back to prehistoric savage

When Zhang Tian led the craftsmen to build a house, Lin Yu led others to reclaim the land that would be cultivated next year. The tribesmen were all very skilled and set a good example for the Yanbao people, so Lin Yu didn't have to worry too much. .

Lin Yu burned six to seven hundred acres of wasteland based on the amount of seeds in his inventory, but he could not cultivate all of them. Firstly, the Yanbao people needed time to master new skills, and secondly, building houses took up part of the labor force.

Everyone has been busy until the season changes and the ground is frozen. The cultivated land is almost the same as last year. The rest can only be cultivated after the weather gets warmer.

This year's harvest has almost filled all the granaries, because the capacity of crops is basically between 600-800 kilograms per cubic meter. The total harvest can be roughly calculated based on the size of the cellar.

After excluding the soybean and hemp seeds, the harvest of millet and millet is about [-] to [-] kilograms. With the food supplement from breeding, hunting and gathering, it is not a problem to meet the needs of the tribe for a year, but it may be difficult to achieve anything. Remaining.

The crops harvested last year have been cleared away long ago, and there are still some grains that have sprouted and become moldy due to moisture.

Zhang Tian thought for a while and asked people to throw away the moldy ones and collect the sprouted ones. There were several large jars in total.

"Grind them with a stone grinding rod and a stone grinding disc. The more ground they are, the better."

Everyone didn't know why, but they still acted according to the instructions of the sky priest.

Who knows dishes on the menu, A Journey.Having farmed his own land, Zhang Tian knew that food was hard to come by, especially in an era when crop yields were so low.

Both sprouted and moldy grain seeds can actually be used to make wine.

The preparatory work for using grain to make wine is to convert the starch in the grain into sugar, and then yeast can be used to convert the sugar into ethanol.

There are two ways to do this process. One is the germination method, which is a traditional Western wine-making method. It is also a relatively simple method. You only need to soak the seeds in water to promote their germination. The amylase contained in the seeds will Automatically convert starch into various small molecule sugars.

In fact, the original ancestors of our country also used the germination method to make wine. However, during the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the germination method was gradually replaced by another brewing method: the distiller's yeast method.

The raw material used in the koji method is moldy seeds. Molds can also convert starch in grain into sugar. This method can be used to brew higher-alcohol wine, but the process is very complicated. Zhang Tian decisively retreated from the difficulty. .

Add the ground millet to purified hot water and stir it into a paste. At this time, the starch in the millet has been completely saccharified. After naturally cooling to room temperature, add the fruit wine containing yeast and seal it. After about a week of fermentation, you can get Low alcohol grain wine.

Of course, no matter how low the alcohol content of grain wine is, it is still an order of magnitude higher than that of fruit wine.

This group of primitive people who had never drank alcohol were a little tipsy after drinking a few glasses of fruit wine last year. This year's grain wine was definitely a hit.

The new drinks include more than just food and wine.

The camp was filled with a strong aroma of beans.

Nowadays, poultry has not been domesticated, and there is no stable supply of bird eggs to eat; the breeding of bamboo rats and pigs has just started. Now every time one more is eaten, two or three less are eaten, and meat can only be eaten occasionally.The usual sources of protein mainly rely on fishing, hunting and soybeans.

Soybeans are rich in high-quality vegetable proteins and vegetable oils. Today, due to insufficient domestication, the soybean seeds grown are still relatively small, not as round and plump as modern soybeans, and the seed coat is not yellow, but jet black. But the taste is authentic soybean flavor, and even if the nutrition is worse than modern soybeans, it shouldn't be too different.

Soybeans originated in my country and have been one of the important food crops since the day our ancestors first sown them.

Because of the high nutritional value of soybeans, they were first used as the main diet for poor people. The so-called "mostly what the people eat is bean rice and soup", that is, bean grains are used to make bean rice, and bean leaves are used to make vegetable soup. Soybeans can be used to make soup. Feed the whole family.Even Tao Yuanming had to "plant beans at the foot of the southern mountain, where the grass is abundant and the bean seedlings are sparse."

It was not until after the Han Dynasty that reforms in farming techniques and agricultural tools significantly increased grain yields, and soybeans gradually shifted from staple food to non-staple food, giving rise to various delicious soy products such as tofu, bean sprouts, soy milk, soybean skin, and soybean oil.

With the existing tools, it is too expensive to process soybeans into soy products. They are usually cooked and eaten directly. However, eating too much can easily cause bloating.During the soybean harvest a while ago, everyone ate and drank so much that the whole camp was making noises all night long. It was so cold that they didn't dare to close the door at night.

Now that the busiest time is over, after a busy year, there is nothing wrong with a little luxury.

Tofu cannot be made yet, because the process of making tofu requires the use of brine or gypsum to burn the tofu. Both of these raw materials are currently in short supply. We will wait until we find a salt mine or a gypsum mine in the future.

Lin Yu taught the women how to make soy milk and bean skin.

Soak the soybeans first, stir out the bean-coated impurities mixed in the beans, completely remove them together with the foam, and let them soak for three to four hours.

Grinding soy milk is more laborious because there are no donkeys or stone mills, so it can only be ground by hand. This is why soy products are not suitable for mass production.

Pour the soy milk and bean dregs into hot water and bring to a boil. As the bean smell gradually disappears and the rich bean aroma spreads, it means the soy milk is ready.

Filtering out the bean dregs with a cloth, Lin Yu asked the women to put the soy milk into about ten flat-bottomed earthenware pots, and heat it over water to maintain a constant temperature and cook the milk to form a skin.

After a while, a thin film of oil will appear on the surface of the soy milk. The condensed essence of this layer is bean skin, also called oily bean skin.

"You can pick your skin now!"

Lin Yu picked up a wooden spatula and demonstrated it to the women.

Picking skin is a technical job that requires accurate timing and enough patience. Lin Yu has practiced it many times in private and found the trick, otherwise he would not dare to start teaching classes.

She used a spatula to cut open the bean skin along the edge of the pot, then inserted the flexible bamboo stick into the soy milk, gently lifted up the oil film, and carefully placed it on another bamboo stick.This process must be done with full concentration and extra care, so as not to damage the skin and affect the appearance.

The women also followed the same example, using spatulas and bamboo sticks to pick up pieces of bean skin as thin as cicada wings and hang them on the bamboo sticks.

It is inevitable to break the skin when picking for the first time. During this time, the women's exclamations never stopped, but the exclamations soon turned into laughter. New knowledge and new things always bring new fun. Those who are born optimistic They are also very good at finding pleasure in hard work.

The tofu skin in the first few pots is golden, thin and shiny, rich in fat, the most flexible and delicious.As it cooks, the soy milk becomes thicker and thicker, and the peeled bean skin becomes thicker and thicker. Although it is slightly less oily, it has a solid texture and a richer bean flavor.

The bean skins are dried and stored, and the ancestors are invited to enjoy them during sacrifices. The remaining soy milk is distributed to the tribesmen, and is paired with the maple sugar stored in spring and summer to adjust the sweetness according to their own tastes.Impurities such as bean clothing and bean dregs are not wasted and are all fed to the pigs.

In the increasingly cold season, there is nothing more exciting than a bowl of thick and sweet hot soy milk!

The children are especially happy. Soy milk is much better than wine, and even more delicious than the goat milk of the grassland people!
It's a pity that we only drink it once a year. The children licked the ceramic cups containing the soy milk until they were as smooth as new, with expressions of contentment on their faces. “It would be great if I could drink soy milk every day from now on!”

When they looked up at the sky that night, the children made wishes one after another, hoping to achieve freedom from soy milk as soon as possible.

After the first snowfall, Zhang Tian convened a general meeting of his clan members as usual to review the gains of the past year and commend and award the best.

Although the people from Rock Castle were from a large tribe, they had never seen such a gathering before. They thought that the Sky Priest would be the best at it, and he made everyone's blood boil with excitement in just a few words.

Then came the annual sacrificial ceremony.

The altar was finally built this year. Having a formal sacrificial venue is not enough, the sacrificial ceremony must also be standardized.

On the day before the sacrifice, while the river had not yet frozen, Zhang Tian ordered everyone to fast and bathe. Some sloppy kings who never bathed were now dragged and forced to bathe.

The bathhouse has never been so busy since it was built.

Zhang Tian did not expect the tribesmen to be smooth and smooth. At least he had to wash away the stains visible to the naked eye, especially the Rock Castle people. The hair of these guys was all cake-shaped and twisted into a ball like steel wire. It was simply terrifying.Zhang Tian wondered if they had never taken a bath since they were born.

The water had to be changed every time a batch of people were washed. The water was so dirty that they didn't dare to drain it into the ditch. They might have thought they had opened a chemical factory.

There are still people who find it troublesome to take a bath and try their best to fool them.

It can only be said that people cannot be generalized. It is said that the ancient Romans loved taking baths. They even built a luxurious mixed-sex bathhouse for this purpose. They captured a group of slaves to burn firewood underground 24 hours a day, while the nobles used bathhouses as big as swimming pools. Enjoy the steaming water vapor.

In addition to fasting and bathing, it is natural to prepare sacrifices.

The boars of the group of wild boars caught last year were slaughtered at the beginning of spring, and the remaining two sows had already given birth, giving birth to a total of twelve piglets. Now the piglets have grown fat, and the eight piglets caught last year have already given birth. The young pigs grew fatter and stronger and completed their first breeding.

Raising pigs for a thousand days and using pigs for a while, the tribesmen raised the two female wild boars for a year in order to slaughter them today to offer sacrifices to heaven, earth and ancestors.

Zhang Tian and Lin Yu did not instill the concept of three animals into their tribesmen. They simply believed that scarcity was the most valuable thing. Compared with the bamboo rat breeding that had begun to take shape and the seemingly inexhaustible fish harvest, pork was obviously rarer. More, much more precious.

It is the consensus of everyone, including the people of Yanbao, to dedicate the best things to heaven, earth and ancestors. Moreover, the food you offer will eventually fall into your own belly. Thinking of this, people have nothing to hesitate.

This is the first time for the Yanbao people to participate in the ceremony of worshiping the heaven. It is completely different from the sacrificial activities of the Yanbao tribe. Everyone must participate: the men play drums, the women dance, and the children play the flute... To them, these are all important It's a brand new thing, and it's something they never dared to think about. In the past, they used up all their energy just to fill their stomachs, so how could they dare to have fun?
They joined the rehearsal team of men, women and children, devoted all their enthusiasm to learning, sometimes shouted slogans, and sometimes laughed. Although they were sweating like rain like rain when they worked hard, they felt happier than ever before.

After sharing the joys and sorrows, the Yanbao people finally integrated into this group, and the relationship between the two groups became closer and closer.

On the day of the sacrifice, everyone put on beautiful new clothes and went to the Temple of Heaven outside the camp in a good mood as if on an outing. Various sacrifices were placed at the dedicated place for sacrifices under the Temple of Heaven.

The women cooked sumptuous food, adding some torn bean skins to the delicious fish soup to elevate the flavor to a new level. The rich aroma of grain wine lingered on the mountain tops for a long time.

Everyone saluted and knelt before the Temple of Heaven, sincerely thanking heaven and earth for their gifts and their ancestors for their protection.

After seeing off his ancestors, Zhang Tian collected the grain and wine and distributed the fruit wine to everyone. It was not because he was stingy, but because he was worried that the clan members would be too drunk and would lie down in front of the Temple of Heaven while drunk, which would be unseemly.

After returning to the camp, Zhang Tiancai distributed the food and wine under the repeated urging of everyone.

"Half a glass for each person, don't be greedy. This wine is much stronger than fruit wine. It's not pleasant to be drunk."

"drunk?"

Everyone has never experienced being drunk and they don’t understand what it means to be drunk.

"When you start to speak slurred words and start to stagger when you walk, that means you are drunk."

And such a thing?
Everyone was surprised, but their curiosity was aroused, and they couldn't help but ask: "How much can you drink to get drunk?"

"It varies from person to person." Zhang Tian said, "Everyone's drinking capacity is different. Some people don't get drunk after a thousand cups, and some people get drunk after just one sip. It's your first time to drink corn wine, so half a cup is probably enough. about there."

"Impossible!" the men shouted, "Priest, don't underestimate us!"

After saying that, they raised their necks and took a deep breath. They had already learned to cheer as soon as they started drinking.

No one who showed off his talent that night could get up the next morning. Several men even slept in the toilet and were laughed at by everyone all winter long.

Because of the participation of Rock Castle people, the second sports conference was even more grand.

This year's level is obviously much higher than last year. It can be seen that the athletes who failed in the first sports meeting have worked hard and carried out targeted training.

This is one of the few opportunities to show one's face in front of everyone. Winning the championship not only brings prizes, but also enhances prestige. Women also use actions to show that they prefer the winner, so men attach great importance to it.

On the field, the competitive atmosphere became more and more intense.

The Yanbao people who participated in the competition for the first time were unprepared and were hung up and beaten in all directions. Zhang Tian saw the shame and bloodiness on their faces. It is conceivable that today next year, the Yanbao people will also be rolled up. .

Of course, national events such as tug-of-war, relay races, rope skipping, etc. still focus on fun, and that's all.

The happy time came to an end with the freezing of the earth and the advent of severe cold. The tribesmen reduced their outdoor activities and began to live in a humble dwelling in winter.

It was also at this time that the school enrolled its first batch of students. (End of chapter)