I am a Primitive Man

Chapter 42: Every step forward is difficult

The salt production is mainly done by Han Cheng, along with the children and the elderly, and women in the tribe.

The strongest members of the tribe, such as the Eldest Senior Brother, do not participate much because hunting alone to provide enough food for the tribe already consumes almost all of their energy.

They can take advantage of some rare free time to transport rock salt from the salt mountain to the riverbank.

This makes Han Cheng quite helpless. The issue of food is always a looming threat. If the problem of food could be completely solved, the productivity within the tribe could be greatly liberated, allowing more energy to be devoted to other tasks.

However, achieving this is easier said than done. In Han Cheng's previous life, with its long history, his powerful homeland only recently managed to eliminate hunger for the people.

Fortunately, the consumption of salt is not too large. With proficiency in salt-making, Han Cheng and his tribe can produce about ten pounds of salt per day, which is enough for the tribe to use for about a month.

With the salt reserves in the tribe exceeding a hundred pounds in five jars, Han Cheng no longer needs to be as tight as before. Instead, he reduces the salt production by nearly half every day.

During the salt-making process, they also fired two kilns of pottery, mainly casting items such as pottery basins and pots needed for salt-making.

With enough pottery in the tribe, under Han Cheng's advocacy, a decision was made to reform the pottery-making technology.

The focus of the reform is not the technique of making pottery but the kiln used to fire the pottery.

The advantage of using a simple clay kiln is that it is easy to build and master. The downside is that it is too troublesome. After each firing of pottery, it needs to be resealed with clay.

It's more convenient to use a kiln built with bricks. Of course, a kiln built with bricks is initially cumbersome, especially in kiln construction. Han Cheng only knows a general idea about it.

Apart from overcoming difficulties such as digging underground, making bricks, designing shapes, mastering firing temperature, and others, it requires a step-by-step exploration and summarization of experience.

However, it doesn't matter. The development of any technology has gone through such steps.

If one is afraid of this trouble and another is afraid of that trouble, the world will come to a standstill.

In the future, the Green Sparrow Tribe can only use simple clay kilns, and pottery technology will stop here.

Don't stop eating just because you choked before.

They can't make bricks now, not just because they don't have a kiln for firing bricks but also because they don't have enough fuel.

Firing bricks requires a continuous and long period, and relying solely on firewood to burn bricks to make them well-burned and solid, at least four to five days are needed with a brick kiln.

If fewer bricks are needed, large amounts of water must be poured from the top of the kiln, and the water-sealing process takes about two days.

Four or five days of uninterrupted burning, not to mention the manpower and material resources, just the firewood burned, for the low productivity of the Green Sparrow Tribe, is a huge burden.

It is not cost-effective to burn bricks at this stage.

Of course, pottery and brick-making are different. Because the kilns for firing pottery are relatively small, the required temperature is far lower than that of firing bricks, and pottery is relatively thin, so it consumes much less fuel.

It's not a problem for Han Cheng not to make bricks. Even without bricks, he can still build a kiln.

This is not because he has any superpowers but because he can use a substitute for bricks simple clay bricks.

Simple clay bricks are relatively easy to make. It's just a mixture of clay. After mixing the clay well, put it into a clay mold to form a rectangular prism. Let it air-dry to remove moisture.

The bricks in later generations were generally 5 cm thick, 10 cm wide, and 20 cm long, but these specifications did not meet Han Cheng's requirements.

So, he multiplied the simple clay bricks' length, width, and height by two.

As for the pit excavation needed to build the kiln, they could only slowly dig it with simple tools.

Fortunately, there is no rush for building the kiln to fire pottery. They have enough time to do this task because pottery is not a one-time consumable, and they have simple clay kilns.

However, although Han Cheng is not in a hurry, Heiwa is very anxious. After all, he is currently the number one potter in the Green Sparrow Tribe.

Of course, Divine Child needs to be excluded because he has many ingenious ideas but lacks practical skills.

Heiwa's confidence comes from his achievements in pottery, which has increased his fondness for pottery. He couldn't sit still when he heard Han Cheng talk about better pottery-making methods.

Digging pits and making clay molds are what he is most passionate about.

According to the rules of the tribe, Heiwa is now an adult. If it were in the past, he would need to join the Senior brothers in daily hunting.

However, things are different now. The appearance of salt and pottery has made the Senior Brothers realize the importance of these things to the tribe.

As Heiwa is good at pottery, he is not sent to hunt but instead focuses on making pottery and boiling salt.

While doing these things, Han Cheng did not neglect the rapeseed. More than ten days ago, he led people to temporarily stop making salt and transported the mature rapeseed back.

During this process, Han Cheng specifically instructed them not to touch the rapeseed pods too much.

Han Cheng did not wait for the rapeseed to dry completely before harvesting, as it would be difficult to recover them. Instead, he brought them back when there was dew. Even if the rapeseed pods were touched, not much would be lost.

The harvested rapeseed is placed on a small piece of cleared ground near the tribe's entrance for drying.

This area was opened a few days ago under Han Cheng's guidance.

In addition to removing the weeds and small trees, Han Cheng instructed people to use flat stones to compact the approximately 11-12 square meters of ground by hitting it twice, making the soil solid and embedding small stone particles into the soil.

This way, when it's time to beat the rapeseed, the soil won't float, and there won't be more small stone particles than rapeseed.

Don't be fooled by the small size of this area. To clear it up, Han Cheng and the others have spent a lot of effort.

Because of the lack of tools, clearing away the weeds and some small trees and shrubs took a lot of effort.

It was still challenging despite there were no large trees. If there were large trees, they would have been left helpless.

To fall a large tree, relying solely on stone and bone axes, even with everyone working together, it would take a whole day and night to struggle against it.