Mumsnet Talk

WW1 and just after. Fascinating time in history - especially social history. And pretty great clothes too

i'd kind of like to be a dinosaur

Germy that's my favourite answer so far

Now. Too much injustice, disease & filth for my liking in the rest of history.

But if I had to go back I'd love to see what dinosaurs really looked like, how they behaved & moved. Early hominids good stuff, too, but would need to jump around a lot in time to properly observe development.

Historical.... argh. Maybe about 1400 CE in parts of the Americas. See culturally what the societies were like, the massive cities of the Amazon basin & in the Great Lakes area, too. Back to CE 1100(?) to see the Maya empire at its peak. Why in the world the Inca only saw the wheel as a child's toy.

Why in the world the Inca only saw the wheel as a child's toy.

Is that true?! The eejits

<tuts>

I'd like to go back to the 1920s for the fashion and be a bright young thing. I'd only like to go back if I was rich though, no drudgery for me thanks

And also tudor times, I'd love to meet Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots. Actually, I'd love to meet any strong women from history - Boudicca? Although she'd be nails and a bit scary wouldn't she?

Recent, but I would have loved to have experienced the swinging 60's/early 70's. The dawning of all that incredible music, Woodstock, fabulous clothes, a feeling that the world was reall changing and the opportunity to be a cog in the wheel. The optimism (well, they all look like they're having the time of their lives...), the carefree attitude.

To go one further, I would of course be a music journalist or some such, regularly hanging around the best music clubs alongside the up and coming musicians who are legendary now, living in an apartment just off Covent Garden maybe with a variety of suitors to go out with, as and when I felt like it

It would be smells, boak, that put me off the worst.

Poo, wee, sweat, dried blood, rotten food, etc.

can we do it just as a time-travel visitor?

although I love lots of periods in history, I don't think I would want to permanently live in any of them.
(hindsight is a wonderful tool)

I would love to watch the pyramids being built

Yeah, smells would put me off too. Even in the 50s and sixties, hygiene wasn't the best was it, and there was no aerosol deodorant was there?

yes, bits of the Roman world would be great.

I'd like to wear Elizabethan costume.

i'd love to live back in Nottingham in Robin Hood's time for a little while - maybe a week or so. just so I can see what it was like to live in a time of the Crusades.

I'm reading Alex Scarrow's Time Rider books at the mo (as recommended on MN ) and they are fab. It's so interesting when the characters go back to say medieval times and have to try and fit in or even the Triassic (sp?) period and try not to influence history too much. Fascinating.

Also, connie Willis' books about time travel back to WW2 and the victorian era. They really make you think how you would react in theses situations.

Fairly predictable, given my other posts on history, but it would be the Tudor times for me. Kind of torn as to whether I'd prefer to be someone 'important' at court (but far away enough from matters to avoid losing my head over something) or a servant/maid to someone really important (to see all the comings and goings, but not be dragged down with them..!)

Leaning towards the former. Who wouldn't want to wear those gowns?! I'd love to meet all of Henry's six wives. Mostly AB though.

Assuming I could take things like antibiotics, painkillers, deodorant and really good conditioner with me, I'd go back to the 1940s and become a land girl. I'd be great, I'd know how it all ended so could keep morale up.

AB why on earth her? She was a fake who appeared religious, who was mistress who harmed so many.

Smallpox...

The late 60s/early 70s.

The clothes.

The music.

The hair.

And then perhaps a trip to wartime London.

i loved the way they did that show on The Family through time recently - tiny bites of history, but them actually being there.
less severe than the 1900/1940s House that C4 did, but more interesting in that it encompassed more time periods.

There is a thread somewhere, the Golding family were posting on, Cognito.

No MrsjREwing Anne Boleyn was a pawn in her families social climbing games. She wasn't snow white but she didn't deserve to be killed on charges that were obviously false. She didn't harm anyone; her tyrant, psychopath of a husband on the other hand....

No way do I want to live in any time in history other than our own thanks. It will be full of lunatics who go around believing in witchcraft and the divine right of kings, and people dying of minor injuries that get infected.

Ooh, there's so many. Probably with Ghengis Khan and his Mongol empire. Religious tolerance, women had some say in things, meritocracy, and learning!

Or pre-Columbian Americans.

lljkk and Nan have you seen the jungles there and the roads the Inca/Mayans made? there's no where for a wheel to go. Also, llama aren't all that strong to pull a cart. It just wasn't practical to have wheeled vehicles without oxen, horses or elephants to build/clear a path for wheeled vehicles to travel on. It was a lot easier to carry the stuff. And it obviously didn't slow them down any...

AB did harm people. I agree her family used her, she had great teachers.

Oh, I also agree she was put to death unjustly.

If I had been rich - Edwardian. No contest. I'd live in a JS Goodall picture book.

Poor - I'd live in a mediaeval village. All family around, rhythm of the days and seasons - and I'd choose from a number of decades when the menfolk weren't forced to straggle up and down the country fighting.