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[LordBucket]

Imagine that you were transported back to pre-stone age conditions. There are other humans, but they're naked, picking fruit and sleeping under trees.

How well would you do? Sure, maybe you know how to build complicated circuits out of logic gates, but could you do it without already having diodes or transistors to work with? Sure, maybe you could build a turbine and electric motor, but could you do it without wire and magnets to start with? Sure, maybe you even know how to build a clay furnace. But would you recognize a metal ore if you saw one? How about something simple, some technology that's thousands of years old, like alcohol. Maybe you know all about brewing beer. Would you be able to make beer without being able to go to the store and buy yeast? Would you be able to build a container to put it in? Would you be able to start a fire to cook it?

There you are. You have rocks and sticks and dirt.

How far could you go?

Would you even survive your first month?

[Fossaman]

Not very far, personally. And honestly, there's no point in going for the advanced stuff without a solid foundation of the less advanced techs. But, assuming pre-stone age like you said there a bunch of things right off the bat that would improve my situation. If everybody else is eating fruit, that's a good place to start. Find some sturdy grass or leaves and weave myself a bag to put fruit in. It'll be terrible, because I've never done that before, but it'll let me grab my fruit and book it for somewhere safe more easily. I have reasonable confidence in my ability to bash rocks together until one of them has a sharper edge, which would be useful. Armed with this slightly-sharper-than-a-sphere rock, and some more of that grass I used to make a bag, I'd be willing to give firestarting using a bow and drill a shot.

Assuming I could manage all of these things before something eats me (or one of the natives murders me for my sharp rock and bag of fruit), I'd be comfortable trying to do some of the more interesting things like building the first ever shelter, or beginning the long and extremely tedious process of picking which grass seeds were the biggest in hopes of eventually eating bread again before I die. I'd probably dabble in pottery, although I'd probably never manage a good kiln to fire it with. I seem to recall some technique for burying pottery in a fire pit to harden it, so I'd mess around with that a few times. I'm not likely to find any malachite or azurite, so metal tools are unlikely, but if I did those can be melted with a normal fire, and worked cold by hitting them a lot. Again, trial and error. I know the basic concept, but not the details.

There's not really a lot you can do without knowing where metal deposits are. Or if the natives made me leader because they were impressed by my sharp rock. If the natives cooperate, a budding agricultural society with pottery and basic spinning and weaving isn't out of the question by the time old age caught up. Add in knowledge of the wheel, levers, wedges, gears, pulleys, etc. and you'd probably shave a few centuries off of their development. There's other things that just knowing the concept for would help; charcoal, food preservation, germ theory, basic hygiene, written language...If you were just out to do cultural uplift, you could go quite a ways. But not up to electronics or even steam power.

[Bohandas]

This is something I've actually thought about.

I think the best bet would be to prepare for such a situation by preemptively compiling a book detailing how to make progressively more complex tools starting only with rocks. Sort of like a production chain diagram from a strategy game except instead of merely listing ingredients it would also include detailed instructions on what must be done with them.

If I weren't so lazy I probably would have actually started putting such a tome together some time ago. Perhaps I should do a kickstarter so I can hire people to put it together for me; does anybody here have any idea how much such a thing might cost to compile, (and how much it might cost to print each copy; as it wouldn't be very useful for its intended purpose if only published in digital format)?

[~Neri]

This is something I've actually thought about.

I think the best bet would be to prepare for such a situation by preemptively compiling a book detailing how to make progressively more complex tools starting only with rocks. Sort of like a production chain diagram from a strategy game except instead of merely listing ingredients it would also include detailed instructions on what must be done with them.

If I weren't so lazy I probably would have actually started putting such a tome together some time ago. Perhaps I should do a kickstarter so I can hire people to put it together for me; does anybody here have any idea how much such a thing might cost to compile, (and how much it might cost to print each copy; as it wouldn't be very useful for its intended purpose if only published in digital format)?

Would actually probably be super useful for developing countries also.

[i2amroy]

Note 1: Big post, TL;DR at the bottom if you feel like it just getting the answer without the explanation.
Note 2: I'm just going to assume that part of this scenario makes me magically the leader of at least a small group of people who understand me and magically believe everything I say, because elsewise I'm just a crazy guy in the bushes and literally nothing will come of all my knowledge since nobody will believe or understand a word I say (and pretty much every "uplift" scenario in sci-fi has this happen anyways, they just generally go the "convince them you are a god/gods through display of your technology" route which I can't do without technology and as such am handwaving it).

Going of note 2 above, we should be able to (probably) survive, since I know enough survival craft to at least get a fire up and going, and they have to have at least some source of food or they'd all be dead already.

Honestly I think probably the best I could do would be to greatly advance their knowledge of medicine, basic agriculture, animal domestication, simple mechanics (waterwheels, most likely), and the written word (which would be very important for the last step, transcribing as much as you can of your knowledge before you die). Those things alone should provide some huge quality of life improvements, especially medicine. Knowing why diseases happen instead of thinking they are caused by bad spirits and understanding the basics of sanitation would lead to hugely increased life expediencies, and knowing some of the basics of a good diet/cooking would help there as well.

My bet is my society would end up with at least average quality of life, and would know at least the basics of a lot of the lower level technology like brick making, ceramics, and glassmaking. They would understand how to use a waterwheel, and how to preserve meat if we could find a salt source (be that a mine or the ocean). They would know how to write and communicate, which would spur communication and scientific advances through discussion greatly. They would understand and use a currency system instead of barter, which would also help. They would also understand the idea of interchangeable parts and assembly lines, though how much they could put them into practice at that technology level would be quite a question (however once some simple metallurgy is up the ideas go a long way). After that I'd probably end up spending the rest of my life dictating or transcribing as much of my knowledge as I could while we searched around trying to find the right rocks for metallurgy and experimenting with methods to get hotter fires.

If they could find a copper ore (which are some of the easiest to recognize) and a tin one (which is also fairly easily recognizable, though very geographically limited), and could get a fire hot enough we could get bronze production up and running which with a little work could get us to very basic steam engines. Also if we can find a cave with bat guano in it, and find some sulfur deposits (which are also fairly recognizable), we could get a very basic pipe gun up and running with black powder. At that point it's only a matter of discovering which grey rock yields iron and we can get a basic blast furnace up and running for steel production (though I'd probably be dead before long before that). Once we have iron and copper we can get the basics of electricity, which leads to magnets and aluminum, though my knowledge gets spotty enough they'd have to do some discovering of their own. Of course, most of this depends on finding the right metal deposits, which are often very geographically restricted. It's fully possible that I could end up dying of disease or old age long before the right ones were located, in which case they would be forced to rely on any transcriptions I had made, which should include at least enough to guide them in the general direction they need to go all of the way up to the extreme basics of the information age.

I'd also be able to put a large leap in the terms of government, and would be able to bring in democracy as an idea as well as separation of power (though I'd probably wait till near the end to do that ). Accepting those who are different (be that gender orientation, skin color, etc.) could also be pushed pretty hard as well (though for population's sake we'd probably need to push the idea that homosexuals are okay but they should also pick another of the opposite sex to have children with, since growing your population size and manpower limits is a very important thing early).

TL;DR: Huge improvements to the fields of medicine, cooking, writing, science/the scientific method, manufacturing theory, and government. Good improvements in the ideas of acceptance and working together with others. Okay improvements to the ideas of agriculture and domestication. Lots and lots of technology written down and just waiting for the discovery of the right type of rocks or plants to be put forward, meaning that progress would tend to sit fairly stationary, then jump by the equivalent of hundreds to thousands of years once a new metal was found to be able to be used, or a plant was determined to be the right one that was being talked about. Additionally tons of unrelated theory would be there even if it couldn't be applied, such as mathmatics, logic, and information theory.

You won't get to split it into actual planks any time soon, so don't get your hopes up on anything fancy.

You can actually split basic planks (albeit not always the straightest) out of a small tree with nothing but a bone wedge and a hammer. It's mainly just a matter of going with the grain, adjusting as you go, and starting in the right place on the right chunk of tree.

[Radio Controlled]

"Technological advance is an inherently iterative process. One does not simply take sand from the beach and produce a Dataprobe. We use crude tools to fashion better tools, and then our better tools to fashion more precise tools, and so on. Each minor refinement is a step in the process, and all of the steps must be taken."
Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Looking God in the Eye"

[i2amroy]

"Technological advance is an inherently iterative process. One does not simply take sand from the beach and produce a Dataprobe. We use crude tools to fashion better tools, and then our better tools to fashion more precise tools, and so on. Each minor refinement is a step in the process, and all of the steps must be taken."
Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Looking God in the Eye"

You can, however, shortcut a large portion of the time it takes if you already know exactly how to build the better tool once you have the crude one, instead of potentially spending years experimenting to figure out it's warp and weft. If I know how to make a current blast furnace I can jump straight from basic metalworking to approximately that design, without needing to go through the decades of experimentation and design tweaks that were needed to come up with the current design.

[Radio Controlled]

You know the context of that quote? You don't go from sticks and stones to electron microscopes. True, knowledge is power, but a group of people on the new frontier will still 'develop' over time, making the tools to be able to build the better tools.

[Loud Whispers]

We back to Agrarian and Iron age now

[Bumber]

I've thought about this before. Usually it's in Ancient Greece, where they'd make better use of the knowledge, but I've considered earlier as well.

Let's see: Hygiene, food preservation (salt/smoke), start farming and agriculture. I'll mandate some querns for milling grain. They should probably cover themselves with animal hides, which means we've got to figure out tanning (I know it involves urine.) Charcoal, bone tools, try to build shelter, carts for hauling, dig wells. Figure out lye production (involves ashes), make some soap and tallow candles. Try to ferment some fruit for disinfectant alcohol. Willow bark for pain killer (keep away from infants.) Teach written language and try to preserve as much of my knowledge as possible so technical progression will accelerate more quickly once the infrastructure is finally in place. Spend the rest of my days tinkering will metallurgy and machinery. Maybe attempt to spread knowledge and trade across the world, while hoping our technology doesn't exceed our humanity.

At that point it's only a matter of discovering which grey rock yields iron and we can get a basic blast furnace up and running for steel production (though I'd probably be dead before long before that).

Might wanna check the rust-colored rocks on the surface. Just saying.

[Sonlirain]

I think an average human from today could catapult a dark age tribe to somewhere around the early medieval ages. Heck with a bit of experimentation i think a sufficiently desperate person would have the know how to create a bow or crossbow after some experimentation. Maybe even a steam engine if he remembers his history lessons well enough.

However anythng more complicated like electronics is simply out of reach within a lifetime IMHO.

And of course modern humans usually don't have the wildernes survival skills beyond makign a spear out of a branch and maybe lighting a fire. Anythign finer like being able to recognise edible plants is usually beyond the average joe. And let's not even mention hunting.

[i2amroy]

The vast majority of the earth's land is a reddish-brown color. There are tons of "rust-colored" rocks around where I live, yet none of them are good iron ores. Honestly though I'd say the tin would probably be your biggest limiting factor in getting started, most of the ancient world's tin came from a very small geographic area, and you need it to make bronze.

You know the context of that quote? You don't go from sticks and stones to electron microscopes. True, knowledge is power, but a group of people on the new frontier will still 'develop' over time, making the tools to be able to build the better tools.

Yes, but my point is that you don't need to make the "minor refinements" or "take every step" like the quote states because in the vast majority of cases the thing limiting you is not the quality of the tool, but the knowledge of where to make the improvements.

For example lets just say that I had access to the right raw materials (namely surface veins of copper, tin, iron, and coke, as well as supplies of wood, a more easily worked stone, clay, and bone), enough manpower, and enough knowledge (which personally I have some gaps in, but that's my fault, not the fault of the knowledge itself), and we could go from pre-stone age to fairly modern steel-worked in the space of maybe a couple of years. Example: In the above situation we start and we spend the first several weeks harvesting a tiny amount of copper and tin, as as well as creating the basic ceramics we need and setting up a forging location. At that point you should be able to jump straight to bronze tools, no need to work with copper for hundreds of years, or spend decades perfecting the exact blend of copper and tin, you can just jump straight to bronze. Once you get bronze tools out then you greatly speed up resource harvesting, as well as are able to get to work on a basic modern blast-furnace, no need to muddle your way through several lesser methods of ironworking or spend time perfecting your blast furnace, you already know the exact technical specifications you need, and what can be fudged and what can't. Then you just harvest a small amount of iron, and then steel-working is just around the corner, just waiting on you to take a few months to finish updating your tools to iron.

It takes a bit more work to make an iron hammer with a stone one, but it's still possible, and that's what we care about because it lets us skip the copper and bronze hammers completely. And even if we did need to make them building a complete set of new, better tools with your old ones is a process measured in days to weeks; it's designing and perfecting the design of those better tools that is what takes years. We don't need to spend hundreds of years perfecting the perfect steel blend for our hammers, we can just make it in a few days.

And that's not even looking at all the things that are only limited by knowledge, and require no better tools at all to make. You could make a near modern printing press, paper mill, quern, ceramics workshop, leather tannery, soap maker's, and basic surgery unit with nothing more than stone age-level tools if you have manpower, patience, and a river. If you have access to bronze, you can then go on to make a lumber mill, fairly modern blacksmiths shop, guns, steam engines, and a whole host of other things. Once you have ironworking up you can make a basic battery, which is enough for a basic permanent magnet and a basic electric generator for metal extraction (though lightbulbs would still be quite a long ways out). We don't have to take the 20 mile winding path down the long trail if we know that the ending point is a blind 20ft through the bushes directly to our left.

[Loud Whispers]

Bay12 would probably be a bit overrepresented by people who are identify minerals for fun, brew alcohol for fun, craft chainmail for fun, fish for fun, avoid capture by north koreans (really a matter of survival) and plan for these scenarios because they're fun. The decrease in living quality would be kinda shit, but the more free time would allow more time to be spent towards rebuilding Dwarf Fortress

Also most of us would die in short order, but as long as everyone wrote everything down eventually expertise would continue to be built upon until we got back to working order - it's easier to relearn than discover.

[Radio Controlled]

I honestly kinda think you're underestimating the amount of time and effort it would take.

So, let's indeed drop you in there with manpower. How are you gonna feed all these people? Hunter-gathering for such a large group? There goes a lot of manpower. Wanna farm? You have no tools yet, no crops that took ages of selection in terms of size and such. You'll have to domesticate the animals anew. Sure, modern knowledge will speed things up. But even with modern knowledge, you won't be turning that tree with the hard chewy things into delicious large fruits anytime soon.

Starting from scratch, without starting technology, a whole lot of your effort goes to basic survival. No use planting crops, if they take a few weeks to grow, you gotta eat for those weeks. So, if you start with a lot of people, a lot will probably starve, and if you wanna prevent that, you won't be advancing in tech a lot until you have a lot of infrastructure set up. And untill you have a few farms that can feed a lot more people than they need to be worked, a lot of manpower is lost.

Of course, it wouldn't take as long as it took originally for humanity, but it certainly will take more than a few years. And everytime something goes wrong? A single harvest goes wrong along the way? Dang, now the one guy who new the most about medicine starved, since you can't ship in some food from somewhere the harvest didn't fail. There goes all his knowledge and skills.

If everything goes perfect, and you were dropped in a veritable paradise very suited for human life with all the resources you could need, it'll be easier, but it'll still take quite some time. You can skip some steps, but certainly not all, cause you'll die before you get there otherwise.

[Baffler]

I probably couldn't take it very far. The most I could do that would be actually useful to them would be the self bow (if they didn't have it already), salting/smoking/pickling/brining meat (if they didn't have them already), and maybe a slight improvement in medical practice. There's no way in hell we'd speak the same language, so anything I can't just show them is going to die with me unless I last long enough to learn to express myself properly.

On the other hand, I would have to rely on watching them do things to learn what I can safely eat (if I'm somewhere far away from my local area), to get basic tools because I know the word knapping and that's about it, and I would almost certainly need their help to live through a close approaching winter because chances are I haven't been thrown back into the distant past with a tent, a big book of matches, and a big pile of MRE's. If they just chase me off, I would be in a pretty rough situation.