Which historical period would you visit?

ThinkProgress wrote: »

I think previous generations didn't really dwell on the past as much as we do... so these things didn't really matter too much. They were far too focussed on the present and future, to concern themselves with the past.

There was an element of that to it alright. They tended to think on the now more. There were even fewer musings on the future. Even people and events they did consider they often framed them in a contemporary manner. Look at European religious paintings. Although they had some idea of how people may have dressed, they painted them in current fashions. EG Virgin and Child paintings she's nearly always dressed in contemporaneous clothing.

Going further back the Romans had the horn for Ancient Greece and they did do some research and thinking on it and incorporated a pastiche of their aesthetic on their own time, but that was rare enough. Later Europe did similar with the idea of Rome.

Going much further back into the Stone Age, it seems their concept of time was even more rooted in the now. The past were your grandparents, the future your grandkids. You see this with cave paintings. Where the very earliest look very similar to much later work(though the earliest is usually of higher quality funny enough). Similar iconography across tens of thousands of years. Equally Ancient Egypt's aesthetic remains extremely stable across many centuries.

I'd zip back to Palaeolithic Europe. I'd love to see both us and Neandertals living in the same areas and see how they interacted. To see a different not quite us human would be a prize enough.

I'd like to see Rome and Ancient Greece. One big problem would be language. That would start to be a problem even going to English speaking places of three hundred years ago. You'd have to get your ear in. For Greece and Rome I'd attempt to learn ancient Greek as it's useful for both. Palaeolithic times would require much pointing and grunting.