I know how to make rope, among other things, as an eagle scout, and I have some experience with atatl so, probably dying of fever at 14.
You don’t think they’d hang you with your own rope?
Dying.
I think excel would be good software for managing hunter rotations, supplies and stone inventory.
Excel, it wouldn’t be useful but I’d still be great at it.
Dying, mostly.
With or without my current knowledge?
Because I’m pretty sure I could smelt Iron with what I know, and a year or two of experimentation. So the answer would be “ending the stone age”.
Without? I dunno, maybe building traps and snares.
Been watching primitive technology huh?
It always bugs me how cavemen wheels aren’t ever depicted with a matching axle. That’s the hard and novel part! I’m glad this guy found an alternative for it.
With enough grease any old stick can be an axle for a while, the wheel is the hard part.
At the very least, novel applies. Lots of things roll, but what in nature has an axle? I’d also like to clarify that they probably didn’t use stone in real life, because that would be dumb. I suppose if we’re insisting it’s monolithic stone that’s true just because of the raw time it would take. And oh boy, they better be careful not to crack it.
If you have a proper axle, you have a lathe and turning a solid wheel for a cart shouldn’t be too hard. Failing that, or failing the idea to try turning, it has to be freehand, but plenty of people could do that (more so than today, probably, since every moment we spend in a classroom or office is a moment they would be working with their hands).
If it has to be a wheel that’s strong and light like for a chariot, it gets harder and you’ll need actual wheelwright skills, but just a cart should be able to run an a solid wheel. If you’re going for a chariot you probably want a reasonably well-fit axle as well, although my knowledge of chariot driving is too limited to be super sure.
I would argue axels came first, and the wheel is a derivative. See the likely methods accepted by (non ancient alien) archeologists for paleolithic to bronze age wonders made from stone; they used logs on the ground as rollers, essentially an axel, it wouldn’t take much of a leap to carve out the majority of those logs to lighten the load, creating a fixed wheel axel, which just needs a semipermanent but smooth rolling attach point to a vehicle or tool to be even more useful.
When I say axle (that is the correct spelling for this, according to a quick search, FYI), I mean it has a stationary bearing in which it turns. So what you’re calling a “semipermanent but smooth rolling attached point”. A roller is a completely different simple machine with no sliding surfaces.
sucking dick
While I believe you, dear nutsack, take a minute and think about the whole process of sucking dick before showers were a thing.
Recreational drug use can be traced to before written history. Bartering also existed then. I’d be a drug dealer.
Fun fact: Barter only seems to occur in human societies when a. markets were previously established b. those markets collapse. Check out David Graber’s ‘Debt: first 5000 yrs’ for more info. Most societies are debt based- as in people just do things for each other but keep basic accounts in there heads. Eg. You paid for dinner out last month, i’ll pay this month(doesn’t really matter how much was spent, the exactness isn’t very important) Or, my grandma makes the coolest knit socks, I’m gonna ask her to make some for me and then shes gonna have me do some yard work when i visit later.
You reckon the stuff back then was potent enough that people would buy it?
No no, it was freely given.
Dying
I came here to write Dying, but 7 other people had already done that.
Yeah I typed my comment then scrolled and realized I’m extremely unoriginal:)
Cavemen would have just rolled their eyes when people died back then. Like, pffft, everybody does that.
Just by knowing how to wash my hands, medicine. Up until 20th century.
Wash the wound with soapy water, apply cloth that has been boiled. Yeah that should have a better survival rate than most of human history.
Soap is animal fat and what in a survival situation?
Leach wood ashes with water to make lye. Soap is easy
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What if there’s no leech wood?
Either making elaborate traps and contraptions out of sticks and stones.
Or brain surgery.
You’d be the shaman putting holes into heads to cure headaches
Hey, maybe you’ll be the most successful neolithic brain surgeon and only kill half your patients
Oh! I’m actually somewhat decent with some useful things. I got sent to a wilderness school for fuck up kids when I was a teen. So I know how to, and have applied a lot of survival stuff.
I know how to effectively make a somewhat permanent shelter. I can make and use a bow drill to make fire, and along the same principal but with much more effort and time I could make fire with hand drill or fire plough techniques. I know how to make basic traps. I can make cordage, and have very, very very basic tracking skills. I know some edible and toxic plants in my area (not exhaustive by any means). I know how to clean and dress game. There’s a lot of other stuff, but those popped into my head immediately.
It’s been a long time since I’ve done all this, but the knowledge and know-how is all there. I’d actually be a decent person to have around!
That’s a pretty excellent school to go to, hell I wish I had that level of training
Honestly if I had my current level of knowledge, probably hygene. Teach them to make soap (animal fat and a source of base like ash), wash their hands, keep poop away from potable water sources, stuff like that.
Remember, it literally took until Victorian times to figure out that washing your hands prevents disease.
Also, math. Teach them how to do basic arithmetic, how to use a unit of measurement to figure out how big something is, stuff we’d learn in elementary school but weren’t rigorously developed until the Ancient Greek age.
Soap is super important, as for math - I’m guessing it’s going to need to be geometry based before they can grok irrational numbers, or hell, symbolic notation in general
Storytelling & oral sex.
But not simultaneously.
Once upon a slurp slurp slurp
