Effects of q 19th century village being ISOTed to Germania

[Otto Kretschmer]

What if a single village or a set of several villages (numbering ca. 300-500 people in total) from Central Germany ca. 1880 AD is ISOTed to Magna Germania in 10 AD?

How can those people change Magna Germania and in what time period?

As I said the ISOTed area contains approx 300-500 people together with agricultural land around capable of feeding them. There is the usual set of agricultural machinery from that period including heavy ploughs and horse collars. There are numerous hunting rifles and many people in the ISOTed area have experience in the Prussian army. Numerous people know how to make gunpowder and literacy is universal.



The potential for change is profound but how you imagine the initial contact to be like? What about the first 5, 10, 50 years? I expect there to be quite a bit of distrust initially if not open hostility.

[stevep]

Nov 25, 2023 11:38:01 GMT Otto Kretschmer said:

What if a single village or a set of several villages (numbering ca. 300-500 people in total) from Central Germany ca. 1880 AD is ISOTed to Magna Germania in 10 AD?

How can those people change Magna Germania and in what time period?

As I said the ISOTed area contains approx 300-500 people together with agricultural land around capable of feeding them. There is the usual set of agricultural machinery from that period including heavy ploughs and horse collars. There are numerous hunting rifles and many people in the ISOTed area have experience in the Prussian army. Numerous people know how to make gunpowder and literacy is universal.



The potential for change is profound but how you imagine the initial contact to be like? What about the first 5, 10, 50 years? I expect there to be quite a bit of distrust initially if not open hostility.

  Well a lot might depend on luck, location and if any skilled diplomats emerge.  Depending on location if its in the west its going to be in the region recently occupied by the Romans but now in disorder after the destruction of Varus's defeat at the battle of the Teutoburg Forest and will be in a period of disorder with jubilant German tribes and also subject in following years to Roman reprisal attacks.  If further east then that will have less impact and the newcomers, assuming they survive, could take years to realise when they are.  Given the borders of Germany in ~1880 I would say central Germany would make them more in the latter than the former region but not sure how much communications between tribes there was at this time.

  I see two clear sources of conflict between them and the down-timers wherever they are.  That their now sitting on land that one or more local tribes view as theirs and of course religion. I don't know how much language would have changed in the near two millennium so unclear how well they can communicate with the locals.  There would well be issue in terms of differences culture with things like slavery as well.

  They may have guns and be capable of making gunpowder but I suspect they would struggle to manufacture even a relatively simply flintlock musket let alone a rifled gun, at least in the short term.  Also with such a small number, even in a relatively militarised area like Prussia the number of people with military experience and some of that could be a decade or two in the past would probably be in the order of 80-100.  As such while a show of force against an early threat would be very useful to show their not going to be trifled with they would need to find some agreement with at least one of the local tribes else their likely to be simply worn down by sheer weight of numbers and pin-pick raids, something many German tribes of this period probably had experience of.

  If they can survive then they are likely to have a huge impact because of the technological knowledge that would be spread.  How quickly this spreads and to whom would be the big issues.  Does it benefit one or more German tribes or are say Roman merchants and possibly spies able to gather information and possibly lure some up-timers to the empire with wealth and comforts that aren't as available in Germany.  What happens with Christianity would also be an interesting question.  Could be that if some reach the empire they would seek to head east to Palestine to try and meet up with Jesus.  Which would probably be a cultural shock for both sides!  Or if news of what the religion does to Rome it could prompt a quick purge of some people in Palestine. - Which is likely to clarify claims about Jesus's divinity somewhat.

[Otto Kretschmer]

stevep

Yes they are located further East far away from the Roman controlled part of Germania.

I expect them to survive as they have all the skills necessary to do so. I purposely choose 1880 as the year of the ISOT as a modern village would be too reliant on modern technology.

Do you know by any chance what skillset might be available to rural people in Central Germany in 1880? Blacksmithing obviously. What other craftsmanship skills mighg be present in such a set of villages?

As for language - Proto Germanic and modern German are not intelligible with each other and it would take a year to three of intense exposure to learn.