I wonder sometimes what it would be like to meet someone from 200 years ago. 300. 400. We wouldn't even recognise each other as the same species.
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Technology changes. People don't.
OK, obviously people have evolved. Homo sapiens was a new species, once... many tens of millennia before the earliest recorded history.
The reason that the earliest literature - Gilgamesh, the Hebrew bible, Homer etc - remains relevant is because people haven't changed
@TheBreadmonkey We have a lot of old stuff at work.
Like a complaint from a widow in 1729 that she had met this guy, Niels, who was a merchant from Jutland. And they became close but just when she was late he had to return to Jutland for some emergency. But then she met him on street later and found out that he wasn't a merchant from Jutland, his name wasn't Niels, and he had a wife and family. He tried to buy her off with 8 Rigsdaler but she wanted child support and recognition. Same species.
@TheBreadmonkey I don’t think they’d be very chatty.
@TheBreadmonkey
We probably wouldn't recognize them unless we had been properly introduced, Ben.
And how would THAT have worked?
Sam (@samuelpepys) is a buddy of mine, he posts regularly here on Mastodon. He talks with his friends here all the time. Sam lived some 4 centuries ago. He's not necessarily a nice person, and some of his behaviour frankly is despicable --- I and his other friends here tell him so! But definitely same species, no doubt about it.
@TheBreadmonkey Honestly I think people fundamentally haven’t changed that much in recorded history. I mean if you read Montaigne, he sounds like a great guy to have a chat with, and he died in 1592.
Was he the guy with the cocaine who said say hello to my little friend?
@TheBreadmonkey That was his cousin Tony.
@TheBreadmonkey I think the big thing that changes a lot is language though. It wouldn’t be like stepping out of the Tardis in Anglo Saxon Britain and a load of peasants are speaking like it’s Eastenders.
@TheBreadmonkey Our needs only changed in the last 70 years with indoor plumbing and electricity.
Before that, from ancient Egypt, to the early 20th century, people mostly concerned themselves with growing enough food to survive the winter and having a pot to piss it. So 200, 300, 400, 1000 years ago, I don't think it matters much.
@TheBreadmonkey 400 years ago you could talk to, assuming they spoke the English of the time. Not much before that, though.
@TheBreadmonkey I barely recognise my kids as the same species.
