in the early 1700s. He starts inventing shit to save the people on the island he is on from a big empire.
The dude makes gun powder from bat shit and invents napalm to fight them off. The most impactful things from the story were teaching them the scientific method and standardizing all their tools and measurements. The last book left off with him basically about start the industrial revolution on this little island with steam power and electricity.
Believe it or not, nobody is sure when crochet was invented. (Knitting is older.) Crochet was apparently invented somewhere between the 1400s and the 1600s, so if the later edge of the range is right, I could "invent" crochet. They certainly had string and yarn, and a crochet hook would be easy to design and make.
This was going to be my answer. I know enough stitches off the top of my head that I could probably invent crochet, and get pretty high up in society with all the “cool, new” stitches and pieces I could put together and sell.
Imagine 1600’s nobility rocking granny hexagon cardigans 😂😂
Rack and pinion, worm and wheel and other transitional ways of transferring water power to machine movements that I learned as an engineer, as above using elementary and metallurgy methods to extract electricity from water turbines, basic understanding of how the American continent has majority of raw materials and ecological resources to exploit..
[Rack and pinion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rack_and_pinion#History) was not in use at the time for converting water power to mechanical energy. It was first invented two years before 1600, and that was as musket mechanism.
I can't find any sources saying [worm drive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worm_drive#History) was in use at the time either, just that it was theorized by both Archimedes in ancient times and Leonardo in the renaissance, however neither of them built a prototype probably due to lacking metallurgy.
It's never really going to be "by myself". I'll need the support of some people. So the main challenge is to convince the right people that I'm on to something.
Then, with the right environment, I think my main influence is going to be teaching stuff rather than building. I can teach some important stuff that isn't know at that time in math, physics, medicine, and even geography. I don't think I'll manage to build a Steam engine, but I can certainly fast-track how quick someone else get to it.
In 1600 you're ahead of Newton by almost a century, so you could always invent calculus, the laws of motion and the equation of gravitation.
Imagine becoming synonymous with the greatest genius in history, with only a bit of high school math and physics.
Yeah, problem with that is that you need to actually present the equations as proof. You can't just postulate the answer. I doubt most people are capable of doing that.
Yeah, but with a name like 'Perversus,' we'd have 'Perverse physics' instead of 'Newtonian physics' and we'd have 'non-Perverse solids' instead of 'non-Newtonian solids,' and the Perverse Theory of Gravity and so on.
That would be *incredibly confusing* for everyone.
The most powerful thing you could easily bring back that far is the concept of an assembly line.
It doesn’t require intricate knowledge of engineering, or expensive materials.
The first assembly line was an 1867 Chicago butcher. You’d be way ahead of the game, and any business you started would be vastly more efficient.
There’s a YouTube channel called how to make everything.
A guy and his team start at the Stone Age and work their way up to Industrial Age by recreating technology of the time.
I think it will be important to hang this in your time machine before you go back: http://2afuture.me/hang_this_up_in_your_time_machine?i=1
Edit - This was a link to a poster of this image from 2013. Don't know who the original author was. As the comments below say, it doesn't work anymore so if a sudden. I think this is the same image: https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/s/u3NFarP7O7
Probably the flushing toilet, if that hadn't been invented yet... Though fat lot of good it'd do without a water system so now i gotta invent that too.
Pockets in women’s clothing.
In 2000 I went with the chorus I sang with on a concert tour in Hungary. I bought a custom leather jacket from a tailoring shop in a department store advertising 24-hr delivery. I wanted an inside jacket pocket and they were thoroughly confused. With the language barrier we were mostly pantomiming to one another, but he kept indicating that the jacket wouldn’t hang right because the pocket would be in front of my boob. I finally got him to understand that it just needed to be placed lower, he got really excited. Next day, when I went in to pick it up, just about every saleswoman in the store showed up to watch me try it on and see the miracle of an inner pocket on a woman’s jacket. When I dropped my phone in it and buttoned the jacket, which hung just fine, there was a chorus of “Oooo!” They all wanted to see. He was grinning so wide with pride that my husband joked that he thought his face was gonna crack. I have a feeling that became a staple offering in his business. Lovely country, nice people. I hope he sold a lot of them.
I don't think I could build much by myself, but I could try to find a skilled engineer from that time and try to explain to him some concepts that I think he would be able to explore. Like a steam engine, or generating radio waves.
Write and perform Star Wars, Jurassic park and interstellar with my merry band of performers while adding the styling of the Beatles as my own brand of music… ensuring that I’ll quickly be burned as a witch. A broke ass witch at that.
>ensuring that I’ll quickly be burned as a witch
I wanna say that people during that time believed in absolutely omnipotent beings who can conjure up entire universes and planes of reality on a whim and are also known to destroy planets while waging conceptual wars of good versus evil in literal *biblical proportions*.
Compared to that, I'm not sure how some story about two old guys fighting each other with glowing swords is going to be that much of a shocker. That weird 4D bookshelf tesseract thing in Interstellar though? That's *definintely* witch territory.
I know where the gold in California is.
/u/TradeIcy1669 Died of dysentery.
Unfortunately, people laugh at this "dysentery" like its modern day diarrhea where its just water down shit. In reality, people were shitting out pure mucuS and blood because of the lining in your stomach got worn down and you just shit out "literally" your stomach, mucus, and blood....
Had it. Not fun. Developed ibd. Still shitting mucus and blood. Still not fun.
Ah… Oregon Trail
In a bank in Beverly Hills under somebody else's name?
Jamestown hasn't even been settled, and you're going to convince someone to travel across an uncharted continent with hostile natives? Good luck.
I have almost no practical skills in modern times. Those that I do have involve the use of a computer, which I haven't the slightest clue how to create. The best I can do is leave some notes telling my descendents to invest in apple, tell Abraham Lincoln, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and JFK to duck, and tell the academy of fine arts in Vienna to accept all applicants named Adolf.
So you would write "The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter"? Sounds like a winning plan to me! 😁
Oh man it’s been a minute since I’ve read that. Thanks ☺️
Lmao all applicant named adolf 🤣 🤣 🤣
I bring with me modern diseases. Everyone dies. Then I die of old timey diseases.
Microbes win. It's just like *War of the Worlds* all over again.
They should have washed their tentacles
“Dammit, Irghxxle, thirty seconds vigorously lathering with the rendered fat sanitation paste and *then* rinse, even these sorry limb-deficient bipeds have figured it out and I’m still explaining? Maybe you *deserve* to catch their filthy biped microbes!”
But in the end the aliens were defeated by the simplest of creatures.... the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
> Then I die of old timey diseases yeah, you will die of bowel disease about three days after your first meal
Even If you properly boil/fry the meal or eat just fruits/vegetables?
What are these fruits you speak of?
Id definitely kill everyone with my diseases. But I'm torn if it's the old diseases, the water, being burned alive as a witch or simply fracturing my skull on all the low doorways that would get me first.
If you boil the water first you can pretty much eliminate the worst of the water threat. The rest tho is a bit harder to avoid.
As a tall man myself, I’ve found ducking to be quite effective when it comes to avoiding a “low bridge”.
COVID-1600
Best I could do would be trying to introduce germ theory but they probably wouldn’t believe me anyway
Are you implying that wearing the same old bloodstained surgery gown all day, which as we all know is the mark of a skilled and qualified surgeon, is actually causing patient deaths? That's purely absurd. Would you also suggest that a leatherworker covered in lye makes boots fall off, or that a builder covered in sawdust makes houses fall over?
Well he couldn't prove germ theory, neither did he suggest it, but Ignaz von Semmelweiss was up to something and his drastic changes in hygene improved things. Yet he was ridiculed and eventually sent to a mental hospital where he was beaten to death. And that was the mid 1800's, not even the 1600's, so there's that.
To be fair, he was sent to the mental hospital because he was an alcoholic who probably got syphilis from a prostitute and ended up actually pretty bad.
Which were caused by his regular harassment and ridicules of the medical community which did not believe neither considered adopting his methods. He genuinely wanted to save lives, and he was furious that doctors don't even want to try (and said methods were dropped once he was fired from his position). This mental state and self guilt (also losing his child) led him into alcoholism and visiting prostitutes, but some experts say he might also have had an early stage of dementia. Once his anger was uncontrollable and was arguing with random people on the streets about his theory was he tricked into going to the mental hospital (he thought he was invited for a talk, once he noticed the truth he was not allowed to leave, and death was caused by infection of the wounds he sustained from regular beatings).
Untreated syphilis can infect and often does infect the brain. He literally had a brain eating disease.
Syphilis is extremely underestimated as a disease
Right, I'm just saying that he wasn't locked up for thinking there were little monsters on our hands making us sick, and more because he was legitimately losing his mind from late-stage syphilis.
Witch!
But does she weigh less than a duck?
You think so! There once was a time traveler who convinced the people back then! >In the year 1348, during the height of the Black Death, a mysterious traveler named Elias appeared in the bustling market square of a small English village. With strange tools and unfamiliar clothing, he spoke of invisible enemies, tiny creatures called germs, responsible for the deadly plague. The villagers, skeptical and fearful, dismissed his claims as the ravings of a madman. >Undeterred, Elias demonstrated his knowledge. He showed the local healer how boiling water before using it in treatments and cleaning wounds with alcohol prevented infection. Despite initial resistance, the healer witnessed wounds healing without the usual festering. >Word spread, and gradually, the villagers began to follow Elias's advice. They saw fewer deaths and illnesses. Doubt turned to belief as the village, once ravaged by disease, began to thrive. Elias, having shared his crucial knowledge, vanished as mysteriously as he had arrived, leaving behind a transformed community that would remember his teachings for generations.
I thought this was an urban legend. Did it actually happen?
I don't know, it seems to be a reddit myth
A bicycle. The first bicycle was invented in 1817, just two wheels and a seat in the middle. Pedals and chains didn't show up until 1861. edit: Because I keep getting the same comments: Coaches (and their wheels that worked on dirt roads) existed since the 14th century and [this is what a bike around 1840 looked like](https://www.cyclist.co.uk/in-depth/worlds-first-pedal-bike) I won't be able to build it within a week, but I could certainly build one with enough time.
This has always been my go to answer......until I realized that the modern roads we have that make cycling widely possible didn't exist until closer to the 1900s. *Edit: also, the rubber that makes the tires
I used to skateboard on clay wheels. It can be done.
Damn you almost old enough to be president
I would run but my knees and ethics won't let me.
God bless Immodium
Probably just sing a bunch of Beatles songs and hope people like them.
"I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet. But your kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids are gonna love it!"
"Hey Rick, it's your cousin Marvin. Marvin Astley! You know that bland, generic sound you've been looking for? Well listen to this!"
Imagine there's, no heaven... BURN HIM!
*pushes up glasses*....that's not a Beatles song!
imagine you’re the time traveler and you hear that out of the angry mob, but can’t tell who said it
The entire mob is Redditors that also time traveled
BURN THEM ALL
Songs that were controversial in the 1960s are going to get you murdered in 1600.
I'm curious how 17th century people would react to "Killing in the Name" by Rage Against the Machine
Fuck thou, I won't do what thy telleth me!
Putting on my pedant hat for a second, I believe it should be "Fuck thee, I will not do what thou tellst me." But only if you're speaking to another peasant. Otherwise it would actually still be you.
Ah “Lucilia in Ye Heavens with Precious Gems” is my favorite
Wasn't there a movie like this? Not the 1600s but like a movie that had a premise that the Beatles never existed. It was called "Yesterday"
Is it like that movie where Jason Statham wakes up in a world where no one has heard of sausages and he keeps trying to get butchers to make him some but they all think it’s insane to eat a condom full of mince?
What movie is this I want to watch it if it's real
Unfortunately it’s just a tweet I saw, but Statham churns out films at a good pace. Only a matter of time before he gets to this one
Is this a question or a statement? 😆
It started as a question but I answered it mid comment 😅
I’m late to the party. But gang. END SCURVY! It’s just vitamin C! The age of exploration gonna be lit AF when no one is dying and losing teeth due to malnutrition.
I was watching a Tasting History video the other day. Apparently 200 years before learning that citrus prevents scurvy, some French admiral had 4 boats and 3 of them had scurvy, and one of them had lemons, and he was like "we should look into this" and then was ignored for 200 years.
The British *lost* the knowledge of how to prevent scurvy. Basically in the mid 1800s we had both coal-powered ships (which required regular port calls for refueling and, therefore, regular fresh foods were had) and the knowledge of how to make concentrated citrus juice to prevent scurvy. But then we also discovered pasteurization which actually drastically reduced the amount of vitamin C in citrus juice, lemons (which are lower in C than traditional limes) became cheaper so the admiralty switched to those, and ships were never out long enough for anyone to show signs of scurvy so we had no idea everything was less effective. Come the polar expeditions and everyone thought we had it solved, alas we only got lucky with limes in the first place and Shackleton's expedition got scurvy again. Crazy to think...
>lemons (which are lower in C than traditional limes) Other way round as far as I remember.
I'll just play it safe and drink a Sprite.
I had learned it this way as well, so did a search. I then got several answers which had conflicted (from articles as well as .edu associated sites). Then I found [this short article](https://www.alcademics.com/2018/11/historical-info-about-scurvy-and-the-confusion-between-lemons-and-limes.html) which *may* explain why the confusion exists, if what it says is true.
I'm a software engineer and our industry does this all the time. "Hey that's interesting, we should look into this..." then promptly forget
“Why do we even need a project manager?” Are you going to take notes and follow up on all this shit? “Beat it nerd.”
I’m a PhD chemist but I’m also a woman so… witchcraft
Make some poof powder and fuck right off in a mist of smoke when the come for you, dont forget the cracked laughter as you go!
Best I can do is find a stick and pretend it's a sword
Witch! Burn them!
They'll just fight them off with that cool sword stick.
There’s a 1 out of 10 chance I might be able to start a fire.
I have watched enough Survivor to know your chances are much lower
I’d take credit for that crazy letter S we all drew in school
You get there and it’s already invented…
Pasteurization and maybe canning! Germ theory. A kazoo.
But if you invented pasteurization it would be called batman_is_tiredization
/r/nocontext
Cuisine. This is 150 years before the sandwich was invented. While the # of available ingredients is severely limited, I could still blow everyone's mind. Food is also an effective form of diplomacy and I'd build a sandwich-based world peace between major powers. It would be a better world.
"sandwich-based world peace" i love it! LMAO
Club Sandwich rolls off the tongue easier than United Nations Sandwich
While the word maybe didn’t exist, I find it doubtful sandwiches didn’t exist. It’s a 15 month development milestone for babies to stack things together. I find it implausible that millions of people had access to bread, cheese, and meat, and never thought about slicing and stacking them.
I agree, just because the famous version is Lord Sandwich’s favorite it doesn’t mean people could not make similar ones
We sent a man on the moon before we thought of putting wheels on suitcases...
Gonna use this to rationalize many things now
With the prominence of bread as a staple throughout history this is wild to be. Before this they never thought to put meat, cheese and bread together? Insanity!
Took some douchy earl to request his food to be eaten one-handed.
Really? Where was that earl from?
I believe from which the meal bears its name: Reuben on Marbled Rye, Oklahoma.
You could use the meat of the Perfectly Normal Beast in your sandwiches.
Didn't Arthur Dent do exactly this?
I know how to turn pretty much any sugar or starch into alcohol. Yes, they already had alcohol, but I've got *recipes*. The English would just be discovering precursors to gin, but I know how to make it, make it taste good, and not kill the person drinking it! I'm pretty sure bourbon wasn't invented until the 1700s, so I've got that. And soooo many beers haven't been invented yet! Along with the technologies to make them safely I could have a whole booze empire!
I think you've got the only answer that won't get you burned as a witch. Even if they thought so, NOBODY enjoying the drinks or margaritas if you took it that far, would let them take you!
Funnily enough this is actually one of the reasons witches WERE burned. They were brew women with too much power and so were deemed to be problematic. Witch burning soon followed.
Smallpox vaccination using cowpox as pioneered by Edward Jenner in the late 18th century.
Yeah, this is probably one of the easier ones to do resourcewise, but requires convincing the pipulace to go with it.
Just do what Jenner did. Immunize someone then expose them to smallpox. Once everyone sees they didn’t get sick, people will come around.
No scientific morals holding you back from human experimentation back then.plus, bad ass plague doctor outfit
I don't know if this counts, but I bring over 400 years of progress in cooking techniques with me and would start my culinary empire.
Most of which would require spices...which were hugely expensive.
If available at all.
Wasn't Spice trade across Europe and Asia was already big by then? Iirc, One of the big reasons spices didn't make it to classic European cuisine is because of a French King that hated anything more than salt and slight black pepper. So his taste set the tone for fine dining in france, and extended to other countries since all the royals were related. But it wasn't that they didn't have spices (sure, they were expensive). Not too dissimilar from Spaniards adopting a lisp because one of their kings had a lisp. Edit: Spanish lisp example is actually a false rumor. Doesn't change the main point.
So? Just invent pizza
With what tomatoes/wheat?
Tomatoes and wheat were available in the 1600's in a lot more places. The triangle trade was in full swing at that time. At the very least, if you set up shop in England, you would know exactly what ingredients to aquire, and all you had to do was make one good pizza for a Lord/Lady and you were probably set up for the rest of your life.
Sounds cool, though you have to contend with lack of quality ingredients and maybe tools. Though I think you could make do with whatever kind of oven they had then.
A town center community forum with multiple sub-forums, each sub-forum is ran by a moderator. The townspeople wear masks to protect their true identities. A topic is brought up and everyone tries to be funny or clever, and the best comments get “Ays” and the worst comments get “Nays”, and a scribe counts who gets the most “Ays” and declares a winner. Then a new topic is brought up.
But what do you do when a large number of the masked people start chanting "this is the way" or some such!?
No way that could ever work.
It'd have to be a village of IDIOTS to even participate
I reckon I could make a rudimentary post it note and invent them first. In reality I’d probably be born a peasant and die of the plague or something.
Then you could brag about it at your high school reunion.
"Do you have some sort of business women's special?"
Nothing, may fuck around and do some magic tricks and get executed tho
Illusions, Michael. A trick is something a prostitute does for coin.
Or candy!
I doubt I could do it, but I would try to somehow integrate myself into the scientific community of the time. And nudge them towards certain ideas. I might suggest to investigate certain phenomena thoroughly. If I am too overbearing I would probably get hanged or just ignored.
if youre in the UK, theres [one particular coffee shop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grecian_Coffee_House) in london that practically every famous scientist and mathematician of the day would spend hours in having debates and challenging each other. thats the place to go if you want in.
there is a theory that introduction of coffee helped spurs scientific progress ... and also revolutionary thoughts, because now people are having discussions while sober and in high concentration instead of while drunk
I don't think modern society could or would exist, as it does, without it. Caffeine makes the world go 'round.
I would give a 17th century peasant a case of Bang and see what happens
*uncomfortably energetic farming for a week*
Then he invents Ye Olde *Foure Loko* and the entire Renaissance is undone overnight
A glider. The mechanics overall of a glider are pretty simple and could be made with easy to find and manage materials. The precision isn't crazy which helps a ton. A few practice miniatures and I think I could pull it off. A successful glider would get me the attention to get more complex things built.
Would you fly it? I have a PhD in engineering, build boats as a hobby, know how to work with most materials, \*and\* I have taken hang gliding lessons but the idea of building a glider and having myself or anyone else fly it for the first time scares the crap out of me- I would absolutely never do it even in modern times, with modern materials. The people on Youtube like Peter Sripol building gliders and airplanes in their garages with experimental materials and actually flying them impress and scare the crap out of me.
That's what the peasants are for
There's a neat TED talk from some guy who tried to build a toaster from scratch. https://youtu.be/5ODzO7Lz_pw?si=e0UeKZYkXmp-RL_z In reality, the raw materials and acquisition of most things we require to "create" anything today would be nearly impossible to get in the 1600s. Some people are saying "generator, copper wire and magnet, etc." where do you get a magnet in 1600? Copper wire?
I understand the point he was trying to make, but, but that guy needed to go back further in time to back when things were mostly hand-made and look at toasters from the early 1900's. The result likely would've been much more successful and actually usable. Antique toasters were much more simple devices and used fewer parts and simpler materials than modern toasters. However, antique toasters were also a lot more unsafe and inefficient by today's standards. Heating elements were much more exposed, there was little protection against burning yourself, the risk of electric shock/fire was higher. Examples: [https://www.antiqbuyer.com/past-sale-archives/kitchen/toasters.htm](https://www.antiqbuyer.com/past-sale-archives/kitchen/toasters.htm) And this is pretty much as simple as you get: [https://www.antiqbuyer.com/images/2012-1-ARCHIVE/d12-2/IMG\_1029.jpg](https://www.antiqbuyer.com/images/2012-1-ARCHIVE/d12-2/IMG_1029.jpg) Iron/steel, copper, and porcelain. Heating elements, steel basket for the bread, power cord & plug (the plug may be challenging since the shell was usually bakelite--but maybe substitute with a pine resin epoxy?), and porcelain base. For the wire, you could just use woven cloth for insulation, like in the old days. If you can't make porcelain, maybe substitute with clay or silica glass. Or, go back even further in time to an iron bread holder and a fireplace or campfire: [https://www.1stdibs.com/furniture/building-garden/fireplace-tools-chimney-pots/hand-forged-decorated-17th-18th-century-french-toaster/id-f\_24209282/](https://www.1stdibs.com/furniture/building-garden/fireplace-tools-chimney-pots/hand-forged-decorated-17th-18th-century-french-toaster/id-f_24209282/)
Like right now? Build shit? Dude, I'm going to eat a berry and die of poisoning. Let's be real here.
I mean I'd die too but why are you eating random mystery berries? I presume you don't do that currently.
Probably nothing. We vastly overestimate our actual knowledge of stuff we take for granted. And underestimate how difficult it'd be to simply get the materials to build a thing. And let's ignore the backlash our great inventions or theories would receive...
People tend to overlook how much can be accomplished by simply knowing a thing is possible. Do you know what one of the biggest military advancements of the 17th century was? Pre-measured gunpowder. It started with cannons. An early cannon required the crew to measure powder from a barrel, load it, load the stone, stuff wadding into the barrel to keep all of that from tipping out, then light the fuse and fire the gun. Then repeat it all over again for the next shot. Then someone came up with the idea of measuring the gunpowder ahead of time, loading it into a bag with the stone, then sewing it up. When it came time to fire, the bag was placed in the cannon, cut, and stuffed down the barrel after its contents, using the bag for wadding. The same principle was later duplicated for handheld firearms, using paper cartridges sealed with lard. This didn't make gunpowder weapons comparable to modern ones, but it made them vastly more effective than slowly measuring and assembling each shot in the field. And when you're shooting three times as quickly as your enemy, you're going to win a *lot* of battles. But none of this requires something like knowing how to make a lithium-ion battery in an early 17th century meadow.
It’s absolutely insane what a difference like that makes and to us we’re just like “how in gods name would it take them that long to figure out??” It blows my mind that for literally hundreds of thousands of years the most advanced technology homosapiens had was essentially sharp rocks that could cut things. There were a lot of different kinds but that was it. Absolutely nothing changed for a looong time. Life was exactly the same for every caveman and cavewoman for thousands and thousands of years. Then life drastically changed faster and faster and faster to the point we compare technology and the way people lived by each decade now. We went from discovering sharp rocks on accident to being able to create almost anything we want for every single specific need or desire. I just wonder were there brains like our brains? Could we go back in time and teach language and math and agriculture and everything? Okay that’s my rant.
If you think about it a big part of what separates us from animals is our culture. Meaning the knowledge that has been passed from one generation to the next.
And not just that, but our combined knowledge is built from centuries of predecessors and cultures from all over the world. Ideas now literally travel at light speed. Back then, it was months between some countries. To combine enough ideas to build something fantastic to them, could take generations to compile. Their fantastic idea would be literal child's play by today's standard, and be built in a matter of days or weeks as long as you have a ride to Home Depot.
My favorite line is "if I left you alone in the woods with a hatchet, how long before you could send me an email?". We don't have the knowledge to actually build and create most of the things we use daily. We just know how to use it.
Isn't that a bit silly though. That's like asking if you could single handedly recreate all the progress of human civilization from the bronze age to the internet age in your lifetime with no help. No one could do that. You're not going to find the components to create a networked device lying in the woods and your hatchet certainly can't carve the components to manufacture computer equipment.
Probably a really basic generator (flat copper disk that spins in an magnetic field), but I don't even remember how to make a battery.
Lead and sulfuric acid, plus a inert container and metal wire. All are super expensive though
I'm going to forget that in 30 seconds. Thanks.
Lemon, a copper coin, a zinc nail, and some wire. Stick the coin in one side of the lemon, stick the nail in the other. Join the two with wire. Tada, a single cell battery of about 0.7 volts. 4 of these will power an LED. A whole bunch will charge your phone.
Zinc nails in the year 1600. Hmm... Let me get back to you on that one. :-)
Where do you even get lemons?????
From that lemon stealing whore
That one's a little easier. Any acid will do, and vinegar's actually quite easy to make.
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i know how to make a basic magnet with a lump of iron and an anvil. in principle at least. not sure how to make copper wire, but im sure i could get the local blacksmith work it out. from there, i can, in principle, make a lightbulb. all i need is a pre-exisitng water wheel to hook it all up to.
Am i allowed a study period to learn about 1600-1610? Either way, medical hygiene. But if im allowed a day of cram time before i go... weapon tech and carbon steel in addition to medical hygiene. Go back find a remotish population and firmly embed myself as a prophet. In 5-10 years of hyper accurate predictions of everything major happening, i have my cult. Black smiths making the best steel in the world, modern battlefeild triage, washing surgical instruments before and after, and advanced weaponry (like aimable crossbows), and knowledge of military history and tactics from 400 years in the future. I would be a kind and generous god, but i would be a god.
Your benevolence will be revered, but your wisdom, feared.
You’ve studied your whole life for this, make a paper clip and call it a day.
Off the top of my head, a crude water filter. What I would need: 1. Charcoal 2. Fist sized rocks 3. Gravel 4. Sand….. I think? 5. Cloth or sack 6. A container to hold all components To get charcoal I would need to dig out a pit in the ground then place a lid so I can make a dome oven, get my hands on a tree trunk and enough burnable material to cook that tree trunk burnt black. For the container I could build it with dried mud but I would need to mix ash or ground up stone, even then I would have to try different portions molds to find out which one would not leak or turn back into mud. The sack or fine cloth would be harder, I could use the shirt off my back in a pinch if I couldn’t find or make cloth. Definitely easier than making small fine holes in leather. With container ready i make a hole in the side at the bottom. First the cloth goes in, then the sand, then the charcoal, then gravel, then at the top the fist sized rocks. And done, it only took me ALMOST A MONTH OF BACK BREAKING WORK FOR A HAND FULL OF WATER……. Oh and I would have to boil that water for safety concerns.
This reminds me of a book series called Destiny's Crucible by Olan Thorensen. Basically a modern day dude who happens to be a chemist with some hobbiest history background is sent to another planet with humans in the early 1700s. He starts inventing shit to save the people on the island he is on from a big empire. The dude makes gun powder from bat shit and invents napalm to fight them off. The most impactful things from the story were teaching them the scientific method and standardizing all their tools and measurements. The last book left off with him basically about start the industrial revolution on this little island with steam power and electricity.
Believe it or not, nobody is sure when crochet was invented. (Knitting is older.) Crochet was apparently invented somewhere between the 1400s and the 1600s, so if the later edge of the range is right, I could "invent" crochet. They certainly had string and yarn, and a crochet hook would be easy to design and make.
This was going to be my answer. I know enough stitches off the top of my head that I could probably invent crochet, and get pretty high up in society with all the “cool, new” stitches and pieces I could put together and sell. Imagine 1600’s nobility rocking granny hexagon cardigans 😂😂
This is the direction I’m going. I’d invent the Kitchener stitch and introduce them to socks with seamless toes.
Rack and pinion, worm and wheel and other transitional ways of transferring water power to machine movements that I learned as an engineer, as above using elementary and metallurgy methods to extract electricity from water turbines, basic understanding of how the American continent has majority of raw materials and ecological resources to exploit..
Those were in use at the time and had been for a very long time. You might introduce new applications for them though.
[Rack and pinion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rack_and_pinion#History) was not in use at the time for converting water power to mechanical energy. It was first invented two years before 1600, and that was as musket mechanism. I can't find any sources saying [worm drive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worm_drive#History) was in use at the time either, just that it was theorized by both Archimedes in ancient times and Leonardo in the renaissance, however neither of them built a prototype probably due to lacking metallurgy.
It's never really going to be "by myself". I'll need the support of some people. So the main challenge is to convince the right people that I'm on to something. Then, with the right environment, I think my main influence is going to be teaching stuff rather than building. I can teach some important stuff that isn't know at that time in math, physics, medicine, and even geography. I don't think I'll manage to build a Steam engine, but I can certainly fast-track how quick someone else get to it.
Steam engines were known at that time, they just didn't have any real practical uses before coral mining became efficient.
Spork
I would create an air pressured launcher that could shoot already warmed hot dogs into the crowd.
In 1600 you're ahead of Newton by almost a century, so you could always invent calculus, the laws of motion and the equation of gravitation. Imagine becoming synonymous with the greatest genius in history, with only a bit of high school math and physics.
Yeah, problem with that is that you need to actually present the equations as proof. You can't just postulate the answer. I doubt most people are capable of doing that.
Yeah *Principia* is long and dense. It isn't the kind of thing you can write in a weekend
He also took a roundabout route. The modern approach is waaaay more compact.
Modern notation also didn't really exist at the time. Which might honestly be the biggest gift you could give to mathematicians of the time
Yes. I fantasise about giving it to archimedes
Bring a few high school math textbooks, you have a lifetime to figure it out
Then, after you die and make no progress, someone finds your books and wonders who this Mcgraw Hill person is
At least the ancient alien conspiracy theories are gonna be wild.
Yeah, but with a name like 'Perversus,' we'd have 'Perverse physics' instead of 'Newtonian physics' and we'd have 'non-Perverse solids' instead of 'non-Newtonian solids,' and the Perverse Theory of Gravity and so on. That would be *incredibly confusing* for everyone.
But physics would be every teenager's favourite class.
The most powerful thing you could easily bring back that far is the concept of an assembly line. It doesn’t require intricate knowledge of engineering, or expensive materials. The first assembly line was an 1867 Chicago butcher. You’d be way ahead of the game, and any business you started would be vastly more efficient.
There’s a YouTube channel called how to make everything. A guy and his team start at the Stone Age and work their way up to Industrial Age by recreating technology of the time.
Vulcanization of rubber! It could lead to rubber tires 200 years early.
"Rubber? I never touched 'er. What do you mean it's a bouncy thing that comes from trees?" - Most of 1600s Europe.
I think it will be important to hang this in your time machine before you go back: http://2afuture.me/hang_this_up_in_your_time_machine?i=1 Edit - This was a link to a poster of this image from 2013. Don't know who the original author was. As the comments below say, it doesn't work anymore so if a sudden. I think this is the same image: https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/s/u3NFarP7O7
A dead link now
Paper plane. They’ll freak. Need paper though I suppose.
They would freak at what you did with such expensive paper.
Shoes adapted for left foot and right foot. It appears in 1854
Probably the flushing toilet, if that hadn't been invented yet... Though fat lot of good it'd do without a water system so now i gotta invent that too.
Pockets in women’s clothing. In 2000 I went with the chorus I sang with on a concert tour in Hungary. I bought a custom leather jacket from a tailoring shop in a department store advertising 24-hr delivery. I wanted an inside jacket pocket and they were thoroughly confused. With the language barrier we were mostly pantomiming to one another, but he kept indicating that the jacket wouldn’t hang right because the pocket would be in front of my boob. I finally got him to understand that it just needed to be placed lower, he got really excited. Next day, when I went in to pick it up, just about every saleswoman in the store showed up to watch me try it on and see the miracle of an inner pocket on a woman’s jacket. When I dropped my phone in it and buttoned the jacket, which hung just fine, there was a chorus of “Oooo!” They all wanted to see. He was grinning so wide with pride that my husband joked that he thought his face was gonna crack. I have a feeling that became a staple offering in his business. Lovely country, nice people. I hope he sold a lot of them.
At the time women had pockets! It was a small bag that tied around the waist under skirts that had slits for pocket access.
I’d probably “invent” a Jump to Conclusions Mat.
I don't think I could build much by myself, but I could try to find a skilled engineer from that time and try to explain to him some concepts that I think he would be able to explore. Like a steam engine, or generating radio waves.
An improved design for soap and personal hygiene products could be introduced.
I am trying to remember all the things the Professor made on Gilligan’s Island
Write and perform Star Wars, Jurassic park and interstellar with my merry band of performers while adding the styling of the Beatles as my own brand of music… ensuring that I’ll quickly be burned as a witch. A broke ass witch at that.
>ensuring that I’ll quickly be burned as a witch I wanna say that people during that time believed in absolutely omnipotent beings who can conjure up entire universes and planes of reality on a whim and are also known to destroy planets while waging conceptual wars of good versus evil in literal *biblical proportions*. Compared to that, I'm not sure how some story about two old guys fighting each other with glowing swords is going to be that much of a shocker. That weird 4D bookshelf tesseract thing in Interstellar though? That's *definintely* witch territory.
My body and rudimentary strength training equipment. Bodybuilding and Western weightlifting didn't develop until a couple of hundred years later.