You would still have the same age, gender, personality, skin color, etc. and you would be able to speak at least one local language and would know basic information of the era and place. Your family, social standing, and such would be randomly picked.
You didn’t specify the calendar used 🤓, so I’ll go to the year 1401 in the hijri calendar (1980 in the gregorian calendar)
Why not 1949 in the hijri calendar???
If you’re going back to before technology got good anyway, might as well always travel to ancient greece (preferably Athens, as they’re a bit less violent).
preferably Athens, as they’re a bit less violent
Athens were involved in more conflicts than any other Greek city. If you want just peace in ancient Greece you should choose, paradoxically, Sparta (though as usual it depends on the class you would be born, but the same can be said of any place and time in history).
Sparta has much worse problems than war. Not to mention, even today some “spartans” don’t consider themselves to be greek. It’d be like going to an icecream shop and buying a single cookie.
Sparta has much worse problems than war.
Shitty ultraconservative social structure and mass serfdom but looking at their history they usually ended up worse after even victorious war - due to their shitty social structure rather than war itself. Though it still took them over a century and something along 5 lost wars in a row to end up in the dustbin of history.
even today some “spartans” don’t consider themselves to be greek
Today Sparta is a small town mostly unrelated to the ancient one except rough location, it was depopulated for centuries and refounded by king Otto in 1834. So it sounds weird they don’t consider themselves Greeks, why would they since they literally are. Anyway they don’t have much to do with ancient Spartans since ancient Sparta has been totally razed and its population sold into slavery by Visigoths, and later Slavs raided the area multiple times in VI and VII century, causing remaining population to flee.
The location, geography and placement is randomly picked?
Then like the other guy said December 31, 1949 11:59 pm
To be born before this time randomly anywhere in the world means that there is a high chance you’d be dropped into an impoverished hell hole with nothing, no chance and no help … God help you if you are female.
I have a whole rant on this topic, but the short version:
It’s dentists.
The gnarliest mountain man, who hunts bears with his bear hands, can be brought to his knees with a toothache. The toothache never sleeps, can’t be fought, and always eventually wins. Even basic dentistry is life saving - even another human with a pair of pliers and some moonshine - but I’d much rather have novocaine.
Dental problems a hundred years ago were not as problematic as we think. I’m Indigenous Canadian and my parents were born and raised in the bush and judging from family photos I’ve seen from a hundred years ago … most people had decent teeth. I have photos of my grandmothers parents who must have been in the 60s or 70s and they all had full teeth, probably not the best but they had obvious white teeth.
Cavities and tooth problems are a modern problem from wealth … we eat too much starch and sugar and generally just eat way too much of everything. Before the modern era, up to about the mid 1800s, the average person ate about five pounds of refined sugar a year - today the average person consumes about 100 lbs of sugar a year. … and those are the averages! Back a hundred years ago, you were wealthy if you could get sugar … most people just couldn’t afford to eat it … most people couldn’t afford to eat! And they ate more simple diets and less often.
The biggest fear I have about going back to the past is just getting a flesh wound, a hang nail or a scratch that could fester into an infection and either take a limb or kill me.
Dental problems aren’t about them looking good; teeth used to kill. Dental disease used to be the 5th leading cause of death. Your great-grandparents aren’t the best bar for dentistry in the past as modern dentistry began in the 18th century.
