Okay, first of all, 200 years ago was 1826, so why are we looking at a pic of cave men? They already had working telegraph machines in 1826. So, no, they aren't going to be that confused by the concept of electricity.

Secondly, don't sell yourself too short. Just knowing that washing your hands prevents the spread of disease could be a big benefit.

And thirdly, don't revel in your ignorance -- go out and learn some shit! You've got the entire internet at your fingertips right now. If you don't know how electricity works, go learn how electricity works. You can do it right now. Seriously, close social media and search for "how does electricity work".

200 years isn't that long ago, but call it 2,000 years: If you go back with at least a cursory grasp of the scientific method, that might be enough to get things up and running, if not for you then for the more intelligent and scientifically-minded types around you. "Try to prove yourself wrong at every step of the process" isn't a natural impulse for most of us, but once taught and understood, it changes the game.

You could also drop a few tantalising nuggets even if you don't know what they mean:

• E=MC^2^
• Basic concept of evolution by natural selection
• Germ theory of disease
• Electromagnetism
• Lenses for microscopy and telescopy, using the same lenses to start fires with the sun
• Electrical conductivity of different materials (e.g. metal good, wool bad)
• The basic components of a battery
• Newton's first few laws
• Radio waves
• Calculus
• Periodic table of elements

Those are all things you can read about in any library, so you could do a crash course and memorise the broad strokes or write them down, or just take the books with you if that's allowed.

If it were me, however, I'd just instantly kill myself.

Strong disagree.

Put a guy back 200 years ago with the concept of things to come and let the great thinker of the time stand on the shoulders of an Everyman from today, we would be at least a hundred years ahead of where we are currently.

There were some very intelligent people back then who just didn't know the rules of the game they were playing. They had to figure out the rules so future inventors could build off of them.

Go back 200 years and say "everything is made of things from the periodic table, it has rows and columns" and you instantly revolutionize chemistry. If you know of acids and bases you're even further along. There are ways to communicate long distances without using sounds or visible light, boom twenty years later I guarantee someone will have figured it out, it's terribly obvious once you know it's possible, but why would you assume invisible communication is possible since it's so outlandish to our seemingly natural everyday rules?

The only thing you need to do is survive being proclaimed a heretic, you need to get open minded thinkers to hear you, because the closed mindedness was even more entrenched in society than it is today.

1826 sure looked primitive.

I know about germs and the importance of cleanliness; I also know about what ACTUALLY caused the plague

Also while Alexander the great was himself from so long ago, he's apparently attributed with having been the first to invent tactics, so if I go further back I can be the first to engineer tactics myself

If I go far enough back in Egypt, I'm scratching out messages in English to really mess with archaeologists thousands of years down the line

200y ago electricity was already a known thing, though not something you got home yet.

One thing you could do, however, is buy up "worthless" land around the Middle East for when oil starts being drilled

put lemon juice in shiny metal you found in cave put lot of it 5 lemons juice take shiny metal string attach to eachother make big big fire

wash hand in fire boiled river water and do surgery with washed hand and washed utensil

you know how make beer? ok now put hands and tool in beer when surgery

dirty hand cause death .

Your biggest issue with tech, even if you know how to make it, is getting the materials.

You would at least know about penicillin, germ theory, how cells work, and about atoms. So much theory and philosophy would be skipped, for better or worse.

I know how electricity works, but without any technology more advanced than flint tools I'm gonna just have to go with "magic."

Assuming I did know anything about advanced productive processes, how would I convince anyone to give me resources to demonstrate them?

That's one thing that's kinda bothers me a little bit in animes (Isekais).Like who the fuck knows exactly the chemical process on how to make everything and how every details gets done just by giving a vague description of something they only heard of.

My only issue is turning spinning into power. I know we need spinning, and spinning is easy. Water mills are a thing and have been for ages.

if you transported me 200 years in the past, i would just go to turkey and enjoy steam powered kebab. dudes knew what was up

Magnets and some copper wires baby! How do we mine up and create these wires and magnets? Lol we’re so boned. (Actually I’ve watched enough primitive technology vids that I might be able to resolve that one too!)

Real talk I actually think it’s not a horrible idea to have like… a book on how to do permaculture on hand. While I doubt being sent back in time will happen, society collapsing enough that knowing how to sustainably farm food is actually a distant possibility. More than likely you’ll be dead in that scenario anyways

I spend way too much time thinking about this very topic.

I think I am somewhat well informed, so I've been thinking how well I would do in different eras. Of course in these scenarios I assume I can learn the language and communicate with the people of the past.

Anyway, I came to the conclusion than apart from some very specific advances, I'd do very badly. The vast majority of technological discoveries require an already well established base of knowledge and a society to carry it. You can't singlehandedly kickstart the agrarian revolution early, it requires generations of plant knowledge. Same goes for stuff like metalworking, unless you can easily find soft metal ore and build a furnace out of primitive materials, you are boned - I could maaaaybe find iron ore in certain places, and maaaaaybe build a very basic bloomery, but at that level (amount of material and labor) it's next to useless, unless I somehow get everybody to blindly follow my vision.

And it just follows like that, for ages on. Maybe I could get something like electricity going a hundred or two hundred years early (I know how to make a rudimentary magnet, or we could use a lodestone. With access to copper and other metals, I can work my way up. But sadlly, I know almost nothing about chemistry which was extremely important for early electric science), but that's only if there is any actual interest for it - and I don't really think there would be a lot of it back then, the main use would just be lighting for lords and rich people.

So, in the end, it turns out development IS kinda dependant on material conditions.

Same with 20000 years

Making eletricity is easy! We just need magnets.

Now to make magnets it's the hard part. We need magic!