From Chief to Ball

Stone spears, five bone pikes, bows and arrows, clay pots, moss that has been baked and easily ignited, fiber ropes, fiber bags, food, and the hopes and blessings of the people were all loaded onto the boat.

The shadow of the birch bark boat got smaller and smaller, and was finally covered by vegetation...

Yu Qian'er rubbed her red and swollen eyes, and asked an answer she knew.

"When will brother come back?"

"When the moon is full."

The old grandmother took Yuqian'er's hand and led the tribe back to the cave, begging the ancestors to protect their children and grandchildren.

Chapter 14 The future of guano

The early agricultural civilizations of mankind lived along rivers, so there are rumors of great floods in ancient legends all over the world.

China has the wrath of Buzhou Mountain and Gun Yu's water control; the Semites have Noah's Ark; the Sumerians have the flood of the Gilgamesh epic...

But the raging waters also gave birth to agriculture, soft and fertile floodplains, irritable land.However, if seeds are sown on the soil after the flood every year in the delta area entering the sea, the fertile silt can grow gratifying crops without fertilizer.

There are advantages and disadvantages, the key is how to choose.People on the desert grasslands don't have to worry about floods, but they can't stand at the top of civilization either.

Going out of the cave and building a village is the first step for Chen Jian to lead his people to truly conquer nature. The result of this expedition determines every step in the future.

Standing in front of the poles, the narrow river gradually widened, and the people on the boat also learned to use poles and wood pulp.

The speed of going down the river was very fast, and Langpi felt that his eyes were not enough, and he never thought that he could look at both banks in the river.

This is completely different from walking in the forest. There are no annoying nettles and thorn roses to scratch the skin, and there is no need to worry about snakes that suddenly emerge from the grass. A sister of the wolf skin was bitten to death by a poisonous snake.

You don't need to paddle deliberately, and you will soon arrive at the place where you hunted the deer herd last time.

This is the fork at which the small river joins the great river, at which point the three birch-bark boats arrived when the sun was setting on the hillside.

The nearly 200-meter-wide river is covered with lush tall grass on both sides, and there are faint animals running in the setting sun.

There are sheep drinking water by the river, watching the boat floating in the water curiously, and fleeing in a hurry.

The water is deep, but the water surface is very stable, the slanting light of the setting sun is horizontal on the water surface, occasionally a fish leaps out to break the reflection, and occasionally one or two ospreys fly by.

The dusk was getting darker, and the moisture on the water was getting heavier.

"Jian, let's light a fire by the shore?"

Chen Jian shook his head, standing on the bow of the boat and looking far away, there seemed to be an island in the middle of the river in the distance.

Sailing at night is dangerous, and camping in unfamiliar places is not wise.

"go there!"

Pointing to the island in the middle of the river, the three boats followed the water to the beach. The fine sand was soft to step on. There were some snails washed up on the bank, and a few water birds were pecking at them.

Taking out a piece of charcoal, he drew the flow of the river on a piece of birch bark.The small river coming down from the cave was named Tao River to commemorate the first time I made pottery by the river.

The Tao River flows for about seventy or eighty miles, and it joins the big river, and the river center island is more than ten miles down.

The color of the big river is emerald green, but unfortunately, the tribe has never seen emerald jade, so they named it Caohe, implying that the color is like grass.The snails on the beach on the island became the name of the island, Luodao.

There is a tall stone mountain in the middle of Luodao Island, and there are not many trees, because there is a flood season every year, and the trees in the low places can't grow at all.

There are many birds on the stone mountain, and it is white at night, and no one has ever disturbed it, and there are no wild animals on the island.

Both wolves and tigers can swim, but generally they don't bother to travel so far for an amuse bouche.The civet cat, which is the most threatening, is afraid of water, so it has become a paradise for various birds.

Wolfpi held a bow and arrow and shouted: "Go and eat!"

Everyone laughed, Chen Jian asked Lang Pi and another cousin to shoot birds, picked up some dead branches washed down from the upstream on the beach, and tied the stick with a rope to make a fire together.

After a while, the wolf skin came back with several birds, singing happily.The birds here are stupid and not afraid of people, so they are easy to shoot.

Looking at these birds, Chen Jian was also very happy.

Not because of food, in his opinion, birds that cannot be domesticated are meaningless, but so many birds must have one thing - guano!

The women were burning the birds there, and Chen Jian asked the wolf skin to go to the mountain to have a look.

The island is not very wide, but it is extremely narrow and long. Luoshan is about 200 meters high by visual inspection. The top of the mountain is still bright with the setting sun, but the bottom of the mountain is already dark.

After approaching the side of the mountain, there was indeed a thick pile of bird droppings on the ground, which condensed with the soil and formed some hard lumps.

The digestive tract of birds is generally short, and the nutrients in the food are accumulated in the feces, accumulated over thousands of years, forming stones.

These are all good natural fertilizers. Looking at the thickness of the struvite, they are sufficient.

Knock off a piece with a stone and put it in a fiber cloth bag, but Wolfpi didn't understand what it was for.

Looking up at the steep Luoshan Mountain, it stretches down for two or three miles, and the Caohe River diverges from here and rejoins downstream.

Picking up a piece of gravel from the ground, and smashing it hard towards the steep rock wall, the huge echo startled countless hidden birds, chirping overwhelmingly.

"Let's go."

After confirming, Chen Jian returned to the river with satisfaction, put the stone in his pocket away, and nodded with satisfaction.

After dinner, Langpi stared straight at Chen Jian and asked, "Jian, what are you looking for? Is it just to find stones?"

Chen Jian closed his eyes and said slowly: "Find a kind of grass that can bear fruit. As long as this island is as big as this, it will be enough for the tribe to eat for a year."

Wolfpi shook his head in disbelief, why can't he think of any grass that can bear so many fruits?

The clansmen gathered around to inquire one after another, and they heard a fantastic future from Chen Jian.

You don’t need to live in a cave, but you will live by the river in the future, surrounded by the kind of plants that can fill the stomachs of the clansmen, groups of flightless and fat birds are squeaking around, every day A fixed place lays eggs...

Everyone stared at the fire, imagining this kind of life they had never imagined, their faces flushed with excitement, and everyone was a little drunk by these words.

"Is it really possible to live like that?"

This is the common question of nine people, looking forward to the coming of the next day.

At night, take turns to watch the night, move the bonfire away, and spread a layer of animal skins with the help of the hot sand, so it is not cold.

Pillowing his hands, looking at the unfamiliar stars in the sky, what kind of crops will this strange but almost familiar world bring to the tribe?

Early the next morning, Chen Jian led his people to the lower reaches of Hexin Island with a birch bark boat on their shoulders. Because the river was narrow and the current was fast, he didn't want any accidents.

Going down the river, by noon, the terrain by the river has become more and more flat, and the muddy ground after the flood is full of various grasses.

Wolfpi, who was paddling, suddenly pointed to a mountain in the distance and said, "I've been there before! That's where spring gathers with other tribes!"