What period in history would you have loved to go back and see for yourself

[Revelation]

Originally Posted by pyan

Yes, what most people mean when the say that they'd like to live in a different era, is that they'd like to be a rich person/noble of that era - this is about the only time in history when life at the bottom of the pile needn't be nasty, brutish and short.

Even then, some things we take for granted would just not be available to nobles, no matter how much money or influence they have:

Sugar
Chocolate
Plumbing (boiling water for bath, crapping in outhouse/chamber pot)
Electricity
Toothpaste
Soap (no shampoo either)
Dentistry (tooth hurts? Have the barber will pull it out)
Eyeglasses
Medical (No competent doctors/methods, antisceptic, aspirin, antibiotics, pills of any kind)
Mirrors
Rights (freedom of speech, voting, women's rights, etc)

Some of these things might be available in the later periods, of course, but pre 1500, well...



Myself, I would have loved to go back to 1095 to join the First Crusade. I think it would have been life changing to participate in such a spiritual journey. Just thinking about it gives me chills.

Also, I want to say something to the person who wanted to go back in time to kill every prophet there ever was.

Don't adopt or have kids. Thanks.

[Marvolo]

Originally Posted by MorningStar

HI there, I was just thinking if we had a chance to go back in time just for a week, which period would you like to visit?

I think I would love to visit the Tudor/Elizabethan era. I have always had a love of this age and sometimes feel I must have been around in them times in an earlier life. The music, housing and clothing were so beautiful and the times themselves were so interesting with so much going on.

Let me know what you think.

First crusade

[PTeppic]

As a genealogist I'd love to see how my family REALLY lived, notwithstanding how I view their lives as a result of my research.... and that's only the 50-150 years ago parts. But I'd also be interested in much/most/all of recorded history: what was Da Vinci/Mozart/Newton etc really like as a person, what were the major religious figures like, what really happened in Roswell, how did they actually build the pyramids / was there alien help, who was Robin Hood, how closely do our impressions of "famous" periods of screen-time history map to reality, and so on... a history omnivore really.

[bruno-1012]

There are so many periods I would love to visit due to my background in engineering -

Going roughly backwards....

The great civil engineering periods of the 18th & 19th century with Brunel, telford, Smeaton, Newcomen and Watt.

The medieval cathedral buildings

Stonehenge - how the stones were transported and how it was built

The great Pyramid & Sphinx under construction

The Colossus of Rhodes

And also the great library at Alexandria - just for a browse you know.....

[The Ace]

Roman soldiers had hot baths, toilets that flushed, superb medical care and a healthy, well-balanced diet.

[bruno-1012]

Ace,

I would love your take on the fact that the greatest war machine in the world at that time got to here and instead of continuing on or ignoring the people they built a great big wall across the country to control movement.

Was it fear/financial or political motivation?

Then they moved forward a few years later and built another wall...

[The Ace]

Antoninus Pius just needed a military victory. The Antonine Wall was abandoned because it was pointless.

[Thessaly]

*newbie thread-resurrection alert*
What an interesting topic! This is something I think about probably far too much as a medievalist, but I would love to experience life in the 12th century at the Angevin court in England and France. Then I could ask the authors of the books I study what they really thought about the romances they compiled, the compositional process, the patrons they may have had, audience reception, the list is endless! From a slightly less nerdy perspective, I'd just love to suck in the atmosphere of a French tourney, eavesdrop on Henry II's privy council after the death of Thomas Becket, see if there was anyone matching Robin Hood's description lurking round Nottingham, wave Richard I off on crusade, and maybe throw in a visit to the Kingdom of Jerusalem via Constantinople and Antioch.

NB: I'd like to do all this as a ludicrously wealthy and well-connected noblewoman of course, no peasant hovels for me thanks!

[tangaloomababe]

Gee this is a hard one, I want to see it all. I guess if I had to chose it would be either ancient Rome or Egypt, then I would know for sure how those Pyramids were built.
However I also have a strong passion for English History so I am torn between them.
Then again imagine being an early explorer........................... ah to hard I want to see it all.

[andyn]

I would loved to have been in the court of Count Roger of Sciliy. As the First crusade brutalised its way through the middle East sowing the seeds of bitter enmity that exist between East and West today. Roger in Sciliy and Southern Italy built a domain, that was incredibly tolerant - Muslims, Jews, Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholics were equal under law and their religious rights were protected. He defied the Byzantine Emperor, The Holy Roman Emperor, The Emir of Tunis, the Pope and despite everything they could not beat him.

[Revelation]

Originally Posted by andyn

I would loved to have been in the court of Count Roger of Sciliy. As the First crusade brutalised its way through the middle East sowing the seeds of bitter enmity that exist between East and West today. Roger in Sciliy and Southern Italy built a domain, that was incredibly tolerant - Muslims, Jews, Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholics were equal under law and their religious rights were protected. He defied the Byzantine Emperor, The Holy Roman Emperor, The Emir of Tunis, the Pope and despite everything they could not beat him.

The First Crusade didn't brutalize or sow anything. It was a response to hundreds of years of muslim aggression against the Christian lands.

[Curt Chiarelli]

Originally Posted by andyn

I would loved to have been in the court of Count Roger of Sciliy. As the First crusade brutalised its way through the middle East sowing the seeds of bitter enmity that exist between East and West today. Roger in Sciliy and Southern Italy built a domain, that was incredibly tolerant - Muslims, Jews, Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholics were equal under law and their religious rights were protected. He defied the Byzantine Emperor, The Holy Roman Emperor, The Emir of Tunis, the Pope and despite everything they could not beat him.

Yes, it was a golden (but, sadly) short-lived era in a brutal time. Sicily is now a mostly bitter and burned-out land, still clinging to it's ancient heritage and moment of cultural glory. A good choice!

[Allegra]

Well Curt, Mount Etna is not burned-out yet!

[Curt Chiarelli]

Originally Posted by Revelation

The First Crusade didn't brutalize or sow anything. It was a response to hundreds of years of muslim aggression against the Christian lands.

I'm afraid that I must disagree with this assessment.

An even-handed appraisal of the situation in 1095 C.E. demonstrates that Muslim conquest of large tracts of the Mediterranean basin to be both alarming and swift. However, Europe had no legitimate claim to the Levantine region either. Although Pope Urban II's religious fervour and belicose declaration, "Deus Vult!" may have reverberated throughout Christian Europe's soul, it was the temporal greed and avarice of the European aristocracy that propelled the enterprise forward into the pages of history.

[Curt Chiarelli]

Originally Posted by Allegra

Well Curt, Mount Etna is not burned-out yet!

Uh, uh!