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What would amaze a 16th century visitor?

Vaccines and penicillin, I think. Would fully amaze our 16thc traveler. Maybe add birth control pills.
What wondrous miracles all these have wrought.
in order to be amazed by penicillin one had to be at least made aware of germ theory. Before that it's jut funny looking white beans and nothing to be amazed about. Electronics, cars and planes is what would have amazed these people.

Smallpox? Oh, we got rid of that. And almost nobody dies of plague, leprosy, or sepsis anymore.

I reckon he would be at least a little bit impressed.
 
Vaccines and penicillin, I think. Would fully amaze our 16thc traveler. Maybe add birth control pills.
What wondrous miracles all these have wrought.
in order to be amazed by penicillin one had to be at least made aware of germ theory. Before that it's jut funny looking white beans and nothing to be amazed about. Electronics, cars and planes is what would have amazed these people.

Smallpox? Oh, we got rid of that. And almost nobody dies of plague, leprosy, or sepsis anymore.

I reckon he would be at least a little bit impressed.
Try impress a kid with that. And then give it some shiny toy and see the difference. These people knew that people get sick and sometimes die and sometimes recover. Nothing amazing about that.
Or compare cure for cancer and freaking aliens (from space). Don't tell me that cure for cancer would amaze you more than aliens.
 
Mostly technology / transport / infrastructure. Even people in the 19th century would fawn over the internet. Hell, I still fawn over the internet sometimes.

The internet is just a minor variation. The real big new thing is instantaneous global communication, even when it was still restricted to a select few - i.e. the establishment of intercontinental telegraph lines did it. The internet is just a minor variation on the same theme.

Before that, imagine a newspaper headline: "We can now confirm last week's rumours about a rebellion in France. Initial reports suggest that ten days ago, the Bastille was stormed. We expect more details with tomorrow's coach."
 
In the 80s I knew someone who spent a few years in the Peace Corp in remote places.

He said when he got back a supermarket was overwhelming.
Hell, i was stationed in Scotland for two years in the 80's. I got back to the states and was amazed at central heating. Heat coming out of the walls, without having to turn on gas or start a fire!
 
Lots of good stuff.
I wonder if the sheer overload of new capabilities, new tech, new knowledge, would overload the awe.

Like Ishi being unimpressed by a pilot. Well, if you've only ever walked anywhere, then rode in a car for the first time, all forms of impossible transit become plausible.
If you're among people who have survived just about everything you've ever thought of as fatal, then further impossibilities like artificial hearts and liver transplants and contact lenses are just so much trimming on the impossible Christmas tree.

Maybe the truly amazing thing to the traveler would be what we cannot do? We fix his teeth, cure his STD, give him shoes that actually differ between left and right feet, he meets someone who survived a heart attack... Then he reads about the coronavirus in the paper. "Why don't you just irradiate it? Or vaccine it? Or vitamin it or whatever?"
"Sorry, it'll take a bit to 'vaccine it.' We're working on it, but..."
"Don't you computer these problems? What's the delay?"
 
IIRC Ishi was not really impressed with telephones or electric lights, or even the daredevil aeronaut who flew an airplane from Golden Gate Park. What fascinated Ishi were venetian blinds. Make of that what you will.
^^^^ This ^^^^

I remember reading somewhere about an anthropologist taking a Yanomamo guy from the rainforest to the big city for the first time. After seeing all the modern wonders of the 20th century with a blase attitude, suddenly he was pointing and dumbfoundedly staring in amazement at what was apparently the most incredible thing he'd seen in his life. The anthropologist looked to see what he was staring at. Some kid had a pile of stuff on a cart and was getting a donkey to pull it. Apparently to truly be amazed by something, you need to grasp how it works.
 
Fine. A VIDEO of a heart transplant, then.

😆
 
More culture shock.

In Shakespeare-era theater, women were all played by men. But for well over a century, women are almost always played by women, and that carried over into movies and TV shows as they were developed.

Men's clothing would look fairly familiar, but women's clothing would be startling. Women typically wore ankle-length skirts and dresses until about a century ago, when knee-length ones started becoming common. Knee-length is still the most common length, though shorter dresses and skirts were prominent half a century ago. An even bigger change also occurred half a century ago, when many women started wearing pants/trousers. Nowadays, in many places, a large fraction of women do that.


As to politics, I agree that it would be startling. The House of Commons is effectively Britain's ruling body. The House of Lords does not do much, and the Queen is effectively a Mistress of Ceremonies. Every MP in the HoC is elected from a single-member district, and every adult citizen can vote. Whichever party or coalition of parties gets a majority of seats gets to choose the de facto leader, the Prime Minister, and the heads of the highest-level government departments. So the UK is effectively a republic, and a monarchy in name only. I like the term "crowned republic" for such a "monarchy".


As to the state of the art in science, there wasn't much of a scientific community back then. "Science" as a general term was invented in the mid 19th cy., as opposed to referring to specific sciences, like medicine or astronomy or mathematics. It was called "natural philosophy" back then, and it wasn't carefully separated from what we nowadays call philosophy. It was also in a very crude state by present-day standards. Euclid's mathematics, Aristotle's physics, Ptolemy's astronomy, Galen's medicine, chemistry being alchemy, etc.
 
The idea of the Queen being a reine fainéante may not be totally unfamiliar. That was what the later Merovingian kings of France had been. The Mayors of the Palace ended up doing most of the work of leadership.

Germany was a loose collection of small statelets, as was Italy, and many of those were united in the Holy Roman Empire. It was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, but a loose confederation. The Pope had sovereignty over some territory in central Italy, the Papal States. When Italy was unified in the late 19th cy., the unifiers conquered the Papal States, and the Pope got all butthurt about it. He refused to recognize the nation of Italy until Benito Mussolini let him have a tiny bit of territory to claim sovereignty over - Vatican City.

Around 1600, Poland was a huge sprawling nation that included Lithuania and western Ukraine. Its king was an elected position, making him a sort of President for Life. It was a constitutional monarchy with its Sejm or parliament doing much of the work of governing. But the Sejm had a rule, the Liberum Veto, where any MP could veto anything, thus effectively requiring unanimity. This was very helpful to Poland's neighbors, and in the 18th cy., Austria, Prussia, and Russia divided the nation between them. It disappeared off the map until the end of WWI.
 
More culture shock.

In Shakespeare-era theater, women were all played by men. But for well over a century, women are almost always played by women, and that carried over into movies and TV shows as they were developed.

Men's clothing would look fairly familiar, but women's clothing would be startling. Women typically wore ankle-length skirts and dresses until about a century ago, when knee-length ones started becoming common. Knee-length is still the most common length, though shorter dresses and skirts were prominent half a century ago. An even bigger change also occurred half a century ago, when many women started wearing pants/trousers. Nowadays, in many places, a large fraction of women do that.

A sixteenth century Englishman likely wouldn't have ever encountered trousers. And he would be astonished by the disappearance of fashion and flamboyance in men's clothing.

In the C16th, a man bought clothes the way C20th men bought cars - they were an expensive investment, and few people of means would settle for a suit of clothes that just did the job of keeping him warm and modest - clothes were a statement, and just as a wealthy man today might buy a supercar, to signal his wealth and power, so C16th men bought clothes to show off their wealth and status.

That today the King of England wears much the same charcoal grey suit as a bank clerk would completely flummox our time traveler.

Take a look at C16th portraits of powerful men, such as Henry VIII, or his courtiers. Even the puritanical types were making wealth statements through their clothes - black cloth was very expensive, as were very white linens (with cotton only available to the very richest in Britain), and bright reds, yellows, blues, and greens were all costly. Wearing grey, brown, or un-dyed clothing was the sign of poverty, and anyone who could afford expensive dyed fabrics would wear them. There were even "Sumptuary Laws", that attempted to prevent people from wearing clothing above their station (a sure sign that many were doing so).

Even as recently as the C19th, when Victoria married Albert, his clothes for the wedding were picked over by the press just as much as hers were. The assumption that the groom will wear a black tux and the bride a white gown is a late C19th and early C20th thing.

For men to eschew displaying their calves (in colourful linen hose, and tied at the knee with a flamboyant ribbon about the leg of his breeches); and would even have discarded the codpiece as a fashion statement, would be something of a surprise. Breeches steadily got longer through the C16th, and by the C17th were tied below the knee, rather than above as in the early C16th. This likely reflected reduced prices for the woollen fabrics used in their tailoring, allowing even the middle classes to afford the larger amount of material required. Codpieces steadily declined in prominence during the C16th, perhaps as a reaction to the decreasing male virility of the court, first as Henry VIII aged and became less healthy, and then with the ascent of Elizabeth to the throne (bearing in mind that both monarchs were totally autocratic dictators, to a degree that would have made Stalin envious).

Many C16th doublets and breeches were 'slashed', to show off the colourful (and therefore expensive) linings and facings. Men in the C16th were bigger buyers of fashion than women, and they dressed to impress.

That your comments on fashion today focused mainly on women's fashion would be a surprise in itself. As would your assumption that men's fashion would not have changed much (an understandable error, as it genuinely didn't change in the last three or four generations; your great grandfather wouldn't see a vast change in men's dress; But his great grandfather assuredly would).
 
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the plethora of personal hygiene products available today would probably turn our time traveler off.. such a burden to have to spend so much of your effort keeping every aspect of your body constantly sanitized.
The instantaneous communication that is so prevalent might put our visiter in quite the panic... how can anyone even think that quickly to be able to absorb so much information and keep up with the expectation to instantly respond to people's correspondances?
Having no time at all to arrive places might be rather uncomfortable.. the ability to get to any place on the planet within 24 hours puts quite a bit of pressure for actually getting there fast.
All the dark skinned people freely walking around and interacting with lighter skin people would be simply frightening... a violent reaction, purely in perceived self-defense is likely.
Women.... speaking... outloud.. unprompted... even TEACHING (gasp)... doing things independently... maybe a big turn on for our visiter.. but also maybe totally ruins their ability to be attracted to any contemporary woman - as they to them may just seem totally manly.
The food... Dear god, the food... filled with sugar... everything is so sickly sweet tasting... inedible.
The music... you can't even tell what kind of instrument is being played.. that's not music, guys... that's not even a musical type of sound.
Church. Don't get me started on church. That's not church... that's not even religion.
Why are all those kids not working? what a total waste of resources.
football fields... what the fuck? You could feed an entire village with the food you can grow in that field... but it just sits there so you can throw a ball back and forth? While it's great you don't have to feed anyone with that.. all that wasted space just doesn't sit right.
 
the plethora of personal hygiene products available today would probably turn our time traveler off.. such a burden to have to spend so much of your effort keeping every aspect of your body constantly sanitized.
The instantaneous communication that is so prevalent might put our visiter in quite the panic... how can anyone even think that quickly to be able to absorb so much information and keep up with the expectation to instantly respond to people's correspondances?
Having no time at all to arrive places might be rather uncomfortable.. the ability to get to any place on the planet within 24 hours puts quite a bit of pressure for actually getting there fast.
All the dark skinned people freely walking around and interacting with lighter skin people would be simply frightening... a violent reaction, purely in perceived self-defense is likely.
Women.... speaking... outloud.. unprompted... even TEACHING (gasp)... doing things independently... maybe a big turn on for our visiter.. but also maybe totally ruins their ability to be attracted to any contemporary woman - as they to them may just seem totally manly.
The food... Dear god, the food... filled with sugar... everything is so sickly sweet tasting... inedible.
The music... you can't even tell what kind of instrument is being played.. that's not music, guys... that's not even a musical type of sound.
Church. Don't get me started on church. That's not church... that's not even religion.
Why are all those kids not working? what a total waste of resources.
football fields... what the fuck? You could feed an entire village with the food you can grow in that field... but it just sits there so you can throw a ball back and forth? While it's great you don't have to feed anyone with that.. all that wasted space just doesn't sit right.

C16th London already had plenty of residents of every skin tone humanly possible. Our visitor wouldn't be at all surprised by seeing black and brown men walking around.

And vast amounts of land were parkland and wastelands useful only for sporting events in the C16th. The surprising thing to our visitor would be how rule-bound and organised football has become. In the C16th, a football match was barely distinguishable from a battle fought between neigbouring towns.

Modern food is only so universally sugary and sickly sweet in America. Modern British food would be unusual to our visitor, but not remarkably sugary for the most part - though the low cost of sweet foods might be a surprise. The lack of strong spices in modern British foods could be an issue, but Indian, Chinese or Mexican food would probably be to his taste.

Women in C16th Britain (particularly London) were not debarred from much of life - the idea that women cannot speak as equals, or teach men was already fading fast in Henry VIII's reign, and pretty much collapsed in Elizabeth's. You need to go back another two or three centuries to find men who are shocked and horrified by the very idea of a woman having an opinion worth hearing.
 
In the 80s I knew someone who spent a few years in the Peace Corp in remote places.

He said when he got back a supermarket was overwhelming.
Hell, i was stationed in Scotland for two years in the 80's. I got back to the states and was amazed at central heating. Heat coming out of the walls, without having to turn on gas or start a fire!

Scots must be Luddites.

It is no exaggeration to say we have no appreciation for what we have gained in a short time.
 
In the 80s I knew someone who spent a few years in the Peace Corp in remote places.

He said when he got back a supermarket was overwhelming.
Hell, i was stationed in Scotland for two years in the 80's. I got back to the states and was amazed at central heating. Heat coming out of the walls, without having to turn on gas or start a fire!

Scots must be Luddites.

It is no exaggeration to say we have no appreciation for what we have gained in a short time.

Scots mostly live in houses built long before the invention of central heating. Retrofitting central heating to such buildings is both expensive and disruptive, and it wasn't until the eighties that the cost fell to within the means of the majority.

It's not easy to decide to spend thousands on fitting central heating in a hundred and fifty year old house, particularly when your grandad spent a month's income getting gas fires installed just fifty years ago.

I remember my dad making that decision in the 1980s, for our house that was built in the 1870s. We lived with ripped up floors and holes in walls and ceilings for what seemed like months, with plumbers and gas fitters coming and going every day.

My dad still lives in that house, and he has the heat cranked up to 'tropical', so he got his money's worth. But it was an expensive business.
 
IIRC Ishi was not really impressed with telephones or electric lights, or even the daredevil aeronaut who flew an airplane from Golden Gate Park. What fascinated Ishi were venetian blinds. Make of that what you will.
^^^^ This ^^^^

I remember reading somewhere about an anthropologist taking a Yanomamo guy from the rainforest to the big city for the first time. After seeing all the modern wonders of the 20th century with a blase attitude, suddenly he was pointing and dumbfoundedly staring in amazement at what was apparently the most incredible thing he'd seen in his life. The anthropologist looked to see what he was staring at. Some kid had a pile of stuff on a cart and was getting a donkey to pull it. Apparently to truly be amazed by something, you need to grasp how it works.
Starring is not exactly the same as amazement.
Reminded me my first day in US starring in "amazement" at incredibly obese man driving electric scooter inside a supermarket. I had not seen such a thing before. Of course supermarket itself was quite a thing for me too.
 
"Sixteenth century" is casting a broad net: 1501 - 1600, or else 1500 - 1599. I suggest narrowing it down a bit, to the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and the career of William Shakespeare.

QE1: born 1533 Sep 7, started reign 1558 Nov 17, died 1603 Mar 24
WS: baptized 1564 Apr 6, died 1616 Apr 23, produced most of his known works 1589 - 1613

So if one wants a precise date, let us use 1600.

Someone from then might be a bit startled to discover that their native land is ruled by a monarch also named Elizabeth: Queen Elizabeth II.

QE2: born 1926 Apr 21, started reign 1952 Feb 6

It might be startling that she has outlived her namesake for so long. QE2 is now 94 years old, while QE1 died at 70.

QE1 was queen of England, Wales, and Ireland, though not of Scotland. QE2 is queen of England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland as the United Kingdom, though not of the rest of Ireland, which is now a republic. She is less directly queen of some unofficially independent nations, like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
 
.... snip ....

Someone from then might be a bit startled to discover that their native land is ruled by a monarch also named Elizabeth: Queen Elizabeth II.

.... snip ....
I would think that it would be reassuring for them to see that some things hadn't changed rather than being startling. They would be quite aware that England had been ruled by eight monarchs named Henry.
 
"Sixteenth century" is casting a broad net: 1501 - 1600, or else 1500 - 1599. I suggest narrowing it down a bit, to the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and the career of William Shakespeare.
Like, i dunno, maybe if i had said
Someone plucked from the gallery in Shakespeare's theater, say
, that sort of specificity?
 
He would say, 'Amazing, but why are the French so far behind everybody else?'
 
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