Dying, mostly.
this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025
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Asklemmy
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Navigation and being the first to try a cool looking mushroom and findout how dead I get.
why navigation?
I just have a really good sense of direction and memory of places and paths.
Usually if I went somewhere even only once, even a year later I can recall how to get there again
oh that's decent
*invites you to the caveman inner-circle*
Oh! I'm actually somewhat decent with some useful things. I got sent to a wilderness school for fuck up kids when I was a teen. So I know how to, and have applied a lot of survival stuff.
I know how to effectively make a somewhat permanent shelter. I can make and use a bow drill to make fire, and along the same principal but with much more effort and time I could make fire with hand drill or fire plough techniques. I know how to make basic traps. I can make cordage, and have very, very very basic tracking skills. I know some edible and toxic plants in my area (not exhaustive by any means). I know how to clean and dress game. There's a lot of other stuff, but those popped into my head immediately.
It's been a long time since I've done all this, but the knowledge and know-how is all there. I'd actually be a decent person to have around!
That's a pretty excellent school to go to, hell I wish I had that level of training
I think excel would be good software for managing hunter rotations, supplies and stone inventory.
Our ancestors measured time to keep track of the breeding seasons of their prey as to not exterminate the local populations... so most likely for that
Or just to better understand how and where to catch them. Don't forget we hunted all kinds of things to extinction anyway.
It always bugs me how cavemen wheels aren't ever depicted with a matching axle. That's the hard and novel part! I'm glad this guy found an alternative for it.
With enough grease any old stick can be an axle for a while, the wheel is the hard part.
At the very least, novel applies. Lots of things roll, but what in nature has an axle? I'd also like to clarify that they probably didn't use stone in real life, because that would be dumb. I suppose if we're insisting it's monolithic stone that's true just because of the raw time it would take. And oh boy, they better be careful not to crack it.
If you have a proper axle, you have a lathe and turning a solid wheel for a cart shouldn't be too hard. Failing that, or failing the idea to try turning, it has to be freehand, but plenty of people could do that (more so than today, probably, since every moment we spend in a classroom or office is a moment they would be working with their hands).
If it has to be a wheel that's strong and light like for a chariot, it gets harder and you'll need actual wheelwright skills, but just a cart should be able to run an a solid wheel. If you're going for a chariot you probably want a reasonably well-fit axle as well, although my knowledge of chariot driving is too limited to be super sure.
I would argue axels came first, and the wheel is a derivative. See the likely methods accepted by (non ancient alien) archeologists for paleolithic to bronze age wonders made from stone; they used logs on the ground as rollers, essentially an axel, it wouldn't take much of a leap to carve out the majority of those logs to lighten the load, creating a fixed wheel axel, which just needs a semipermanent but smooth rolling attach point to a vehicle or tool to be even more useful.
When I say axle (that is the correct spelling for this, according to a quick search, FYI), I mean it has a stationary bearing in which it turns. So what you're calling a "semipermanent but smooth rolling attached point". A roller is a completely different simple machine with no sliding surfaces.
Honestly if I had my current level of knowledge, probably hygene. Teach them to make soap (animal fat and a source of base like ash), wash their hands, keep poop away from potable water sources, stuff like that.
Remember, it literally took until Victorian times to figure out that washing your hands prevents disease.
Also, math. Teach them how to do basic arithmetic, how to use a unit of measurement to figure out how big something is, stuff we'd learn in elementary school but weren't rigorously developed until the Ancient Greek age.
Soap is super important, as for math - I'm guessing it's going to need to be geometry based before they can grok irrational numbers, or hell, symbolic notation in general
Iโm pretty good at thinking outside the box and innovating, so Iโd probably just die.
Time travel, evidently.
Mandatory I'd have died more than once, but I suspect I would have been good at mental things like tracking and storytelling. I'd probably suck at everything else, too.
Iโd be the best at powershell. Unfortunately I wouldnโt live very long.
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Dying from allergies & asthma.
While still living, the tribe could deploy me as an animal detector: place me at the front of hunting parties, and the moment I start sneezing & wheezing, they know they've got prey nearby.
Counting and therefore distributing spoils fairly. I would become a well-loved chief and would probably get laid more than I currently do, although the hairy partners may not be of my liking.
eh beauty is relative and you'd get used to it. It sounds like you'd be the village sandwich maker, and yes I can imagine that being a very prestigious position
Dying
I came here to write Dying, but 7 other people had already done that.
Yeah I typed my comment then scrolled and realized Iโm extremely unoriginal:)
Cavemen would have just rolled their eyes when people died back then. Like, pffft, everybody does that.
Yelling yabadabadoo and sliding down that dinosaur
I'm a natural at shooting a traditional bow.
I know every edible plant in my area, and some that get you high.
I can find north without a compass, day and night.
I can make a fire from things I can gather in the woods.
I know how to safely fell a tree, split logs and build a shelter with hand tools.
I know how to act around most predators and have experience handling a spear.
I think I'd do reasonably well.
Sometimes I wish I was born in the stone age. My ADHD is completely gone whenever I'm in the wild.
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I know how to make rope, among other things, as an eagle scout, and I have some experience with atatl so, probably dying of fever at 14.
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You'd be a lot taller and probably also faster (maybe not stronger). You'd become a god-king in no time. Or be killed as a monster.
Recreational drug use can be traced to before written history. Bartering also existed then. I'd be a drug dealer.
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Starvation.
Either making elaborate traps and contraptions out of sticks and stones.
Or brain surgery.
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I'd probably be something of a builder/ "engineer."
I'm not actually an engineer, but I have a knack for utilizing what I have around me or simple enough objects to serve other goals. I suppose I'm what people used to call a Macgyver or "mechanically inclined."
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Dogs seem to like me so maybe I'd be one of the first to domesticate dogs. I'd probably just live with dogs.
I would invent God so others would do all the hunting and gathering for me while I partied in the cave basement drawing on the walls.
Just by knowing how to wash my hands, medicine. Up until 20th century.
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