So we're reading "Pastwatch," by Orson Scott Card for my bookclub and I thought I would get some ideas from you guys as well. In the book future scientists send three people back in time to alter the course of human history around the time Columbus discovered the Americas, attempting to alter it for the better. Ignoring any grandfather paradoxes, if you could do the same, what change would you introduce to human history and why?
I have two thoughts. 1) Go back and give germ theory to Hippocrates (or some similarly important historical figure in medicine). The mere introduction of handwashing would be hugely important.
2) Send back a team that could give Alexander the Great and Aristotle, his teacher, printing presses and moveable type. By the time the Romans take over the Greek Empire later, the technology would be so widely dispersed it would be hard to annihilate it ever.
Thoughts?
7 comments:
Preserve the Library of Alexandria, Egypt.
Good thoughts, I especially love your idea of the printing press. From a nerdy LDS point of view, imagine how much more of Christ's and the apostles' teachings we would have in the Bible. The Bible would huge and the great apostasy would have been severely blunted, or never have happened at all.
What if the Ottomans had conquered Vienna? Not because that's necessarily something I would rather have happened, I'd just want to see what the outcome would be. Also: What if the Mongols hadn't sacked Baghdad?
What. No one is going to suggest to stop the city of Enoch from ascending?
Watch Sliders and you can what would have happened if some of those things came to pass....well watch it until it got weird anyways...
This week I've been wondering about how eliminating the Black Plague before it ran through Europe would have done. After all, the population decline had a severe effect on every aspect of European society.
Introduce smallpox and other European diseases into the Americas several thousand years ago.
Stop Ralph Nader from running for president in 2000.
Eve created first. Or at least at the same time as Adam.
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