Leave a Legacy

[kerbiloid]

12 minutes ago, Lisias said:

It's completely unrelated

Vice versa, it is just on topic.

We can see on this picture a group of people in nomad clothes (trousers, coats with arms), standing near some kind of charriots on lightweight wheels with spokes (Aryan?).
They sing a song in an Indoeuropean language. But the words are strangely reduced, they have no cases, etc.
The charriots are put one by one. Probably, this is some ceremony for the  charrioteers blessing.

In hands they hold similar things of specific shape. They are definitely some kind of pole tools or weapons, like shovels or axes.
But they hold them in unusual position, making some gestures with their fingers.

Probably, this is some Proto-Indoeuropean ritual of fertility being performed by a local Mid-East tribe.

Edited June 2, 2018 by kerbiloid

[YNM]

29 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Archaeologists of the alternate future (alternate present?) would simply conclude that irrationals were discovered much earlier.

Depends on when/where I landed in the past I guess.

But if it's something before the greeks, my thinking was that :

- I knew of a "past" that hasn't happened

- I knew of something only possible after a really long thought of humanity

Also, if you wonder, the way how we know all the "extra" digits of Pi today is no longer by evaluating fractions. It's far more better than that.

The way how we validate them however, is still "traditional".

Edited June 2, 2018 by YNM

[Jaelommiss]

The solution is surprisingly easy. Information, no matter how it is stored, is likely to degrade, be misunderstood, or considered a hoax. I have something far simpler in mind that, so far as I can tell, does not violate any of the initial assumptions.

Spoiler

This is my knife. If I am willingly going back in time, it's coming with me. For all waking hours, it is in my pocket or hand. So long as I am not transported back in time against my will while asleep or bathing, this knife will be with me. 

This knife is clearly of modern design. It is made of modern steel. It would not be possible for ancient peoples to produce such a tool. I will be entombed with this knife in a dry climate and in a stone sarcophagus. A complete lack of wealth or artifacts in my tomb should deter looters. Metal bands will be used to ensure that the sarcophagus is not opened casually and suggest to whoever discovers is that it has not been tampered with. When my tomb is discovered, the knife should be in relatively good condition. The initial reaction will be that it is a hoax. Although well preserved, it should be possible (by 21st century standards) to accurately determine its age. A knife made of modern materials and design that is over 1200 years old should get people running more tests, then get people speculating.

 

Naturally, this does not work if nothing comes back in time with us. I suspect in that situation that I would starve to death or succumb to exposure long before I could rise to power.

 

Edited June 2, 2018 by Jaelommiss

[wumpus]

I'm curious how you would ever compute pi so accurately, and leave behind records of such.  In the Middle Ages, monks routinely scraped books clean to copy more valuable books, I'm sure random lists of numbers would be first on the list for scraping.

Ancient texts are fairly common from Egypt (papyrus) and Mesopotamia (pottery shards).  I think we have far more Mesopotamian texts than anybody can translate: often you have to complete a jigsaw (which requires understanding of the text to put it together) before finally translating it.  This might be an amazing opportunity for AI researchers to show massive possibilities for their routines.

Basically, if you want text to survive it needs to be more or less buried in the desert.  Some temples might have survived, but often pillaged and any "sacred texts" over written by rival priests (I can't imagine the Inquisition was willing to allow Aztec temple writing remain).  So expect to bury a *lot* of text if you want your texts to be found when somebody can read it.

As far as complicated calculations of pi, of all the techs to "beeline" to, I can't see building a computer before the (electric) telegraph was ready for use (you might wind up building the telegraph, but don't expect a lot of help until the railroads really want some help in avoiding crashes.  You'll need:

Electricity (starting with battery cells)

Highly ductile wire (and the temperatures to make them ductile
metals that can withstand temperatures while other metals are drawn through them
permenent which in turn require a great chain of the above magnetizing more magnets, but start with some fairly strong lodestones

Once you have that you need a *ton* of cheap wire, magnets, and either generators or batteries.  Don't plan on building a computer or telegraph on batteries.

You really can't build a computer without building half the infrastructure of the Victorian era (or later).  That said, if you were in the 1940s or so, once you understood how to make all the basic gates out of vacuum tubes and could make magnetic core memory, you could pretty much beeline to a CDC6600 (the supercomputer of the Apollo era, although presumably with tubes instead of transistors so it wouldn't be *quite* as fast).  In the Victorian era, you *might* be able to get a full blown packetswitching telegraph system going, allowing you to scale up computers as you wish.  Before that, you'd be pretty much like Babbage: toiling away a fortune trying to build something on the edge of technological feasibility with little to show for it (Babbage could at least influence an infrastructure on the verge of making use of it, a Roman Babbage would see his device suffer the fate of the Antikythera mechanism.

21 hours ago, NSEP said:

You don't have to see stuff happend to make it happend. You can simply make one stirling engine and the people do the rest of the revolutionizing. You don't need to build a big highly functional one either, you can just make a prototype engine so people know it works, and can improve the design. The only problem here is creating the actual engine, wich requires metal, but i don't think it will take me and my people over 50 years to make a few metal parts.

*cough* astronomical events *cough*.

The Romans had some massive watermills, but they had equally massive sunk costs and it was easier to just buy individual slaves (kind of like nuclear plants vs. natural gas turbines).  The economics became far worse after Rome fell, and England wouldn't see watermills until around 1000 (most of the data comes from the Domesday book).  Watermills nearly died out again before the fourteenth century, but the black plague gave the forests a chance to regrow.  By the time the forests were in danger, the technology was ready to extract enough coal from the ground.

So your sterling engines would have to have a greater work/cost output than watermills to even get built, then they would have to consume wood (charcoal, whatever) at a rate slower than the equal watermill.  I suspect that if you managed to get a culture using Sterling engines, you could possibly choke off the whole industrial revolution and simply have the tech crash back to "medieval normal".

12 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Yes, but according to Anosov (guru of iron casting, damascus steel was his special interest,) it requires special  very rare ores, iron oxide (II) FeO with no admixtures, especially with no sulfur. 

The key word here is that the Syrians were casting iron/steel in the Middle Ages.  Europe might have waited until the 18th century, but not everyone else did.

12 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Antikythera is amusing, but I'm mostly impressed by the Baalbek monolyths (leave pyramids alone for the moment).

They are this.

  Reveal hidden contents

Estimated mass up to 1000 t each.

That's how they move 1000 t now.

  Reveal hidden contents

That's how they suggest to move 1000 t in bronze age.

  Reveal hidden contents

1000 t / 50 kg = 20000 people at once.
Try to imagine how 20000 people would get close to the monolith at once .

This assumes you can simply give commands and 20,000 people will obey you.  I'm not sure how many craftsmen it took to produce the Antikythera mechanism, but it seems more available to our forum time travelers.  Of course, if you introduced gunpowder/greek fire at a time when it could obviously tip the balance, maybe you could have 20,000 people at your command.  But I still suspect it wouldn't be as simple as that (and you would be more concerned with assassination attempts (sword of Damocles was from a similar era)) than "leaving a legacy that people of "your" time could decode".

Organizing 20,000 people doesn't seem to be something that requires modern thinking anyway.  I'd rather do it with modern (or even late medieval) accounting, but plenty of cultures managed with rudimentary math.

Don't forget survivor bias in these ancient monuments.  Medieval cathedrals all appear to be well designed which requires strong understanding of engineering.  In reality, plenty of them simply collapsed and the ones that remain have the good designs.  Oddly enough, they had quite a few similarities to government rocket programs.  They were typically jobs programs first (which benefited *this* generation, the cathedral would benefit your great-grandchildren) and cathedrals second.  The secondary point, glorifying God was also largely in theory (similar to "advancing science") while the real secondary goal was "to show up all the other local cities by having a Cathedral (and presumably the Archbishop that comes with it, who presumably could even tax/demand tithes from nearby areas [I'm less certain of the last bit, having just realized that the title requirements would likely change the local politics]).

[magnemoe]

23 hours ago, Wjolcz said:

Isn't this thread about how and what to do in order to give people of the future a hint that you had that kind of knowledge? I thought the assumed rise to power is already done and we are focusing on building that one ultimate time traveler's relic?

They are kind of interlinked, if you are Ramses 2 pet wizard you are a bit stronger position  than if stuck in an stone age village. 
In the first your writing would not be forgotten, they might be suppressed the same way lot of the Manhattan project is secret. 
Now you tell the tallest tale ever, add schematics of stuff you did not manage to do nor the details, steam engines, smokeless powder, machine guns, battleships, aircraft, carriers, transistors, ic, nukes.
Fiction part for inspiration : Orion pulse nuclear in massive fleet engagement around mars, fighting monsters at the edge of solar system, laser pumped interstellar crafts reach other stars. Taking stars, FTL, works as well against bussard ramjets as fighter jet as against cavalierly, yes they probably make it work.
 

[kerbiloid]

50 minutes ago, wumpus said:

The key word here is that the Syrians were casting iron/steel in the Middle Ages.

You can cast a steam engine detail pack from a bunch of hand-made aristocratic swords melted out of specially selected pieces of ore (pure FeO (II) ) found in local place and still worse than industrial steel of XIX century, and call it "they were casting steam engines".

The key word: they had to weld the pieces of bad iron to make a knife.
Melting is the way to purify the iron, not to form. And they could just soften it from this pov.
 

50 minutes ago, wumpus said:

I'm curious how you would ever compute pi so accurately, and leave behind records of such. 

pi/4 = (8/9) * (24/25) * ... * ((i²-1)/i²)*...
i = 3,5,7,9,...

and other similar methods

50 minutes ago, wumpus said:

I can't see building a computer before the (electric) telegraph was ready for use

Spoiler

 

50 minutes ago, wumpus said:

So your sterling engines would have to have a greater work/cost output than watermills to even get built, then they would have to consume wood (charcoal, whatever) at a rate slower than the equal watermill. 

Sterling engine made with watermill accuracy would crash in seconds.
And watermill requires nothing except wood, axe, and saw to get built.

50 minutes ago, wumpus said:

This assumes you can simply give commands and 20,000 people will obey you. 

Even if they obey (and you have enough food and water to feed 20000 people at once - read about the ancient armies and their problems).

Perimeter = 20 + 5 + 20 + 5 = 50 m.
Human = 0.5 x 0.5 m.
100 humans per row around the block.
20000 = 200 rows of humans from each side= 200 m long ropes even if the humans stay around the block.

50 minutes ago, wumpus said:

Of course, if you introduced gunpowder/greek fire at a time when it could obviously tip the balance,

Unlikely it could effect the balance just because of expensive bronze cannons, inaccuracy (so any ship need tens of cannons right where the oarsmen sit), puny speed of oar ships (3..5 kn or so).

50 minutes ago, wumpus said:

Organizing 20,000 people doesn't seem to be something that requires modern thinking anyway. 

It's what requires a lot of food, water, and feces removal. And food for the cattle, and food for the donkeys/horses carrying the food.
That's why ancient armies rarely reached tens thousands at one place.

50 minutes ago, wumpus said:

Medieval cathedrals all appear to be well designed which requires strong understanding of engineering.

They were made of small stones, and weight much less than even pyramides.
Some of them are still not finished (and I guess, never will).

Also do not overestimate the medieval engineering, This is mostly a set of methods and habits, not a scientifically formalized technology.
And we can see only those gothic cathedrals which have not crashed under construction.

Once a real engineering technology appeared, mason guilds disappeared as fast as other ones, with the tricky gothic architecture.

Edited June 2, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Mjp1050]

On 6/1/2018 at 5:00 AM, sevenperforce said:

But you can guess that thousands of years in the future, archaeologists will dig up your civilization, and you want to give them something to really blow their minds.

What do you do?

I'd leave instructions for myself to be mummified after my death. And I'd instruct my mummifiers to slice open my tummy and stick my iPhone inside.

That'll come as a shock to any archaeologists 

[sevenperforce]

2 hours ago, Mjp1050 said:

I'd leave instructions for myself to be mummified after my death. And I'd instruct my mummifiers to slice open my tummy and stick my iPhone inside.

That'll come as a shock to any archaeologists 

 

7 hours ago, Jaelommiss said:

The solution is surprisingly easy. Information, no matter how it is stored, is likely to degrade, be misunderstood, or considered a hoax. I have something far simpler in mind that, so far as I can tell, does not violate any of the initial assumptions.

  Hide contents

This is my knife. If I am willingly going back in time, it's coming with me. For all waking hours, it is in my pocket or hand. So long as I am not transported back in time against my will while asleep or bathing, this knife will be with me. 

This knife is clearly of modern design. It is made of modern steel. It would not be possible for ancient peoples to produce such a tool. I will be entombed with this knife in a dry climate and in a stone sarcophagus. A complete lack of wealth or artifacts in my tomb should deter looters. Metal bands will be used to ensure that the sarcophagus is not opened casually and suggest to whoever discovers is that it has not been tampered with. When my tomb is discovered, the knife should be in relatively good condition. The initial reaction will be that it is a hoax. Although well preserved, it should be possible (by 21st century standards) to accurately determine its age. A knife made of modern materials and design that is over 1200 years old should get people running more tests, then get people speculating.

 

Naturally, this does not work if nothing comes back in time with us. I suspect in that situation that I would starve to death or succumb to exposure long before I could rise to power.

 

Both very good ideas. I think the major challenge to these ideas is that you do not necessarily know how you will die, and so you cannot guarantee the circumstances of your burial. Unless, of course, you commit suicide at the height of your power; that'll do it. 

Plus, it depends on the particular item not being looted, and on being found. Looters are no respecter of locale; even if you have no valuables stored around your sarcophagus, looters may still crack it open and look inside, just in case. You're also taking a large gamble on the idea that someone will actually eventually crack it open.

Hence the general goal being more toward "what can I create that will last and carry my knowledge?"

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

pi/4 = (8/9) * (24/25) * ... * ((i²-1)/i²)*...
i = 3,5,7,9,...

and other similar methods

As I said before, though, if pi had been calculated to a high degree of certainty thousands of years ago, we could also suspect that the whole of mathematics would have charted a different path, and so the conclusion would be that such series were discovered in antiquity.

5 hours ago, magnemoe said:

They are kind of interlinked, if you are Ramses 2 pet wizard you are a bit stronger position  than if stuck in an stone age village. 
In the first your writing would not be forgotten, they might be suppressed the same way lot of the Manhattan project is secret. 
Now you tell the tallest tale ever, add schematics of stuff you did not manage to do nor the details, steam engines, smokeless powder, machine guns, battleships, aircraft, carriers, transistors, ic, nukes.
Fiction part for inspiration : Orion pulse nuclear in massive fleet engagement around mars, fighting monsters at the edge of solar system, laser pumped interstellar crafts reach other stars. Taking stars, FTL, works as well against bussard ramjets as fighter jet as against cavalierly, yes they probably make it work.
 

Hah!!

[Laie]

The pyramids already encode all kind of data... or so I'm told. I wouldn't know how to do it any better, that is, unmistakably.

I can't proffer a good idea of my own, but of what I've read in this thread, like the idea of lore and folk tales best. Not starships, horseless carriages and and so on -- keep in mind that your story will be retold and the important details probably won't persist.

But four busybody servants circling around Jupiter? Yeah, that could work, though it will likely been taken as proof of keen eyesight. The bulls-eye crater on the far side of the moon would be an excellent subject, however. Any ideas of how to make it stick?

[Just Jim]

Ahhhh, I'm not going to all this bother...

I'm just going back in time, find the nearest tribe or village, have everyone gather some really huge stones and put them in a circle...

 And then in a thousand years mankind can drive itself nuts trying to figure it out... 

hehehe

 

Edited June 3, 2018 by Just Jim

[kerbiloid]

12 hours ago, Jaelommiss said:

This knife is clearly of modern design. It is made of modern steel. I

Steel will rust. Better carry a ceramic knife.
When anybody asks - explain: "That's in case if I suddenly teleport into Ancient Egypt, to put it in my mummy".
I believe, no more silly questions would follow.

8 hours ago, Mjp1050 said:

I'd leave instructions for myself to be mummified after my death. And I'd instruct my mummifiers to slice open my tummy and stick my iPhone inside.

And set the alarm clock.

5 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Both very good ideas.

Good ideas from the persons with good teeth.
Ceramic teeth would survive whole epochs, they are always in their owner, and require nothing from the mummificators.

10 hours ago, magnemoe said:

if you are Ramses 2 pet wizard

Reading Ramsie's bio and list of achivements, one could ask: "So, and who now knows his pet wizard name, or even think he was ever existing?"
But no. Even if Ram had a pet wizard from future, they anyway would say that he did it himself.

Edited June 3, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Mjp1050]

5 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Plus, it depends on the particular item not being looted, and on being found. Looters are no respecter of locale; even if you have no valuables stored around your sarcophagus, looters may still crack it open and look inside, just in case. You're also taking a large gamble on the idea that someone will actually eventually crack it open.

My theory is - unless I'm buried in Skyrim - I'm not likely to have a jewel in my body. So a tomb raider won't actually cut open my corpse.

An archaeologist with an x-ray machine, on the other hand....

[YNM]

14 hours ago, wumpus said:

I'm curious how you would ever compute pi so accurately, and leave behind records of such.

That's the point - they'd realize something is massively off. They'd know my real origin. Tinfoil hats abound !

[kerbiloid]

6 hours ago, Mjp1050 said:

An archaeologist with an x-ray machine, on the other hand....

will treat the iPhone as an evidence, that it's a fake mummy created by the modern archaeotrolls.

(The only thing confusing him will be "iPhone" trademark. But he will treat it as a noname counterfeit.)

Edited June 3, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Wjolcz]

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

will treat the iPhone as an evidence, that it's a fake mummy created by the modern archaeotrolls.

(The only thing confusing him will be "iPhone" trademark. But he will treat it as a noname counterfeit.)

Wouldn't the iPhone degrade somehow?

[kerbiloid]

53 minutes ago, Wjolcz said:

Wouldn't the iPhone degrade somehow?

I mean, the archaeologist will treat any anachronism as such evidence, no matter if it's still working.

[YNM]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

I mean, the archaeologist will treat any anachronism as such evidence, no matter if it's still working.

Delicate PCBs after 6000 years... not very sound.

Hence plaques of 1 million decimals of pi.

[magnemoe]

16 hours ago, Just Jim said:

Ahhhh, I'm not going to all this bother...

I'm just going back in time, find the nearest tribe or village, have everyone gather some really huge stones and put them in a circle...

 And then in a thousand years mankind can drive itself nuts trying to figure it out... 

hehehe

 

Better deep in an cave you the skeletons of 12 squirrels all grabbing an huge nut
You might wonder if some of weird stuff archaeologists find is pranks who kind of timed out, add nobility with too much money and spare time. 

 

[magnemoe]

14 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Good ideas from the persons with good teeth.
Ceramic teeth would survive whole epochs, they are always in their owner, and require nothing from the mummificators.

Reading Ramsie's bio and list of achivements, one could ask: "So, and who now knows his pet wizard name, or even think he was ever existing?"
But no. Even if Ram had a pet wizard from future, they anyway would say that he did it himself.

Good point, has one Ceramic one, note that even an failed mummification would help as it would leave an cocoon who can be c14 analyzed and was undisturbed. 

Yes Ramses would obviously take the credit, I would help him with some PR on top, I would simply ask to add some features to be added to his tomb in case the great plan failed, it it succeeded his tomb would newer be looted but it would still be nice to keep some monuments to verify his power so his grandsons don't clam it all,  

[sevenperforce]

What about building a massive tomb/temple complex shaped like the waterman map projection, with reinforced foundations exactly tracing the shapes of the continents?

[Terwin]

Well, the CZ crown in one tooth, the implanted titanium screw with attached CZ tooth, and several composite resin fillings should make it pretty obvious that my origin is more modern than ancient(with Titanium having not even been discovered until 1791).  This would also be much harder to fake than a post-mortem iphone insertion.

Both the CZ and the titanium show up very clearly in x-rays, suggesting closer examination.

 

[1101]

Didn't see the idea mentioned, so here is my idea:

Rather than encoding mathematics or anything like that, describing the past/future.  My presence may change human history but it is likely that nothing we have done as a species changes geological events.

So, describe a significant, distinct catastrophe, and get it in, for example, the Book of Revelation.  The 'Boxing Day' Tsunami of 2004 is a large enough event that could be used.  Tambora's 1815 eruption and subsequent 'Year without a summer' could also work, as an example of holy wrath.  Modern scholars could look at it and say that the author was just describing (actual) past events, but a detailed or sequential enough description might work:

"and then His wrath poured forth, and with it brought destruction through clouds of glowing fire.  Those many leagues away could hear, the sky turned red and for a year none on his creation had summer"

Or something like that.

If around the time of the King James translation, encoding an actual, working Bible Code could work similarly.  Use all major events you can think of to increase probability of it being detected, and possibly used:

Tambora 1815

Krakatoa 1883

Tunguska 1908(?)

San Fransisco Earthquake 1906

1960 Peru Earthquake

Mt St Helens 1980 (include detail of lateral blast)

2004 Earthquake and Tsunami

2010 Haiti Earthquake

2011 Japan Earthquake

2013 Chelyabinsk Meteor

And so on.  I'm unlikely to influence human history, possibly include WW1 & 2, Moon Landing, Russian Revolution, French Revolution, Loss of the Titanic, Tenerife Airport Disaster, Lockerbie Disaster, 9/11 etc.  Even if history does change, if all those are included but I got everything else right, then the conclusion that a time traveler was involved could be reached.

 

If further back, i.e. before 0 AD or so, obvious problem is that your religion could die out first. 

[YNM]

On 6/4/2018 at 11:03 PM, 1101 said:

So, describe a significant, distinct catastrophe, and get it in, for example, the Book of Revelation.

Would just be passed as doomsday stuff.

There's no guarantee the dates or events would even line up.

Being from the country that had the tsunami AND the eruption, I'd say people here don't take too much notes. They are to be expected anyway.

http://indonesiaetc.com/in-memory-of-170000-indonesians-or-not/

(though i'd be amazed if the alternate verse is going to be better on us.)

________

 

Something else I just thought up : 

Squaring the circle.

Rather than proving it wrong, put up a really good approximation AND the error figure. I'm almost tempted to carve it to the actual words but think that'd take centuries to do XD

[1101]

2 hours ago, YNM said:

Would just be passed as doomsday stuff.

There's no guarantee the dates or events would even line up.

Being from the country that had the tsunami AND the eruption, I'd say people here don't take too much notes. They are to be expected anyway.

http://indonesiaetc.com/in-memory-of-170000-indonesians-or-not/

(though i'd be amazed if the alternate verse is going to be better on us.)

 

Of course people will take it as doomsday stuff.  But that isn't all bad.  For starters, while it could be dismissed, there would still be the fact that someone had a really good guess on the effects of a large eruption such as that.  And no one in 400AD or so could see worldwide events such as that, or do the cause effect analysis of volcanic winter.

The funny possibility exists, of course, that mainstream science/literature types would dismiss it, but some crazy conspiracy site somewhere would guess at the truth.  And everyone else worldwide would be like 'That's Crazy!' when it is in fact true.

 

Edited June 6, 2018 by 1101

[sevenperforce]

8 minutes ago, 1101 said:

Of course people will take it as doomsday stuff.  But that isn't all bad.  For starters, while it could be dismissed, there would still be the fact that someone had a really good guess on the effects of a large eruption such as that.  And no one in 400AD or so could see worldwide events such as that, or do the cause effect analysis of volcanic winter.

The funny possibility exists, of course, that mainstream science/literature types would dismiss it, but some crazy conspiracy site somewhere would guess at the truth.  And everyone else worldwide would be like 'That's Crazy!' when it is in fact true.

The funny thing is...this brings us to a new question.

What level of anomaly (accuracy in ancient prophecies, mathematical structures in ancient tombs, oddly-intricate relics) would we, as present investigators, need to see before an "ancient aliens" or "time traveler" hypothesis would make more sense than coincidence?

To be clear, I am 100% certain that all "ancient alien" and related theories are utter bunk. But the reason I know they are utter bunk is because I can tell you what sort of proof I'd need to see in order to be convinced.