Sherlock waved a vague hand, not as surprised as Joan to find that Guy had some semblance of intelligence (beyond, of course, being consistently surprised that everyone in the world wasn't an idiot except for him). Intelligence and cultural development was not an equal concept. The human brain had stopped evolving before the paleolithic, after all.

And, well, Guy just gave him an opening to talk his ear off.

"Beyond the trolls; the grue, Some; and a hand full of others, most tributes come from worlds or dimensions close enough to our own to not make enough difference to warrant. Differences end up superficial at best - history and human development are rarely touched. So yes, while it is hypothetical that perhaps your world saw the paleolithic era later, and you could hypothetically come from the same time period as us, or have absolutely no connection to our timeline, the result is the same. Joan and I are not from the same world, but the deductive reasoning remains, as it does with you. Unless you are about to tell me that you also understand what a steam engine is. The fact that they are able to pull from different time periods is fact - we have a gladiator handy to prove that, John's already verified that his history is extremely close the the Roman history from our world."