I think Internet Historian had a real good take on this.

depends on how far back in the past you're going, and which region as well

Spicy.

Even further I think. If you show medieval people say a combustion engine, they'd be blown away by it, but recognize parts of it. "Oh thats a pulley, and thats oil, and thats a flywheel, those are gears."

The Romans built aqueducts without calculus, and the Chinese made gunpowder without understanding the periodic table. Our ancestors weren't stupid; they just didn't possess the centuries of hard-earned knowledge we take for granted now.

>i think they would recognize that it's technology >show picture of africans, people who don't even know how to open a water bottle i agree with him but that was the wrong example to pick

Our ancestors weren't retarded and a lot of those "medieval ppl would be shocked seeing this" are moronic but I definitely think a lot of people from back in the day would think modern technology is magic because I have heard stories from my great grandma about this kinda shit

Explaining glasses bicycles steam Engines and hand washing would do all that

When you think about it, it's really fucking weird how late in history the bike was invented. Though I think we should bring back the dandy horse to replace mobility scooters at walmart.

@banvinluvifugay I think the main bottleneck was paved roads. Basic bikes are impractical without them until you add rubber tires, shocks, etc.

@CptMuchoTexto Leather wheels and invent springs

@CptMuchoTexto Springs large enough for that function were invented after the bicycle.

@CptMuchoTexto I can make them

There's a Russian scifi anthology with one short called "a locomotive for the tsar" that illustrates this point by using an example of a time traveller going back to tsar Ivan the terrible, who demands him to build him a steam locomotive, which he can't, so he's executed.

That one meme where a guy has a bag of doritos and he starts crying when he sees the entire milky way with zero light pollution, and the medieval serf is pretending to like the chips

I think the most revolutionary bit of knowledge you could bring to the past would be knowledge of germ theory. Just knowing about the existence of germs revolutionized so much medicine. They had soap, bam, building blocks for basic cleanliness. Just good luck convincing anyone.

The medieval people would ask me to do something relevant to their time like tie some kind of knot or something and then call me retarded lol

tribal blacks DEFINITELY do not look at an iPad and say "yeah this is just a sophisticated technology". they literally think the White man is a god for having mastered the skies with his White man magic; they didn't even invent the fucking wheel.

When my country opened up and send ambassador to the us in 1880s our ambassador were amazed at trains and elevators. Despite not knowing how they were moving every one of them knew it was not magic.

Mechanical clock towers are nearly a thousand years old, and any medieval peasant who's seen the inside of one could then see an engine and figure out that large parts of it operate on similar principles and by similar methods, so it's clearly not ALL magic.

The whole electricity thing feels like a midwit argument because of course you wouldn't try to create electricity in Rome because electricity requires infrastructure and materials too advanced to replicate. But you know how a gun works, what rifling is, and the physics behind it

That's usually why isekai fiction with trope about introducing specific expertise to medieval civilization usually involves someone who has knowledge of said expertise instead of the average human. Because people in the past were capable of rational thinking.

Goated movie car

I think they could recognize the familiarity of the tool, but the operation of it is magic. Even if you can explain it, it might as well be magic to them because of the degrees of separation between their comprehension and the tech. Familiarity of form, magic of operation.

We call the ancients dumbassess for thinking the sun goes around the Earth, but there's about 3 people who know how to prove them wrong with the technology they had at the time.

Everyone overestimates medieval intelligence lmao, believe it or not yes they truly believed in actual magic. Natives thought cameras stole souls, Appalachian people who first saw technology thought it was witchcraft. The peasant would be amazed and horrified by an iPad lmao.

Here’s my favorite part: I do know how to make electricity. Manufacturing the parts needed to make, and utilize electricity is the hard part

Didn’t internet historian plagiarize an entire video

You can probably explain calculus to them and germ theory if you want flex

I can explain those things. Incan explain most of the shit we can do today, I understand it. Instill think it's fucking magic. Like the US is trying to create a plane that goes faster than sound (hypersonic is their goal, because they're fucking mad) without making a sonic boom, or at least making one that's quiet enough to he used over civilian population centers. They're doingnthisnby creating a machine that has an aerodynamic profile small enough, with a low enough friction value, that it doesn't really disturb the air.

They probably would think a phone is an extremely advanced book of sorts. However, if you bring 100 drones with you and enact a laser lightshow in the sky, that would probably make them think of magic.

I liked how Dr. Stone did this. The tribals aren't dumb they can keep up. Even if they call is sorcery or smth they mean it like its a skill you can learn and figure out.

The stuff you find advanced they’d get and the stuff you don’t think about (refrigerator, clean drinking water, air conditioning, meat availability) they’d be blown away by

I've seen African tribals try to wrap their minds around Fanta bottles, so I will have to disagree.

Idk, I've seen that video where they gave some tribals mirrors and they were going crazy.

If there is only one piece of tech id learn inside and out to bring to the past, it be air conditioning. Would speed up society so fast.

I feel like it would depend on the purpose and thing its used for, a jackhammer or gun would be more obviously recognized than a cellphone would be as the force those two act on is evident, the phone though they wouldn't even understand why it was invented which is a stopgap

I remember on the rt podcast they'd do a bit where they'd try to *explain* how technology works to a hypothetical medieval person

I mean, people forget to say they would think you a Wacky Foreigner cause they wouldn't understand a word you say lolol