Chapter 70: Bone shovel and pottery board

Chapter 70: Bone shovel and pottery board

The vast wilderness was covered with heavy snow, seemingly sealing everything off. The entire world appeared incredibly quiet.

After a year of busyness, people could finally take advantage of this rare opportunity to rest. However, compared to previous years when they would sleep extensively, the people of the Green Sparrow tribe seemed a bit busy this year.

Due to the daily consumption of salt and ample food supply, the people of the Green Sparrow tribe no longer faced the same struggles as in the past, when they would barely have enough to eat and would lose energy with the passing of winter, leading to excessive sleep.

Now, after the initial seven to eight days, their sleep duration gradually decreased. As the Divine Child, Han Cheng found them new tasks during their waking hours.

In addition to making gloves, socks, and hats, there was also the task of making tools for digging soil. A simple flattened wooden stick was not convenient for digging soil because it lacked sharpness, wore out quickly, and the part used for digging could easily break due to excessive thinning. Moreover, the wooden stick was not wide enough, limiting the amount of soil dug up each time.

The Green Sparrow tribe needs soil for making pottery, building walls, and planting rapeseed, making it necessary to improve digging tools.

Han Cheng didn't have any better solutions, so he had to rely on the wisdom of ancient people and make bone shovels.

With many bones collected from years of hunting, Han Cheng selected hard and large pieces from these bones. He chose suitable places, ground the edges thin on stones to make them as sharp as possible, and then combined them with the wooden sticks previously used for digging. By binding them together, a bone shovel was created.

Describing the process might sound simple when spoken, but it was quite challenging in practice due to various factors.

Besides overcoming other difficulties, connecting the bones with the wooden sticks proved to be headache-inducing.

Without nails and unlike modern shovels, where you could simply thread the wooden handle through a hole in the shovel head, connecting the bone to the wooden stick was not an easy task.

Threshing fields involve using a stone roller to press wheat straw after harvest, clearing away the straw, gathering the remaining wheat, and using a wooden shovel to toss the mixed wheat and chaff into the air. The wind blows away the chaff, leaving clean wheat and some unseparated wheat spikes on the ground.

Of course, this method is also suitable for soybeans, rapeseed, and the like.

When they were younger, they used this method to process wheat. As they grew older, they introduced threshing machines driven by electricity or machinery and, later, combined harvesters.

With a lack of metal tools, making bone shovels was not easy, and drilling holes in bones using sharp stones was particularly challenging, requiring significant effort.

This is why Han Cheng did not suggest making bone shovels earlier and only started the process after the winter snowfall when people had more free time.

While it's true that sharpening the axe does not delay the cutting of firewood, it will undoubtedly delay the cutting if it takes too much time.

Especially when Han Cheng wanted to finish building the wall before the heavy snow fell.

As always, Shaman was eager to learn and valued knowledge. When people in the tribe were engaged in these activities, he watched from the sidelines, and after understanding, he recorded in the inner cave, as he had done in the past.

Now, the space inside the cave has become much smaller because Shaman has recorded too much.

He treasures these things and does not allow them to be placed outside the inner cave.

This situation led Han Cheng to improve the writing material for Shaman, replacing the heavy stone tablets with fired clay tablets. Otherwise, there would probably be very little space left in the inner cave.

Initially, Shaman was somewhat reluctant to record these valuable pieces of knowledge on clay tablets. However, after using them twice, he found them so convenient that he immediately abandoned the habit of recording knowledge on stone tablets passed down from the previous shaman.