What would you do in the year 1000AD?

[Will]

I wanted to ask for survival tips in case I am unexpectedly transported to a random location in Europe (say for instance current France/Benelux/Germany) in the year 1000 AD (plus or minus 200 years). I assume that such transportation would leave me with what I am wearing, what I know, and nothing else. Any advice would help.

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/margi ... l-bac.html

I read this question a few days ago and I've been pondering it quite a bit. Could I change history? Should I change history? Would I even be able to locate other people? Would I be burned as a heretic for washing? Would I bring back a simple flu and be the Typhoid Mary of the 1000s?

What do you think could happen and how do you think you'd respond to this odd turn of events?

[Asmodean]

I would get my hands on a giant German zwei-hander sword, learn how to use it and become a sell-sword. Maybe make a glorious end for myself breaking a cavalry charge somewhere :-D

[Will]

I would get my hands on a giant German zwei-hander sword, learn how to use it and become a sell-sword. Maybe make a glorious end for myself breaking a cavalry charge somewhere :-D

Middle German is a very interesting language. While I fancy myself useful with modern German, I'm not sure how well I'd do learning Middle German.

[Lexxvs]

Let’s play the game.
As you mentioned, and instant exchange of diseases will occur, you giving them those evolved in the last thousand years, you acquiring the still lively ones from that time. Neither you nor them are prepared for the consequences. Ask the old native Americans when they encountered the Europeans (even though for geographical reasons the Europeans were well off prepared for diseases than the Americans).
Suppose for the sake of the story that you survive and  so do most of them. ¿Do you have the real, sounding, profound, step by step, right to the earth knowledge to really gives them new practical things? I mean, we all “think” we know a lot of stuff, but we don’t at the base of it.  We â€"if we are lucky or studied enough- know a substantial deal of a part. Maybe you are really a genius that content enormous amount of information, then you could really change things. If the fortune is with you. And know, you telling them that the earth is round will not lighten them at all. Au contraire.
Remember that people there lived without the essentials â€"no clean water, no sanitation at all, no antibiotics, no nothing- when you instead have been treated with medicine all your life, even for not life threatening things. For those people having lice was as normal as breathing. Having all the teeth was a strange luxury after the youth. So, you also have to live on those environmental conditions even if you were rich, thing that we know you will not be.
You will not understand not be able to express in their languages. Unless you are a studious guy of the ancient languages, and even if you were, you could not know for a fact the real pronunciation. So you will be for a long time trying to jabber something in order to survive, and no, no one cares if you die and you rot in the middle of a muddy street. If you became too eager to make your marvelous points out, you will be treated as the mad man who speak a language no one knows and who is unaware of all the proper customs of the Christians of that period, local superstitions included.
Your knowledge about the pattern of sciences could be excellent but utterly heretics. You could not express anything remotely blasphemous without covering it up with a pious cape of religion. And then, to whom are you going to tell? The most prepared people of the time were in fact religious people, as the monks. So, or you marry to religion  and disguise yourself as a for God’s blessed intelligent guy, or you just shut the mouth up. We are assuming here that your intelligence is something that exceed the average guy. The problem is all of us tend to think the same thing. And guess what.
Suppose you have took advantage of your brilliant XXI century brain â€"so to speak- and you create a “crazy” sect of people that convenes with your ideas â€"that could not be atheistic cause it would be too much to ask for such people-, are you ready to die and send to die that people in the most brutal and pitiless way because you think you are so special? I mean, you could became a military genius and prevail, but are you? Do you have the basic knowledge of that period arsenal or the practical improvements needed to make a step by step advantage? You could try, but remember that your life span will be way too shorter than what you would have in the present times. And by the way, you would have to be magnetic with your personality and voice and very convincing in order to make other people to follow you, it doesn’t matter how wise you are if you can’t make them fall for you.
Suppose you think you could court the powerful people â€"the nobles, the church- with some kind of wonders, witch one do you know? Have you got any -easy and effective and not suspicious of witchcraft- medicine you could be famed for? If so, you could get closer to those in power. But those in the power could kill you because you made a reverential mistake or just fearful of your abilities. Or those close to the power could kill you just out of jealousy.
Not only that, you could discover that many people claims to know much more than you do, and many people sell and propel the use of “medicines” some of them utterly ridiculous but completely embedded on their culture. Can you change that overnight? (Overnight is your short life). Suppose for a fact that you can, just related on sanitation. Your story will mingle with hundred of miraculous stories that dwell in such magic times, remember that people were illiterates and unable to distinguish between practical success and pure God (or devil) influence on everybody’s fate.
This list can continue, but the point is, unless you are an encyclopedia into a strong and disease proof body that also can learn extremely fast and have the tact, charisma, patience, personality and sagacity to mingle and stand out for good, it would be very hard that you could change things as they were. Historically speaking that is. Ok, you can tell me you could kill a king to change history or something, but guess what, that also was very frequent stuff so you would have to make the queue to gain a name. Lol.
Nice to play this game with you!

[Asmodean]

I would get my hands on a giant German zwei-hander sword, learn how to use it and become a sell-sword. Maybe make a glorious end for myself breaking a cavalry charge somewhere :-D

Middle German is a very interesting language. While I fancy myself useful with modern German, I'm not sure how well I'd do learning Middle German.

Yeah... I see the problem, but I'm quick when it comes to learning languages. Not quite so quick in learning swords. But since I'm a pretty useless farmer (I can, but I hate doing it all - from planting things to milking things) and no more than a half-hearted craftsman, mercenarism would likely quickly become my only option.

[Will]

Lexx jumped in feet first.

So what would I do? If the placement of drop-off is truly random, there's no way you're going to be anywhere near people. At the very, very most there were 30 million people in Europe around 1000AD. That's about equivalent to Montana. This would present good news so far as avoiding spreading your own diseases. Pragmatism dictates solitude in order to maintain the low risk of exposing 21st century disease.

First, I'd need to cover basic necessities: shelter, food, clean water, safety. This means a lot of activity on the first day. I'd need to create a makeshift shelter as quickly as possible, locate dry tinder, and make sure that these are on higher ground, near a water source. If I'm very fortunate, I can locate a clean stream that's fed from a clean source.

Second, I'd need to locate easy food, which generally means insects. I'm not partial to eating insects, but hunger is the best spice and I'd hopefully learn quickly. Most insects have protein, which I would need to stay alive. Of course eventually, I'll be needing protein, fats, and carbohydrates, along with a variety of vitamins and minerals. One cannot live on grubs. I'd probably need to hunt, considering I'm not familiar with what berries and such are or are not poisonous. Veggies and fruits possible available would vary greatly depending on where I was dropped off, so I'd have to play that by ear. I happen to be a decent fisherman, though I do have to wonder how difficult spear-hunting would be in comparison to fly fishing. Assuming I'm very lucky, I can catch a few fish, gut them, pike them, and cook them over a fire.

Third, I'd need to create a permanent residence. I'd need to locate reasonably high ground with a decent foundation near fresh water. Then it's time to dig. Using flat rocks, I'm thinking maybe a 15'x15' square, maybe 2' down. With the dirt excavated, I would create a barrier around the hole, and pack it down well. After this, it's time to start developing tools. Let's be honest, the average person can't forge an axe, so I'd need to make stone axes. This will take time. I'd need to locate stones made up of strong enough material to actually chop wood, which probably means a dense volcanic or igneous rock like basalt, diorite, granite, or quartzite. Good news: I'm in Europe. One of the reasons Europe was able to move ahead of many other areas where humans developed was the easy access to mine-able materials. But really, most of this will be trial and error.

While this is going on, hunting and planting need to be going on. One would need to try and establish a garden as soon as possible so one wouldn't have to rely on foraging indefinitely. I'd ideally like to have nuts, berries, and vegetables... but I'll take what I can get.

The construction would have to be simple. I'd plant 4 large logs in each corner as deep as possible and pack them down with rocks and soil. Then I'd lay down logs horizontally between each of the 4 supports with soil in between each. It would be best for me to try and locate a loam high in clay in order to make sure that the logs were secure and in order to keep me separated from the elements.

Sitting here thinking about it, the only way to make a roof would be tons of sapling poles woven across with tree bark sown in like shingles. I'd have to do a lot of layers of this, which would likely take months. I remember reading about native American longhouse construction when I was in grammar school, and that's basically how they did it.

Heating would be interesting. I'd clearly have to build a fireplace of some kind, which means a lot of rocks and some more of that clay loam. As I think of it, there's usually plenty of clay near streams, so I might catch a break there. I happen to have experience building stone walls from when I did landscaping (which I could also use to water my crops, hmm...), so I am relatively confident that I could construct a decent fireplace. I'd definitely have the chimney pointing in the opposite direction of my wood house and kindling roof.

If I am extremely lucky, I'll live a few decades.

[Lexxvs]

Willravel you could run with advantage over most of us mainly urban people.
Even though â€"and this is not mean to be harsh, just a funny anecdote- all what you recounted reminded me about a “survival man” that has his own reality show on T.V.. I don’t remember his name, but yes, this guy was the sly guy and he was tough. So tough and wise. So tough and “You know I lived with the Indians at the U.S.A. stuff”. “And I know how to make a bow and an arrow out of nothing” tale.  He was supposed to survive  just one week into the Amazon forest.  Imagine, the Amazon, wow, food falling from everywhere, just toss a stone and you will kill some animal to eat. Sort of. Well. Thing is â€"I can’t avoid laughing everytime I remember it- that he could catch not even a rat. He could not fish not even a piranha. Well, I’m lying, he ate eagerly a couple of dirty and squalid bugs and a single rare fruit that happened to be there by chance. At any step, day after day he was like “you know, now I’m gonna  do this magic Indian trick and I gonna get plenty of this stuff, because of this and because of that. Rain pouring from the sky like a deluge. Nothing. He was ate alive by bugs he didn’t even know how to name. He acquired a infectious fungus disease on one foot. Hurtful and getting worse day after day (wet climate is horrible for that). So, to resume, this extremely “I know everything to survive and I will teach you” guy, ended up scared as a poor creature â€"to add humiliation to his ordeal a jaguar was roaring from the dark around and was not familiar neither afraid of humans- hungry, with diarrhea, and with a foot disease that could have ended up â€"under real situation- with a gangrene or even death. He had to go for help where the TV backup team was, a couple of miles away, camping with the local Indians.
The Indians of the Amazon â€"just remind that the Amazon is one of the richest ecological zones in the world- know the ropes on how to survive, how to take shelter, how to hunt and fish, etcetera. And they know it after generations and generations of cultural learning. This “I know and I will teach you guy” didn’t. And he wasn’t doing the show because he was a kind of mythomaniac, he didn’t fall there out of the blue.  
So guess what Willravel, I think you could do a great job, I don’t doubt it. And I would be lucky if I were with you to help me out in such a fantastic situation.  But sooner or later I think you could need humans to tell you how to improve your life. Or kill you for being such a strange intruder.
But even so, one of the question was “Could you change the history of that age”. And I think you responded that.
If it happened to me â€"Ok, time travel is not possible, lets concede- I think I would do much worse than you, that’s no doubt. Necessity is the mother of heresy, so no matter how much I had promised myself not to contact the locals, I suppose I would end up taking the risk. So, -at the end of the day- it’s a parallel universe â€"has to be- , then this are not my  great great grandparents. Lol. By the way, I think I could â€"luckily- live for a couple of years, :eek:

[curiosityandthecat]

Man, it's like Les Stroud got a show on the History Channel in here!  

[Lexxvs]

That's the guy! Les Stroud. I've seen him on the -now went awry- Discovery Channel. So he was a musician too. Now I understand  why in the middle of the Amazon he tried to soothe himself with a -I think makeshift- flute. Lol. I thought "this guy must have seen Kung Fu the series when he was a kid".

[OldGit]

Middle German is a very interesting language. While I fancy myself useful with modern German, I'm not sure how well I'd do learning Middle German.

Here's a little verse I made up in Middle High German many years ago:

Ich saz uf der toilette mere danne ein jar
Papier ich da enhette, ezn was niht papier da.
Owe, mir ist diu hose vol
Ich enweiz, wie ich si wischen sol.

Load of crap, really.

[myleviathan]

I would totally attend a pilgrimage to the Holy Land with the first crusaders in 1095.

I would also just drink my way through Christiandom, tasting early monastic beers.

[Asmodean]

Another idea... Hows about finding a remote society, starting up a new religion, training the buggers in sneaky warfare and waging a holy war on Christendom?

Maybe even get a chance to kill your own great^x-grandpa before he met your great^x grandma and find out just what the grandpa paradox is all about  

[Will]

Another idea... Hows about finding a remote society, starting up a new religion, training the buggers in sneaky warfare and waging a holy war on Christendom?

Like Muhammad?

[Asmodean]

Another idea... Hows about finding a remote society, starting up a new religion, training the buggers in sneaky warfare and waging a holy war on Christendom?

Like Muhammad?

Yes. Somewhat.  Although my holy war would probably succeed.  

[Will]

Yes. Somewhat.  Although my holy war would probably succeed.  

OH SNAP. Take that, Muhammad.