4mo ago

If you could go back in time to observe a moment, what moment would you pick and why?

I'd choose a big medieval battle like Agincourt or something. Medieval times interests me, and I'd like to see the long bows in action. Might pick a battle with Trebuchets though cos they're cool

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Assuming that this is spectator mode and I can't inadvertently change history or die while I'm back there, I think watching the Chicxulub impact which killed the non-avian dinosaurs would be a pretty awesome spectacle.
- Oh good call! Bring a torch it may get dark.
- Good choice! What's a polymath genius?
I would try to coordinate with linguists and scholars to find out more about language isolates. If everyone can do it, we could train everyone and go at 20-to-50-year intervals and solve some linguistic mysteries (specifically Japanese (current and peninsular) and Korean; Ainu origins; yayoi origins; jomon origins; etc.)
- Can you explain what the mysteries are?
  
  A very TL;DR version of some question:
  Do any of the 3 have any other relatives (some conjecture that Japanese and Korean are related, Ainu may have had other relatives maybe something before Nikvh, and we have no idea what the original settlers to Japan (some of whom likely came from Taiwan but others from other places) spoke).
  Was Peninsular Japanese a thing (we only think it exists because of some placenames in old Korean and/or Chinese documents). If so, was Japaonic pushed off the peninsula or was it brought to the peninsula?
  What was pronunciation like of any of these languages in antiquity? We have some ideas, but it's not as clear-cut as, say, Chinese which can be studied by things like rhyme dictionaries.
Dinosaur!

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