How would you prove that you're from the future?

You take a pen and paper. Draw an iPad. Tell them it lights up. You can order pizza from it. Then? Tell them about hamburgers too.

I’m sure there will be far brainier comments than mine to this very interesting question, but I don’t think you could prove you were from the future if you went back even a day, let alone centuries. I just don’t think you would be believed no matter what you did.

I think you could do it as well as if God or Jesus came to Earth and proclaimed his identity.

No…since English wasn’t invented until 15 century. I would be helpless and dependent on others for food. Maybe if I performed first aid on someone then maybe. Good chance that I would be executed for being a witch.

@talljasperman
You bring up a good point.

Just factor out language.. You magically know the language of where you show up.

Under the specified conditions, I would not, because it would be impossible.

Pretty sure if you tried you’d be killed.

I wouldn’t try to prove it. I’d just try to use my knowledge to further my own ends as best I could.

I would explain astrology to them. Draw them in the sand and show them at night. I would also show them cultivation techniques.

Maybe if I showed my fillings.

Astrology @UnholyThirst ? Whatever for?

If you went back a few days with a copy of today’s paper, that would be pretty convincing. Going back to Roman times would be more difficult. Trying to explain electricity would be futile.

Trying to explain any of it would be futile. They might just decide you’re a debil and kill you.

Start letting people know what will happen in the near future, then make boatloads off of your “psychic” abilities.

Nope. You’re a witch. You’re dead.

No one ever said I had to be in late 1600s Salem.

Witchcraft was around looooong before 17th Century Salem!
Googled 8th Century Rome (per the OP’s time frame) and got this

You’re dead!

I know! Tell them all about Fluther!

Wait…now we’re ALL daid.

Extended thumb & little pinky held to my ear, “call me”
Failing that i’d just do the Macarena.

Why would I want to prove it? I could be one of the smartest dudes around. I’m good with that.

“Your knowledge is not that of mortal men…you’re dead!”

It would remind me of some of the jobs I’ve had. People were afraid of the computer. Thought it was some sort of inexplicable magic or something. I know computer stuff that other people don’t understand and boy, do they hate that.

@Dutchess_III That’s why you need to be smart enough to not just drop a wealth of information on them at once. ;)

I try, @El_Cadejo. I really do try. It’s one of my greatest weaknesses. I have to fight something inside of me that keeps whispering “If you just say it right, just ‘splain it to them, they’ll see the light and it will be as obvious to them as it is to you!” I have to fight so hard to really, really realize that that is not the case. It’s almost like letting go of the most important part of me. Oh…I can’t even explain it.

@Dutchess_III I understand. It’s the reason I’m not a teacher :P

I even got fired from teaching because (among other things, to be fair) my boss didn’t like me teaching anything above the very basics in Word. No Excel, no Powerpoint, no teaching short cut keys.. She said they’d never have a need for those skills. WTF!

Ok, here’s the only way I could think to do it.. IF you were in a time where lodestones (magnets) had been discovered, and you could get a hold of that and some copper, then you could make electricity. A wire would be hard to fabricate out of the copper, but a crude one is possible. Outside of that IDK…

I would not try to prove I was from the future.
I would act the idiot, learn the language, and seek a rich patron or monarch. Then I’d set up a rudimentary still and begin the production of ‘distilled beverages’. Life of Riley follows. I’m sure I know enough about the basics to have lots of other new ‘inventions’.

I’d just keep it to myself, however hard we try people would just think it’s some kind of trick anyway.

I would not try to convince people of anything, other than I lost my way, and need some kindness. What I would do depends entirely on whether there is a return trip. Is there a return trip?

@ibstubro Great idea. Although alcohol has been around for thousands of years, maybe it was only available to the rich? You could make rot gut for the huddled masses!

Lord @Esedess Could you imagine what the world would be like today if electricity had been invented/discovered in the 8th century?!!

I’d jump back in my time machine, and tell everyone I’d see them in 10 seconds.
And if that didn’t work, I’d go back 10 seconds and try again….....

And if that didn’t work, I’d go back 20 seconds and tell everyone the me they see in 10 seconds, isn’t the me they’re seeing now, but the me that is about to get so pissed off that no one believes he’s from the future, that he went back in time to give them the ear bashing I’m giving them now.

And if that didn’t work, I’d go back and kill all their mothers!!!!!!!........

Then I’d go back and stop myself from killing all their mothers, and say see…....

You all used to be dead!........

And you still would be if I didn’t have this f#@kin time machine!

Okay…..

Short answer: No. It’s pointless to try. Though there’s no reason to think that 8th century Romans were incapable of the concept of time travel. There’s an incredibly slight possibility that if you were to survive at all, OR EVEN COMMUNICATE, your unique combination of advanced thinking and ignorance of the mundane would lead a Roman thinker (likely a Greek) to halfway explain your existence as one of a time traveler. It’s infinitely more likely that you would be considered insane or should I say possessed.

Wow, not the shortest answer, I know.

So you are suddenly marooned in Rome in the 8th century. You are without any possessions, most significantly clothing. And NO, you aren’t suddenly even semi fluent in CONTEMPORARY Latin. You should consider yourself damned lucky if you had previously learned to write it.

This will all add up to a host of interesting problems:

You are naked and have no possessions. Nearly everyone would assume you were a slave, if you didn’t seem like too much of a blithering idiot to be of no use to any house or institution. Your end could come as bloody entertainment for the Public.

Stealing clothes on the quick: Not likely. Clothing was a precious commodity. New clothing was worn by the wealthiest or as a uniform. The lower classes wore second (or more) hand. There would be no clothes just lying around for you to snatch.

You would likely be thought of as one of the foreign hordes. In my particular case my coloring and features would suggest that I was Germanic, and again, most likely a slave, and one that sustained a head injury.

How do you know where you are? The stars. Okay, so we’re in the Northern hemisphere… Again, you are lucky that you coincidentally studied Ancient Rome. Some artwork and a cable miniseries isn’t going to get you knowledgeable enough for things to be easy. So you suspect you are in Rome. Latin’s written fucking over thousands of miles. You might recognize some of the many iconic structures here… Rome, So the river’s in the right place, so is the hill, so are the walls… Public artwork might save you, including that found on currency. That is if you have a chance to get a peek at money in the short time before your death by starvation.

The Church might be willing to help out. Monks might be willing to tolerate you as a project of kindness. I’m still very skeptical. The Church: It’s filled with the superstitious back then as well.

You are introduced to the slave market. This is hardly the worst thing that can happen to you. In fact you should consider yourself extremely lucky. Not only are you incapable of the vaguest communication but you come from a time filled with fantastic convenience. Instead here and now just fetching the water is complicated by comparison. What are the chances you end up in a home with plumbing? To us Rome seems ahead of it’s time in the convenience department. That doesn’t mean your owner and your boss are going to have much patience with you. Hell, your just being in the kitchen is looking to them like more and more bad luck. How did you manage to get acquired in the first place? Can you ever hope to someday emerge a free man? Would anyone be motivated to even teach you the language? So you easily form the letters, you even speak words with an unintelligible accent. Who’s to say you aren’t just mimicking? Education is basically a novelty for the average person of stature or it’s applied to those who need it, and Rome doesn’t consider it impressive in it’s own right. You can’t even aspire to be one of those hairy know-it-all Greeks.

The military! Rome’s much more impressed with it than general knowledge. Sure one can defend The Empire as a slave and or foreigner. I suspect your inability to communicate and your baffling weirdness won’t get you anywhere here either.

The risk of being branded a loon for your claim of being a time traveler is the very least of your problems. I believe the best you could hope for is a lifetime of slavery, at the lowest conceivable level. You would be much more easily welcomed as a true member of the frontier’s fauna rather than one from another time, no matter how knowledgeable or intelligent you were.

Take some one with you. Some people only believe what they psychically see in person.

Distilled spirits are a relatively modern concept, @Dutchess_III, becoming popular 12–1400. In the early stages, it was seen as medicinal, and only became recreational after the Black Plague.

@SecondHandStoke I think I could manage to survive the situation better than that. Being a plump woman, I would have a bit of an advantage. Assuming I DON’T magically know the language, I would pretend inability to speak. I might even adorn myself with a few abrasions, and seek pity, but from an individual, not the open public. To a crowd, I would be a spectacle. To an individual, I would be a find, a curiosity. (the wheelchair would be difficult to explain, but enough like a chariot, they may consider me regalfor having such a contraption, and wonder what misfortune had befallen me. Since we’re ASSuming though, let’s assume I can walk.) I would endear myself to SOMEONE quickly. Clothing is not a particular issue. My round, ample presence may fascinate some. I have drawn water from a well. I have had to survive around some pretty backwards, superstitious people. I could again.
Once I had found a nitch for myself, I would “let” some observe my cunning, by using numbers, semidiscreetly, and other subtle, “tells”. Rumor would spread that I was of means, and some misfortune had befallen me. Perhaps I had offended a god, or perhaps an adversary had coveted my good fortune, and lifted me somehow from it.
With my subtle disclosures, I would find myself an acceptable place. Perhaps the quiet but adoring lover of someone with servants.
That is if I can’t return to the good old 21st century.
If I can return, I would stay away from dtection. I would survive a while in the distance, finding opportuities to steal small but cool items. I would stow them away, bury them well in a safe spot, a spot which will remain undetected for centuries. When I return to my own time, I would spend all I have, and go get those things, Once they are proven authentic, I’m set. Then I can be a quieet, adoring lover of someone in the now, and hire my own servants.

China’s had them for thousands of years @ibstubro. Here’s the wiki article on it.

“While the art of wine making reached the Hellenic peninsula by about 2000 BC, the first alcoholic beverage to obtain widespread popularity in what is now Greece was mead, a fermented beverage made from honey and water.”

Fermentation is the first step toward distilled beverages. Naturally fermented beverages typically top out at 10% alcohol. Distilled tops out at 100% alcohol.

Quote from your link: “The first dated and certain evidence of the distillation of alcohol comes from the School of Salerno in the 12th century.”

What would I do if transported to the 800’s? “I’d set up a rudimentary still and begin the production of ‘distilled beverages’.”

I could try to dazzle them with my knowledge of math. I would first tell them about decimal numbers. Although this would be a novel idea to Romans, it was first thought of by Indian mathematicians several hundred years earlier. Then I would show them the wonders of algebra, which would remain in a crude form for a few hundred years. I could show them how to use analytic geometry, show the usefulness of vector representation and tell them the basics of calculus.

I could also tell them about my limited knowledge of science. I could tell them Newton’s basic laws. It would be easy to show them that Aristotle was wrong about heavier objects falling faster. It would not be necessary to climb the Tower of Pisa, as in the apocryphal story about Galileo. All I would have to do is pick up a large and small stone and drop them, showing they hit the ground at the same time. I might blow their minds with the theory of evolution. I don’t have the means to provide evidence, but it would definitely give them something to think about. They would either believe I was from the future or think I was a madman.

I wouldn’t try. The combination of the law of unintended consequence and the time paradox would ensure that any actions I took would prevent at least one of my forefathers from meeting and/or procreating with the appropriate “foremother”.

@Yetanotheruser I don’t know if time paradoxes work like that. If you would have gone back in time and somehow nullified your own birth, then you wouldn’t have been born to go back and mess yourself up in the first place. Therefore, you going back in time, and anything that follows IS what happened. You have to consider that at this moment on the timeline you were already in the past. The resulting world you live in now, is the result of whatever meddling you’ve already done/will go into the past to do. Whatever happened back then, already happened.

@Yetanotheruser / @Esedess and you guys just summed up why time travel movies tend to annoy me. No one ever follows the same “rules”.

@El_Cadejo In ten dimensional space, you can kill your father and have him living in another parallel universe. One of you will not be born but others will live… all options are taken in 10 dimensional quantum space/time.

@talljasperman What about the 11th dimension? =p

@Esedess Then your mind is blown away. Let stick to the 10 dimensions first.