You need not an academic understanding, but an intuitive understanding of the workings behind the technology. Natives could pretty quickly figure that Powder + Bullet = Bang for the musket, but I doubt they'd ever figure out how works an MP5. Maybe they'd know it's "pull the trigger", and maaaaybe they'd know a magic box is used to make it fire again once it stopped firing, they could never actually figure out how the mechanism work.Captain Seafort wrote:Of course, but "easier" is a relative term. In this case it doesn't matter whether you're talking about Brown Bess or a jimpy - they're both Outside Context Problems to a civilisation that has no concept of firearms.Lt. Staplic wrote:Why is it wrong....simpler technologies are easier to figure out.
Hell, if your soldiers put the safety on before letting them take the gun, the natives might actually start to believe the magical deathgivers only work in the hand of the Foreigners. Why would they think that a small switch allow for the firing and not firing? Do they have anything remotely similar?
The natives already have firestones. They know how to create sparkle, and they know how a sling works, so they know how dangerous a fast bullet might be. The only foreign element to the musket there is the gunpowder. You need a lot more culturo-technological background to figure out the MP5 intuitively, without anybody telling you anything about it.