I agree with 1 and 2 to some extent, but still hold to my original opinions about ease of world takeover.
History has a few precedents for this; in particular, the conquistadors were precedents for what can happen when a few people from a more technologically advanced civilization find themselves alone inside a gigantic but technologically less advanced civilization. Some anecdotes: Cortez gave instructions to his native allies for how to make better spears, and they were able to produce lots of them in time for the final battles. Cortez brought with him a shipbuilder named Martin Lopez. Lopez knew enough about shipbuilding that under his direction the natives of Tlaxcala were able to construct a fleet of ships on Lake Texcoco, with which to assault Tenochtitlan. To be fair, he did have a supply of the most important components, cannibalized from the ships they had used to get to Mexico. But still. Ships are much more complicated than bicycles, and manufacturing them isn’t as simple as bolting bits of wood together either. They also built a trebuchet during the siege (though embarrassingly they screwed up the first shot, launching the stone straight up into the air and down on themselves!). They also built a mobile fortress thing (a wooden tank?) earlier to escape the city, IIRC. They also made their own gunpowder from local materials. There are probably other things too that I’m forgetting.
Here are some more thoughts:
--I think probably not everyone could do this; having the right skills and preparation would be important. I think the whole “connecticut yankee in king arthur’s court” thing is plausible, but only for the right sort of connecticut yankee, who prepared well beforehand!
--Like I said, I think the farther you go back in history, the harder it would be. However, this is not primarily for the reason you mention (that to get up to 21st century tech, you’d need to gradually work your way up through many iterations of gradually more advanced artefacts and production methods.) It’s entirely true that you’d need to gradually work your way up like that; however, you don’t need to go nearly as far as the 21st century in order to take over the world. All you need to do is go slightly farther than the local tech level, and then you can take over the local region, and then you can use that region’s military to take over as much of the world as can be reached using whatever technology is available at the time. (Assuming you have the political and social acumen, of course—like I said, you need to be a particular sort of person with particular skills.) The primary reason it would be harder to take over the world the farther back you go is that, given the lower tech level, it would be harder to reach the whole world in time. (If we loosen the time constraints, and give you say 200 years to take over the whole world, then maybe you could do it even in the Stone Age. But if instead you were sent back to 1700, you’d only need 20 years or so, maybe less. And by you I don’t mean you, or me, but rather someone from our time with the right skills.
--I agree that a single person sent back in time would have a lot more difficulty than Cortez did. Having a few hundred men + their equipment is a big deal; it’s two order of magnitude better than just yourself. Since you need to scale up to the whole world, you need to cross, like, eight orders of magnitude, and starting with 2 already means you are a quarter of the way there. Less abstractly, a single person would have significantly less knowledge, less equipment, and less credibility/impressiveness, while being much more vulnerable, than a group of a few hundred.
--I agree that lots (most?) knowledge is lost over time, rather than stored somewhere. We still don’t know how they made Damascus steel or Greek fire, etc. However, for taking over the world you don’t need to know everything, just some things—enough to give you an advantage. Moroever, as Habryka said, it’s in general much easier to rediscover something than to discover it. If you already know something is possible, you are 90% of the way there. Then if you remember what it looked like and roughly how it worked, that’s 99%. (And again, this doesn’t need to be true for everything, only for some things.)
We have a very good idea about this, now. It is a kind of crucible steel, called wootz. The key detail was the presence of certain impurities in the steel. If memory serves, in the American recreation effort they used glass from a bottle and leaves, and the impurity of interest was molybdenum. The current explanation for the failure of the technique to transmit is that the iron mines which contained the necessary impurities ran dry; this stopped the shipment of the necessary iron ingots, and the technique failed to achieve the desired results on purer steels and so was abandoned.
Lot of knowledge is obviously required. If your aim is 21st century technology, I doubt anyone can learn enough stuff. If your goal is 19 century technology, and a rough draft of the road to follow too 21 century it is easier. I’m sure I could do that, with the exception of chemistry where I certainly lack a lot of basic knowledge (and chemistry include metallurgy so this is huge).
2. I think on the contrary that the longer you go back in time, the easier it gets (up to a point, established metallurgy is I think a necessary starting point). The reason is that the skill and knowledge gap between you and the rest of the world is smaller in more recent period. If you went back to 1700, chances are Louis XIV or someone like him would hear about you and find a way to copy some of your “inventions”.
3. This has a second consequence : you want a period that is stable enough that you get a bit of slack at the beginning—you need time to get rich somehow—and already has a functioning society. You don’t want to risk getting stabbed two weeks after your arrival. You also want a geographical area that has the right natural resources—iron and coal are a must, good agricultural land and ocean access too.
Your early strategy should be to become friend with the local king. In fact, I doubt you can succeed without political power at your side. Fortunately you also have in mind a few way you can help a king to stabilize his power so you only need a strong centralised kingdom or empire to start in, with a good monarch that can help you get started. Good choices include August, Charlemagne, probably a handful of Abbasid caliphs, Ottoman sultans and Chinese emperors. I’d go with Charlemagne because 1) inheritance rule is way better than during the Roman empire (you’d just need to stop him from dividing the empire between his sons), 2) France has enough coal and iron to get you started, good agriculture and good harbours and 3) being at the Western end of Europe is a huge advantage when you will want to “discover” America. Actually screw that, the best places to start are 14th century Venice and 17th century Japan.
Becoming friend with a great leader has two big advantages : 1) you get a kick start in money, military power and infrastructure and 2) you get a charismatic guy to do the dirty political job that you are unable to do due to being a nerdy geek, so you can concentrate on what you do best (being a nerdy geek).
I agree with 1 and 2 to some extent, but still hold to my original opinions about ease of world takeover.
History has a few precedents for this; in particular, the conquistadors were precedents for what can happen when a few people from a more technologically advanced civilization find themselves alone inside a gigantic but technologically less advanced civilization. Some anecdotes: Cortez gave instructions to his native allies for how to make better spears, and they were able to produce lots of them in time for the final battles. Cortez brought with him a shipbuilder named Martin Lopez. Lopez knew enough about shipbuilding that under his direction the natives of Tlaxcala were able to construct a fleet of ships on Lake Texcoco, with which to assault Tenochtitlan. To be fair, he did have a supply of the most important components, cannibalized from the ships they had used to get to Mexico. But still. Ships are much more complicated than bicycles, and manufacturing them isn’t as simple as bolting bits of wood together either. They also built a trebuchet during the siege (though embarrassingly they screwed up the first shot, launching the stone straight up into the air and down on themselves!). They also built a mobile fortress thing (a wooden tank?) earlier to escape the city, IIRC. They also made their own gunpowder from local materials. There are probably other things too that I’m forgetting.
Here are some more thoughts:
--I think probably not everyone could do this; having the right skills and preparation would be important. I think the whole “connecticut yankee in king arthur’s court” thing is plausible, but only for the right sort of connecticut yankee, who prepared well beforehand!
--Like I said, I think the farther you go back in history, the harder it would be. However, this is not primarily for the reason you mention (that to get up to 21st century tech, you’d need to gradually work your way up through many iterations of gradually more advanced artefacts and production methods.) It’s entirely true that you’d need to gradually work your way up like that; however, you don’t need to go nearly as far as the 21st century in order to take over the world. All you need to do is go slightly farther than the local tech level, and then you can take over the local region, and then you can use that region’s military to take over as much of the world as can be reached using whatever technology is available at the time. (Assuming you have the political and social acumen, of course—like I said, you need to be a particular sort of person with particular skills.) The primary reason it would be harder to take over the world the farther back you go is that, given the lower tech level, it would be harder to reach the whole world in time. (If we loosen the time constraints, and give you say 200 years to take over the whole world, then maybe you could do it even in the Stone Age. But if instead you were sent back to 1700, you’d only need 20 years or so, maybe less. And by you I don’t mean you, or me, but rather someone from our time with the right skills.
--I agree that a single person sent back in time would have a lot more difficulty than Cortez did. Having a few hundred men + their equipment is a big deal; it’s two order of magnitude better than just yourself. Since you need to scale up to the whole world, you need to cross, like, eight orders of magnitude, and starting with 2 already means you are a quarter of the way there. Less abstractly, a single person would have significantly less knowledge, less equipment, and less credibility/impressiveness, while being much more vulnerable, than a group of a few hundred.
--I agree that lots (most?) knowledge is lost over time, rather than stored somewhere. We still don’t know how they made Damascus steel or Greek fire, etc. However, for taking over the world you don’t need to know everything, just some things—enough to give you an advantage. Moroever, as Habryka said, it’s in general much easier to rediscover something than to discover it. If you already know something is possible, you are 90% of the way there. Then if you remember what it looked like and roughly how it worked, that’s 99%. (And again, this doesn’t need to be true for everything, only for some things.)
We have a very good idea about this, now. It is a kind of crucible steel, called wootz. The key detail was the presence of certain impurities in the steel. If memory serves, in the American recreation effort they used glass from a bottle and leaves, and the impurity of interest was molybdenum. The current explanation for the failure of the technique to transmit is that the iron mines which contained the necessary impurities ran dry; this stopped the shipment of the necessary iron ingots, and the technique failed to achieve the desired results on purer steels and so was abandoned.
Oh cool! OK, shoulda chosen a different example ;)
Isn’t it? The larger point stands; just spreading the cool around.
Lot of knowledge is obviously required. If your aim is 21st century technology, I doubt anyone can learn enough stuff. If your goal is 19 century technology, and a rough draft of the road to follow too 21 century it is easier.
I’m sure I could do that, with the exception of chemistry where I certainly lack a lot of basic knowledge (and chemistry include metallurgy so this is huge).
2. I think on the contrary that the longer you go back in time, the easier it gets (up to a point, established metallurgy is I think a necessary starting point). The reason is that the skill and knowledge gap between you and the rest of the world is smaller in more recent period. If you went back to 1700, chances are Louis XIV or someone like him would hear about you and find a way to copy some of your “inventions”.
3. This has a second consequence : you want a period that is stable enough that you get a bit of slack at the beginning—you need time to get rich somehow—and already has a functioning society. You don’t want to risk getting stabbed two weeks after your arrival.
You also want a geographical area that has the right natural resources—iron and coal are a must, good agricultural land and ocean access too.
Your early strategy should be to become friend with the local king. In fact, I doubt you can succeed without political power at your side. Fortunately you also have in mind a few way you can help a king to stabilize his power so you only need a strong centralised kingdom or empire to start in, with a good monarch that can help you get started.
Good choices include August, Charlemagne, probably a handful of Abbasid caliphs, Ottoman sultans and Chinese emperors.
I’d go with Charlemagne because 1) inheritance rule is way better than during the Roman empire (you’d just need to stop him from dividing the empire between his sons), 2) France has enough coal and iron to get you started, good agriculture and good harbours and 3) being at the Western end of Europe is a huge advantage when you will want to “discover” America.
Actually screw that, the best places to start are 14th century Venice and 17th century Japan.
Becoming friend with a great leader has two big advantages : 1) you get a kick start in money, military power and infrastructure and 2) you get a charismatic guy to do the dirty political job that you are unable to do due to being a nerdy geek, so you can concentrate on what you do best (being a nerdy geek).