What are the skills and knowledge you could actually bring & fully realize at some point in the past?
And we’re taking this in the strictest, nerdiest, materialist lense. I don’t care how smart you are you ain’t making a steam engine the in bronze age, for instance.
So what could you create, with just your knowledge & period tools? What kind of institutional, technological, philosophical innovations could you realistically recreate? How would you interface with the social fabric of society to not be some crazed pariah who never positively influences the place they went?
Depends on time frame, but most places in the old world would have access to bronze from, well, the bronze age and onwards. New world would be trickier unless you know mining and metal refinement to teach, or rely on native metals.
But yeah if I’m sent back to the stone age I don’t think I’ll be able to do too too much
I meant more access to large quantities of coal. I guess that would be easiest in the Roman Empire, but then you’d be giving the Roman Empire trains and that might just prolong it’s collapse.
Edit: New idea! Teach Carthage how to build trains instead!