Basically the title, you need to use the skills you have now and be a productive member of society.
I don’t mean go back and show the wheel or try invent germ theory etc.
For example I’m a mechanic i think I could go back to the late 1800s and still fix and repair engines and steam engines.
Maybe even take that knowledge further back and work on the first industrial machines in the late 1700s but that’s about it.
If I had access to good quality copper, I could invent electricity and do very well for myself.
So long as I can avoid Ur in the 18th century BC, I could go back pretty far.
I’ve been doing computer engineering long enough to do the field in the 80s and still live as comfortably as I do now, if not more so.
I also sail, with a license old enough that I have my own sextant and reduction tables. I’d assume those skills transfer hundreds of years back, but I wouldn’t like those survivability odds.
Grew up hunting, growing, and preserving a good percent of my food. I might need to brush up on specifics but i think i could do okay if i had social supports for my disability (food providers usually do/did)
I don’t even got skills for today
I can learn new things, so any time in human history.
My skills travel pretty far. But with my gender id not be allowed to use them.
my skills sadly don’t allow me to go back in time at all.
As a software engineer, I’d struggle with the limitations of ten years ago.
But on the non-work side, I have no problems with maintenance on my house and hand tools haven’t changed much, so at least 80 years
I’m a chef, so probably back to when fire started to be a thing people used.
At least as far back as keyboard instruments have been around I could be a musician. Ending up further in time, I’d be a composer; the guy that revolutionised polyphony.
‘Palestrina, that’s really nice. Now check this out’
I’m a structural engineer. I might not have all the materials needed, but I could probably still design old masonry structures if needed.
My day job won’t go far, but my fire expertise and leatherworking skills will take me pretty far
Give me some stone knives and bear skins and I could construct a mnemonic memory circuit. ;-)
I’m a locksmith so any time since the invention of the pin tumbler lock 150ish years ago I will be fine. I don’t prefer it but I can hand file keys without any electric key cutting machines. Before that the bit and barrel locks that were used I know enough to get by though admittedly I don’t know enough history to say roughly how long ago those were invented.
I think my knowledge of first aid and basic anatomy would be of some use in any pre-modern time period. I know enough to make a positive difference at least (wash that cut, dont drink water from downstream of your encampment, give the sick plenty of fluids, etc)
Beyond that, i’d be behind everyone else. I can fish, forage, garden, cook, start fires, and build shelter, but so could everyone for most of human history. I could probaby keep up with a hunter-gatherer society, but i’d be the least capable among them.
