Originally Posted by Loony BoB
Is timeframe the only thing you have a problem with? We can say it took a few more years, just not thousands, because that's ridiculous to say that they'll exist on the planet for thousands of years and still be in medieval stages.
But they couldn't keep a medieval technological level. Technology requires cities and nations, which we won't have without enough people.
As for the world and how they live, just assume that it's got a hell of a lot of livestock floating around the place, not to mention fish and of course edible vegetation.
Livestock must be domesticated. Othervise it's not livestock. And not reliable to reproduce in captivity. It took thousands of years to get cows from aurochs, reindeer from... Other reindeer, and so forth.
And of course, edible vegetation hardly can cope with the needs of civilisation. You need lots of that vegetation, and that means domestication - domesticated plants are HUGE compared to wild species, which makes it possible to survive on them.
You put a family on a resourceful island for a couple of years and if they have the knowledge, they can build themselves a house and breed chickens and eat the fruit. There won't be every single person from the medieval ages, it's not going to be a hugely populated world at the beginning, just spread out, that's all.
But that's not a nation. That family will either die out, or form a population for a small island - AND there is not enough genetic diversity! You'll have inbred island idiots who wouldn't know a coconut from riverbed rocks. You need LARGE populations for nations and civilisation - that is why there are no nations of tribes, but nations of peasants.
I'm happy to change the time for nations to come into action, though, if it suits your personal mindset.
It's not the technology, because technology won't be on the minds of starving people trying to survive in the wild. Technology will disappear, and slowly grow - maybe even to the medieval levels you are supposing. It's the infrastructure. No survival without domesticates! No nations without survival. Nations are born when there are people, specialised jobs and and not anarchial tribalism. Which is what we'll have if these people are dumped into the wilderness.