1000 plus or minus 200 years covers a huge range. 1000 was just about the fulcrum of the medieval period: life in 800 would have been a complete disaster, whereas life in 1200 was in some places a mini-Renaissance.
If you really got dropped at a random place, it would probably be grazing land or forest, especially in 800.
You'd have to find the nearest tiny village and convince them you weren't dangerous. The stuff you had on you would seem miraculously fine, so could be valuable in trade if it wasn't stolen from you first. But the best way to extract value from your stuff would be to give it as a gift to some powerful protector; money wouldn't be any use unless you could protect yourself against robbers. So it would be all about finding a powerful protector.
In 800 you'd want to find the most enlightened bishop nearby, present yourself as a traveller from some obscure pocket of Nestorian Christians in the far east (drop hints about Prester John), and get work helping to administer his estates. This wouldn't work everywhere, though: a lot of Europe was still pagan in 800. If you landed in the north or the east, you'd have to try to find some enlightened local warlord instead. Hard to say what use you could be to him, though; probably your only hope would be that he'd keep you around as an adornment to his court.
In 1200 you might still want to find a bishop, but if there was a town nearby (especially a great one like Florence or Venice) you could also find work in a bank or for one of the great wool merchants.
Generally: Be compulsively clean, and keep your opinions to yourself.
I think your ideas about this period are similar to ideas that the chinese people have about the U.S - many think that the U.S is overrun by gangsters and terrorists and lots of other dangers.
Why is that? Because people only write about the drama.
If you actually travel to any existing country where there are small villages, you will see that strangers are always treated with great friendliness and respect. If someone walks in to break the monotony of your cow herding, your instinctive reaction will not be to kill him.
It's the same with robbery - there are a lot of stories about robbery, but in reality, human societies don't function when people steal a lot. It's not true now anywhere, and I doubt it was true back then. So robbery will likely not be a problem.
(Remember also, those who wrote history where those who rode in fine carriages, and such people likely thought a lot more about robbery than the common guy)
Warlords in the north did not have an information apparatus - you could live for a while before they would become aware of you, and even then the interest shown in you would probably be more benign than not.
Cleanliness is something you really would not be able to maintain. Imagine the process:
1. Wake up
2. Get a bucket
3. Walk a kilometer to the next well
4. Walk back holding 10 kilograms of water
5. Bath yourself with this freezing water (be careful not to catch pneumonia)
6. Somehow either invent soap or buy some expensive soap
7. Do the same, but for your clothes
8. Avoid being too close to any children or anybody who is in any way grubby, because they will instantly void your work
9. Be considered wierd for doing this everyday
Cleanliness is not that easy in a cold climate, and it's not that neccessary compared to a warm climate.
There are a lot of stories about robbery, but in reality, human societies don't function when people steal a lot.
By present standards, society didn't function in most of medieval Europe, especially in 800. That's why the flourishing trade of the Roman era was replaced by subsistence farming. Banditry had replaced pax Romana.
The rich didn't ride in carriages in the period we're talking about. The roads were too bad. Carriages didn't come into widespread use till centuries later.
This discussion is going of the deep end, but... are you sure?
Pax Romana had little to do with common muggery.
The Eastern Holy Roman empire, a.k.a Byzantine was still doing OK.
And for that matter the barbaric peoples at it's border, like the ones I am descendant from were as the above poster described, mostly peaceful and friendly.
Soap = fatty acid + lye. How can anyone not know this? Run water through wood ash, boil a bit to concentrate, then mix with any accessible oil. Use eye protection at all times for those trying his at home.
I don't think it would ever have occurred to me to try to turn ash into something I could clean myself with (given that jumping into coal is a quick way to get dirty). Should I find myself in the middle ages, I hope to remember your comment...
You could not die, which would be pretty valuable.
But come to think of it, you could also make tons of money. An ordinary educated person today knows way more about medicine than medieval doctors did. So your optimal career goal should probably be to become a court physician. You could become as rich as minor nobility doing this, and (most importantly) without having to take sides in power struggles.
SaS = Soaps and Sterilization. Hmmm, interesting, but seems like you'd have to violate your second rule ("no opinions"). Maybe if you could manage to out live most other folks into your late thirties and forties (steering clear of all sorts of bugs - water, food, and transmission-based) the marketing would be your very aliveness. People would have to solicit your counsel rather than you having to actively sell it.
Why would firewood be difficult to find? I could be wrong, but I don't think the European deforestation had set in yet, at that time. Is the wood in most European forests not of sufficient quality?
Depends where you were. In feudalized, agricultural bits of Europe, everything did, at least nominally. But especially in 800 there would have been large expanses of uncultivated and mostly depopulated forest.
There might be reasons for doing it other than making money. For instance, (1) making life more pleasant for yourself and (2) saving a whole lot of lives.
Perish the thought that anyone might think either of those more important than making money, of course...
I would introduce the horse collar. It existed in Europe as early as the 10th century but was not widespread until around 1200. It enabled horses to pull plows and was much more efficient. In order to use my much increased grain production, I would introduce distillation and whiskey. Ah the riches.
"Alright you Primitive Screwheads, listen up! You see this? This... is my boomstick! The twelve-gauge double-barreled Remington. S-Mart's top of the line. You can find this in the sporting goods department. That's right, this sweet baby was made in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Retails for about a hundred and nine, ninety five. It's got a walnut stock, cobalt blue steel, and a hair trigger. That's right. Shop smart. Shop S-Mart. You got that?"
Prediction is impossible, we all know that. What
we don't know is that retrodiction is also impossible.
History is a form of science fiction. The future is
history that hasn't happened yet. History is the
sensibility of one time, assessing another time, that it
cannot possibly know.
How to make gunpowder, from Wikipedia. Warning, gross.
"Historically, nitre-beds were prepared by mixing manure with either mortar or wood ashes, common earth and organic materials such as straw to give porosity to a compost pile typically 1.5 meters high by 2 meters wide by 5 metres long.[3] The heap was usually under a cover from the rain, kept moist with urine, turned often to accelerate the decomposition and leached with water after approximately one year. The liquid containing various nitrates was then converted with wood ashes to potassium nitrates, crystallized and refined for use in gunpowder.
Urine has also been used in the manufacture of saltpeter for gunpowder. In this process, stale urine placed in a container of straw hay is allowed to sour for many months, after which water is used to wash the resulting chemical salts from the straw. The process is completed by filtering the liquid through wood ashes and air-drying in the sun. Saltpeter crystals can then be collected and added to brimstone and charcoal to create black powder.[4][5][6][7][8]"
"Government officials had the power to scrape up dried urine from beneath the boarded floors of Stuart stables because it contained saltpetre, a vital ingredient of gunpowder."
Be humble, mute, and helpful. If you know latin, work on learning the current dialect/script -- you'll have a shot at declaring yourself a "wise man from the east" and go for the job of physician. I would be careful with the Prester John references, your mileage may vary. As one commenter pointed out, you should be able to make aspirin from willow bark and penicillin from mold. These two alone, plus hygiene, should make you a miracle-worker. Be prepared to saw a lot of limbs off. You could also be the first to use opiates in medicine, which could alleviate a lot of suffering in that time.
After 1100 or so, the crusades are well under way. Most of the nobles will be coming and going to the various crusades. They started in the Levant and ended up being next door as crusades were eventually preached against heretics. As physician, try to attach to the church -- they're on the ascent. Perhaps with some luck you can get noticed by the pope and end up with a (relatively) cushy job in Rome.
Don't do the man-at-arms thing. You'll suck at it. Don't try for any kind of social revolution -- people were pretty tolerant during that time, but by 1200 the church was getting very sensitive about outliers. You don't want to show up on their radar. Stay away from southern France -- the Cathars were nice folks but trouble is on the way for them.
If I had the choice of picking a city (besides the Rome-physician thing), I'd go for Genova, Pisa, or Venice. Great cities with fast growth and more of an open culture. They made out like bandits transporting nobles and supplies during the crusades.
As to the "man-at-arms thing": if you could bring with you to the past a suitcase or so of initial supplies, what would be the best investment in the long term to become a unopposable warlord (or just an arms dealer with a technological monopoly?) Just "a bunch of guns" wouldn't help once you had given them away, and even specifications wouldn't help because no one could engineer to the required tolerances at the time. I'd think the best investment would be body armor, walkee-talkie radios, and surveillance equipment, personally.
The big question is how to stop worrying about the need to personally fetch water and make clothes, and how to start worrying about implementing your overall plans. That is, how to get enough production going where you wouldn't be screwed when the solar cells powering your electronics (you didn't seriously consider bringing batteries, did you?) wear out.
My basic plan would be: Convince a small village I'm God and chose them to build my kingdom, improve their farming and sanitation enough to produce some labor surpluses, and then work my way up the tech tree.
The basic sketch of that would involve fireworks, a single assault rifle, and a low-power device storing lots of specifications.
If I wanted to fight (or assist) in a limited war, I'd go for a solar-powered backpack, night-vision goggles and radios (x5), water purification, gold (for money), antibiotics, and a taser.
The trick, as a sibling commenter pointed out, is that you could easily spend 99% of your time getting water, finding food, learning to communicate, etc. You have to find a way to move beyond that point -- and that's a non-trivial barrier.
there are a few series that cover that area.(not exact mind you, but close enough)
First you have the Assati Shards series(1632, 1633, 1634)...basically a town in Virginia get transferred to Germany in 1632.
And then you have the Conrad the Engineer series, where you have a guy transported to 13th century Poland, just before the Mongol invasion.
But chances are, no matter where you wind up...you'll be dead within a week. Why? Simple...language barrier. You won't be able to understand a thing....even if you wind up in the most civilized English speaking country. So you'll probably wind up getting burned as a demon who is speaking in tongues
For example...this is what Beowulf's first few lines look like in original english.
Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,
Modern hebrew is somewhat different, but understandable to those that speak biblical hebrew. But I think in those days they did not speak it, but rather spoke aramaic.
Arabic's a good bet because the Qu'ran is still written in the original Mediaeval Arabic and people learn it in order to read it in its original form. The accent might have changed over time but Arabic's going to be good for any time in the last 1300 years.
Modern Standard Arabic (The generalized approximation of what college-educated people speak nowadays) is fairly different from Koranic Arabic, but it'd still probably be at least somewhat mutually intelligible, so you could pass as being from some other part of the Arab world I suppose.
Spain would've probably been the best possible place to land during the Ummayad/Abbasid Caliphates (before about 1085 or so), but it was a very rough place afterward (the Almoravid/Almohad Caliphates were not known for tolerance, and the reconquest was even worse)
Modern Icelandic is very close to medieval Icelandic as spoken by the Vikings. Apparently, manuscripts of the sagas can be read and interpreted by an Icelandic speaker with no special training, just as you or I could read an original printing of one of Shakespeare's plays.
Strangely, it appears that, on the basis of one year of college Spanish combined with lots of practice from being the closest thing to a bilingual person at a job I had, I would be better off in Spain than England.
There's a comparison of El Cid in Old Spanish and modern Spanish at wikipedia (see link below), and they don't appear to be very different. Spain was not conquered by non-Spanish speaking foreigners between 1000 and now, so it's not surprising that the language has changed less than English.
Teeth. I would show off my teeth as a start to my entrepreneurial apothecary business. Our average dental hygiene is way way better than what they had then, and consequently our teeth look like divine pearls in comparison. Hopefully, their amazement will allow a perceived transference of my expertise to other medicinal areas.
Also, knowing more math might help me make coinage with some simple engraved code that needs to be combined with the name of the bearer in order to be verified (only feasible for inter-medieval banks). This would be impetus for trade across greater distances.
Funny, I've been daydreaming a lot recently about scenarios such as this. At first I thought it might be a sign of mental illness, but everyone had so much fun thinking up answers I'm pretty sure it's everyone else that is crazy :)
Pray that I'll be transported to the Middle East, where it is warmer, and where the arabs of the time were vastly more enlightened and tolerant than most of Europe. They might keep me alive long enough for me to learn Arabic and learn to blend in..
Backpack full of seeds. Potatoes, corn, etc etc. The agriculture of that time was pretty much non-existent. You'd get something like 20x the output from your seeds.
Most modern crops have been bred or genetically engineered so that they physically cannot survive on their own. They need petrochemical fertilizers to grow, pesticides to fend off insects & fungi & disease, mechanized tilling to penetrate the ground, and artificial supports so they can stand up and avoid keeling over.
In my sustainable agriculture course, I read that modern grain varieties put 60% of their photosynthesized energy into growing the fruit (the edible portion of the grain). Wild varieties put more like 3% into the fruit. There's your 20x difference in yield. But it comes at the expense of every other survival mechanism of the plant: modern grain varieties yield so much grain because they don't have working systems for anything, be it support, storm resistance, disease resistance, or general hardiness. They give us food because we supply them with a good amount of fossil-fuel derived work.
Thanks for the insight. It's interesting why the external work supplied to the plants still costs less than growing plants that can do these things itself. I suppose chemistry and mechanization in agriculture are just much more efficient than their biological counterparts.
Using externally supplied fossil-fuel is kind of cheating. The energy still comes from photosynthesis, but the energy that was created over eons is used in (geological) moments.
It's somehow similar venture capital. It's a resource produced in older times that allows you to get temporary advantage compared to somebody that uses just in-time generated resources.
Almost certainly not more efficient, but growing plants can't use oil directly, and since we can supply enormous amounts of external energy by the standards of a crop plant, engineering them to be able to use it more effectively is useful even if the plant itself is less efficient overall.
Almost any sort of mechanical or chemical process is more efficient than plants. Photosynthesis is only 3% efficient; by the time the energy enters the plant, you've lost 97% of it. Then you figure various biological pathways, and you're down to maybe 1-2% efficiency for the best plants.
This, among other reasons, is why grain ethanol was such a scam.
The worst mechanical processes, by contrast, usually get at least 10-15% efficiency. That's what photovoltaics can do, for example. Gasoline engines have a thermal efficiency of about 30%, diesel about 45%. Granted, you lose energy in the extraction/refining/transportation steps, but it's still an order of magnitude more efficient than photosynthesis.
The primary [photosynthetic] reactions have close to 100% quantum efficiency (i.e., one quantum of light leads to one electron transfer); and under most ideal conditions, the overall energy efficiency can reach 35%. Due to losses at all steps in biochemistry, one has been able to get only about 1 to 2% energy efficiency in most crop plants. Sugarcane is an exception as it can have almost 8% efficiency.
Not sure if energy is important part of the equation. Protection from diseases and weather doesn't seem to require energy, it's about chemistry and structure.
Given the millions of backyard gardeners who produce yields beyond what the most productive mechanized farms of the early 20th century were capable of this claim is demonstably false. Contrary to the BS you are apparently swallowing with little skepticism from this class, modern varieties are not completely dependent upon heavy loads of fertilizer, etc. What makes them different is that when provided these addditional resources they will thrive and produce a large yield instead of shutting down and they can toldate being overcrowded (as well as having the structure to support the he's ier yield).
Not only was the agriculture of the time primitive, but you could bring new-world plants and make a mint... Potatoes are one of the most calorie-rich crops on a per-acre basis and a modern sugar beet or super sweet corn variety would be very popular. If tobacco was not such a diificult plant to cultvate you could make a fortune from just a pocketfull of seeds and a couple of growing seasons :)
This machine was not invented yet at the time, but could have been made by any decent medieval carpenter. I could probably do it with an axe and a saw. It would have been quite valuable at the time, and could make you rich if you played your cards right.
Of course, that doesn't help solve the problem of immediate survival in a world where you don't speak anybody's language...
I'd grab my Wagner's Chemical Technology 1872, a Pocket Ref, a hatchet, my wristwatch (automatic movement, no batteries), my Leatherman, every knife in my kitchen and the entire contents of my medicine cabinet (asprin, alcohol, gauze, etc). That ought to fit in a large backpack. Maybe some nylon rope if I could dig it up fast enough.
Yes this is all stuff in my house at the moment.
If I had more time I'd buy a 9mm revolver, load up a Kindle with reference books from demonoid and start working out.
Pack a latin version of the graduale and as much church music as I could cram in a bag. If the bag wasn't coming with me I'd read up on the survivalist websites. Making a compass, that sort of thing.
The thing I'd be most worried about is dental hygiene. How do you look after yourself if you don't have a toothbrush and floss? I suppose there'd be less white sugar, which would help. What food you could get would taste bland and generally be awful.
I suppose it would be like an extended camping trip.
First I'd go to the local book store and buy as many survival guides as I can get my hands on.
Then I'd buy some high quality tools - knives, leathermans, nail clippers, matches, first aid kits, etc..... Many of these would be priceless for that era.
I'd try to buy a small waterproof tent. Maybe a sleeping bag if it's not too large to carry. If not a sleeping bag, at least pack some warm water-resistant clothes.
If there's time I'd print out some Wikipedia articles about agriculture techniques, subsistence farming, natural medicines and fertilizers. Maybe find some information about edible insects and plants. Basically anything that helps you survive in the beginning.
Fascinating to think about. I did some fencing in college, and some archery and horseback riding when I was younger. I think I'd try to survive and move over land until I got to a coastal trading city, and then convince the nearest Lord that I was shipwrecked from a distant, mystical land and try to enter into military or guard service. Then catch up on the local language and customs, do what I can to get land or a title, then try to figure out what modern process improvements I could invent to build a lot of wealth. If I was in a rigid caste system type place, I'd definitely recruit potential great men from non-aristocratic classes and get them working for me. Depending on which invention path I went down, take over in terms of commerce of have myself a mini-revolution displacing the aristocracy and becoming ruler and protector of the land. It probably wouldn't be a party, but it wouldn't be so bad either.
If you're interested in this highly unlikely scenario, I highly recommend the Dies the Fire books by S.M. Stirling. I actually got a good education in feudal economics and have a much better appreciation for the concept of food as wealth.
"... how many people living in the US know how to make gunpowder from scratch? Given enough time, I guess I could build a ... How would you survive if suddenly transported back to 1000 AD? ..."
Well I'd hope I'd be pushed forward a few hundred years into the late 12'th - early 13th century and dropped into Western Europe. The UK or France.
Why late 12th/early 13th century France or UK?
Well for one thing the "Hundred Years' War" is just starting and it probably is the most turbulent time in UK/French history and with this comes warfare and opportunity. It turns out this period of history is where the linage of the French House of Capet was broken and King of England (John - Henry III) had gone from owning more land than the King of France to loosing almost the lot.
The consequences of these new weapons meant
that the nobility was no longer the deciding
factor in battle; peasants armed with longbows
or firearms could gain access to the power,
rewards, and prestige once reserved only for
knights who bore arms.
But these were heady days for the English this is the time of the Longbow ( and by the way the 2 fingered salute favoured by those of English descent and a token to their weapons superiority ), the introduction of the cannon and the end of the era of chivalry, the introduction of Modern army, the introduction of the Magna Carta some 50-100 years prior, centralised government that had the authority to raise taxes & armies. So in terms of making your mark this was the era.
The first problem you'd have is language. I'd either have to bring a book (latin) or wing it on my language skills but where to learn latin? Anything but a classical education makes me stand out as an uneducated heathen. As for a job if you are fit enough you could either join up as a foot soldier but a more lucrative path might be to hack the warfare technology of the time and work on improving them. One problem at the time was training enough archers to use the longbow efficiently. It took a lot of training from an early age - all English boys from the age of 12 years had to train to use the longbow & all men from the ages of 15-60 carried such weapons.
Let's flip this around a bit. Who would have a better chance of survival, one of us transported back to the Middle Ages, or a person in the Middle Ages transported to 2009?
I'd say we have a better shot at living a longer period of time (over a year) since we could take basic precautions against disease and germs. The Middle Ages guy/gal would probably die of our modern germs within a few days (similar to the Indians when they met European explorers).
As I recall, most of the Native deaths were from smallpox, measles, typhoid, diphtheria, and the bubonic plague. Not exactly common diseases these days.
I don't think that the Middle Ages person would do too badly, though we would definitely do better as we have MMR and other mandatory vaccinations.
"I'm skeptical of this approach...how many people living in the US know how to make gunpowder from scratch?"
What did this guy do for fun in high school? Saltpeter, charcoal, sulfur in a 75-15-10 ratio.
Saltpeter + sugar in a 6-4 mix and then caramelized is more fun though. It would also aid your getaway when the angry knights came to hunt the heretic who just invented gunpowder.
The most obvious and easy thing I can think of is Penicillin.
If you can somehow identify which moldy bread is it, that with the basic knowledge of human health any modern person should have, will make a great healer.
This is a time when people were still sealing wounds with boiling oil.
So yes, even if you have no formal first aid training you can be a great healer.
Would it be much worse than traveling to a 3rd world country today, though? Granted, typically travelers get some vaccination, but overall, not that many (mostly Hepatitis?).
Yaws and Smallpox, just to name two, are practically extinct today. You will have NO immunity.
Rubella, mumps, chicken pox, lockjaw etc were all common diseases then. Today, we vaccinate against them, even in the third world. You, like all adults, have probably relied on herd immunity to compensate for your fading resistance.
Intestinal disease was common in this era. It's very rare today. You would suffer from it for the same reason that modern tourists suffer in the third world. Tourists, soldiers, and aid workers grin and bear it in comfortable quarters with plenty of clean water. You would be bearing it... elsewhere.
Disease might not take you out, but it would certainly be more of a problem for you than for the natives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_of_the_12th_century
If you really got dropped at a random place, it would probably be grazing land or forest, especially in 800. You'd have to find the nearest tiny village and convince them you weren't dangerous. The stuff you had on you would seem miraculously fine, so could be valuable in trade if it wasn't stolen from you first. But the best way to extract value from your stuff would be to give it as a gift to some powerful protector; money wouldn't be any use unless you could protect yourself against robbers. So it would be all about finding a powerful protector.
In 800 you'd want to find the most enlightened bishop nearby, present yourself as a traveller from some obscure pocket of Nestorian Christians in the far east (drop hints about Prester John), and get work helping to administer his estates. This wouldn't work everywhere, though: a lot of Europe was still pagan in 800. If you landed in the north or the east, you'd have to try to find some enlightened local warlord instead. Hard to say what use you could be to him, though; probably your only hope would be that he'd keep you around as an adornment to his court.
In 1200 you might still want to find a bishop, but if there was a town nearby (especially a great one like Florence or Venice) you could also find work in a bank or for one of the great wool merchants.
Generally: Be compulsively clean, and keep your opinions to yourself.