[quote=@catchamber] Sure, there are also penicillium strains native to the Americas, but can you identify and refine them without using the internet? It's one thing to say it's possible, but it's another to actually know how to do these things. As for disease: [url=https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071659/]I sure hope you're immune to staphylococcus, streptococcus, syphilis, and tuberculosis[/url], especially strains from 500 to 1500 years ago. I also hope the locals are immune to all the bacteria inside of you. The pathogenic sword cuts both ways. Also, as population density increases from urbanization, you'll have to deal with those pesky plagues. Good luck bootstrapping technology while everyone is dropping like flies. [/quote] The thing is with the Americas: there wasn't really anything that effected European colonists coming into the country on such a scale you would be necessarily affected. It's not like you're going to wake up one day with either of those like you might Small Pox or Bubonic Plague in Medieval Europe. TB might be a different matter, but on the whole native populations don't generally gather consistently in large populations for any period of time required to pass along some sort of contagion between people at a risky and lethal rate. You would have a much poorer time in Medieval Europe, north Africa, the middle east, Asia, or India at this time for the general reason there are cities people move to and live in and where you might be otherwise drawn to kick off your prospective career as a totally not satanic wizard who brings strange and unknown knowledge with him, because no one knows about the internet nor are they aware of it or any other mediums by which you would have learned to become technically proficient at anything. That said, like all the westerners that went off to join the natives through North America's history up until the subjugation of the Apache's in the early 1900's you would most likely have a fairly safe life on the basis that these diseases didn't murder the colonists the moment they stepped off their ships in the 16th century, and that rates of transmission are all together pretty low. Presumably having studied up on medical science to cure the natives of their diseases and then protect them from Western disease, and to ingrain these seemingly irrelevant practices into their cultural mind-set to establish it as a norm; you would have read up on a thing or two on identifying and avoiding having your dick rot off at least. That said the best bet KGP might have north of the Rio Grande in influencing a native culture easily would be with the Mississippian culture which prior to the arrival of Cortez and the subsequent conquest of the Aztecs was one of the most prominent indigenous civilizations in the Americas, who were known to have made the transition into farming society from a hunting one using Maize which had managed to make its way slowly into the north and were getting around to long-term housing and large villages comparable to cities, and their own ceramic works. The thing is though: apart from this KGP is going in blind since by the time Conquistador's made their way north these communities had been abandoned or whipped out at the head of their advance or decimated by Small Pox which had been carried north by refugees from Mexico and laid waste to the people of the Mississippi and killed them all before the Spaniards could even sick their giant fucking mastiffs on them.