[quote=@catchamber] A lot can change in a few decades. 35 years of 2% annual growth doubles your population. Other groups may join yours, or mimic your ideas, too. Also, every immigrant and citizen raised by ignorant parents can be a vector for syphilis and tuberculosis. [/quote] This implies neighboring tribes outside the ethnic group would be responsive. While the aforementioned Mississippi Culture had developed sedentary agriculture it was only after thousands of years of slow march and adaptation of technology otherwise developed by the Aztecs to make the march northwards. Guns, Germs, and Steel goes into a great level of detail on this and even goes into the numbers for the progress of things such as corn, beans, and beats to progress northward from central Mexico. It took more than a few thousand years to do so, and Jared Diamond's calculations per the spread of technology on a north-south axis is some three times longer. That put down, this assumes automatically that the moment the Cherokee pick up on and utilize KGP's technological gifts that Creek, Chickasaw, and Pawnee would quickly follow suit. Just because your neighbors have superior technology doesn't make those individuals with lesser technology follow suit quickly. This isn't including the fantastic level of socio-economic changes that the Cherokee would undergo or if the tribe he sets up with would be able to impress upon it on their neighbors; if anything they might only begin to adapt over a generation or more of trading and by the time the full fruits of his efforts come about he would have passed away irregardless of dick-rot. [quote] You were? Vilageidiotx's first post is blank, and I explicitly said "I'd love to see you explain how to produce all of that in a language you don't know, and get it running within your now shortened lifespan, all without googling anything." If we're prepared, we're basically aware of all recorded facts about the era, minus butterfly effects caused by our arrival. That seems cheap. Yeah, religious conflicts are always a bummer. On the bright side, you can keep your head down and take advantage of the cushy positions clergy generally get, such as isolation from infected populations, and access to historical records. If push comes to shove, just contact local royalty, and explain how you can ensure they and their people remain competitive and prosperous with technology. [/quote] Remember: we're talking about KGP's proposal here ultimately and not the lack of proposal in the OP. By his accounts he is preparing to go back in time and willing to ignore butterfly effect and all associations. By him, he's preparing and getting educated. He's actually probably going to read a book if he's going to walk down the street to his nearby Cherokee community to being learning the language and life ways of the tribe before he heads back in time. [quote] If we define the Medieval Ages as 500 to 1500 AD, and Columbus reached the Americas in late 1492, you have a >0% chance of ending up in a year where there are colonists or explorers. Even if you don't, and we assume the butterfly effect doesn't alter European history, you just need to be a few decades away from 1500 to encounter Europeans. [/quote] To argue technicalities the middle ages are generally accepted at having been the fall of Constantinople in 1453 or the end of the Hundred Years War in 1453 at which time modern nationalism in Western Europe develops and we see the steady decline of the feudal order. If Columbus still leaves in 1492 this provides a certain period in which he will never arrive and packs a minimum of two generations between our arrival and his arrival. This scenario admittedly doesn't leave us much time to do anything per my first response, but it would be enough to do something minimal in the hopes of preparing, like introducing the Cherokee Alphabet centuries before the Cherokee Alphabet was actually introduced so the tribe can pass around ideas and integrate things into the long-term memory. Prior to that we'd have time, but even assuming Columbus it's not like his landfall in the Caribbean spells doom for anything north of the Gulf, since it's not for another twenty-thirty years the Spaniards conquer the Aztecs and begin the great fucking up of shit. Even coming in on the beginning of European presence means the best thing you could do is prepare and inoculate the tribe against the dangers posed by European-borne diseases which would vastly empower the tribes; regular European realpolitik will do the rest. [quote] Without using a search engine, can you list 10 sources of dietary iron that are native to the New World? While that seems excessive, let's keep in mind that mismanagement and pathogens can destroy food sources. [/quote] Beans, deer, pheasant, turkey, shell fish, insects, possum, turtle, bison, wild rice. [quote] I get that it talks about New World organisms. But, if we're being super serious about waking up in Medieval America, one would likely want to know what is and isn't native to the region. [/quote] The only thing we mostly changed before the 20th century is killing a lot of shit.