I mean depends on how the crops looked; im sure they'd tie me for bog body purposes and toss me in the dip if the crops were bad enough and I went feverish. The gods gotta eat too after all.
Great! I got a random Excel question. Sometimes when I pull reports at work the format for the price changes. Instead of showing the $ and the correct amount of spaces after the cent sign like .00, it has no $ and many digits after the cent sign like .000000000000000.
Now when I try to change the cell format back to currency, accounting, text, or anything it keeps the same format and amount of digital after the cent sign. The work around I found is to open up a different Excel doc type it in the correct format and then copy and paste over the incorrect formatted cell.
Do you can a better answer or did I explain horribly and your as confused as me when I try to fix Excel?
Yea when I said that I excel at Excel I was somewhat exaggerating, much as I have at every job interview I've ever had. It's become something of a reflex these days. But as someone else has said I think that particular issue is just down to Excel being crap.
I had someone at work ask me if I was an expert at Excel. I've written macros in VBA and made formulas that would have been easier as a macro so I could save them as xlsx instead of xlsm. I said yes, with some hesitation. She asked me if I could help her with a problem and I said sure. The problem was a bunch of hidden cells. At least it wasn't a bunch of data she'd deleted and wanted me to get back for her.
The amazing part was how hard it was to show the cells in the latest version of Excel.
I haven't encountered this but have you tried select the cell, going to the home ribbon tab I think, then clicking normal. Then adding the number formating you want
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.
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.
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."
I was taught they never actually lived in caves, by an angry frenchman when I visited caves in France. The car sized bears did hibernate there though (and people did paintings in the caves).
It depends on what was needed at the time, but probably things like tools and housing. Obviously considering the time we're talking about it would be very "primitive" lol
But if you knew what you knew now you could do a lot. Just knowing that you can bake mud to make clay. Getting running water to where you live could be a game changer. It's the key to agriculture, sanitation, etc.
Weapons are the same. Knowing something like the bow and arrow is possible will put you way ahead of sharp sticks and rocks.
Robert Sawyer has a series of science fiction books where there's a parallel universe in which neanderthals ended up ruling the earth instead of modern day humans.
It's been a while since I read them but the fact that you comment itched that part of my brain tells me there might have been a steamy parallel universe crossover scene or two 🤔
Glit walked slowly across the plain, eyeing the group of hunters that surrounded the creature. It was large, much too large for the tribe to eat before the meat spoiled.
As he approached he could hear the argument already.
"No, rapal, you take that part! It was your spear that slowed her enough for us to catch her!"
"But it was your arrow that finally brought her down, Jatam, you should have that part for your family! You have 5 younglings!"
They would carry on like this for hours if left to their own devices, none wanting to be seen as greedy.
Glit approached and broke into the conversation,
"Hunters, good hunting," he said loudly, "Karana has smiled upon you today! The beast has laid down it's life for the survival of our people!"
The hunters beamed, proud not only of their work, but now in the secure knowledge of it's righteousness. The hunt has been approved, sanctified by the Storyteller, the one who speaks for the gods. They know they will be rewarded.
The hunters began disemboweling the enormous creature and cutting the choicest sections of meat off of her as Glit began to tell the story of Olana, the great Mother Elephant. He has told this story many times, but the hunters never tire of hearing it. When the work is done, and the story is told, Glit will reward the hunters and walk back to the tribe with them.
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.
It would take time to get back into it, but I was turning out decent knives, spear points, and arrowheads for a while there. Nothing that would blow anyone's mind as art, but pretty enough and usable.
One of those things I did just because I wanted to see if I could, and it turned out to be really relaxing and enjoyable. Arthritis took the enjoyable and relaxing part away, so I stopped, but on a survival level, I could get the job done well enough to make up for being a bottom tier hunter.
Juda, therefore, said to Onan his son: Go in to thy brother’s wife and marry her, that thou mayst raise seed to thy brother.
He knowing that the children should not be his, when he went in to his brother’s wife, he spilled his seed upon the ground, lest children should be born in his brother’s name.
And therefore the Lord slew him, because he did a detestable thing[.]
In all seriousness, since apes do it (a lot), I don't think there ever were a "first person in history". It's more just a consequence of having long enough arms.
Exactly how wasn't known anywhere before1875, however most humans through history seem to have had some idea of there being a connection between sex and pregnancy. I remember reading about isolated island peoples having other ideas, like the Trobriand people who believed that an ancestral spirit entered the woman's body and that sex had nothing to do with it. However this article claims those reports are half-true at best; the Trobriand people apparently considers sex necessary for the formation of the fetus, even if it's not the primary cause. There's also some speculation that humans became aware of the relationship between sex and pregnancy after the domestication of dogs because of their shorter gestation period. Ultimately, we'll never know...
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!
Everyone alive right now must have ancestors who very literally did live & survive though the stone age and the ages before and after that. Wish I knew what my ancestors did to survive stone age, or better still if I could like watch them in a time lapse video. I guess I might have run away from stone lifting to go be a shepherd or something.
I can make soap from fats and lye (from wood ash). Getting the right balance of fats/lye would be tricky; I've never used wood ash so I'd need some time to work out the right formula. But, theoretically, I could make handmade soap for everyone.
If I had my current knowledge, low-level iron forging, agriculture, and architecture (cisterns, wells, deep food storage) and very rudimentary medicine because the wife is obsessed with various herbs that are used to make our modern medicine
If I was starting from scratch, probably just be decent at hunting because I have good hand eye coordination and maybe tracking
i'm a fairly deft hand at pottery. i'm also decent at fiber crafts. depends when and where during the stone age, of course, that's a pretty big expanse. if i'm really lucky, i'd be in one of the many cultures with special spiritual roles for trans folks. i've also got good rote memorization skills, so i can help with oral history.
I guess I could build a cart/waggon for easier transporting the dead animals the other guys hunted. Not sure if that would be much appreciated or if I just would be the weird guy again.
Maybe a plough would be more useful.
And building/improving shelter.
I could also make a fire after failing some time I suppose.
I can imagine you making a rock hammer, and having to sit there and justify to people why the end has that weird flange. "It's for pulling things out!"
Right, come to think of it, I definitely would be the weird guy that doesn't understand how the community works. I couldn't speak their language, wouldn't know their common practices and hierarchy.
I'd likely go (be exiled) on my own lonely journey (aaand thus quickly die).
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
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.
I'd be a good forager, gatherer and tracker. I have a knack for identifying plants and animals and spotting signs of their presence. I'm sure with a bit of training I could become decent at trapping too but I've never done that.
I'd also be good at art, be that cave wall painting or figurine sculpting/carving.
Being that person providing a better method halfway through a process. A cave person standing on top of another to cave art the ceiling? Halfway through I go "...You know you coulda just grabbed the log from outside, leaned it against the wall and climbed it". Someone halfway through whittling a bowl? "Oh, yeah, I saw some coconuts on the beach they'd be perfect".
I have the great hobby of Looking At Random Things, but the bad habit of assuming everyone else saw those things too so they must be doing what they're doing for a reason lol. That all said I'm sure I'd be dead from dysentery within a week or smtg, they wouldn't have to suffer me long.
Depends what you mean by shovel. Little wooden scoops/spades might have been a thing, although hands will work nearly as well on soft substances. For bigger jobs the digging stick was the tool of choice, and then baskets to move the rubble or economic load (ocher, tubers) out.
I'm guessing multi-piece wooden shovels, if they were ever commonly used, had to wait for some level of civilisation. That's a very difficult thing to make with no proper tools, and not trivial even with. Ditto for bone, and nothing else available in nature is strong and rigid enough under bending.
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
I would excel in the use of the internet and computers as I would be the only one with knowledge about it. I would also be the only one who knows how to drive a car.
Dying.
Dying is not a task, dying is a condition
Not with that attitude
Well, it can be both.
Seppuku is a task
Wouldn’t death be the condition?
Not with that attitude it isn't.
I’d be the best at powershell. Unfortunately I wouldn’t live very long.
I find the powershell method gives me hemorrhoids, I much prefer the gentler three shells method.
But which one goes where?
That one goes there. That one goes there. And that one goes there.
Plot twist: powershell is slang for a sex act in the Stone age
Yelling yabadabadoo and sliding down that dinosaur
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.
You don't think they'd hang you with your own rope?
I mean depends on how the crops looked; im sure they'd tie me for bog body purposes and toss me in the dip if the crops were bad enough and I went feverish. The gods gotta eat too after all.
Excel, it wouldn't be useful but I'd still be great at it.
Great! I got a random Excel question. Sometimes when I pull reports at work the format for the price changes. Instead of showing the $ and the correct amount of spaces after the cent sign like .00, it has no $ and many digits after the cent sign like .000000000000000.
Now when I try to change the cell format back to currency, accounting, text, or anything it keeps the same format and amount of digital after the cent sign. The work around I found is to open up a different Excel doc type it in the correct format and then copy and paste over the incorrect formatted cell.
Do you can a better answer or did I explain horribly and your as confused as me when I try to fix Excel?
That’s just excel being excel.
It Excels at formatting.
Yea when I said that I excel at Excel I was somewhat exaggerating, much as I have at every job interview I've ever had. It's become something of a reflex these days. But as someone else has said I think that particular issue is just down to Excel being crap.
The more I learn about Excel, the more I know I don't know Excel.
I had someone at work ask me if I was an expert at Excel. I've written macros in VBA and made formulas that would have been easier as a macro so I could save them as xlsx instead of xlsm. I said yes, with some hesitation. She asked me if I could help her with a problem and I said sure. The problem was a bunch of hidden cells. At least it wasn't a bunch of data she'd deleted and wanted me to get back for her.
The amazing part was how hard it was to show the cells in the latest version of Excel.
I haven't encountered this but have you tried select the cell, going to the home ribbon tab I think, then clicking normal. Then adding the number formating you want
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.
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."
So, what would you "build"?
Definitely some kind of stone bulwark at the cave entrance to keep out the bears and prehistoric cheetahs.
would you ever try to make something resembling a car / cart?
The flintstones car was a the essential tool humanity used to create civilisation so of course
I was taught they never actually lived in caves, by an angry frenchman when I visited caves in France. The car sized bears did hibernate there though (and people did paintings in the caves).
It depends on what was needed at the time, but probably things like tools and housing. Obviously considering the time we're talking about it would be very "primitive" lol
But if you knew what you knew now you could do a lot. Just knowing that you can bake mud to make clay. Getting running water to where you live could be a game changer. It's the key to agriculture, sanitation, etc.
Weapons are the same. Knowing something like the bow and arrow is possible will put you way ahead of sharp sticks and rocks.
Storytelling & oral sex.
But not simultaneously.
Once upon a slurp slurp slurp
Beat me to it. Mine was "storytelling and sexually gratifying the hunters in exchange for food"
There is a whole world of romance novels in this setting.
Robert Sawyer has a series of science fiction books where there's a parallel universe in which neanderthals ended up ruling the earth instead of modern day humans.
It's been a while since I read them but the fact that you comment itched that part of my brain tells me there might have been a steamy parallel universe crossover scene or two 🤔
I need to start reading again
Well that's going on the list
Glit walked slowly across the plain, eyeing the group of hunters that surrounded the creature. It was large, much too large for the tribe to eat before the meat spoiled.
As he approached he could hear the argument already.
"No, rapal, you take that part! It was your spear that slowed her enough for us to catch her!"
"But it was your arrow that finally brought her down, Jatam, you should have that part for your family! You have 5 younglings!"
They would carry on like this for hours if left to their own devices, none wanting to be seen as greedy.
Glit approached and broke into the conversation,
"Hunters, good hunting," he said loudly, "Karana has smiled upon you today! The beast has laid down it's life for the survival of our people!"
The hunters beamed, proud not only of their work, but now in the secure knowledge of it's righteousness. The hunt has been approved, sanctified by the Storyteller, the one who speaks for the gods. They know they will be rewarded.
The hunters began disemboweling the enormous creature and cutting the choicest sections of meat off of her as Glit began to tell the story of Olana, the great Mother Elephant. He has told this story many times, but the hunters never tire of hearing it. When the work is done, and the story is told, Glit will reward the hunters and walk back to the tribe with them.
With or without my current knowledge?
Because I'm pretty sure I could smelt Iron with what I know, and a year or two of experimentation. So the answer would be "ending the stone age".
Without? I dunno, maybe building traps and snares.
Been watching primitive technology huh?
I mean, I have, but I saw this long before he started trying to smelt Iron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuCnZClWwpQ
That was fascinating thank you! I watched the whole thing. There's a ton of work those people put into making their iron. Truly a community effort
I don't even know what smelting
meantmeans. Can we be cave-friends? I'm good at sharpening knives.Dying
The only correct answer.
Dying
I came here to write Dying, but 7 other people had already done that.
Yeah I typed my comment then scrolled and realized I’m extremely unoriginal:)
Cavemen would have just rolled their eyes when people died back then. Like, pffft, everybody does that.
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.
making fire.
You good at making fires in the present?
am i an expert ? no.
am I pretty good at it. I'd say yes. what i haven't done I have seen done enough times I should be able to get it to work.
I think a big part of this is just knowing what is possible. Not having to "chance upon" things for the first time.
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.
I’m pretty good at thinking outside the box and innovating, so I’d probably just die.
Just by knowing how to wash my hands, medicine. Up until 20th century.
Wash the wound with soapy water, apply cloth that has been boiled. Yeah that should have a better survival rate than most of human history.
Soap is animal fat and what in a survival situation?
Leach wood ashes with water to make lye. Soap is easy
Yep, IIRC hardwood is what you want to be using to make the lye
What if there’s no leech wood?
Dying quickly
drawing dongs everywhere
I wouldn’t survive long with my poor eyesight. Maybe I’d create tools or something. Love tinkering.
This, anyone with strong glasses would be disabled in the stone age, lol. Needed some surgery before? You'd be dead. Ever broke a bone? Likely dead.
I went through my whole (living) family tree once and I'm pretty sure none of us would have survived, including me.
Yeah loooooots of people wouldn’t survive
Either making elaborate traps and contraptions out of sticks and stones.
Or brain surgery.
Hey, maybe you'll be the most successful neolithic brain surgeon and only kill half your patients
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepanning
You'd be the shaman putting holes into heads to cure headaches
It could go either way
Probably tool making.
It would take time to get back into it, but I was turning out decent knives, spear points, and arrowheads for a while there. Nothing that would blow anyone's mind as art, but pretty enough and usable.
One of those things I did just because I wanted to see if I could, and it turned out to be really relaxing and enjoyable. Arthritis took the enjoyable and relaxing part away, so I stopped, but on a survival level, I could get the job done well enough to make up for being a bottom tier hunter.
technical art and programming for video games
Wanking
Who (and when) was the first person in history to wank? And how did they find out?
Genesis 38:8-10
In all seriousness, since apes do it (a lot), I don't think there ever were a "first person in history". It's more just a consequence of having long enough arms.
But could an elephant also have done it first?
An elephant? Why not the wooly mammoth?
All I know is that I now completely understand why the T-Rex was so aggressive all the time.
Tiny arms.
Probably like probably most people still do find out nowadays.
I doubt there was porn at that time!
You'd be surprised
I want to know how they figured out shagging and how that creates babies.
Exactly how wasn't known anywhere before1875, however most humans through history seem to have had some idea of there being a connection between sex and pregnancy. I remember reading about isolated island peoples having other ideas, like the Trobriand people who believed that an ancestral spirit entered the woman's body and that sex had nothing to do with it. However this article claims those reports are half-true at best; the Trobriand people apparently considers sex necessary for the formation of the fetus, even if it's not the primary cause. There's also some speculation that humans became aware of the relationship between sex and pregnancy after the domestication of dogs because of their shorter gestation period. Ultimately, we'll never know...
Is that Marjorie Trailer Greene?
That's a supermodel compared to her.
Dying, mostly.
Starvation.
Hog cranking
I've got some decent smithing skills, I'd go looking for bog iron and skip the bronze age.
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*
Hoarder. Of things that might conceivably be used one day.
You need weird rock? I got weird rock.
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
Cavernbook: a cavern where everyone chisel his/her photo and his/her thoughts
I'm guessing "chisel thoughts" is more akin to painting than writing. I like the idea though, very Lascaux
Time travel, evidently.
obsessing over plants and accidentally dooming the world with agriculture
Everyone alive right now must have ancestors who very literally did live & survive though the stone age and the ages before and after that. Wish I knew what my ancestors did to survive stone age, or better still if I could like watch them in a time lapse video. I guess I might have run away from stone lifting to go be a shepherd or something.
Bronze peddler. "Hello, have you heard of bronze? Just attach it to your axe instead of stone. No more annoying stone chopping! And look, it's shiny!"
Foraging for plants.
pretty useful skill, even now
I can make soap from fats and lye (from wood ash). Getting the right balance of fats/lye would be tricky; I've never used wood ash so I'd need some time to work out the right formula. But, theoretically, I could make handmade soap for everyone.
That is genuinely a revolutionary and practical skill to have
Finding fruit trees. Hunting would be my weak point.
I would introduce them to scrumpy, then teach them to grow apples so we can make more.
Reaching things on top of the fridge would be my special skill. I hope they'd create a special government position just for people like me.
Cave wall art. Carving trinkets and talismans. Might branch out into making spear tips, arrowheads, axes, stuff like that.
Breeding
Engineering and chemistry. You know, sharpening knives/arrows and distilling seawater into salt for food preservation.
If I had my current knowledge, low-level iron forging, agriculture, and architecture (cisterns, wells, deep food storage) and very rudimentary medicine because the wife is obsessed with various herbs that are used to make our modern medicine
If I was starting from scratch, probably just be decent at hunting because I have good hand eye coordination and maybe tracking
i'm a fairly deft hand at pottery. i'm also decent at fiber crafts. depends when and where during the stone age, of course, that's a pretty big expanse. if i'm really lucky, i'd be in one of the many cultures with special spiritual roles for trans folks. i've also got good rote memorization skills, so i can help with oral history.
Butchering, I live on a farm and butcher sheep/lamb and chicken is second nature to me ( started when I was 12 )
Protecting the womenfolk while the other menfolk are out hunting
Uhhuh - what were you doing in my wife's cave there
Criticizing people about their hair styles
I think he's got quite a friendly face tbh
If you could figure out how to make soap from fat, you could be the clean one. Supposedly that helped the Vikings take the ladies home.
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.
I feel like I could get flintknapping down pretty well.
Not being on the internet
I guess I could build a cart/waggon for easier transporting the dead animals the other guys hunted. Not sure if that would be much appreciated or if I just would be the weird guy again.
Maybe a plough would be more useful.
And building/improving shelter.
I could also make a fire after failing some time I suppose.
I can imagine you making a rock hammer, and having to sit there and justify to people why the end has that weird flange. "It's for pulling things out!"
Right, come to think of it, I definitely would be the weird guy that doesn't understand how the community works. I couldn't speak their language, wouldn't know their common practices and hierarchy.
I'd likely go (be exiled) on my own lonely journey (aaand thus quickly die).
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
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.
I'd be the hairless monkey that stays up all night and talks to plants
wouldn't that get you killed very fast?
Hey I didn't say I'd be successful
Ironically, brute force. I would be great at hunting too!
Username checks out
Fucking, for sure
tool making most likely. also fire keeping, and cooking.
sucking dick
While I believe you, dear nutsack, take a minute and think about the whole process of sucking dick before showers were a thing.
you do what you've got to do
They were just used to it. Even today, bathing frequency is culturally dependent.
When old love poetry talks about the musk of a lover, I do wonder at what range it was noticeable.
I'm reasonably good at surviving pregnancy and childbirth, and nursing. Think all my other skills are only useful after the agricultural revolution.
I want to say "crossfit".
stoneagers would trounce any of us at crossfit
Hitting people with a cudgel
Dying from a decease.
dying
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.
hoardlng stones
I'd be a good forager, gatherer and tracker. I have a knack for identifying plants and animals and spotting signs of their presence. I'm sure with a bit of training I could become decent at trapping too but I've never done that.
I'd also be good at art, be that cave wall painting or figurine sculpting/carving.
Being that person providing a better method halfway through a process. A cave person standing on top of another to cave art the ceiling? Halfway through I go "...You know you coulda just grabbed the log from outside, leaned it against the wall and climbed it". Someone halfway through whittling a bowl? "Oh, yeah, I saw some coconuts on the beach they'd be perfect".
I have the great hobby of Looking At Random Things, but the bad habit of assuming everyone else saw those things too so they must be doing what they're doing for a reason lol. That all said I'm sure I'd be dead from dysentery within a week or smtg, they wouldn't have to suffer me long.
Selling camping gear
Cave paintings, since I'm an artist! 😃 Also probably building tools and things since I enjoy building stuff in general
test plant on grug before eating
Knapping flint while fishing. And shitting under a tree. I feel like my ancestors have more in common than I thought.
Digging holes with a shovel. I'm good at that.
Whittling. Drawing.
Meditation.
We said stone age.
We had shovels in the stone age.
Depends what you mean by shovel. Little wooden scoops/spades might have been a thing, although hands will work nearly as well on soft substances. For bigger jobs the digging stick was the tool of choice, and then baskets to move the rubble or economic load (ocher, tubers) out.
I'm guessing multi-piece wooden shovels, if they were ever commonly used, had to wait for some level of civilisation. That's a very difficult thing to make with no proper tools, and not trivial even with. Ditto for bone, and nothing else available in nature is strong and rigid enough under bending.
min-maxxing my sticks
Dispensing elderly wisdom
Sleeping and eating
vee, loop up.
Being a bitch.
::: spoiler perhaps geometry, politics and drugs :::
I'm pretty ok at knapping flint and I'm not a terrible hunter. I'm also usually in poor health.
So I'd probably die as a baby.
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
Feeding the living with my body
I would excel in the use of the internet and computers as I would be the only one with knowledge about it. I would also be the only one who knows how to drive a car.
Being dead
Sloth simulator
Probably dying at age <1.
Chef
Georgia senator by the looks of the picture.
Wololooo
Being the cave complex idiot.
Running away.
Computers! Shit.