I’d give laser pointers to Neanderthals. Even if they did figure out some useful application for them (maybe hunting?) they’d run out of batteries eventually.
Bicycles. If we could have gotten bicycles a few centuries before cars, I don’t think modern cities would be so damn car centric.
Something with gears. Like a cranked egg whisk. Huge amounts of science went into this, but all of it should be replicable in a few generations of experiment with even bronze working. And it should inspire inventors of the age too
Hey this might help us out. If Neanderthals learn how to sit for hrs a day we would get that evolutionary advantage.
A single glass coca-cola bottle
A solar panel with a light attached.
I would take a portable CD player, place a CD with Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up on it playing backwards, hook up solar panels, remove the ability to shut it on/off, and set it up a circuit that will:
- As the device solar charges, keep it off until some voltage threshold is exceeded
- Once the voltage is high enough, start a random timer (8 - 100 hours), so that it is not immediately obvious that the sun activated the device
- When the timer ends, turn the music on on repeat mode
- Sometimes turn the music off at random, and then turn it on again at random after a long delay, so that in some cases you can have turn ‘ON’ events without the device being exposed to the sun
- When the voltage drops below a low threshold, turn the device off until it is charged again
Imagine how crazy it would be as tech advanced through the ages and people create their own artificial sound and eventually realise that that sounds from the mysterious artifact from the future was playing music BACKWARDS and there’s discernible lyrics.
Hopefully the English language is developed and Rick Astley gets to make his song before anyone figures it out!
A large obsidian slab standing perfectly vertically.
A Nintendo Switch running Animal Crossing. Assume it has some kind of perpetual battery, and they can figure out how to operate it/play the game, and read our modern English.
I’m thinking they figure modern civilisation is about (or back to) fishing and farming… and that animals are intelligent. Like validating TF outta the Egyptian pantheon. You’re a human but you have a dog for a neighbor, here’s a koala, a gorilla, an eagle… and they all talk and wear clothes.
(Of course, if we wanna blow their minds with a game AND we can assume they can play it, why not just go straight to Cyberpunk?)
oh I’d teach 'em modern english, and then dump a truck load of People’s Magazine’s outside their hut
Going for a hunt today? Can’t. Need to know what Janniston said to Branjelo on page 4
Leaf blower. They are loud and the “breath” coming from them is pretty awesome.
A Roman dodecahedron, it fucks with modern people as well.
Ha ha, that’s my one too - tell us what these bloody things are for!!
A monolith
That still trips up some people today. That metal monolith that was propped up in the desert a year or two ago comes to mind.
Flashlights.
Fleshlights
Flushlights.
Yes, toilet illuminators, what of it?
Condoms
A Furby.
