this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
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1700 is basically medieval. The differences are things most people couldn't spot, like potatoes and puffy clothing vs. tight. They were even still using plate armour and pikes, although it wasn't long for the world.
Edit: To be clear, I am aware that's 2.5 centuries after the medieval is usually demarcated as ending. Besides seafaring not a lot was fundamentally new, though.
I mean, this is like seeing the Dutch East India Company or Shakespearean London or the events of Les Mis in Game of Thrones.
In my mind, these are very distinct time periods. One has castles, the other had coffee.
But also still castles. It's true, people might divide them up now, but I'm not sure how uniformly or accurately.
You gave events over two centuries as an example, but if I was dividing the world up by associations, DEIC goes in with Shakespeare and Columbus, but Le Mis goes in with beam steam engines and sawtooth-roof factories in a later era. That's just me though, obviously it changed continuously in reality.
I guess what I'm asking is, how would medieval be different when it comes to this question? They're still going to understand trade and politics fine, but not most things machine or industry-related.
Edit: Even if I was explaining stuff to a guy like Ea-Nasir from the deep bronze age, I'd mainly have to adjust for metal being less common in their era. A lot of everyday life would be familiar to people from 1700AD.
The medieval period to me would be like in Game of Thrones or DnD settings, where automation tech was still hydraulic based at best, and medical knowledge was still very very limited.
1700s had steam engines and electricity, and apparently lithography was invented in the 1790s, so that's a big difference.
Yeah, but we're in 1700, as in a year after 1699. They had the word "electricity", and it referred to the tendency of feathers to stick to stuff. The first static electricity generator is recorded in 1705. Thomas Savery's practical steam engine was patented in 1698, but probably wasn't being used in actual mines as of 1700. The first impractical ones were recorded in classical antiquity, however. All the experiments and applications you're thinking of were from much later that century.
That's actually kind of a nitpick, though. They have a chance to know more than a person from 1500AD, 1200AD, or 1700BC. The point is that all of them still know basically nothing. You're not going to gain good analogies and comparisons until deep into industrialisation, and even then some things like computers will be tricky. Late life Ben Franklin would be somewhere in between, but it's my personal guess him being Ben Franklin would be more helpful than his prior knowledge of the concept of conservation of mass.
You're right, I misread the question and thought it was the 1700s. That changes it quite a bit ๐.