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Imagine that time goes back, no apes smarter than chimpanzees appear, and then in year 2020, 100000 random humans with all the knowledge we have now spawn naked in one area.

In what region of the world should they appear so they do not get eaten by tigers or starve to death or freeze to death, and they also have resources to get out of there?.

I first thought about Africa beacuse the first humans were there, and the first civilizations were in the middle east, but that was because the land was fertile, right now it is a desert and they would not survive.

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  • $\begingroup$ "Right now it is a desert": What do you think, have the presence and activities of humans anything to do with that? (And Egypt is just as desertic today than it was in the Antiquity. The Nile is still flowing, as are the Tigris and the Euphrates and the Orontes.) (But in the Antiquity, the Near East had lions; it does no longer have lions because of the presence and activities of humans.) (And the 100,000 naked humans "with the knowledge we have today" will surely starve to death regardless of wherever they "spawn', except maybe the very few who happen to have the right knowledge.) $\endgroup$ – AlexP Nov 5 '20 at 7:31
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    $\begingroup$ VTC:Opinion-Based. With the possible exception of the polar regions and a couple of deep-desert regions, there is no "best" place on the planet. Each will have pros and cons and whether those pros/cons matter is the opinion of whomever is writing the answer (there are creatures that will kill/eat the humans pretty much everywhere). Please take our tour and read the first two bullets of our help center to better understand our site. What are the specific and answerable conditions you need us to achieve with the answer? "Best Survival" is too subjective. $\endgroup$ – JBH Nov 5 '20 at 7:38
  • $\begingroup$ Does this answer your question? How far could civilisation develop within one lifetime - starting from nothing? $\endgroup$ – Trish Nov 5 '20 at 10:20
  • $\begingroup$ 1-million or 100000 - in worst case they don't make a fortnight... Alos, tigers generally don't eat humans. $\endgroup$ – Trish Nov 5 '20 at 10:21
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100000 random humans in the same area with no food supply means a carnage due to famine and competition for the scarce resources of that area.

To keep that amount of human decently fed you have two options: hunting/gathering or farming.

Obviously, neither of the two is going to work for such a large group:

  • first of all most of them would have no practical knowledge on how to do the task.
  • if you go the farming way, you will need to prepare the ground, fetch the seeds and wait the next harvest season to be able to eat
  • therefore hunting is your first obligated option. Well, hunting and gathering for that many mouths will quickly deplete the area from all edible resources.

As a result famine will ensue, and fights will follow over the scarce food.

Those who managed to survive famine and fights will be restarting humanity, with only a subset of the initial knowledge and no infrastructure to support them.

Therefore the suitable places are the usual suspects: regions with rivers will support farmers, else it will be mostly hunters.

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    $\begingroup$ Nice frame challenge. $\endgroup$ – JBH Nov 5 '20 at 8:06
  • $\begingroup$ Your chief problem is the 'spawning naked part'. There is a small number of modern individuals who, by dint of military training or personal study etc could live of the land, if they had to, after having been dumped naked somewhere reasonably habitable with no cloths, tools or supplies etc. So 99% of your 100,000 individuals are probably going to die of exposure/starvation etc in short order. If only because there won't be enough food for that many people in one location - anywhere on the globe. What you need is 100,000 Bear Grillys's, in groups of 20 or so spaced out across a wide area. $\endgroup$ – Mon Nov 5 '20 at 11:34
  • $\begingroup$ P.S when I said 'Bear Grillys' I meant male and female Bear Grillys. $\endgroup$ – Mon Nov 5 '20 at 11:36
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Australian east coast

Zero infrastructure. Zero tools. 100% knowledge. You need a spot where knowledge is the only difference between life and death.

When you arrive; You have the knowledge of everything humanity has used to survive. So rather than being the white explorers dying in the jungle, As I've already explained in a similar question, you'll be the smart natives who've lived there the entire time wondering why the white guys are dying of hunger next to edible food.

Longest continuous civilisation in human history has lived there (Australian Aboriginal people). 60,000+ years and counting, and lived without significant infrastructure.

If you need an more exact spot; These lands here between Sydney and Brisbane:
enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ Calling the least technologically advanced group of humans to survive into modern times a "civilization" is a stretch; a culture, yes. (And we don't really know whether the Australian indigenous culture is indeed 60,000 years old, because they had no writing. As far as we know, their culture as it was when they were discovered by people who had writing could have been very recent, simply the last of a long series of cultures which rised and died. Their material culture is indeed very old, but about the history of their society, beliefs, stories etc. we know exactly nothing.) $\endgroup$ – AlexP Nov 5 '20 at 7:40
  • $\begingroup$ @AlexP newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/… . We know from carbon dating they've survived for 60,000 years and haven't changed what they're doing significantly over that time. That's a safe bet for this question if there is any. $\endgroup$ – Ash Nov 5 '20 at 7:43
  • $\begingroup$ The material culture, as I said, yes, it's old. The spiritual culture, the languages, the structure of society, the stories, the songs, etc., those cannot be dated with carbon 14. They must be recorded in writing. And they had no writing. (For example, we know that at some point their ancestors used to make paintings on rocks. Modern aborigines didn't make paintings on rocks. So, when did this change occur? Yesterday, or 55,000 years ago? Was this the only change, or was it the result of some overarching cultural revolution? We shall never know.) $\endgroup$ – AlexP Nov 5 '20 at 7:47
  • $\begingroup$ @AlexP surprisingly their oral history is extremely accurate, with oral stories matching geological events up to 10,000 years old. Eg dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2929775/… sapiens.org/language/oral-tradition $\endgroup$ – Ash Nov 5 '20 at 7:49
  • $\begingroup$ "Accurate" oral "history"? I guess cultural anthropologists have to eat too. (Oral history is to history as military intelligence is to intelligence. That is, same word, completely different meanings.) $\endgroup$ – AlexP Nov 5 '20 at 7:53

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