Could you rebuild civilisation?

The premise of PastMaster is ‘Could you survive and thrive in the past armed with nothing but the clothes you are wearing and the knowledge in your head?’

I’ve debated with Ryan and Keon in countless pub chats whether we could actually make electricity or penicillin if we were transported back to the Middle Ages. The answer is always a resounding ‘no, not really’.

In one PastMaster episode set in biblical Galilee I ‘invented’ gene editing to improve the strain of saffron I was growing and corner the spice market. This is an example of the ludicrous flights of fancy ChatGPT will let you get away with in the game if you really bully it. Obviously you’d have to have a large number of intermediary technologies developed between 25AD and now before you were able to do gene editing.

Out of curiosity I looked up (on ChatGPT) what sort of technologies would actually be plausible in this era given the available means, and that would also be effective. It suggested: improved sanitation systems, basic medical knowledge (especially keeping wounds clean), crop rotation and wind & water mills.

I asked for something a bit flashier with more of a ‘wow’ factor and it suggested hot air balloons and telescopes would theoretically have been possible to create, and would arguably have gotten people more excited than a bit of old soap.

Side note: the most useless inventions I can think of for the Middle Ages: bubblegum, moisturiser, a dog-walking business, fidget spinner and garden gnomes.

While mulling on these concepts and deciding what my go-to invention would be in the event I got transported back to Medieval England, I happened on this book, The Ultimate Guide to Rebuilding Civilization.

It purports to contain the blueprints for the most wondrous and useful inventions in our history. Inventions like a plough, a mill, a blast furnace or glass are all things we take for granted today, but go far enough back in time and they would have been (and were) game changers.

But how easy would it be to actually make one of these things? Or explain it to someone who could? If you are going to go back in time and sort people out with a nice new bit of technology, this book looks like a great guide.

At £110 it ain’t cheap, but if that’s the price of raising a phoenix from the ashes after a nuclear holocaust, it sounds like a bargain.

In the meantime I’m going to go away and work on my hot air balloon prototype. Its name? Air Lord.

What would your go-to invention be if you were sent back in time?