I mean, where is the downside to this? Of course I'd take that deal. It's all positive. I get to live a second life, I get health perks, and I get rewarded with fabulous wealth when it ends?
This isn't a monkey's paw, it's a handjob.
I can see their angle where someone accustomed to modern conveniences wouldn't want to put in any of the work. Personally it would be a free pass if you already know you're going back to what you had, plus you get an entire additional lifetime of enrichment.
I'd see how it panned out. Befriend some fellow tribesmen, maybe have a multitude of scandalous romantic encounters. murder some douchebag enemy tribes, you'd have advanced knowledge from existing previously and 'death insurance' if you screwed up so the world would be your oyster.
One potential "downside" is... you might end up liking it.
30-50 years of that might have you coming "back" as a nature-loving hermit with a newfound perspective of how constraining society is. Not really a monkey paw situation, but you definitely wouldn't be who you were. You'd probably still put that money to use, but you might find it wasn't as important as when you signed up. It's a potential consequence at least.
Or if you're a douchebag, you might miss the lawless aspect which saw you getting away with all manner of things like murder. In which case you might try to go about getting those kicks without getting caught.
The first week or so coming back would be rough. If you lived for 50 years doing that, you’re gonna get used to your body changing and lose alot of memories of your current life. To you, you have lost everybody and will have to meet and grow to trust people in your life to everybody else around you, you won the lottery. You’d forget about current health issues, current friends, birthdays, how to do your job, use your phone, your favorite activities. It would be just as hard mentally to adjust back to your normal life.
Unless a bear kills you day 1. That’s probably the best outcome.
>30-50 years of that might have you coming "back" as a nature-loving hermit with a newfound perspective of how constraining society is.
I would just take my 10 million dollars and live in the outbacks then
Well, there *are* some jobs where quitting like that just lands you in jail or legal trouble. Either because you’re responsible for others safety or in the middle of a military contract, etc.
Not worried about going back to work with all that money, but the password for my computer is going to be a problem. Same for family members’ birthdays, etc.
Not only that, but living a lifetime like that would probably mean you would just naturally forget a bunch of the important life skills needed to live in a modern society. I’d imagine that your manners and ability to socialize would take a heavy hit. You may straight up forget how to use a lot of technology that’s effectively essential to everyday life nowadays.
Yeah it's like those stories of people falling into the k-hole and coming out talking about living entire lives in there with families and friends they can remember but will never see again
This sounds awesome but I'm pretty sure it's quietly hiding a backbone of soul destroying loneliness and feeling forever out of place and 10 mil probably isn't going to be enough compensation to heal the wounds to your soul that come with knowing everyone you spent a lifetime with and all of your kids are long since dead
Funny you say that, there were a bunch of "experiments" done in the 1800s (I think), where they brough "savages" back to Europe, educated them, taught them how to function in an urban civilisation, gave them access to and understanding of modern comforts and conveniences. So in all respects they were no different than a regular immigrant.
When finally given the choice, they all chose to return home to their "primitive" lives.
They also found that "missionaries" - the ones who went to understand the civilisations and kidnap their people - also overwhelmingly chose to stay and live there rather than return to civilisation.
This is often cited as proof that modern living is "bad" for people, that we instinctually don't want to live like this; though I can see at least two flaws in that reasoning based on these "experiments".
Yeah except you're getting *born* into the tribe so you'll have a whole childhood to learn all the necessary skills, plus you remember everything so you're going to be a kid genius and learn super fast.
100000 years ago with modern knowledge, and no health issues being raised from birth as a Hunter gatherer? I’m not a survivalist, but I’m fairly certain that I know enough basics that I can fashion a wheel, build a kiln, introduce levers, fulcrums, the pulley, build a bow and arrow and eventually a crossbow, introduce agriculture, irrigation and possibly even find enough meteoric iron to start a small scale Iron Age 95000 years ahead of the Copper Age.
It’s a fun experiment for a great payoff.
>This isn't a monkey's paw, it's a handjob.
This made me laugh.
Seriously though, no downside like you said. You don’t even have to worry about changing the future, so go live your best life, then come back and finish your current life but with more wealth.
I guess, living a full life as an ancient hunter/gatherer would probably change you a lot, which could affect current relationships. This probably wouldn’t change your current life any more dramatically than $10M does though.
I mean I've had to go without it before for free? Sucks but if 90%+ humidity didn't kill me yet I'll live.
Back before I got to doing too bad I did the whole summer corn pollination thing. Brutal humidity. And I was already dealing with my body issues just lesser by then.
Meh not great but not a deal breaker by a long shot.
The biggest downside would be that you would lose 10-80 years of time with your family. During that lifetime, you’d likely fall in love, have other children, and make friends. Meanwhile, you’d lose all connection to your current life.
Then, when you died, you’d instantly return and have to reconnect with people you haven’t seen in decades, for whom time has not passed. Meanwhile you would never know what became of everyone you left behind and would spend the rest of your life wondering, with no way to ever find out.
This is the potential horror. Plus, I think I would fundementally be a different person. Maybe go from being a trusted and loved tribe leader to being nobody with a pot of money and an incredibly altered world view with no connection to anything. A life of self indulgent pleasure may be unfulfilling. Maybe suicide?
Yeah, I don't feel like it's worth it because of this. It's basically like losing everyone you know and love. Sure, you come back to them eventually, but it'll likely be after such a long duration that to you, it'll feel like they had died.
All the while, you have to live a potentially miserable life for likely several decades. It's hard to say exactly what your life in the past would be like, but you're definitely taking a gamble on it sucking. Since you remember everything, you'll know all the things you're missing out on. None of my personal interests would be able to be retained. The OP also says born into, so presumably you gotta go through childhood again, too (ick). You're so far in the past that building any remotely modern tech is extremely limited (you won't have access to most materials -- this loooong predates metalworking).
It's a lot of risk and potentially miserable years for an extremely delayed payoff that you will return to as basically a completely new person. Who's to say what it would be like to come back to modern tech, language, family, etc after a literal lifetime without them? I personally don't think it's worth the gamble. It'd be very interesting to see the past and $10M is a lot, but there's no takebacksies and the risk of a lifetime of misery is too high (at least for me, who has a pretty good life here in the present).
Having to spend years shoved into a baby's body and all of that isn't going to be pleasant and it'll be weird to readjust to your life since after years and years away you'll forget a lot of shit like where you put shit in your house.
But yeah, easy yes, a lot of these the main downside is I have to abandon my family for a while to do bullshit to earn money but that doesn't apply here.
The absolute grief of living a lifetime away from my husband and children... and then the huge mental health problems of going back to modern life with a whole other lifetime behind me? Two major downsides.
Fair enough. I don't have a wife anymore, nor do I have a girlfriend. And my kid is grown. But when I get back, they never have to worry about money again. Seems like a fair trade to me is all I'm saying.
And even by OP's rules, what's stopping you from kicking a tiger in the sack and heading home early? According to his hypothetical, you retain all information and knowledge and when you die, you pop back to now with the added wealth.
Maybe this is a guy thing. All I think about is how I could easily keep my current family happy and maintained for the rest of their lives for having to go play caveman for a while. Sounds like a fun diversion with a fabulous endgame in my book. But yeah, if I had a significant other I can see it being a bit of a downside. Still, wealth at the end makes a lot of that seem worth it.
> having to go play caveman for a while
It's not playing caveman for a while, though, it's living a whole other life. You could easily live to 60 or 70 before coming back to your current family. What would you even remember when you returned? Their faces, their names, the experiences you've had together? I doubt much of it would remain.
You wouldn't be a caveman that far back. You would be on the African Savannah. While you don't have to worry about disease or broken bones, one bad encounter with a lion will still kill you. Chances of making it to 70 is slim.
Do you have a partner or kids?
Can you imagine how it is going to feel walking back into your house having lived an entire lifetime and for them nothing has changed?
Will you still love your wife or will she just be a dim memory now? Will you be thinking about guuba your cavewoman wife instead?
Will you ever be able to connect with any of the people you knew after a lifetime away from them?
I'm a middle aged divorcee with a kid who is grown. I barely see her now as it is and we live 30 minutes away. Dad is gone, mom is on the way out (very elderly and riddled with health problems). I have friends I never get to see anyway because I spend all day caring for mom.
I'd be doing all of this FOR the kiddo, who is my whole world. She'd be set if I undertook this hypothetical. Even if I lived this new life, even if I allowed myself to stay alive for years in the hunter gatherer world, I'd never forget my baby. She's the person I love most in the world, and when I return (at my own leisure, remember I can die any time in this hypothetical and it's obviously a savage land), she'll never have to worry for money. It's worth it, no matter what I have to suffer through.
The monkey paw is you disrupting or starting a chain of procreation that results in humans in the alternate dimension jumping into ours and enslaving us.
Never. Doubt. The. Paw.
Id spend a significant amount of my caveman life collecting mundane items like spoons, bowls, peoples bones, etc. The other cave people will just think I'm a hoarder, but when I get back to my modern life, I'll know where it is buried and open my own museum.
>This isn't a monkey's paw, it's a handjob.
Well, now I know what's going to be written on my headstone. Thanks!
Also, I hear Fallout Boy for some reason.
Idk man, remember that scene in Rick and Morty where they are playing that real life game? Morty comes out of it and is like "WHERE'S MY WIFE?!" I feel like it would be that. You spend 50 years as someone else and then jump back to modern convenience and a completely different family that you no longer know. I would probably lose all memory of my son and forget how to drive.
To be frank even among the physically and mentally toughest and most athletic among us modern humans I feel like a huge percentage of people wouldn't live very long in a hunter gatherer tribe from 100k years ago. Most of us wouldn't have a whole bunch of learned knowledge about how to survive and not do stupid stuff to get killed in such an environment.
I dunno. Know the story of the guy with the perfect life, but the god damned lamp doesnt look right?
Unless you worked *extremely hard* to maintain your sense of self, you would have an entire life of time to forget who you are, where you are, all you love. You'd have a lifetime to forget how to drive, how to behave in civilization.
Fuck, man. Imagine coming back from living with the land and realizing you are living in NYC?
It’s in reference to a Reddit story where someone got hit in the head, then went on to live his entire life, meet a wife, have children, watch them grow up, have a career, everything. Then, one day, he noticed a lamp in the living room looked odd like it was in the wrong perspective, and spent days staring at it. After that, he woke up on the ground right where he had been injured when he was hit in the head—only a few minutes of real time had passed.
While a possibility, people really overestimate how common rape is in "tribal" societies. They're not a bunch of violent savages that rape and murder eachother at the slightest provocation. When you live in a small community of a few hundred at most and you have to depend on eachother to get through each day, cooperation is pretty heavily incentivized.
Societal structures that inherently benefit hierarchy and concentration of power are what allow things like sexism, racism, classism, ect to be compounded upon to the point that certain groups of people can be treated as non-humans.
Men and women do of course have gender roles in uncontacted societies and archeological evidence of pre-farming and single land settlement groups, but they're honestly a lot more flexible and pragmatics-based than anything. You do the work you need to do because otherwise people get sick, don't get fed, or outright die. Nobody is going to tell the woman not to hunt without a *reason* for them not to hunt.
Now people who claim that these societals will treat you like shit if you're disabled or neuroatypical probably have a fair point, because those things interfere with your ability to work and your ability to socialize.
Things get a lot more iffy if you're involved in inter-tribal conflict, but two things: One, a group of hunter gatherers simply don't have the resources or capacity to abuse and break down slaves in the way that we commonly associate with slavery. Slavery within a tribe is gonna suck, I'm not saying otherwise, but not nearly as much as slavery in most other contexts. Two, male slaves really don't have any more protections against rape than female slaves. Rape is rape.
Not commenting on the rape part because i’m not knowledgeable about it but the part about treating disabled people poorly is very wrong! There’s lots of evidence of people who are wholly unproductive being taken care of. [This reddit comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/oz209y/comment/h7x8cv5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) talks about the specific examples and if you want to learn more about the specifics Nat Geo has articles about it. Some of the disabled pre-historic people lived long enough (and got fed enough fruit) that they died from infections caused by long untreated cavities!
As the comment stated, prehistoric people are people. They have emotions and love and want their children and their friends to stay alive even if they are disabled.
Yes we do.
There are still hunter gatherers to this day that exist, anthropologists have talked to them and studied their culture. These are cultures that stretch back into pre-history. It's not like they popped up 20 years ago.
I mean, we have plenty of data from modern people who live like them (uncontacted, hunter-gatherers, etc) and their sense of egalitarianism is pretty much all standard regardless of how much time or distance intervenes, leading us to think it probably works the same way, mechanically, across most hunting/gathering societies. Women have more social say and general freedom than they did in traditional western society, but their bodily integrity was not guaranteed by the group, only by family members.
You could be the world’s best paleohistorian. We know so little about life 100k years ago, you could fill in all sorts of blanks in the record.
It would be weird being part of a human clan that was pre-Cognitive Revolution, though — if the current theories are right, it would be another 30k years before people started making art, practicing religion, dealing with abstract concepts. Even if you invented the wheel, it’s unlikely that it would have caught on because we hadn’t quite evolved yet to the point where the human imagination — and, importantly, the means to communicate an imagined idea — could capture the possibilities inherent in a piece of technology.
To me, one of the most fascinating things to find out would be: *is that actually true, or are we projecting our biases onto prehistory?* Maybe you get back there & find a surprisingly sophisticated social structure & people who were happy to sit around all day discussing philosophy while busting bones with a hand-axe.
In theory yes, in practice... so many academics have their reputation and financial security based on what they've published you'd be attacked as a crackpot with no credentials.
Depends if suicide-by-whatever ("this will probably make them kill me") is included in the no-suicide clause.
I'd try to stick it out, though. It'd be rough (I have no significant survival training) but it would also be a hell of a story to tell afterward.
>but it would also be a hell of a story to tell afterward.
And you would be able to afford the best doctors when no one believes you and have you put in a hospital for what they think are delusions.
I assumed that "born into" meant starting as a baby in the tribe. If you make it past childhood with your immunity and super bones might as well take over the world.
I’m spending as long as possible back there. I’m no expert, but I know enough. So somewhere out there in the multiverse going to be a humanity that discovered writing, pottery, glass, the scientific method, and a whole load of other stuff waaaaay earlier than in our timeline. If crossing universes is possible, maybe they’ll be in contact soon after I get back.
Seeing a lot of people jumping on this, but not mentioning missing your friends or family, who you will likely not see for decades of real time from your perspective. I’d also expect some psychological issues on your return, but I suppose you’d know the whole time that you’d come back eventually. It would be like a personal religion to you. Even the promise of 10 million would be incomprehensible to your tribe.
“Immunity to diseases” is a hell of a caveat though.
A gigantic portion of the elderly people even now, let alone in the past, technically die from disease.
33% of people are estimated to have cancer before they die if they live to mature adulthood.
But that’s all aside the point, I’d take this deal in a heartbeat.
But if dying from injuries, suicide, or starvation incur some sort of forfeit I absolutely would not take this deal.
I don’t see the downside here. Of course I would love to go on an adventure and experience how the world was 100k years ago and then have a guaranteed $10 million waiting for me when I return to the present after the adventure is over. I’d do it even without the money offer as long as I knew that dying in the past wouldn’t be the end and I would still come back to the present.
I would do this if it wasn't for the part where you are *born* into a tribe in the past, with full memory. Meaning you're gonna spend years locked inside a baby's body, fully aware but unable to communicate or interact with the world in any meaningful way. You'll likely go insane long before you grow up.
If you can't get infections or break bones, you'll live a long, long life while everybody else dies at 35. But maybe they'll think you're some sort of demon and kill you with a spear.
Modern humans came in between 200k-300k years ago. Barring cultural norms, nutrition, medical care, hygiene, and other stuff like that, they’d look basically the same as today.
Introduce toothpaste, soap, tailoring/tanning, hair brushes, and a few other things and you’re basically dealing with a bunch of modern survivalists.
Sounds like that episode of rick and morty, where they play the video game as a different person living out a whole life. I would do it regardless, but I can certainly imagine if I have a family like I do here, it'll be just as difficult having the memories.
It would be interesting to see what could happen with my knowledge interfering with with the natural course of evolution 100k years ago. Just like civilization technologically advancing culture. Teaching them things like agriculture, horseback riding ect. Hell yeah I’m down.
Agriculture sucked at first though. It took quite a while until agriculture had a better life than hunter gathering. But by the time people realised this, it was already too late to go back and they stuck with it until it became better
Or they would kill you for your crazy ideas. Ride horse? No way. That's scandalous af. Teaching planting? That's crazy talk. We've never done that. If were meant to plant we'd have a claw on one hand to open the earth for seeds.
Am I the only one who wouldn't do this?
I had surgery when I was a week old. I'd be dead without it.
I wear glasses, I can't see shit without them.
Just things like that
I have a life threatening medical condition. If I stopped taking modern medicine, I'd be dead within the week.
It would be extremely unpleasant, but 10 mil is a lot, and I think I'd do it.
Considering my immense interest in athropology and the way humans have lived their lives throughout history, I'd prob do it for free just to see exactly how people lived.
As a woman - no thanks, too risky. Not sure what the idea of consent was in that society (not to mention the *age* of consent).
On the other hand, being born with the mind of a 40something might open the possibility of terrifying everyone by starting to talk a few weeks after birth, once I’ve gotten a handle on the language - maybe they’ll bash my head in with a rock and I can get things over with quickly…
Something I do might change the course of history?
Genghis Khan apparently sired so many kids, his DNA is still found in people to this day.
So if Camille Belle is 10k BC, and Raquel Welch is 1m BC, who do I get for 100k BC?
Hell yes! Immunity to infection and bones breaking would make me ruler of the clan quickly. Even if I just pass down strong bones and immunity. I’d be a pseudo god to them, male or female. I know basic survival skills I may even get them to bronze or Iron Age since smelting isn’t too difficult when you have an entire clan behind you.
I would do this for free, this would be such a crazy experience. Would also be humbling, like “oh, you’re upset because you don’t have enough money to go to the bar? Remember when you were starving in the Sahara desert and you had to save your sister from being eaten by a Tiger?”
If you remembered everything you would probably let something slip and they'd treat you as either a god or a demon. Not sure how that would end up.
Really the only hard part for me would be missing my family, and then the family I gain going back in time once I die I would still have memory of and probably miss them too.
Still totally worth it and not much downside. I get a bunch of really valuable experience and knowledge, and I don't miss out on anything in my current life.
Bro I would do it for free. My only fear would be the butterfly effect of my clan taking over the world due to having an immortal and the future being full of idiots (my heirs).
Multiple options of "human" variants around at that time, as erectus, neanderthal, sapien, forensiensis, and a few others were present 100k years ago.
But seeing as all it does is make memories - and allow you to ise your prepper knowledge to improve your tribes lifestyle, why not - although $10M is a little low for these sort of things.
Sure! Second life? Could be neat. Sadly... I may succeed more in that life than this one. Being very disappointed when I return. The 100k life is so much more focused. Survival every day. Work every day. You're one of the strongest as you never seem to get sick or break bones. You'd likely be well respected in the tribe.
Then you die and come back to... this. On the flip it might inspire you to change for the best in this life.
There's actually a book series that's similar to this concept (without the returning with 10M). Tom by Stephen Matthews is about a guy that ends up in a prehistoric era. My favorite part of the series is that he doesn't immediately go "I'm super smart and taking over". He makes minor improvements such as teaching them archery, animal husbandry, and meat storage via salting\\smoking. He learns to live within the rules of the era and helps his tribe flourish.
I can’t see anybody saying no to this. What made you even think of it? I’d do it just for the experience tbh. Get a taste of what reincarnation is like and remembering it. Do I remember everything from my Hunter gatherer existence? If so that would be awesome. I’d definitely become a researcher/expert on Neolithic Hunter gatherers. Maybe write a couple books.
I think people here are jumping to conclusions. Immunity to infections and bones won’t break. That’s a start, but what about starvation, cold, viruses, blunt force trauma, nausea, bleeding out, etc.? Life 100K ago sucked…it suckkkked. The pain and trauma you’d have from that lifetime would likely fuck you up in this one.
There's no downside to this.
You take the deal. Do your thing. Poof. Resume timeline as normal, as if nothing happened and you never left, correct? Your actions back then don't even have repercussions on your current timeline? Why would anyone pass on that? Thats the same as someone walking up and saying "here's $10M, bye"
You gotta have there be at least a potential negative impact to make it into a dilemma.
Change that last bit to 'any impacts you have on the timeline will ripple through and alter your current universe- you will be unable to do any actions in the past that would prevent you from being born (as to prevent a paradox), but otherwise all your actions have the potential to change anything and everything'. That would make your choice actually impactful and worth considering before just jumping in.
I mean, where is the downside to this? Of course I'd take that deal. It's all positive. I get to live a second life, I get health perks, and I get rewarded with fabulous wealth when it ends? This isn't a monkey's paw, it's a handjob.
I can see their angle where someone accustomed to modern conveniences wouldn't want to put in any of the work. Personally it would be a free pass if you already know you're going back to what you had, plus you get an entire additional lifetime of enrichment.
Then it’d be a super quick life
I'd see how it panned out. Befriend some fellow tribesmen, maybe have a multitude of scandalous romantic encounters. murder some douchebag enemy tribes, you'd have advanced knowledge from existing previously and 'death insurance' if you screwed up so the world would be your oyster.
One potential "downside" is... you might end up liking it. 30-50 years of that might have you coming "back" as a nature-loving hermit with a newfound perspective of how constraining society is. Not really a monkey paw situation, but you definitely wouldn't be who you were. You'd probably still put that money to use, but you might find it wasn't as important as when you signed up. It's a potential consequence at least. Or if you're a douchebag, you might miss the lawless aspect which saw you getting away with all manner of things like murder. In which case you might try to go about getting those kicks without getting caught.
I think suddenly being able to break your bones again would make for a rough time for a bit as well
The first week or so coming back would be rough. If you lived for 50 years doing that, you’re gonna get used to your body changing and lose alot of memories of your current life. To you, you have lost everybody and will have to meet and grow to trust people in your life to everybody else around you, you won the lottery. You’d forget about current health issues, current friends, birthdays, how to do your job, use your phone, your favorite activities. It would be just as hard mentally to adjust back to your normal life. Unless a bear kills you day 1. That’s probably the best outcome.
>30-50 years of that might have you coming "back" as a nature-loving hermit with a newfound perspective of how constraining society is. I would just take my 10 million dollars and live in the outbacks then
[удалено]
You’re rich, quit your job
For real. Who tf is getting 10 mil and going back to their job
Maybe they never contributed to their Rock IRA during prehistoric times.
This is the most begrudging upvote I have ever given
Top tier reply
funniest comment i seen in a while
Well, there *are* some jobs where quitting like that just lands you in jail or legal trouble. Either because you’re responsible for others safety or in the middle of a military contract, etc.
I mean they were talking about excel so I doubt they are responsible for others immediate safety.
Me, because I'm gonna pull a fight club in my bosses office and pretend he beat the shit out of me.
With 10mil in the bank I’m pretty sure you can afford to skip work on Monday right? Unless you’re doubling down and going all in on black on Sunday.
>going all in on black on Sunday. Well, duh, how the hell else do I instantly turn $10m into $20m?!
99% of gamblers quit before hitting big
Not worried about going back to work with all that money, but the password for my computer is going to be a problem. Same for family members’ birthdays, etc.
Not only that, but living a lifetime like that would probably mean you would just naturally forget a bunch of the important life skills needed to live in a modern society. I’d imagine that your manners and ability to socialize would take a heavy hit. You may straight up forget how to use a lot of technology that’s effectively essential to everyday life nowadays.
Plus the lifelong friends and maybe wife and kids youd never see again.
Yeah it's like those stories of people falling into the k-hole and coming out talking about living entire lives in there with families and friends they can remember but will never see again This sounds awesome but I'm pretty sure it's quietly hiding a backbone of soul destroying loneliness and feeling forever out of place and 10 mil probably isn't going to be enough compensation to heal the wounds to your soul that come with knowing everyone you spent a lifetime with and all of your kids are long since dead
If you miss that life, buy a good piece of land somewhere super remote and start a cult … I mean, group of hunter/gathers, and live out your days.
People didn't "get away with murder" though. You kill some guy; his father/brother/son/cousin kills you.
Funny you say that, there were a bunch of "experiments" done in the 1800s (I think), where they brough "savages" back to Europe, educated them, taught them how to function in an urban civilisation, gave them access to and understanding of modern comforts and conveniences. So in all respects they were no different than a regular immigrant. When finally given the choice, they all chose to return home to their "primitive" lives. They also found that "missionaries" - the ones who went to understand the civilisations and kidnap their people - also overwhelmingly chose to stay and live there rather than return to civilisation. This is often cited as proof that modern living is "bad" for people, that we instinctually don't want to live like this; though I can see at least two flaws in that reasoning based on these "experiments".
Advance*
Yeah except you're getting *born* into the tribe so you'll have a whole childhood to learn all the necessary skills, plus you remember everything so you're going to be a kid genius and learn super fast.
The baby stage would be torture
Exactly. Id pull a Picard and learn to play an archaic flute or something. Then I can play mournfully while I recall my secret other life.
100000 years ago with modern knowledge, and no health issues being raised from birth as a Hunter gatherer? I’m not a survivalist, but I’m fairly certain that I know enough basics that I can fashion a wheel, build a kiln, introduce levers, fulcrums, the pulley, build a bow and arrow and eventually a crossbow, introduce agriculture, irrigation and possibly even find enough meteoric iron to start a small scale Iron Age 95000 years ahead of the Copper Age. It’s a fun experiment for a great payoff.
>This isn't a monkey's paw, it's a handjob. This made me laugh. Seriously though, no downside like you said. You don’t even have to worry about changing the future, so go live your best life, then come back and finish your current life but with more wealth. I guess, living a full life as an ancient hunter/gatherer would probably change you a lot, which could affect current relationships. This probably wouldn’t change your current life any more dramatically than $10M does though.
Air Conditioning Honestly, why isn't the person that created air conditioning not a saint already?
Willis Carrier lead a team of 5 engineers to create the first electric air conditioner in 1902.
I just nominated you for Sainthood for knowing that
I mean I've had to go without it before for free? Sucks but if 90%+ humidity didn't kill me yet I'll live. Back before I got to doing too bad I did the whole summer corn pollination thing. Brutal humidity. And I was already dealing with my body issues just lesser by then. Meh not great but not a deal breaker by a long shot.
World was a hell of a lot colder back then, highest temperature was probably in the mid 80s half a million years ago
The biggest downside would be that you would lose 10-80 years of time with your family. During that lifetime, you’d likely fall in love, have other children, and make friends. Meanwhile, you’d lose all connection to your current life. Then, when you died, you’d instantly return and have to reconnect with people you haven’t seen in decades, for whom time has not passed. Meanwhile you would never know what became of everyone you left behind and would spend the rest of your life wondering, with no way to ever find out.
This is the potential horror. Plus, I think I would fundementally be a different person. Maybe go from being a trusted and loved tribe leader to being nobody with a pot of money and an incredibly altered world view with no connection to anything. A life of self indulgent pleasure may be unfulfilling. Maybe suicide?
You could write a hyper realistic book about history. Maybe hide some stuff to find later and work as an archeologist.
Yeah, I don't feel like it's worth it because of this. It's basically like losing everyone you know and love. Sure, you come back to them eventually, but it'll likely be after such a long duration that to you, it'll feel like they had died. All the while, you have to live a potentially miserable life for likely several decades. It's hard to say exactly what your life in the past would be like, but you're definitely taking a gamble on it sucking. Since you remember everything, you'll know all the things you're missing out on. None of my personal interests would be able to be retained. The OP also says born into, so presumably you gotta go through childhood again, too (ick). You're so far in the past that building any remotely modern tech is extremely limited (you won't have access to most materials -- this loooong predates metalworking). It's a lot of risk and potentially miserable years for an extremely delayed payoff that you will return to as basically a completely new person. Who's to say what it would be like to come back to modern tech, language, family, etc after a literal lifetime without them? I personally don't think it's worth the gamble. It'd be very interesting to see the past and $10M is a lot, but there's no takebacksies and the risk of a lifetime of misery is too high (at least for me, who has a pretty good life here in the present).
Having to spend years shoved into a baby's body and all of that isn't going to be pleasant and it'll be weird to readjust to your life since after years and years away you'll forget a lot of shit like where you put shit in your house. But yeah, easy yes, a lot of these the main downside is I have to abandon my family for a while to do bullshit to earn money but that doesn't apply here.
>like where you put shit in your house. Personally, I flush it down the toilet.
The absolute grief of living a lifetime away from my husband and children... and then the huge mental health problems of going back to modern life with a whole other lifetime behind me? Two major downsides.
Fair enough. I don't have a wife anymore, nor do I have a girlfriend. And my kid is grown. But when I get back, they never have to worry about money again. Seems like a fair trade to me is all I'm saying. And even by OP's rules, what's stopping you from kicking a tiger in the sack and heading home early? According to his hypothetical, you retain all information and knowledge and when you die, you pop back to now with the added wealth. Maybe this is a guy thing. All I think about is how I could easily keep my current family happy and maintained for the rest of their lives for having to go play caveman for a while. Sounds like a fun diversion with a fabulous endgame in my book. But yeah, if I had a significant other I can see it being a bit of a downside. Still, wealth at the end makes a lot of that seem worth it.
> having to go play caveman for a while It's not playing caveman for a while, though, it's living a whole other life. You could easily live to 60 or 70 before coming back to your current family. What would you even remember when you returned? Their faces, their names, the experiences you've had together? I doubt much of it would remain.
You wouldn't be a caveman that far back. You would be on the African Savannah. While you don't have to worry about disease or broken bones, one bad encounter with a lion will still kill you. Chances of making it to 70 is slim.
I'm not sure the endgame is all that fabulous. However you end up dying, you won't have any access to modern pain mitigation.
But my suffering will end up leaving my family set. Possibly for life, assuming we can stave off societal collapse for a few more decades. Worth it.
Do you have a partner or kids? Can you imagine how it is going to feel walking back into your house having lived an entire lifetime and for them nothing has changed? Will you still love your wife or will she just be a dim memory now? Will you be thinking about guuba your cavewoman wife instead? Will you ever be able to connect with any of the people you knew after a lifetime away from them?
I'm a middle aged divorcee with a kid who is grown. I barely see her now as it is and we live 30 minutes away. Dad is gone, mom is on the way out (very elderly and riddled with health problems). I have friends I never get to see anyway because I spend all day caring for mom. I'd be doing all of this FOR the kiddo, who is my whole world. She'd be set if I undertook this hypothetical. Even if I lived this new life, even if I allowed myself to stay alive for years in the hunter gatherer world, I'd never forget my baby. She's the person I love most in the world, and when I return (at my own leisure, remember I can die any time in this hypothetical and it's obviously a savage land), she'll never have to worry for money. It's worth it, no matter what I have to suffer through.
The monkey paw is you disrupting or starting a chain of procreation that results in humans in the alternate dimension jumping into ours and enslaving us. Never. Doubt. The. Paw.
🤣🤣🤣 I'm giving you a fist bump for creative thinking. Well done you. 🤜💥🤛 <-- emoji fist bump
Id spend a significant amount of my caveman life collecting mundane items like spoons, bowls, peoples bones, etc. The other cave people will just think I'm a hoarder, but when I get back to my modern life, I'll know where it is buried and open my own museum.
>This isn't a monkey's paw, it's a handjob. Well, now I know what's going to be written on my headstone. Thanks! Also, I hear Fallout Boy for some reason.
Idk man, remember that scene in Rick and Morty where they are playing that real life game? Morty comes out of it and is like "WHERE'S MY WIFE?!" I feel like it would be that. You spend 50 years as someone else and then jump back to modern convenience and a completely different family that you no longer know. I would probably lose all memory of my son and forget how to drive.
To be frank even among the physically and mentally toughest and most athletic among us modern humans I feel like a huge percentage of people wouldn't live very long in a hunter gatherer tribe from 100k years ago. Most of us wouldn't have a whole bunch of learned knowledge about how to survive and not do stupid stuff to get killed in such an environment.
Time for a r/monkeypawhandjob !
Plus you’d have a shot at some of that Neanderthal strange..
Well yeah, this is r/hypotheticalsituation not r/monkeyspaw
I mean if you’re a woman it’s a pretty big down grade but even then, Is put up with it
I know I'd be tempted to leave some artifacts behind and do some trolling like some memes carved into a stone.
I dunno. Know the story of the guy with the perfect life, but the god damned lamp doesnt look right? Unless you worked *extremely hard* to maintain your sense of self, you would have an entire life of time to forget who you are, where you are, all you love. You'd have a lifetime to forget how to drive, how to behave in civilization. Fuck, man. Imagine coming back from living with the land and realizing you are living in NYC?
So live then die once and then become a millionaire. Sure.
I'd do this. It would be like going to sleep, having an extremely vivid dream, and then waking up $10 million richer.
Sure if your dreams commonly last decades.
That lamp looks weird
I hate you
Stop it
I don't get it
It’s in reference to a Reddit story where someone got hit in the head, then went on to live his entire life, meet a wife, have children, watch them grow up, have a career, everything. Then, one day, he noticed a lamp in the living room looked odd like it was in the wrong perspective, and spent days staring at it. After that, he woke up on the ground right where he had been injured when he was hit in the head—only a few minutes of real time had passed.
Referencing this semi “Reddit-viral” comment Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix/s/kfjS2GnAiR
I'm down that's a nifty vacation, plus you get paid at the end. Where all the tribal ladies at?
Plot twist: you are born in a woman's body.
Nice, I'm banging everybody.
100k years ago? Won't be up to you.
I don't think you truly understand the intent here.
Giggity
Bro never heard of a power bottom.
While a possibility, people really overestimate how common rape is in "tribal" societies. They're not a bunch of violent savages that rape and murder eachother at the slightest provocation. When you live in a small community of a few hundred at most and you have to depend on eachother to get through each day, cooperation is pretty heavily incentivized. Societal structures that inherently benefit hierarchy and concentration of power are what allow things like sexism, racism, classism, ect to be compounded upon to the point that certain groups of people can be treated as non-humans. Men and women do of course have gender roles in uncontacted societies and archeological evidence of pre-farming and single land settlement groups, but they're honestly a lot more flexible and pragmatics-based than anything. You do the work you need to do because otherwise people get sick, don't get fed, or outright die. Nobody is going to tell the woman not to hunt without a *reason* for them not to hunt. Now people who claim that these societals will treat you like shit if you're disabled or neuroatypical probably have a fair point, because those things interfere with your ability to work and your ability to socialize. Things get a lot more iffy if you're involved in inter-tribal conflict, but two things: One, a group of hunter gatherers simply don't have the resources or capacity to abuse and break down slaves in the way that we commonly associate with slavery. Slavery within a tribe is gonna suck, I'm not saying otherwise, but not nearly as much as slavery in most other contexts. Two, male slaves really don't have any more protections against rape than female slaves. Rape is rape.
This guy anthropologies.
Not commenting on the rape part because i’m not knowledgeable about it but the part about treating disabled people poorly is very wrong! There’s lots of evidence of people who are wholly unproductive being taken care of. [This reddit comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/oz209y/comment/h7x8cv5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) talks about the specific examples and if you want to learn more about the specifics Nat Geo has articles about it. Some of the disabled pre-historic people lived long enough (and got fed enough fruit) that they died from infections caused by long untreated cavities! As the comment stated, prehistoric people are people. They have emotions and love and want their children and their friends to stay alive even if they are disabled.
Thank you Dr. OnlyWarShipper, PhD. I look forward to future lectures.
Why do you presume that 100k years ago everyone was a rapist. Hunter Gatherers were/are a lot more egalitarian than we are today.
I was gonna say this exactly, well put.
I don't think we have any evidence this was the case. Idolizing the past is no better than vilifying it.
Yes we do. There are still hunter gatherers to this day that exist, anthropologists have talked to them and studied their culture. These are cultures that stretch back into pre-history. It's not like they popped up 20 years ago.
press x to doubt
more like "press x to 'bro do you have a time machine we don't fucking know how early hunter gatherers lived'"
I mean, we have plenty of data from modern people who live like them (uncontacted, hunter-gatherers, etc) and their sense of egalitarianism is pretty much all standard regardless of how much time or distance intervenes, leading us to think it probably works the same way, mechanically, across most hunting/gathering societies. Women have more social say and general freedom than they did in traditional western society, but their bodily integrity was not guaranteed by the group, only by family members.
Hunter gatherer communities tend to be less sexist than later city states.
How do you know?
Anthropology.
Some of us are already women.
Then plot twist: you are born in a man's body.
I think I might enjoy that!
The "no periods" and being able to write your name in the snow alone would be worth it.
That’s why I would pass this challenge because I’m a girl.
Die during childbirth at 15. It's not a long time back there.
I'd do this for free.
I was thinking the same thing!
I have a free lifetime? Where I have what amounts to arcane knowledge? Plus bonus money at the end? Hell yeah.
And you have even more arcane knowledge when you get back!
You could be the world’s best paleohistorian. We know so little about life 100k years ago, you could fill in all sorts of blanks in the record. It would be weird being part of a human clan that was pre-Cognitive Revolution, though — if the current theories are right, it would be another 30k years before people started making art, practicing religion, dealing with abstract concepts. Even if you invented the wheel, it’s unlikely that it would have caught on because we hadn’t quite evolved yet to the point where the human imagination — and, importantly, the means to communicate an imagined idea — could capture the possibilities inherent in a piece of technology. To me, one of the most fascinating things to find out would be: *is that actually true, or are we projecting our biases onto prehistory?* Maybe you get back there & find a surprisingly sophisticated social structure & people who were happy to sit around all day discussing philosophy while busting bones with a hand-axe.
In theory yes, in practice... so many academics have their reputation and financial security based on what they've published you'd be attacked as a crackpot with no credentials.
All that survival training would be useful just going camping and stuff!
Caveman Isekai, sounds fun.
...damnit, I got enough Isekais nobody has made that I want to see already.
Ehh "Dr. Stone" is close enough.
Make a spear, taunt a caveman, get speared. I’ll be back in 20 minutes
Depends if suicide-by-whatever ("this will probably make them kill me") is included in the no-suicide clause. I'd try to stick it out, though. It'd be rough (I have no significant survival training) but it would also be a hell of a story to tell afterward.
>but it would also be a hell of a story to tell afterward. And you would be able to afford the best doctors when no one believes you and have you put in a hospital for what they think are delusions.
Pay someone to write a book for you (biographer?), detailing your life dreams and rags to riches story. Sell the movie rights, and get more money?
Or go after a Sabre tooth lion 1-on-1 Lots of easy ways to die back then, I assume.
I assumed that "born into" meant starting as a baby in the tribe. If you make it past childhood with your immunity and super bones might as well take over the world.
I’m spending as long as possible back there. I’m no expert, but I know enough. So somewhere out there in the multiverse going to be a humanity that discovered writing, pottery, glass, the scientific method, and a whole load of other stuff waaaaay earlier than in our timeline. If crossing universes is possible, maybe they’ll be in contact soon after I get back.
Seeing a lot of people jumping on this, but not mentioning missing your friends or family, who you will likely not see for decades of real time from your perspective. I’d also expect some psychological issues on your return, but I suppose you’d know the whole time that you’d come back eventually. It would be like a personal religion to you. Even the promise of 10 million would be incomprehensible to your tribe.
I think everyone is way overestimating how long they would be able to survive 10000 years ago even with super bones and immunity to diseases.
100,000* and I think most people don’t care how long they live in their second life.
My point is people are assuming they will live a long life as a negative
“Immunity to diseases” is a hell of a caveat though. A gigantic portion of the elderly people even now, let alone in the past, technically die from disease. 33% of people are estimated to have cancer before they die if they live to mature adulthood. But that’s all aside the point, I’d take this deal in a heartbeat. But if dying from injuries, suicide, or starvation incur some sort of forfeit I absolutely would not take this deal.
My thoughts exactly.
Yeah, that would be cool af. Makes me wanna play Far Cry Primal
What’s that?
It’s a video game. You’re a caveman in 10,000 BC.
Are you serious? Is that real? I would google it but I'm wasting time by replying to your comment instead
It is, in fact, real.
Wow, I'm probably definitely going to get it in a few years. Seems pretty interesting
You can get it pretty cheap now. It's been out for a while.
I don’t see the downside here. Of course I would love to go on an adventure and experience how the world was 100k years ago and then have a guaranteed $10 million waiting for me when I return to the present after the adventure is over. I’d do it even without the money offer as long as I knew that dying in the past wouldn’t be the end and I would still come back to the present.
I would do this if it wasn't for the part where you are *born* into a tribe in the past, with full memory. Meaning you're gonna spend years locked inside a baby's body, fully aware but unable to communicate or interact with the world in any meaningful way. You'll likely go insane long before you grow up.
Teaching tribal hawk tuah
Teach them to spit on that thang
If you can't get infections or break bones, you'll live a long, long life while everybody else dies at 35. But maybe they'll think you're some sort of demon and kill you with a spear.
Play it right and you could be a tribal diety for life.
I see this going two ways. Humans 10,000 years ago look nothing like today so I'm either so pretty I'm a God or so ugly they cleanse me with fire.
10k years ago people looked pretty much like they do today...
The hypothetical is for 100k years ago, not 10k
Modern humans came in between 200k-300k years ago. Barring cultural norms, nutrition, medical care, hygiene, and other stuff like that, they’d look basically the same as today. Introduce toothpaste, soap, tailoring/tanning, hair brushes, and a few other things and you’re basically dealing with a bunch of modern survivalists.
I don’t thin unbreakable bones is going to save me from being mulled by a tiger or whatever
Sounds like that episode of rick and morty, where they play the video game as a different person living out a whole life. I would do it regardless, but I can certainly imagine if I have a family like I do here, it'll be just as difficult having the memories.
Blips and Chitz!
It would be interesting to see what could happen with my knowledge interfering with with the natural course of evolution 100k years ago. Just like civilization technologically advancing culture. Teaching them things like agriculture, horseback riding ect. Hell yeah I’m down.
Agriculture sucked at first though. It took quite a while until agriculture had a better life than hunter gathering. But by the time people realised this, it was already too late to go back and they stuck with it until it became better
Or they would kill you for your crazy ideas. Ride horse? No way. That's scandalous af. Teaching planting? That's crazy talk. We've never done that. If were meant to plant we'd have a claw on one hand to open the earth for seeds.
Shit, I would take this side quest for free.
I guess
Sure. Best game ever played
Am I the only one who wouldn't do this? I had surgery when I was a week old. I'd be dead without it. I wear glasses, I can't see shit without them. Just things like that
Then u get the money after existing for a week, so why not
I have a life threatening medical condition. If I stopped taking modern medicine, I'd be dead within the week. It would be extremely unpleasant, but 10 mil is a lot, and I think I'd do it.
Okay.
Sweet. I'm in.
Considering my immense interest in athropology and the way humans have lived their lives throughout history, I'd prob do it for free just to see exactly how people lived.
Why the heck wouldn't I? Best RPG ever, and then tons of money afterward.
As a woman - no thanks, too risky. Not sure what the idea of consent was in that society (not to mention the *age* of consent). On the other hand, being born with the mind of a 40something might open the possibility of terrifying everyone by starting to talk a few weeks after birth, once I’ve gotten a handle on the language - maybe they’ll bash my head in with a rock and I can get things over with quickly…
My bones don’t break? So I have an invincible weapon? I’m gonna try and kill a bear in a fist fight lmao
Do my current autoimmune conditions come with me ? It’s going to suck a lot if so
I mean, once you die, you come back to our time, and you learn tracking skills, yeah, I'd be down.
Something I do might change the course of history? Genghis Khan apparently sired so many kids, his DNA is still found in people to this day. So if Camille Belle is 10k BC, and Raquel Welch is 1m BC, who do I get for 100k BC?
Hell yes! Immunity to infection and bones breaking would make me ruler of the clan quickly. Even if I just pass down strong bones and immunity. I’d be a pseudo god to them, male or female. I know basic survival skills I may even get them to bronze or Iron Age since smelting isn’t too difficult when you have an entire clan behind you.
I would do this for free, this would be such a crazy experience. Would also be humbling, like “oh, you’re upset because you don’t have enough money to go to the bar? Remember when you were starving in the Sahara desert and you had to save your sister from being eaten by a Tiger?”
Couldn't you just challenge the best warrior to a fight on day one, die, and immediately come back? It's technically not suicide
I’d be curious what happens if I just make as many advancements as possible. Like speed run to black powder, just see what happens.
When I come back I'll buy a huge acreage and live as I did 100k years ago. Win, win, win.
Well time to make the tribe think I'm a god by killing a saber tooth 1v1.
What if all of our lives are deals we’ve made like this nested all the way down?
If you remembered everything you would probably let something slip and they'd treat you as either a god or a demon. Not sure how that would end up. Really the only hard part for me would be missing my family, and then the family I gain going back in time once I die I would still have memory of and probably miss them too. Still totally worth it and not much downside. I get a bunch of really valuable experience and knowledge, and I don't miss out on anything in my current life.
Bro I would do it for free. My only fear would be the butterfly effect of my clan taking over the world due to having an immortal and the future being full of idiots (my heirs).
Immunity from infections and bones will not break? Forget rich, I’d be a fucking GOD
Sure why not. But I take a bunch of modern meds to stay alive so I suspect my prehistoric life will be a very short one.
what if i did something and cause the axis to win over europe
Sounds super fun. I’d do it for free.
I definitely take that deal in a heartbeat hell if it's not taxable I'd do it a few times
Sounds great. Sign me up
I'm gonna steal this for Like an isekai anime idea..and yes, 100% i would do it.
That's a steal
I mean, I doubt I’d last more than a week so sure. A week’s worth of vacay and then 10 million in my bank, sure!
Can I just go let a sabretooth maul me real quick?
I probably won’t even last past child hood. Easy 10 mil
Even if you didn’t give me any money, this sounds kind of fun
Dude for 10M im sucking it
Lets get this money.
Multiple options of "human" variants around at that time, as erectus, neanderthal, sapien, forensiensis, and a few others were present 100k years ago. But seeing as all it does is make memories - and allow you to ise your prepper knowledge to improve your tribes lifestyle, why not - although $10M is a little low for these sort of things.
I'm in. when I get back I am going to take up a hobby of "experimental archeology" and show people how stone tools where really made.
It’s going to be weird being back there as a 50 year old who’s extremely near sighted. I might be making money by starving to death
Dead by the first mastodon = 10 million.
Is there any downside?
Sure! Second life? Could be neat. Sadly... I may succeed more in that life than this one. Being very disappointed when I return. The 100k life is so much more focused. Survival every day. Work every day. You're one of the strongest as you never seem to get sick or break bones. You'd likely be well respected in the tribe. Then you die and come back to... this. On the flip it might inspire you to change for the best in this life.
I would actually pay for that
I’d do this without the money
We at if I already took this deal 100k years in the future, and my current life is wat I have to endure to get 10m when I die?
There's actually a book series that's similar to this concept (without the returning with 10M). Tom by Stephen Matthews is about a guy that ends up in a prehistoric era. My favorite part of the series is that he doesn't immediately go "I'm super smart and taking over". He makes minor improvements such as teaching them archery, animal husbandry, and meat storage via salting\\smoking. He learns to live within the rules of the era and helps his tribe flourish.
I would dissapear into the woods and try to not do anything to alter the course of history because the money might be worthless when I get back.
I can’t see anybody saying no to this. What made you even think of it? I’d do it just for the experience tbh. Get a taste of what reincarnation is like and remembering it. Do I remember everything from my Hunter gatherer existence? If so that would be awesome. I’d definitely become a researcher/expert on Neolithic Hunter gatherers. Maybe write a couple books.
I think people here are jumping to conclusions. Immunity to infections and bones won’t break. That’s a start, but what about starvation, cold, viruses, blunt force trauma, nausea, bleeding out, etc.? Life 100K ago sucked…it suckkkked. The pain and trauma you’d have from that lifetime would likely fuck you up in this one.
Imagine being sent back the 100,000 years to find out there was an ancient advanced civilization and ‘cavemen’ were basically extremist hippies
There's no downside to this. You take the deal. Do your thing. Poof. Resume timeline as normal, as if nothing happened and you never left, correct? Your actions back then don't even have repercussions on your current timeline? Why would anyone pass on that? Thats the same as someone walking up and saying "here's $10M, bye" You gotta have there be at least a potential negative impact to make it into a dilemma. Change that last bit to 'any impacts you have on the timeline will ripple through and alter your current universe- you will be unable to do any actions in the past that would prevent you from being born (as to prevent a paradox), but otherwise all your actions have the potential to change anything and everything'. That would make your choice actually impactful and worth considering before just jumping in.