i was watching a very interesting thing on the History Channel about the Battle of Thermopolyae (sp?) (i.e. the famed battle "300" was based on)
now i always had researched it and learned etc out of interest...but here is something i found exceptionally interesting.
what the battle ultimately did, the historians said, was cause the Greeks to unite as one nation, as opposed to the city states they used to be. This eventually led to Greece's eventual defeat of the Persian Empire, and the conquest by Philip and later ALexander of all the lands that became the Greek Empire, and that brought about the beginnings of democracy, philosophy, drama, etc. that was to develop from there in to the beginnings of western culture, and by definition, the beginning of what we have today.
in other words, had those 300 soldiers not made that stand, and given the greeks impetus to eventually unite, the likelihood of greek and by extent western culture would never exist, since the Persian Empire would have likely crushed all the rest of a fragmented Greece, instead of a United one...especially considering that when the Persians took Athens they burned the place to the ground...
so, obviously we have many examples of similar battles etc. that may have had an incredible effect on the world (the defeat of the Spanish Armada, had it actually been a Spanish success, etc.)
but here is where time travel comes in to play...
whenever you see a movie, read a book etc. about time travel, from the most serious to the most silly, the one common thread is basically "Don't touch anything, don't disturb anything, don't talk to anyone etc." obviously because you are changing the course of the history from the time you go back to from when you left...
my proposition is this...
if time travel did occur like that, obviously, there are some things that might change things vastly (like going back and stopping John Wilkes Booth from killing Lincoln, or going back and killing George Washington and Thomas Jefferson etc. Etc.)
but is it always the case that every thing no matter how small would alter history?
what if you just went back, and for 4 hours, you just sat on a nice hillside, and stared out at the sea?
would that have an affect necessarily? probably not...but *COULD* it?
i think so...what if you were stretching, and you accidentally knocked a small rock about a yard away...after you leave, a young man named Napoleon comes along, trips on the rock falls and breaks his neck, and he dies on the hill.
so, i guess i am saying, would it in fact be possible, to go back in time, and not effect anything in the course of history, even if by your very presence, you have ultimately changed something, no matter how minutely small, like just the extra of presence of one more little human being on the planet, even for just 5 minutes, in a place where he was rather isolated, like a desert or a glacier etc....
thoughts?
now i always had researched it and learned etc out of interest...but here is something i found exceptionally interesting.
what the battle ultimately did, the historians said, was cause the Greeks to unite as one nation, as opposed to the city states they used to be. This eventually led to Greece's eventual defeat of the Persian Empire, and the conquest by Philip and later ALexander of all the lands that became the Greek Empire, and that brought about the beginnings of democracy, philosophy, drama, etc. that was to develop from there in to the beginnings of western culture, and by definition, the beginning of what we have today.
in other words, had those 300 soldiers not made that stand, and given the greeks impetus to eventually unite, the likelihood of greek and by extent western culture would never exist, since the Persian Empire would have likely crushed all the rest of a fragmented Greece, instead of a United one...especially considering that when the Persians took Athens they burned the place to the ground...
so, obviously we have many examples of similar battles etc. that may have had an incredible effect on the world (the defeat of the Spanish Armada, had it actually been a Spanish success, etc.)
but here is where time travel comes in to play...
whenever you see a movie, read a book etc. about time travel, from the most serious to the most silly, the one common thread is basically "Don't touch anything, don't disturb anything, don't talk to anyone etc." obviously because you are changing the course of the history from the time you go back to from when you left...
my proposition is this...
if time travel did occur like that, obviously, there are some things that might change things vastly (like going back and stopping John Wilkes Booth from killing Lincoln, or going back and killing George Washington and Thomas Jefferson etc. Etc.)
but is it always the case that every thing no matter how small would alter history?
what if you just went back, and for 4 hours, you just sat on a nice hillside, and stared out at the sea?
would that have an affect necessarily? probably not...but *COULD* it?
i think so...what if you were stretching, and you accidentally knocked a small rock about a yard away...after you leave, a young man named Napoleon comes along, trips on the rock falls and breaks his neck, and he dies on the hill.
so, i guess i am saying, would it in fact be possible, to go back in time, and not effect anything in the course of history, even if by your very presence, you have ultimately changed something, no matter how minutely small, like just the extra of presence of one more little human being on the planet, even for just 5 minutes, in a place where he was rather isolated, like a desert or a glacier etc....
thoughts?
