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.
Caveman era. Give me a heavy rock and a cave and ill make do somehow.
Just kill me
'49?
1940, as there are crazy things that will be going on in the world of computer science (and science in general) over the course of the next few decades and that would be really cool to experience. Kind of sad though to not be alive once we achieve human-level artificial intelligence, would be interested in seeing how that will turn out. I would probably chose America, as I wouldn’t want to spend WW2 in Germany where I live in the present.
Alternatively I think I would very much enjoy visiting Ancient Greek, although I’m not too sure when would be the best time for that; maybe at the peak of Athen.
1600 India. I’m royalty and get to meet my ancestor and favorite historical figure Akbar. And yes the mughal empire is my roman empire
Social standing is random though based on OP’s rules. It would be terrible to end up as part of the lowest caste.
I think the only caste Mughals did was your clan.
Oct 1945 to 1949.
Back in time if you’re gay? Or trans? Or a woman? Or a person of color?
No thanks.
Gay? Ancient Greece. Person of color? Just pick someplace that won’t have significant contact with different races during your lifetime.
what if you’re both?
Then ask someone who knows more about history than me! :)
The way your society currently discriminates and segments humans is not universal
Right?
We’re going on a tangent here, but I feel like Western progressives, particularly with anglo backgrounds, tend to think the entire world runs by their parameters and always has. There is nothing intrinsic to the current kinds of bigotry in their societies. It’s pretty arbitrary and specific, in fact.
@MudMan yeah this. Threads like this make me really wish more non-western ancient history was taught in schools.
As an American, I wholeheartedly agree. I often wish I had a sturdier foundation in world history.
If you go further back in time you can get back to fairly queer friendly societies
Dec 31st 1949.
I’m a queer woman, so these sort of time travel questions boil down to me preserving as many rights as I can.
Where, the U.S.? Seems like there’s gotta be other times and places that were more woman- and queer-friendly, right?
You’d think places like San Francisco would be better, but 20 years later the Stone Wall riots happened. It was pretty rough all around to be gay in that time, though I’m sure some places were worse than others.
fwiw: gay nightlife in san francisco was at its zenith in the 50’s & 60’s .
the san francisco we have today is a tiny dim more conservative ember of what it was back then.
I think you would’ve been fine in the Roman empire during the Pax Romana.
Rome would kinda suck for a woman, especially a queer one.
What is the significance of that date?
Its as close as possible to now before the 50s
Fair enough, though at that point you’d probably get better results if you went further back. The 50s were…really bad.
To be entirely fair I’d probably just ⚡ 🧑🏿🦱 ⚡ myself either way. Not willing to try and survive without my meds.
as a queer brown man; i don’t want to be anywhere at all.
why 1949 and where?
Would fit in with the ancient Greeks
You would have been just fine in, say, North or East Africa a few hundred years ago.
I think they picked 49 because it’s as modern as they could get within OP’s parameters.
New Zealand 800 years ago. The rest of the question doesn’t matter because there were no other humans there.
As I’m from NZ atm I would choose here about 800 years ago as well - 800 years ago is about when the first Maori arrived - give or take a few
I pick NZ, 801 years ago
Are you and @bstix forgetting that there were giant eagles that probably ate humans?
And people ask why Gandalf didn’t call em up to fly to mount doom.
Oh you mean the ones that went extinct not longer after meeting us?
@Deceptichum pretty sure that was because humans ate the eagles’ main food source, the giant moa, to extinction.
I don’t think you
twothree citizens of the fediverse are going to single-handedly defeat them.Edit: forgot @Nepenthe is now arriving before you.
In that case, I also choose NZ 802 years ago.
There are now no humans there 799 years ago.
Yikes. Uhh. 1950. Cause you’re really pushing your luck before that if your background is random.
Florida in the 1300s
As a gay man, maybe early empire Rome? Or even like early nomadic tribe times? Like, before there were institutions large enough to oppress people en masse. I’m sure there was plenty of gay sex happening as a nomadic hunter or trader.
Too Black for that bullshit; you might as well just kill me now
@frauddogg there are plenty of cool pre-colonial civilizations you could join. This kingdom had pottery, metallurgy, literacy, even a sophisticated district court system.
And still wound up eventually becoming a slave-dealing civilization at the same time as they were being “Christianized”-- a fancy term for ‘colonization’. That’s a no-go for me.
@frauddogg yikes, I wasn’t suggesting that. These kingdoms were around for literally hundreds of years without that stuff. OP didn’t say we had to become immortal and live through the rest of history.
I hate the way Europeans effectively colonized everyone’s imaginations so they can’t even conceive of a time and place without them in it.
Well, after like 800 AD, that’s kind of the case. There is no ‘proud’ or even ‘peaceful’ existence in a world with Anglos getting ready to pillage and pervert it all. And that’s just taking my melanin into account-- that doesn’t take my mental state into account, and doesn’t take my sexuality into account either. There is no time in the past I look to favorably, and honestly? Until we’ve handled the capital-worshipper colonizer menace in this era, I don’t see a time in the future to look favorably to either.
Are you done debate perv’ing at me yet, or do I have to find a more scathing way to phrase it?
Are you done debate perv’ing at me yet, or do I have to find a more scathing way to phrase it?
Yikes. I thought we were having a friendly conversation. Sorry to have upset you, will not bother you again.
I’m a little bit incapable of “friendliness” regarding people smugging at me on some redditor headassery like “nooooooo, there’s good points of history” like they’re not either ancient history far and away from here or won’t all get ruined by usually the same people from 800 AD/CE/whatever measure you care about onwards. It starts sounding like all you care about doing is talking over people in absolutely shit faith.
like they’re not either ancient history far and away from here
They are ancient history and far away. That’s the point. Knowing about alternatives is part of anticolonial resistance.
I’ve figured out that you’re using a hexbear term to personally insult me. For the benefit of us both, I’m blocking you now and won’t be seeing or answering further comments from you.
Racism is a european “invention”, and can be dated. If you choose any place “before racism”, that will not be an issue.
And also, you can choose any place in a time without europeans.
Sounds like you’re grasping for ways to justify longing for worse off pasts tbh
Why?
Given that there were 2 world wars in the early 1900s and that I like tech in general I would also choose 12/31/1949. At least I might have a PC sometime in my lifetime and I’d probably live to use it and not be a corpse on some beach somewhere.
Just pick Switzerland.
Have fun in 'Nam!
Yeah, I was thinking after I posted this what other wars I might get drafted into.
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).
Athens might be somewhat nice if you just aren’t a slave, metic, or woman.
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.
