I could see them developing some form of basic anaesthetic (most likely along the lines of "Drink a potion made from this herb, it would put you to sleep before we [cut open your skull to let the demons out]"), but vaccines and antibiotics seem too advanced for a period which would be recognisably similar to OTL's bronze age. As for the theory of evolution, whilst it's neat to know, I don't really think it has much obvious impact on people's quality of life. (If anything, it might even be the reverse, given that IOTL it gave rise to things like eugenics and scientific racism.)
Hahahahahahaha! That's a great image. On a serious note though, I haven't much looked into the history of anesthetics, but GoT (which is now dead to me) keeps on mentioning "essence of nightshade". Was that ever a thing, I wonder?
The scientific method is simple to do, but it also depends on a variety of philosophical premises which are far from simple, and far from obvious too, for that matter. There's a reason why, as far as we know, the scientific method was only ever developed once in human history.
Agreed.
Nero, IIRC, used an emerald to magnify things and help him see better, although obviously such a solution could never become widespread.
A quick glance at the
History of Glass page on Wikipedia dates glassmaking to the Bronze Age, although it is possible that it didn't get started as an independent craft until the 2nd millennium BCE. Still, it seems odd that, given how just looking through a glass bottle can make things appear closer, magnifying glasses didn't become a thing until much, much later.
I've always thought it kind of odd that it took so long for codices to catch on, given that they seem so much better than scrolls.
What are those little folded paper pamphlet-type things they used in China and East Asia? Does anyone know what I'm talking about? You have a cover on either end of a long, rectangular sheet of paper and then you fold the sheet into square/vertical rectangular sections, each side of which is a different "page"? I was thinking of doing something similar IMTL with parchment, since parchment is a fairly old product. Not sure it would work with papyrus, though. All of the papyrus I have ever handled in my life (admittedly only a few sheets) didn't take well to folding.
Related, and although it's not strictly speaking a technology, I'd suggest the alphabet. Learning twenty-six (or whatever) characters is much easier than learning however many logograms are necessary for a language, so widespread adoption of the alphabet would probably lead to a higher level of literacy in society.
IMTL, which is called
Not My Heifer, cuneiform is already evolving down a different track and I want it to remain the primary form of writing in the Middle East well into the Common Era, developing a Chinese-like style to the characters. Alphabetic writing will probably be invented independently in India and also the Black Sea region, probably by Circassians, or it might also grow out of hieratic Egyptian. I want hieratic to be a lot wider spread.
Some form of ritual purity law would probably be helpful here. "Water is a pure substance, and it is an abomination to leave your filth in the place where you get your water from."
I rather like this one, but what about... composting toilets?
I'm also very interested in things we can do to improve agriculture, namely terracing, crop rotation, the use of perennials, agro-forestry, etc.