back to prehistoric savage

Fragrant corn porridge, roasted bamboo rat with crispy skin and tender meat, delicious fish soup... To the tribesmen, they are just daily meals, but in the eyes of the Yanbao people, they are rare delicacies that they have only seen in their lives.

After traveling for several days, the Yanbao people were already hungry. While waiting for the meal, their stomachs complained loudly no less than a hundred times. The saliva they swallowed was enough to raise fish, so how could they be polite when they were served?He devoured it with such ferocity that even the wolves called him an expert.

A small number of people originally complained about eating people's short mouths, but now they were all blocked by the delicious food.

Thinking of being able to eat such delicious and rich food every day in the future, the people of Yanbao are even more convinced that they have made a very wise decision!

After the meal, everyone gathered together and made a blood alliance.

Zhang Tian, ​​the chiefs of each tribe and Lei cut their fingers together, dropped the blood into the bowl, drank it in turn, and then led their respective tribesmen to swear an oath to the sky: From now on, we will be connected by blood, treat each other honestly, and make no distinction between each other. , If you violate this oath, you will be struck by thunder... and so on.

With the experience of the last alliance of six tribes, the formalism this time is even more perfect.

There are a total of 132 Rock Castle people, most of them are young adults and older children, there are about a dozen young children, and there are no elderly people.

This is normal. In the process of escaping and wandering, the old man is naturally the first to be eliminated.

In Zhang Tian's view, these more than 100 people are all laborers. They have no burdens and should not be too perfect!

Fresh blood is injected into each tribe, and personnel distribution is done instantly, but it takes time to truly coalesce into a collective.

The total population of the clan came to 574.

The injection of fresh blood also brought a strong sense of freshness to the men and women of the right age. That night, a group of men and women gathered together to salute the new members.

Zhang Tianze found Lin Yu and shared the information obtained from Lei with her.

The Rock Castle people have come into contact with a lot of local indigenous people in the past two years. Most of the time they were driven away because they broke into other people's territory, so they didn't know them well.

According to Lei’s explanation, Zhang Tian concluded the following precise and important points:

First, the local indigenous people did not develop agriculture;

Second, the weapons are mainly spears, stone axes, and wooden clubs, and the anti-personnel weapon bow and arrow has not been developed;
Third, the distribution is concentrated in the wetland-forest belt east of the river, and there are clear territorial divisions between tribes;

Four, there is salt!

Lei didn't know how to count, so he didn't know how many tribes he had encountered during this period. There were five of them that he mentioned.The small tribe had about the same number of people as them, and the large tribe had more people than them. He couldn't tell how much more, but Zhang Tian guessed that it was at least twice as many.

Ting Lei means that although these tribes have contact with each other and speak the same language, they should not have formed an alliance like the prairie people and the riverside people. It is more like the relationship between the nine tribes in the Northeast. They usually work on their own, and may regularly exchange materials and supplies. Gene.

Lin Yu said: "These tribes most likely belong to the same cultural circle. It is possible that they influenced each other and developed together, or it is possible that one large tribe acted as the 'cultural center' and the surrounding tribes were affected by it."

Culture in archeology refers to a group of sites with common cultural characteristics distributed within a certain area at the same time. After the cultural social form develops to a higher stage, it gradually evolves into civilization.

In the last century, the archaeological community often used several dogmatic criteria such as cities, writing, and bronzes to judge whether a society had entered the civilization stage. However, a large number of domestic and foreign archaeological results in the past 30 to [-] years have shown that such judgment criteria are too simple and crude.

Lin Yu once told Zhang Tian that our country recently summarized the four major characteristics of Chinese civilization in 18: the development foundation of agriculture and handicrafts; the emergence of obvious differentiation of social classes and social members; the emergence of central cities; and the construction of large buildings.

This is also the goal of the two of them. If they don't want to do it in the future, they will first bring the tribe to the stage of civilization.

This is not an easy task. They are not even considered a culture now. Isolated ruins are not a culture. They must at least develop and grow to a certain extent and have a certain influence on the surrounding tribes.

This range can be large or small. Taking the Yangshao culture as an example, its influence has expanded to the four provinces of Henan, Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Gansu, covering almost the entire middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, and has had a profound impact on the development process of Chinese civilization.

They have settled here for a year and a half, and have not yet found any trace of the local indigenous people. They were a little puzzled at first, but now it can be explained.

Culture has an agglomeration effect. For example, everyone in the village wants to go to the city, and everyone in the city wants to go to Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. As long as there are enough resources, people will always go to higher places and gather in places where life is better. The more people there are, the more likely they are to resist risks. The ability is naturally higher.

There may also be primitive ancestors settling west of the river, but they should be small in scale and scattered in the mountains and jungles, isolated and independent.If these small isolated groups do not come out of their caves and communicate with the outside world, they are destined to perish.

Zhang Tian was more interested in the local aborigines than in finding the whereabouts of the Rock Castle people. The salt they controlled was exactly the resource he needed, but he was in no rush to contact them.

Peaches and plums, the next from Seikei.Build first, develop first. As the clan becomes stronger and life becomes more nourishing, countless heroes will naturally come to their knees.

……

The Sky Priest said that not only could they barter, but they could also work in exchange for supplies.

So early the next morning, the Yanbao people took the sowing sticks they had made last night and followed the "seniors" to learn sowing.

Now it is too late to open new fields. The existing cultivated land, combined with the income from fishing, hunting and gathering, is more than enough to support more than 500 people.

Sowing seeds is not difficult, and the people of Rock Castle learn quickly.With more than 100 new troops, efficiency has been greatly improved.

After sowing, the women learned retting and weaving from their predecessors, while some of the men went fishing and hunting, while others were summoned by the sky priests.

"Are you going to build a house?"

Everyone had already speculated and were excited.After the weather warms up, it doesn't matter if they sleep inside or outside the house, but they still want to own their own house as soon as possible. Not having a house always makes people feel at ease.

Zhang Tian glanced at the excited faces of the men, not only the former Rock Castle people, but also the people of his own tribe who were good at construction.

He heard people's discussion and said loudly: "Before building a house, let's build a pottery kiln first!"

At present, there is nothing wrong with their use of pottery kilns. It is just that the kiln is too small. It is okay to burn some pottery. But if they are burning bricks, the efficiency is too low. One kiln can produce dozens of bricks. I am afraid it will take forever to burn them. Save enough to build a house.

Of course, the number of kilns can be used to force the increase, but building a ten-cubic-meter pottery kiln consumes far less building materials than building ten one-cubic-meter pottery kilns, and the firewood consumed in subsequent firings is also much less. There are few.

Therefore, it is necessary to build a large pottery kiln, although the technical difficulty is much higher.

The kilns of later generations could be built to a height of more than ten meters and a diameter of three to four meters, but this is definitely not possible now.

Zhang Tian’s blueprint refers to the famous Dragon Kiln in history. This is a semi-continuous ceramic firing kiln that needs to be built according to a certain slope. It is named after it is recumbent like a dragon.The earliest dragon kiln appeared in the Warring States Period, and the length of the pottery kiln could reach 100 meters.

He does not intend to build such a huge building that can be called a spectacle, and the current productivity does not allow him to build such a large-scale construction.

His idea was to build a new pottery kiln as large as possible using existing materials.There are a total of twelve small brick kilns in the clan, with a kiln capacity of about twelve cubic meters.

Zhang Tian ordered the men to dismantle them all, and then transport the removed bricks to the slope outside the camp.

He had already chosen this place as the site for the dragon kiln when he was surveying the environment in this area. The slope was very gentle and would not exceed 15 degrees by visual inspection. The slope was flat and over 20 meters long.

Everyone spent a day clearing the weeds on the slope, and the next day they started laying bricks along the slope, using yellow mud as an adhesive.

Hang up the yardsticks, space them about one meter apart, and build one wall on each side until they are as high as eyebrows, in the same way as building a brick kiln.

Rock Castle people may be a little clumsy when they first get started, but they will gradually become more proficient.

Jing, Black Snake, Qingque and others began to learn to control the field, and their apprentices were responsible for mixing mud and delivering bricks in an orderly manner.

The wall climbed up bit by bit, leaving a pair of fire holes every meter on both sides for throwing firewood. When it was nearly ten meters long, Zhang Tian called to stop and the remaining bricks were used to cap the roof.

Building walls is easy, but capping them is more difficult.

In the past, because the brick kiln was small, it was enough to cover it with a large stone and wood. Now that the kiln room has been expanded, the only option is to use bricks and yellow mud to build an arched furnace roof.

The arching technology first appeared in the Mesopotamia and Mesopotamia, and is as old as my country's mortise and tenon technology. The principle is to use the gravity of block materials to squeeze each other to form a span-span masonry.

The masonry built by this method on the wall to make door and window openings is called a coupon; the structures such as roofs, bridges, etc. made of multiple coupons juxtaposed or connected vertically are called arches.

Generally speaking, the larger the span and smaller the arc, the higher the technical content of the arch structure. A bow-shaped stone arch bridge spanning nearly 40 meters like the Zhaozhou Bridge can survive for 1400 years, which is unique in the world. .

In comparison, building a one-meter-wide vault for a dragon kiln is child's play.

Seeing the Sky Priest starting to build the stove top, the men gathered around the school, especially those who were interested in construction. They were very discerning and learned new techniques while carrying mud and bricks.

Zhang Tian used bamboo strips to build a support structure, then stood on the wall that had been built, placed the first brick at a slight angle along the curvature of the bamboo strips, and then placed the second brick close to the bottom of the first brick. , fill the gaps with gravel and yellow mud to make them in close contact, then the third brick, the fourth brick...

Brick No. 12 happened to fall on the wall on the other side - of course it was calculated in advance, but no one knew about it. They only knew that the sky priest knew everything very well, and they couldn't help but marvel.

After building the five coupons, it’s time to test whether the quality of the vault is up to standard.

"Does anyone dare to remove the bamboo under the bricks?"

Everyone was surprised.

Jing couldn't help but ask: "If the supporting bamboo is removed, won't the stove top collapse?"

Zhang Tian smiled and said: "If it collapses, it means it's not up to standard and it's time to redo it. Think about it, if we want to bake pottery here, then the entire kiln room will be filled with flames. How can the bamboo not catch it? So we want to rely on bamboo for support. It’s impossible.”

Everyone was stunned, and then new doubts arose: But without support, how could these suspended bricks not fall?
"Then I'll tear down the bamboo."

After Jing finished speaking, he quickly removed the bamboo strips of the first coupon, and then quickly jumped aside, fearing that he would be accidentally injured by the falling bricks.

Everyone held their breath, ready for the top of the stove to collapse.

However, the expected scene did not happen.

After removing the supports, the bricks did not move at all!Hanging steadily in the air in a state that defies common sense!

Everyone couldn't believe their eyes!

Jing immediately jumped back and had this first experience. Even though he found it incredible, his heart fell back into his stomach and he tore away all the bamboo strips in three strokes.

Very stable.

Zhang Tian even placed heavy objects on the top of the stove and did a load-bearing test, and there was no problem.

"Who wants to try?"

"I me me!"

Everyone was scrambling and extremely enthusiastic.Learn this miraculous technique and earn it!
So Zhang Tian taught while building the kiln, slowly building it to the end of the kiln, building a short chimney, leaving the kiln door, and sealing the rest. Finally, he smeared the outer surface with yellow mud, scraped it flat, and smoked it to dry it. The original dragon kiln was built.

It took half a month in total. I was definitely tired, but it was not the same as the tiredness of running around for food in the past. Although I was tired, I was very fulfilled. This was the first time for the people of Rock Castle to experience it.

Every evening, when the tribesmen who had worked hard all day gathered together, ate delicious food and chatted, or gathered around the campfire, playing bamboo flutes and drums, their fatigue dissipated with the sound of flutes and drums.

The day of completion is also the day of opening.

The women had already used molds to make a large number of bricks, which were all dried in the sun.

Everyone installed the kiln according to the instructions of the sky priest.

Today's kilns can bake thousands of bricks at a time, and effectively utilize the heat of flue gas and fired products, significantly reducing heat loss. The heat consumption per unit product is much lower than that of small brick kilns.To put it simply, it is quite energy efficient.

Enter the fire from the kiln head and preheat it with a small fire to gradually increase the temperature of the kiln chamber to avoid uneven temperatures everywhere.

The preheating time varies depending on the volume of the kiln. A kiln of several hundred cubic meters will need to be preheated for several days, and if it is firing porcelain, it will take even longer.

The dragon kiln they built is quite compact, and it only needs half a day to warm up the bricks.

Then switch to a fierce fire attack, put in firewood from the fire holes on both sides, from bottom to top, and seal the fire holes with yellow mud from bottom to top. Finally, seal the fire inlet of the kiln head and bake for four to five hours.

At this time, the temperature in the kiln can reach up to 1300 degrees, which can control the reduction flame and fire porcelain.However, Zhang Tian had no such plan. Now that food and clothing were still a problem, there was no point in firing porcelain and it was just a waste of firepower.

After the firing is completed, the firepower is slowly reduced and the kiln temperature is allowed to cool naturally. This process takes at least a day.

On the day the kiln was opened, everyone gathered beside the dragon kiln, waiting to witness history. (End of chapter)