Civilization, Part 1

So I've been working on founding a civilization.

It's a fairly complex task (not surprising) but also not that hard (given the ability to arbitrarily travel in time). I'm actually surprised I haven't thought of doing it before. It makes a fairly relaxing hobby, at least compared to my previous jaunts. I was always mixing myself in modern political situations, preventing assassinations, overthrowing genocidal leaders, that sort of thing.

The problem with those is they're so high profile. There's always someone else with a Watch (or something fancier from another age, I suppose) who wants to meddle in those things, too. Just as many want it back the way it was as to whatever you changed it to. A lot of them come from the new future you just created thinking that the change they're making is going to set things right.

Anyway, way back at the dawn of history is not something most people think to go. Scared of the implications, the foreign diseases, or maybe just the lack of wi-fi. Of course, there are also some philosophies that try to minimize their impact on the historical branching. But where's the fun in that?

On my first day, I went to about 10,000 BC and started teaching some folks about natural antibiotics. Penicillin may be difficult to purify, but it's really not hard to get the bulk of it right. I figured that was a solid foundation. Maybe it would get population densities a bit higher in an area, give the tribe an advantage.

I zapped ahead a few thousand years and found they'd all been killed off by some alliance of neighboring tribes who envied their “magic”. Obviously, I was going to have to learn to be a bit more subtle about this.