I’d give laser pointers to Neanderthals. Even if they did figure out some useful application for them (maybe hunting?) they’d run out of batteries eventually.
I would take a portable CD player, place a CD with Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up on it playing backwards, hook up solar panels, remove the ability to shut it on/off, and set it up a circuit that will:
- As the device solar charges, keep it off until some voltage threshold is exceeded
- Once the voltage is high enough, start a random timer (8 - 100 hours), so that it is not immediately obvious that the sun activated the device
- When the timer ends, turn the music on on repeat mode
- Sometimes turn the music off at random, and then turn it on again at random after a long delay, so that in some cases you can have turn ‘ON’ events without the device being exposed to the sun
- When the voltage drops below a low threshold, turn the device off until it is charged again
Imagine how crazy it would be as tech advanced through the ages and people create their own artificial sound and eventually realise that that sounds from the mysterious artifact from the future was playing music BACKWARDS and there’s discernible lyrics.
Flashlights.
Fleshlights
Flushlights.
Yes, toilet illuminators, what of it?
Magnets
And for generations people will ask “Magnets, how do they fucking work?”
Just wait til they discover long neck giraffes, pet cats, and dogs
A bottle with a highly concentrated solution of polonium, radium, plutonium or anything spicy and ionizing.
Preferably coupled with something that glows nicely, like ZnS. Just pick a suitable fluorescent dye and make it blue or green for bonus points.
I’m reminded of the real-life Brazilian scavengers that found some medical cesium, and decided to do body paint with their kids. :(
I can imagine the body paint story ended badly… No need to look up the facts with an introduction like that.
Wasn’t there also a Russian RTG core that was so hot it would melt the snow around it? Some scavengers found it, and got immediately blasted with a lethal does of radiation—as you would expect.
With this post, OP was clearly aiming for a minor annoyance or a frustrating little prank, but that story just gave me an idea that goes a fair bit beyond that… More like diabolical malice, but here goes anyway.
Sending one of those plutonium cores back in time to the neanderthals would be a pretty good candidate too. It doesn’t really glow, which is a bummer, but it has other “magical” properties to compensate. The heat might still attract them to it, and the intense radiation would kill them within a day or two. If they somehow manage to touch the plutonium itself—a feat worthy of recognition—they could also experience its toxicity.
Interesting, I hadn’t heard about that one. A little bit more caution around the mysteriously steaming machine would have been wise, even if you don’t know about radiation - they didn’t just get close, but made camp around it, and possibly wore it while working.
The RTG in the accident was using Strontium-90; weapons-grade plutonium is actually not super lethal to handle, FYI. It’s mainly an alpha emitter, so a good pair of gloves is enough. Unless you eat it. Then you’re dead, same as Polonium.
An LED light bulb.
A snow globe from Niagra Falls, a clothes hanger, A Buttplug, a die cast Model of The General Lee, some Tide pods, an assortment of Weeble Wobble’s, The Complete Jane Fonda Workout (large print, hardback edition), A magnifying glass, A bag of Candy Corn.
You’re just listing all the things within arms reach, aren’t you?
Arms reach because they’ve all just been pulled out of an ass.
These items are in my go bag.
Need justifications
The fleshlight
one of those fleshlight vibrators that suck your dick
Neanderthal goes extinct.
Something with gears. Like a cranked egg whisk. Huge amounts of science went into this, but all of it should be replicable in a few generations of experiment with even bronze working. And it should inspire inventors of the age too
Or wood. Mills used wooden peg gears to great effect for a long time.
The bigger challenge is to have enough jobs worth doing with gears to keep craftsmen trained, since making a smooth turning gear by hand is a thing. If this is Rome, there will be, but they already had some knowledge of gears. If it’s cavemen there’s not a chance.
oh I’d teach 'em modern english, and then dump a truck load of People’s Magazine’s outside their hut
Going for a hunt today? Can’t. Need to know what Janniston said to Branjelo on page 4
That singing fish animatronic. Convinced people it’s a god. Wait for the battery to die and the eventual religious crisis.
They would be deeply concerned as it appears to get slowly possessed by a demon when the batteries are low
A Nintendo Switch running Animal Crossing. Assume it has some kind of perpetual battery, and they can figure out how to operate it/play the game, and read our modern English.
I’m thinking they figure modern civilisation is about (or back to) fishing and farming… and that animals are intelligent. Like validating TF outta the Egyptian pantheon. You’re a human but you have a dog for a neighbor, here’s a koala, a gorilla, an eagle… and they all talk and wear clothes.
(Of course, if we wanna blow their minds with a game AND we can assume they can play it, why not just go straight to Cyberpunk?)
A solar panel with a light attached.
That one would actually make more sense if you’ve never seen either part separately, but I like the spirit.
My thought process was, this produces light only when there is light outside making it effectively useless.
Exactly, although to a cave person that’s just an interesting device that redirects sunlight somehow. They’d have to understand it could have been stored up for night or used for something else, in order to feel ripped off.
i would give them nuclear weapons
Yeah finish off human race before it begins
A large obsidian slab standing perfectly vertically.
