Okay, let's say that you get dropped on a planet like Earth, with 1,000 people who only understand basic English and treat you as if you were their supreme monarch, but lack any technology whatsoever. You can teach them anything you know; but only stuff you personally, know, you don't get to bring books along or anything. You can give them any command and they will happily obey.
How well could you recreate society?
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Fame is but a slow decay.
-Theodore Tilton
I would be screwed. Unless I were wearing this:
http://www.topatoco.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TO&Product_Code=QW-CHEATSHEET&Category_Code=QW
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octopuses : octopi : octopodes :: address : URL : URI
Smash Bros. : tires don exits :: Transformers : trukk not munky
My friend and I talked about this a few times. Only the assumption was that you and maybe 1,000 other English-speaking people were dropped into the world and there was no sort of monarch thing going on. So they might have different skills than you, but probably just as useless.
Anyways, I think there's a significant advantage for us. The advantage is that we have an understanding of what's possible. Imagine how much faster things can be done if we know they can be done. The problem is this: we probably have to start from the bottom.
Survival as hunters and gatherers could be rough. Let's pray we were dropped off in a warm area because I'm assuming we're all naked and have no domesticated animals.
Step 1: basic needs. We need to build shelter first and foremost if the weather is rough. Building a fire from scratch (no tools, no matches) I haven't done before, but I do have knowledge more developed than the primitive (and unlikely to succeed) method of rubbing sticks or stones, like the bow drill or the fire plow methods.
When we have fire, we can keep warm and boil our water (until then, and until we have something we can boil water in, we'll have to drink from running water sources) and cook our meats and vegetables. Hunting in and of itself is difficult- hopefully we're nearby shallow rivers we can dam up to trap fish, because I can guarantee otherwise we won't be eating much more than bugs for a long time. Farming is even a bigger nightmare and will have to come later.
Food, water, shelter and clothing... we'll have to wait until we can find/kill an animal to make clothing out of it (I'm not a tanner, but if I had to guess, we'd wash the hide thoroughly, soak it in urine, beat the crap out of it, and rub the animals brains into it... that, I think, makes it more useful). That sets us with our basic necessities. Probably most of the group will die during this phase. We'd need rudimentary tools (sharp rocks or sticks sharpened by sharp rocks) in order to do a lot of the tasks here.
Past rudimentary survival, I can't offer much of anything else, only that we'll know there is more than can be done. I don't know how to smelt ore, or even what it looks like. I don't know how electricity works- but I do know that it does. Rome wasn't built in a day, and we'll be lucky if during our lifetimes we even discover a way to smelt ore (try getting a fire that hot- I know pigs fat and pitch can get pretty hot, way hotter than a bonfire, but that by itself is still not hot enough I am pretty sure). What we offer to future generations is the knowledge that it's doable. Unless, of course, future generations become so removed from us that they think we speak of "magic" and "witchcraft" and reject the notion of flying gizmos in the air as fairy tales.
Law and order is another matter entirely.
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In my society, law and order would come first. I'd institute a democracy and an agreeable constitution before setting about other projects. At first it would only govern what it needed to govern: basic survival. But we'd appoint a leader before setting about anything.
For me, if I got past rudimentary survival, I'd try to figure out the best way to make records of knowledge that I think may be useful down the line, but wouldn't be useful immediately. I figure whatever is immediately useful I could disseminate, and it should stay alive, as useful information tends to do so.
Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I think that sheparding might be a gateway to farming. That is, it probably would be easier to lead around sheep in a nomadic sort of lifestyle, get them up to a certain population point, and then have a year to establish farming where we can stay in one place, while eating most of them.
Smelting, I'm not sure how to do, but I'd probably try to get ten or so scientists to play around, that is, present the problem to them, and let them try various things. Though I might have them run general ideas past me first so I don't have them killing themselves with an obviously dangerous experiment.
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Fame is but a slow decay.
-Theodore Tilton
I wonder how difficult herding might be. Mouflon are the supposed ancestors of the domesticated sheep. Are we to assume we're dealing with them, if we've set things back in time? I wonder if they'd be easy to maintain, or if they'd attack us? Is it possible to approach a mouflon? Or are they like deer, in that they'd run away before we could get ahold of them?
Aurochs is even worse- I fear they'd be rather dangerous until we have advanced tool making skills to even begin to try to get.
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