Chapter 1: Matriarchal Tribes
Chen Jian's transmigration was different from the stories. He had indeed traveled to ancient times, but his body was clad only in a scrap of animal hide, with a stone axe lying nearby.
His downy thighs were exposed beneath a loincloth of what looked like handmade leopard skin.
He spat, then rubbed the grime from his legs. The pale, yellow-toned skin underneath brought him a measure of relief.
*At least I'm still yellow-skinned.*
A voice in his mind kept repeating a message:
"Survive. Lead a civilization and its people to endure. Upon your death, a final judgment will be made, and points will be awarded based on your impact on social change and your contribution to the continuation of your race."
"The points only affect your father's status in your next life—nothing more."
"Geography and the distribution of flora and fauna have been altered. Every continent must be explored."
"Insufficient points will result in obliteration. Attempted suicide will result in obliteration. Interruption of cultural heritage will result in obliteration. Demise of the ethnic group will result in obliteration. Being ruled by a foreign race will result in obliteration."
After echoing several times, the voice in his head gradually faded and then disappeared.
He tried rolling his tongue and making a sound in his throat. He could speak. That was a relief.
At least compared to the hominins who went extinct because they couldn't form complex sounds, his own tribe was fortunate.
Language was a cornerstone for the continuation of civilization. Beyond that, he had his hands and feet. As long as he avoided reckless acts like fighting beasts with his bare hands or hunting tigers alone, he could probably survive.
He recalled what he knew about this tribe. There were just over seventy people in total, with women making up more than half the population.
There were fewer men because they were responsible for hunting and thus had a much higher chance of injury. In an era before even witch doctors had appeared, an injury was basically a death sentence.
The oldest woman in the tribe, a grandmother of about forty, was also the tribe's leader.
Chen Jian estimated his own body's age to be around fourteen, which was already considered mature for a primitive human.
But… he had no idea who his father was.
Marriage within the tribe was strictly prohibited. Instead, every few years, the women would meet with men from other tribes in the wilderness. They would then return to their own tribe, and any children born from these encounters belonged to the mother's clan.
So, who was his father?
That was a philosophical question that could only be answered once the tribe developed primitive agriculture and the concept of family.
For a tribe, reproduction was the ultimate guarantee of survival.
There might have been primitive groups that practiced in-group marriage, but Chen Jian suspected those groups had long since gone extinct.
This was the cruelty of natural selection. It wasn't that people were born knowing the dangers of inbreeding; rather, the tribes that didn't know had long since turned to dust.
After confirming his identity, Chen Jian ran his tongue over his teeth. Fortunately, they were strong and free of cavities.
In this era, tooth decay could easily be a death sentence, limiting one's lifespan to under thirty.
Perhaps it was simply that the thin and unhealthy had already died off, leaving only the strong.
The tribe knew how to use simple stone tools and fire. They had a primitive language, filled with trills and uvular sounds, which allowed for communication, though the vocabulary was not rich—one couldn't expect primitive people to have words for 'airplane' or 'computer'.
Writing had not yet appeared; people used knotted ropes to keep records. They didn't know how to use fishing nets, how to breed and domesticate livestock, or even how to practice slash-and-burn farming.
They had simple stone tools, and weapons were communally owned. The people of the tribe had to help one another selflessly, as it was the only way for the group to survive in this harsh environment.
The old grandmother held the authority to distribute food, while all other major issues were discussed collectively by the men and women of the tribe.
As it happened, this old grandmother was Chen Jian's own maternal grandmother.
The men in the tribe were either his cousins, his uncles, or more distant male relatives on his mother's side.
There were also many aunts and female cousins. His mother was one of the grandmother's daughters, and he had several half-brothers.
This was the environment Chen Jian now found himself in: a small tribe united by matrilineal blood ties.
There were several other small tribes within a hundred-mile radius, and his body's paternal lineage likely came from one of them.
Now that he understood his situation, and since there was no way to change it, he could only try to live with it.
The smell of roasting meat wafted from the fire not far away. Earlier that day, he had gone hunting with the men of the tribe for the first time. They had brought back a deer, four fish, and half a wild goat they had snatched from a leopard.
His female cousins and aunts had collected a large amount of wild vegetables, tubers, elm samaras, and more than thirty bird eggs.
As one of the tribe's able-bodied young men, Chen Jian received a piece of meat and a handful of elm samaras. The bird eggs were given to children or the few elders with dental problems.
Everyone devoured their dinner. The unsalted mutton, with the strong, gamy smell of wild goat, was difficult for a modern man like Chen Jian to stomach.
But with his stomach growling, he had no choice but to close his eyes and endure his first meal in this primitive world.
The rest of his relatives ate with great relish, even using stones to crack open the leg bones and suck out the marrow.
His mother was nursing his youngest half-sister, while another ten-year-old sister played beside her. Chen Jian remembered this younger sister's name was Yu Qian'er. The concept of money didn't exist in this era; her name came from the *yuqian*, the coin-shaped seeds of the elm tree that they gathered for food.
People were named after things, and surnames had not yet appeared. By coincidence, his own name was also Jian—a single syllable with many meanings, in this case likely referring to a healthy, strong beast.
Amidst the sounds of chewing, a voice spoke up.
"Save the bones for needles."
The old grandmother said this in her strange, guttural tone. It was the first sentence Chen Jian had heard her speak. He could understand it, but the language was vastly different from that of later generations.
The tribesmen cracking bones carefully gathered the slender fragments and placed them on a pile of leaves—the tribe's communal property.
After dinner, people gathered around the fire for warmth. A few young people were using stones to polish small trinkets for personal adornment. These were the earliest forms of private property and spiritual expression.
Chen Jian and a cousin named Langpi (Wolf Skin) were assigned to the night watch, tasked with ensuring the bonfire at the cave entrance didn't go out, as it scared away large carnivores.
Looking down at the leopard-print loincloth on his body, Chen Jian felt that surviving in this world was going to be incredibly difficult.
Reality was cruel.
Glancing at the stone spears and stone knives inside the cave, Chen Jian realized his tribe had not yet invented the bow and arrow.
Any proposal that hadn't been tried before would be rejected by the tribe—they would never risk a day of starvation to test some unproven idea from a boy.
Besides, he was too young. No one would listen to him.
*It seems I can only rely on myself...*
With this thought, he walked over to his mother's side and knelt down to touch the half-sister in her arms. The baby girl looked up at him with wide, dark eyes.
"Mother, sharpen a beast tooth for me…"
Chen Jian gestured with his hands, using his limited vocabulary to convey what he wanted. He didn't know the word for "arrow."
His mother nodded and exchanged a few words with the old grandmother. She assumed her son wanted a pendant.
She found a carnivore's canine tooth in the bone pile. After listening to her son's explanation, she understood that he wanted it sharpened to a point.
Chen Jian took a stone knife from the tool pile, told everyone he was stepping out, and left the cave.
It was not yet completely dark. Outside, the pristine air was intoxicating, free from any pollution. He wondered how many of today's urban hipsters would actually be willing to live here.
The cave was located high on a mountainside, a strategic position with a commanding view of the distant mountains and forests. The sunset stained the sky a brilliant red, like blood and fire.
Occasionally, the roar of a wild animal echoed through the forest, startling a few birds into flight.
A few solitary wolves loitered near the cave. Seeing Chen Jian, they showed no hostility, instead wagging their tails in a friendly gesture and letting out low whines.
Although they were friendly, the wolves didn't dare approach when Chen Jian emerged from the cave, maintaining a safe distance.
In his memory, the people of the tribe held no great hostility toward the wolves at the cave entrance; at the very least, they weren't afraid.
In truth, these were no longer just wolves. They were primitive dogs. Though not domesticated, they had formed a symbiotic relationship with humans.
When the tribe had excess meat, they might throw away spoiled scraps. They also rarely ate animal organs unless food was extremely scarce, as the old grandmother's passed-down experience taught them that eating such things could cause sickness.
With a ready source of food, some of the smarter wolves had grown too lazy to hunt for themselves. While still wary of humans, they would not initiate an attack on the tribe.
Their wilder relatives, not clever enough to form this bond, were doomed to remain gaunt scavengers in the wilderness, slowly fading toward extinction. These wolves by the cave would also provide an early warning when other predators approached. Because of this interdependence, the tribespeople did not fear them.
Looking at these wild, untamed canines, listening to the howls of beasts in the mountains, and gazing at the enormous pine trees at the base of the mountain—so thick that several people couldn't link arms around them—he was filled with emotion.
This was a savage age. Feeling humanity's insignificance in this era, an immense pride swelled in his heart—a burning desire to conquer nature.