back to prehistoric savage

Chapter 8 Higher Productivity
Zhang Tian rummaged through the pile of stones.

People have learned to "hoard goods" since the day they turned from single-handed wilderness to group life. At first, like hamsters and squirrels, they mainly hoarded food to cope with the cold winter. Pick them up and keep them.

The most hoarded thing in the tribe is bamboo, followed by stones. Because food is easy to spoil, it is the least hoarded.

When women go out to collect, they will bring back rough stones that are suitable for grinding into tools, such as square, round, flat... There are various shapes.

"What are you doing?"

Xiao Xiao followed, and his intuition told him that his brother was going to do something different again.

Zhang Tian picked up a palm-sized oblate stone, about two centimeters thick, and ordered, "Give me the stone knife."

Xiao quickly came back with a stone knife and squatted beside him curiously.

Using the stone knife as a chisel, Zhang Tian struck hard at the center of the oblate stone, and soon he chiseled out a thumb-sized depression.

He blew off the stone chips, casually picked up a little sand and gravel from the ground, sprinkled it into the depression, and then spun the stone knife repeatedly and quickly, the depression sank at a speed visible to the naked eye, and a small hole was drilled in a short time.

Owl let out an exclamation of oh.

He could drill holes in stone, too, but not so quickly.

Is it because of the addition of gravel?
After comparison, he found that Tian only did this one step more than him, and the efficiency was greatly improved, so he planned to try adding some sand and gravel to the next drilling.

Zhang Tian lifted the stone and looked at the owl through the small hole in the center of the stone.

Because it is single-sided drilling, the hole presents the appearance characteristics of one end being large and the other end being small, which is far less uniform than pipe drilling, and it has its own thread.

However, it is time-consuming and labor-intensive to drill holes. He just wanted to make a simple spinning wheel without such trouble.

Xiao also raised a drilled stone to confront Zhang Tianzhong.

The two stared at each other through the hole, and smiled at each other.

Xiao asked: "There are many stones with holes here, why do you want to make another one?"

"Because there is no such shape in here."

Spinning wheel Spinning wheel, first of all, it has to be a wheel before it can rotate, using its own weight and rotation to stretch and thin a pile of messy fibers and aggregate them into a twist.

Zhang Tian found a wooden stick of suitable thickness and inserted it into the hole to act as a spinning rod.

"what is this?"

"Spinning wheel."

"The spinning wheel..."

Xiao repeated it several times and memorized it silently, but he still didn't know what the spinning wheel was for.

The men have stripped back large quantities of bark, and together with the women tear the fibers of the inner layer of the bark into thin strips, which are then kneaded into strong threads.

Seven new fishing rods were made, but the commander of the bare rod cannot catch fish, at least seven matching fishing lines are required.

The crowd sat around the bonfire and rubbed the threads with their hands. The rough bark fibers were very sticky to the hands. The children soon got red palms and blisters from rubbing them. The hardworking women who often rubbed the threads were already full of calluses. .

At this moment, Zhang Tian walked over with the simple spinning wheel he had just made, and stopped everyone who was rubbing the thread with their hands.

He tied one end of the bark fiber to the spinning rod, held the other end in his hand, and twisted the spinning rod. The spinning wheel rotated rapidly, and the bark fiber was continuously drawn and twisted, forming a long, thin, tough thread. That's it.

Everyone was dumbfounded. They discovered that plant fibers can be kneaded into threads very early on, but they never thought that this process would be so easy and freehand!

A stone and a wooden stick can replace hands, even faster and better than rubbing hands...

When they found that the thread spun by the spinning wheel was thinner and stronger than the one they worked so hard to twist, the thread in their hands suddenly tasted bad, and they all looked at Zhang Tian at the same time.

Zhang Tian saw seven words from their earnest eyes: Coach, I want to learn this!

The use of the spinning wheel is not complicated, and he quickly taught everyone. However, only one spinning wheel is obviously not enough. He asked Xiao: "Have you learned how to do it?"

Xiao immediately understood, and happily said to the men: "I will teach you how to make a spinning wheel!"

One stone spinning wheel after another was manufactured, and the hand-rolled twine that people had been accustomed to for thousands of years was replaced overnight by more productive wheels.

Although the process of civilization has diversity and unity, and although the progress of society requires historical contingency and human subjective initiative, in the final analysis, none of them can escape the grasp of productive forces.

The rough bark fibers quickly turned into slender and tough threads. One end of the thread was tightly tied to the bamboo pole, and the other end was tied with a fishhook. Seven fishing poles were formed in an instant.

Grandma watched with a smile on the men playing with fishing rods and the women weaving hemp thread, and asked the children to fetch blackened charcoal, and recorded the changes and important events of the tribe on the cave wall.

In the previous murals, you can see stone spears, bone needles, bamboo baskets and other inventions that changed the way of life of the tribe, but now, after the traces left by the ancestors, grandma added two thin lines composed of a fishing rod and a spinning wheel consisting of an oblate circle and a vertical line.

Looking at the simple stick figures on the cave wall, Zhang Tian grinned.

It was late at night, and everyone fell asleep in exhaustion and satisfaction.

When he woke up the next day, the sun had already shone into the cave and fell on Zhang Tian's shoulders, but he couldn't feel any warmth.

It's getting colder today.

The seven men with fishing poles headed by Hutou also imitated Zhang Tian's appearance yesterday, erected bamboo poles, picked up bamboo cages, and were ready to go.

After last night, everyone no longer regarded Zhang Tian as an ordinary child, but as a "child prodigy" guided by the sky and ancestors.

It’s a little too much to call it a boy. Zhang Tian is already nine years old. Children in the tribe become adults when they reach ten years old. They can participate in hunting after they reach adulthood. At the age of 12, they can represent the tribe and reproduce with members of the opposite sex from other tribes.

Zhang Tian was born when the ice melted and the snow melted, that is to say, when the weather warmed up, he would be an adult.

He's half a man now.

A group of nine people went down to the river and came to the backwater bay where they fished yesterday.

Xiao Xiao ran all the way to pick up the fishing rod left here last night, while Zhang Tian stepped straight into the icy river to pick up the fishing cage that sank at the bottom of the river.

There are two bamboo cages, one of which contains a fish and three shrimps, and the other contains two fish and two shrimps, all of them are little ones.

The men were very amazed, and they thought that they would have harvested before they even started fishing?Feel more confident.

Xiao was puzzled and asked Zhang Tian, ​​"Why don't they swim out?"

"If you could understand, you'd be as stupid as these fish."

To put it bluntly, it means that IQ is not enough, you can enter from a big mouth, but you can't get out from a small mouth.

Zhang Tian was not very satisfied with the fish caught in the fishing cage. With two cages so big, he only caught three fish in one night. Sure enough, this kind of cage is more suitable for putting in that kind of clear shallow stream.

Catching the river prawns was an unexpected harvest. The two bamboo cages were woven more casually, and some of the gaps between the bamboo pieces could even pass through three fingers. The river prawns were able to escape if they worked hard.

It can only be said that after the weather turns cold, everyone lies flat, and it is better to destroy quickly than to struggle hard.

He put the fish and shrimp together in a bamboo cage, and then submerged in the water.

Xiao took seven novices to dig for bait. The soil on the shore was soft and moist, and it was nourished by many weeds and algae. It was quite fertile, and it was easy to dig out earthworms and other carrion insects.

Xiao skillfully put on the bait, swung the rod and took the hook.

Novices follow suit, put the bait on the hook, and then throw the pole.

"Ouch!"

"Who pulled me!"

"You loosen up!"

During this period, Zhang Tian used a spinning wheel to transform a pull-line drill, instead of hand rubbing, and he completed drilling wood to make fire in the blink of an eye. When he looked up, he saw that the fishing lines of the seven novices were all entangled together, and suddenly felt that there were groups of people in his mind. crows fly by.

Patiently help them separate the lines, and then separate their people.

The shoreline of this Huishui Bay is very long, and fishing spots are arranged every ten meters, and each fishes its own species.

(End of this chapter)