If youβre looking for the biggest change in our timeline for the littlest work Iβd give a hindu-arabic numerals to early Greek mathematicians. Watching those guys try to wrap their heads around zero, that would fuck Pythagoras.
this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2025
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Asklemmy
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I'd just give a LGM-118A Peacekeeper MIRV to the Aztecs and say nothing more. I wonder if they would eventually manage to do something with it.
One of those 3D printed non-round gear toys. They could immediately appreciate both the impressive technology that went into designing and manufacturing it, and that it has no use whatsoever. Which would be a trip.
A monolith
That still trips up some people today. That metal monolith that was propped up in the desert a year or two ago comes to mind.
A screw
I'd give Masada machine guns.
I would take a portable CD player, place a CD with Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up on it playing backwards, hook up solar panels, remove the ability to shut it on/off, and set it up a circuit that will:
- As the device solar charges, keep it off until some voltage threshold is exceeded
- Once the voltage is high enough, start a random timer (8 - 100 hours), so that it is not immediately obvious that the sun activated the device
- When the timer ends, turn the music on on repeat mode
- Sometimes turn the music off at random, and then turn it on again at random after a long delay, so that in some cases you can have turn 'ON' events without the device being exposed to the sun
- When the voltage drops below a low threshold, turn the device off until it is charged again
A Roman dodecahedron, it fucks with modern people as well.
Ha ha, that's my one too - tell us what these bloody things are for!!
Bicycles. If we could have gotten bicycles a few centuries before cars, I don't think modern cities would be so damn car centric.
If I may ask, where are you from? The city I live in is a nightmare for cars, the roads were made for horses and walking, narrow and winding cobblestone streets and the city tries its best to keep cars out of the center.
US. An utter hellscape. Where we ripped out world class trolleys so they wouldn't inconvenience drivers.
Leaf blower. They are loud and the "breath" coming from them is pretty awesome.
A single glass coca-cola bottle
You must be crazy. ;)
A Furby.
The mechanical Furk
Robotic animal recreations were actually very popular in the ancient world.
Hey this might help us out. If Neanderthals learn how to sit for hrs a day we would get that evolutionary advantage.
I mean, we're not descended from neanderthals. And you don't need a chair to sit.
That singing fish animatronic. Convinced people itβs a god. Wait for the battery to die and the eventual religious crisis.
Attack helicopters.
A solar panel with a light attached.
That one would actually make more sense if you'd never seen either part separately, but I like the spirit.
My thought process was, this produces light only when there is light outside making it effectively useless.
Exactly, although to a cave person that's just an interesting device that redirects sunlight somehow. They'd have to understand it could have been stored up for night or used for something else, in order to feel ripped off.
A bicycle.
Anything mechanical, even someone in 5000bc would be able to figure out how it works.
I think the problem would be recreation. Can't really make an effective chain out of wood I assume.
You actually can, although I don't know how rugged the result is. You probably could make a heavy, one speed bike out of wood with like, wheels that are just big disks. I'm not sure if it would beat walking, especially before purpose built roads were common. That being said, they might at least think going down a hill at speed is fun, which is what the first bikes were made for.
For a modern-style bike, the wheels are more of an engineering challenge, as is centering the various parts and ensuring a tight fit. Modern machine parts are made with micrometric precision, which involves surprisingly simple tools, but a whole lot of science and technique.
If it was a few thousand years later after horses were introduced, they could copy the concept of tension wheels for their chariots.
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A Nintendo Switch running Animal Crossing. Assume it has some kind of perpetual battery, and they can figure out how to operate it/play the game, and read our modern English.
I'm thinking they figure modern civilisation is about (or back to) fishing and farming... and that animals are intelligent. Like validating TF outta the Egyptian pantheon. You're a human but you have a dog for a neighbor, here's a koala, a gorilla, an eagle... and they all talk and wear clothes.
(Of course, if we wanna blow their minds with a game AND we can assume they can play it, why not just go straight to Cyberpunk?)
Something with gears. Like a cranked egg whisk. Huge amounts of science went into this, but all of it should be replicable in a few generations of experiment with even bronze working. And it should inspire inventors of the age too
Or wood. Mills used wooden peg gears to great effect for a long time.
The bigger challenge is to have enough jobs worth doing with gears to keep craftsmen trained, since making a smooth turning gear by hand is a thing. If this is Rome, there will be, but they already had some knowledge of gears. If it's cavemen there's not a chance.
A snow globe from Niagra Falls, a clothes hanger, A Buttplug, a die cast Model of The General Lee, some Tide pods, an assortment of Weeble Wobbleβs, The Complete Jane Fonda Workout (large print, hardback edition), A magnifying glass, A bag of Candy Corn.
You're just listing all the things within arms reach, aren't you?
These items are in my go bag.
Arms reach because theyβve all just been pulled out of an ass.
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One of those pens from bawdy seaside resorts where you press the button on the end and the lady's clothes disappear. Might as well be magic.
An LED light bulb.
i would give them nuclear weapons
Yeah finish off human race before it begins
a slot machine and a battery to keep it running
Condoms
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