I’d give laser pointers to Neanderthals. Even if they did figure out some useful application for them (maybe hunting?) they’d run out of batteries eventually.
Furbies. Just to see if we end up with a furby based religion.
[Solar powered strobe lights.](https://www.amazon.com/Solar-Strobe-Warning-Light-Flashing
/dp/B08HLL8JQL)Sure the battery will fail after a few years but until then they will have something that won’t exist again for centuries.
I always thought it would be funny to take aluminum foil back in time to see the reaction. I mean, imagine if a time traveler showed you a roll of platinum that they use to bake cookies. That’s basically what aluminum was for almost all of history.
Nuclear bombs
Let’s give some ancient peoples a couple books on modern maths and calculus. Really fuck with the development of tech.
Fuck yeah, just give the ancient Greeks hindu-arabic numerals and watch them lose their minds. Teach Zeno calculus and watch him try to prove it wrong.
Pretty sure the greeks knew about the hindu number system, they were neighbours for centuries. They just thought zero was of the devil and geometry was better that algebra and never adopted it.
Antibiotics
Talk about butterfly effect lol. I wonder where we would be today if antibiotics were readily available before plagues became plagues.
Me, too. That’s why I wanna do it!
If we’re including eras where people are able to read and write, a history book. They will see their future and will attempt to change it, for better or for worse.
aluminum bars, they won’t be able to work it into things like with iron. even if they do, they can’t make more
Cool Ranch Doritos
Steam engines, clockwork and balloons. Hopefully they turn into a steampunk society.
A polaroid camera so they can steal each other’s soul
If it’s a civilization that hasn’t yet had a writing system, a writing system.
However, I will teach them a (semi-)featural alphabet, kinda like if the Hangeul jamo were its own alphabet. It’d be fun how long the orthography will diverge from the spoken sounds, and how fossilized the orthography can be–and more interestingly, how they might evolve the writing system.
If it’s a civilization that already is using a writing system, emojis that they can use alongside their writing system. It’d be interesting to see if they’d eventually turn into ideograms for human feelings and thoughts.
A cube of pure tungsten. So when they pick it up they cant believe how heavy it is.
Go to that greek dude who invented the steam engine and give him the idea to make a train
Humanity - civilised Greeks or not - didn’t have the metallurgical knowledge to be able to build locomotives and rails out of strong enough materials yet. Ancient Greece basically coincides with the Bronze age.
You’d have to not only bring (knowledge of) steam locomotive tech, but also every single bit of iron tech required to build one. You could skip the requirement for rails by opting for a steam traction engine, not a full locomotive, but those are far closer together in technological ability.
None of this factors in the propensity for steam boilers to explode, which you may or may not consider important.
There’s a reason we were still using beasts of burden (horses, oxen, etc.) for traction until the 19th century.
A copy of Windows Vista
