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Hey Pandas, If You Were To Introduce One Modern-Day Item To A Medieval Peasant, What Would It Be?
Exactly what it sounds like. Top voted answer gets to see this happen when time travel is invented.
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The pill or vasectomies to save so many women dying in childbirth.
The means to purify their water for drinking and cleaning.
In those tomes people drink beer and mead a lot, even children. The alcohol kills the bugs
Nothing. Being burned at the stake doesn't sound pleasant at all.
Antibiotics. Vaccines especially for childhood diseases, rabies vacation, tetanus shots, and tell them bathe on a regular basis, boil water and filter before using it.
I think I'd show them a shark tunnel, the kind in aquariums with the moving pathway. I feel like it could inspire all sorts of myths and monsters.
On the one hand, this is SO much less practical than most of the entries, but on the other hand, this is so much less practical than most of the entries. +1
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"See this? This is my BOOM STICK! The 12-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 $109.95. It's got a walnut stock, cobalt blue steel, and a hair trigger. That's right. Shop smart. Shop S-Mart. You got that!?"
Probably simple circuits. Or something like flashlights. Some of them would be amazed by hot water coming out of a tub
Bored Panda.
Let's be practical. How about a steel plow (with a few spare plow points) and a couple good horse collars? Maybe a few useful improved tools? (Wrenches for the plow, to replace worn points, hammers, saws, brace and bit - need to check and see when these things were originally introduced). And some useful seeds - corn, tomatoes, potatoes, etc.
Probably sewerage systems and heating water to kill germs. Maybe basic electricity generation. They had magnets, they had iron, they just never noticed that moving the magnet near the iron does something interesting.
This yes basic water that's clean and not contaminated with fecal matter and other germs would have made the biggest difference in life prior to like the 19th century
Boring but waterproof clothes, seen enough survivor type programs to know this would be my choice. So I could be dry and hungry rather than just hungry.
The cursed box of the cursed Troubadours. Aka as a Television.
Spices. A rarity back then. One could be very wealthy. What do you spend it on in the middle ages?
Goes to Aldi and buys 1 pound of them all and then sell them for a country!
Semolina wheat. The medieval society actually had a pretty good life expectancy (only 50 years, but that's double the global average of 500 years later). They had cultural checks and balances to prevent a population explosion. Even the black death was largely caused by a weather-induced famine. And that black death is what destroyed the cultural stasis that had been resulting in a standard of living that was far higher than the miserable standards that modern people blame on the medieval era, but which really got progressively worse throughout the "enlightenment."
Deodorant.
If they all ran around with the funk would this necessarily be a "gift"?
Refrigeration and safe food handling rules.
dental hygiene. a crazy amount of people died because they didn't have good dental hygiene, and if it was introduced sooner we would be better off.
Zippo lighter. They'd think it was some sort of sorcery
An alarm clock or a Nokia. The Nokia mostly because they would be like "witchcraft! burn this evil! stone it!" and Nokia would not be destroyed no matter what.lol
Actual footage of warrior trying to chop a nokia with an axe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qQlqRwFkSU
Naan bread.
Something that they'd be able to make.
In medieval times, what bread people ate signified which socioeconomic class they belonged to. Medieval peasants weren't able to afford white bread made with white flour, which required more labor and effort. Peasants would eat brown bread made with barley flour and rye, which costs more nowadays, ironically.
The germ theory of disease
¿A medieval peasant? Crop rotation without fallow would have been quite revolutionary.
They fallowed their fields as part of their crop rotation because they didn't have fertilizers.
Potatoes. The peasants were dependant on cereal crops, which were susceptible to bad weather, trampling by livestock, etc. When the potato was finally accepted after the Columbian exchange, peasants did not starve as often.
Medicines including antibiotics. I can't imagine having migraines daily (or even weekly) without the pain relief we have today, especially considering they did trepanning - having a hole drilled into my head without pain killers (probably not spelled correctly and I know they had poppy syrup which I assume is like opium.) I'm sure another bored panda can confirm or deny this 'fact'!
Smart. It’s trepanation if that helps! Also, they actually didn’t use opium/poppy for painkilling a lot until later. Before that it was just happy brain juice.
A book about agriculture.
They probably knew more about it than we do today... We are so out of sync with nature that it's killing all of us.
Toilet paper
Modern communications would change the course of battles, troop movements and warfare. It Would enhance business and commerce, and in turn, shipping efficiency. Communications among doctors during pandemics would improve medicinal response time. In other words, the speedy spread of significant inventions and ideas would have a huge impact.
Nothing. We don’t need to risk accidentally changing history and creating more problems in the future than we already have. I’d bring a notebook to record all the wisdom of ancient people.
I'd just give them poor people a hug, clothes, and a free-for-life ticket at the nearest place to eat y'all-- but if I had to choose, air conditioning.
A knight armor made out of titan. Same protection, but with a lighter material.
Humans are so much dumber than in your timeline.
Labor unions.
Chlorine pentafloride because its an extremely powerful incendiary agent
albert einstin
they would need to understand newtonian physics first to remotely understand what he was on about.
Ovens that beep when they are done heating up! I think it would be so annoying to have to stick your hand in the oven just so you could know if it was warm enough.
They substituted skill for gadgets. I've used a 17th century oven. It ain't that hard
I wanna drive a settler around in my muscle car. “Tis a horseless wagon that speeds like the wind!”
Probably get stuck to the axles in mud. Good roads came before the automobile.
They were probably rather content with what they had. Remember the Luddites and the industrial revolution? The majority of the houses where I come from are old weavers cottages. Weaving was the main occupation of most families and the mechanisation of looms, although such a technologically successful leap forward came at the expense of the people who relied on home weaving. Some hamlets disappeared because of families having to move to towns and cities for alternative ways of earning a living. If my ancestors hadn’t diversified I wouldn’t be here! They went on to create a joinery and funeral business instead. Similarly in France their Luddites were called saboteurs as they took to chucking their clogs (sabot) into the mechanisms.
Some of these ideas are downright silly. A metal plough yes, but things that call for electricity not, the pill would be appreciated perhaps, but ONE pill?
They were probably rather content with what they had. Remember the Luddites and the industrial revolution? The majority of the houses where I come from are old weavers cottages. Weaving was the main occupation of most families and the mechanisation of looms, although such a technologically successful leap forward came at the expense of the people who relied on home weaving. Some hamlets disappeared because of families having to move to towns and cities for alternative ways of earning a living. If my ancestors hadn’t diversified I wouldn’t be here! They went on to create a joinery and funeral business instead. Similarly in France their Luddites were called saboteurs as they took to chucking their clogs (sabot) into the mechanisms.
Some of these ideas are downright silly. A metal plough yes, but things that call for electricity not, the pill would be appreciated perhaps, but ONE pill?
