Hypothetical: Get your time travel assignment here.

[Rain Man]

Here's the situation: you show up for work on Monday morning, and as you're drinking your initial cup of coffee or Dr. Pepper, an e-mail arrives from your CEO with one of those red exclamation points on it. You open it up.

In a surprise move, your company is moving all operations to the Central African Republic. You can relocate there at a wage of 50 cents per day, plus the company will cover the cost of your first 100 rounds of self-protection ammo, or you can get laid off. You take the second option.

You start browsing through the job ads and come across this one:

Local community college seeks documenting historian. Must be open to new cultures, foods, and experiences.

You answer the ad and you get an interview immediately once they see your resume line item about proficiency in the Microsoft Office suite. You go to the interview and they ask questions about how much you need coffee and electricity and indoor plumbing. They seem satisfied with your answers.

A few days later, you get the nice e-mail that you’ve been accepted into the Twin Pines Community College Time Travel Project as a documenting historian. As it turns out, one of the dental technician students wired some machinery together oddly and created a time machine, so now Twin Pines is the world leader in time travel.

Your assignment will be to go back into the past, live for a year, and document what you see. You can pick your landing location anywhere on the earth. The only challenge is that the time machine picks a random year and no one can control it. You’ll arrive on January 1st according to the Gregorian calendar and depart on December 31st, but no one will know what year until you arrive. The machine overweights more recent years, so the odds are 50 percent that you’ll be more recent than the year 700 AD, and 80 percent that you’ll be more recent than 1,100 BC, but conceivably you could go all the way back to the earth’s beginning.

If you accept the job I’ll randomly assign you a year, and you’ll have to report back on where you would go and what you would try to document. Assume that you will be equipped with a translation device and that you will not change history if you interact with it. Any people or creatures will merely see you as an oddity and minor annoyance, kind of like Michael Strahan on TV shows.

Who wishes to enter the Twin Pines time machine? Volunteer in the thread and I’ll assign you a year.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by FlintHillsChiefs

Actually a lot of civilizations didn't make that logical leap for a long time. So I can please do it?

You might have no choice. All of the other cavalrymen would be making fun of you for your puny thighs.

[patteeu]

Originally Posted by Bugeater

Doesn't seem like a whole lot went on in 927 BC other than a couple of solar eclipses. Think I'm just going to throw on a leisure suit and catch up with Dartgod in 1973.

If you could read about it today, we wouldn't need a historian to go back in time to figure out what was happening.

[FlintHillsChiefs]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

You might have no choice. All of the other cavalrymen would be making fun of you for your puny thighs.

Sweet. Time to take over the world.

On another note, I'm 6'4" and 220. I wonder how people would view me back then. I bet I'm a frigging giant compared to them.

[Otter]

Oh Boy!

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by patteeu

If you could read about it today, we wouldn't need a historian to go back in time to figure out what was happening.

This is a good point. You can keep the disco suit, but we're going to need you to wear it to 927 BC.

[Bugeater]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

This is a good point. You can keep the disco suit, but we're going to need you to wear it to 927 BC.

Great idea. Between that and controlling the sun they will think I'm a god for sure.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Otter

Oh Boy!

You're going to leap back to 1177 AD in the body of a North American.

Actually, that would be a good time to go to Mesa Verde if you want to do Colorado. It might be a tad early, but maybe you could get some clues.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by FlintHillsChiefs

Sweet. Time to take over the world.

On another note, I'm 6'4" and 220. I wonder how people would view me back then. I bet I'm a frigging giant compared to them.

I'm curious. I've read that size depended a lot on food security and food competition, and that some of the old humans were pretty close to our size, at least in height. Maybe not 6-4, but close to the modern average. These early civilizations may fall into the shorter side, though, since they were agriculture-based.

[FlintHillsChiefs]

Originally Posted by FlintHillsChiefs

Sweet. Time to take over the world.

On another note, I'm 6'4" and 220. I wonder how people would view me back then. I bet I'm a frigging giant compared to them.

Upon further research the stirrup wasn't invented until around 100 AD in China. I can't believe it took humankind almost a millennium to make that seemingly short logical leap.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by FlintHillsChiefs

Upon further research the stirrup wasn't invented until around 100 AD in China. I can't believe it took humankind almost a millennium to make that seemingly short logical leap.

That's kind of insane. That's a long time to be falling off your horse.

[ptlyon]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

That's kind of insane. That's a long time to be falling off your horse.

That's when they started letting women ride them

[patteeu]

My assignment is 496 AD.

I initially considered going to North Africa to observe the transition from Gunthamund to his brother Thrasamund in the Vandal Kingdom, but who wants to spend a year in North Africa.

Instead, I'll go to Italy and see how things are going for Theodoric the Great a few years after he unified the place and took charge over the Romans and the Goths who lived there.

[FlintHillsChiefs]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

I'm curious. I've read that size depended a lot on food security and food competition, and that some of the old humans were pretty close to our size, at least in height. Maybe not 6-4, but close to the modern average. These early civilizations may fall into the shorter side, though, since they were agriculture-based.

According to Herodotus the average male was 5'5"

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

I bet your lawyering skills will serve you well in ... um ... 18175 BC.

Does law skill include any courses in working flint or sharpening spears?

Wow, this time machine sucked. 18,000 BC is 20,000 years ago.

So, first off, I've been sent off to an ice age. You want climate change baby, I've got it in spades.

This period of time, referred to by geologists as the Quarternary Glaciation, was an ice age lasting from about 110,000 to 12,000 years ago. In fact, about 20,000 years ago is precisely when (give or take a few hundred years) scientists have put for the "Last Glacial Maximum"). For where I will go -- I will choose an equatorial location because much of the northern hemisphere is covered in ice for long periods. It is estimated that in the winter, the ocean would be iced to south of Los Angeles on the West Coast, and to the Carolinas on the East Coast. (image below). Because so much water is locked up in ice (mainly in North America, Europe and Asia), sea levels are much lower -- like an estimated 280 feet lower. Rainfall is also scarcer, and desert areas much larger.

Average temperatures worldwide are an estimated 10 degrees cooler Celsius. Which is, errr, more in Fahrenheit.

Homo sapiens do exist, having evolved approximately 200,000 years ago. Neanderthals also exist, of course, durign this timeframe. They live primarily in Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia, but only the southern regions of Europe and Asia being habitable.

We are in the stone age. People can make tools and weapons out of stone, bone, animal hide and plant fiber. Fire does exist, but the locals dont' seem able to make pots out of clay or otherwise use the fire to heat and shape other materials.

Writing is not yet invented. While people shape objects using knives, and write pictures on the cave walls, there isn't much else going on. It's pure subsistence living here folks.

There is also "megafauna" at this point in time. Very large versions of certain animals we know now were still alive, up until about 10,000 BC. Megafauna include things like Glyptodon, a 1 **TON** version of an armadillo, mammoths and mastadons, the "short faced bear", which when on all fours would look a man in teh eye, and when "standing" could reach up to 12 feet tall, and weighed a ton, as well as giant beavers, camels, sloths, and an assortment of other animals.

I come back as soon as possible from this frigid, awful, internet=free existence seeking a refund....or another trip to someplace "sooner."

[Rasputin]

Originally Posted by KC Tattoo

Snakes I hate snakes.

I mean **** you Australia no matter what year it is and your andacondas fuk yourself in the ****s.