Chapter 7: Four Minus One is Three
After dinner, Yu Qian'er was too excited by the story to sleep. She pestered Chen Jian, wanting him to tell her more about his dreams.
Instead, Chen Jian stretched out one finger and drew a '1' on the ground. Then he held up two fingers and drew a '2'.
Yu Qian'er looked at the two marks on the dirt, then at her own fingers, and seemed to understand. To her, this was like the knots the old grandmother tied in tree bark to keep count.
Chen Jian counted to three, holding up three fingers and repeating the word to Yu Qian'er over and over.
Yu Qian'er struggled to make the sounds, but she learned the three simplest numbers and thought it was miraculous. When they caught prey in the future, they wouldn't need to tie knots in bark anymore.
By the time the moon shone on the cave entrance, Yu Qian'er had been practicing the three simple numbers the entire time. Finally, she fell asleep, exhausted.
Early the next morning, Yu Qian'er ran to the grassy area by the cave, caught some grasshoppers, and came back to feed the three dodo birds. She proudly told everyone that there were *three* birds, and soon the numbers one, two, and three were being recited among the children.
It wasn't until someone held up four fingers and asked Yu Qian'er what the number was that she looked distressed. Her brother hadn't taught her that one.
The women watched the children with smiles on their faces, while the men prepared to go hunting as usual, their eyes fixed eagerly on the new bow.
A major difference between humans and animals is that humans think about what they will eat tomorrow, the day after, and in the winter. This isn't a squirrel-like instinct but the result of self-aware foresight. Yesterday's prey was still left over, but that didn't mean they could rest today.
Just as everyone was about to leave, however, Chen Jian told them not to go hunting. The ancestors, he claimed, had given him new guidance in a dream.
He pointed to the bow and said, "Everyone can have a bow."
Having witnessed the power of the bow and arrow yesterday, the tribe members discussed it and decided to follow Chen Jian's advice.
Chen Jian also had the women stay behind, telling them they were going to collect some tubers. He explained that the ancestors would give the women a tool, much like the bow, that could be used to easily capture prey. After yesterday's events, everyone believed in the guidance of the ancestors. Except for a few who stayed in the cave to look after the children, the rest followed Chen Jian down the mountain.
The men were thrilled at the prospect of each having a bow, while the women wondered what new tool the ancestors would bring them.
At the foot of the mountain, they found some elm trees as thick as a wrist. Following Chen Jian's explanation, everyone began to smash down the small trees with stones. Chen Jian then led the women to peel off all the bark and collect the fibers within. They quickly gathered a large amount.
After returning to the cave, the men, under Chen Jian's guidance, began shaping the small elm logs with stone knives. Soon, the rough forms of bows began to emerge.
Meanwhile, the women watched as Chen Jian tied several bark fibers to a stone. He attached one end of the fibers to the cave wall and then let the stone hang and spin, using its rotational inertia to twist the fibers together into a simple rope. The tribe members already knew how to twist simple ropes, but they had never seen it done so quickly.
The resulting rope was as thick as a little finger. Chen Jian pulled it hard; it was quite strong. He knew that if the bark fibers were shredded more carefully, the rope could be made even thinner.
The women of the tribe learned to use the stone as a makeshift spindle, and they quickly twisted a large pile of bark fibers into rope. But they still had no idea what Chen Jian was planning.
Next, Chen Jian found some small wooden sticks and drove them into the ground in a row, about five centimeters apart. He counted them out: thirty sticks in total.
He tied a rope to each small stick. Then, he tied another thirty ropes to a crossbar, which, when stretched, held the ropes parallel to the ones fixed in the ground. These sixty ropes, Chen Jian explained, were the weft threads. He then gave Yu Qian'er a very long rope, which he called the warp thread.
The so-called art of weaving was simply the process of interlacing warp and weft.
He lifted the crossbar, separating the two layers of weft threads. He had Yu Qian'er pass the warp thread through the opening and then lowered the crossbar. With the next pass, he kept the crossbar down, separating the weft threads in the opposite way.
By repeating this process, the warp and weft threads were woven together. With each pass, the warp thread went over one set of weft threads and under the other. A simple weave of crossing threads quickly began to appear, though the work was slow. Chen Jian knew the principle but lacked practice, while Yu Qian'er was a complete novice, learning as she went.
Women have a natural aptitude for this kind of highly repetitive labor. As a man, Chen Jian began to feel his patience fraying after a short while. This couldn't be called a loom, but it had the basic prototype and principle. How to improve it would be up to the women.
The complete process of weaving was simple: twist fibers into thread, then intersect the warp and weft. Whether it was linen, silk, cotton, or palm fiber, the principle never changed. The only changes over time would be how to twist the thread faster, finer, and stronger, and how to advance the weaving process from three people using their hands to one person using both hands and feet.
The tribe members watched, mesmerized, feeling it was a miracle. Those twisted ropes were being locked together, forming something that resembled animal hide.
Chen Jian endured his impatience and worked with Yu Qian'er. The two became more and more proficient as the shuttling warp thread neared the end of the weft. After a busy morning, they finally finished the tribe's first piece of cloth.
It was worse than the burlap sacks of later generations. The finger-thick ropes and thumb-sized gaps meant that if it were made into clothing, any part of the body that shouldn't be exposed would soon be visible in a mosaic of healthy, wheat-colored skin. The rough fibers and irregular gaps gave it the rustic air of a handmade luxury good from his previous life.
Yu Qian'er held the two-meter-long piece of cloth, overjoyed. She was more convinced than ever that her brother had been guided by the ancestors and proudly showed it off to the old grandmother.
Chen Jian was unimpressed with his creation, but the other tribe members held it, rubbing it in their hands. Finally, following his example, three or four people began to weave on their own simple looms.
In the afternoon, the men finally finished polishing their bows. Chen Jian helped them string the bows and taught them how to draw and shoot. Before long, their forearms were bruised and purple from the slap of the bowstrings. After practicing for a while, the men took their bows to hunt nearby birds, which would serve as a snack and leave behind feathers for fletching.
A simple longbow, even without fletching on the arrows, is quite accurate within ten meters. However, the tribesmen's various strange shooting stances reduced this effective range to three to five meters, which was still enough to scare away the wolves that lurked near the cave entrance.
There were high-quality elm trees in the forest. With time, they could carve better bows and fit them with bone arrowheads, which should be sufficient for hunting large game. They just needed to spend time breaking in the bows.
Inside the cave, the women had crudely woven dozens of meters of bark fiber cloth. Chen Jian used a bone needle to sew several pieces together, creating a single piece over ten meters long. Then he took four pieces of wood, found a few scraps of cloth, and sewed them onto the wood frame to make a simple sieve.
Chen Jian folded the remaining fiber cloth, stitched the ends together with a bone needle, and fashioned a handmade fiber bag. With a flash of childish humor, he drew an "LV" logo on it with a piece of charcoal.
The women imitated him, using bone needles to sew their own small handbags. In the past, they had to hold wild fruits in their cupped hands or carry them in animal skins. These handmade bags were much more convenient.
When everything was ready, he called the women from the cave and led them toward the small river down the mountain. Looking back, Chen Jian almost laughed. A group of his aunts and cousins, dressed in animal skins and carrying single-strap, handmade, natural-fiber bags, had the artistic vibe of a post-modern fashion show. It was a pity this wasn't a catwalk, but a hunt for survival.
At the foot of the mountain flowed a river seven or eight meters wide. The water was naturally clear and not too deep, and it was teeming with fish. Yu Qian'er carried Chen Jian's "LV" bag, while several others carried the long fiber cloth and the small sieve.
He tested the water temperature; it was a bit cold.
Among the cattails by the river, a few grass carp were nibbling on roots. When they heard the humans approach, they vanished into the depths with a swish. Chen Jian recognized the familiar grass carp and common carp, along with a few fish he had never seen before. If he had a gourd, he could have made a scoop and simply bailed fish out of a puddle, but he hadn't seen any gourds yet.
The women guessed they were going to catch fish, but they were confused. How could they catch fish with these things instead of their stone spears?
Yu Qian'er, however, was confident her brother would succeed. She tilted her head, watching a school of small fish in the water and already imagining the taste of grilled fish.
Seeing that it was getting late, Chen Jian confirmed that the water here was no deeper than their knees—a suitable spot. He directed the women to move stones and build a simple V-shaped weir in a narrow part of the river. The wide mouth of the 'V' faced upstream, extending from both banks, leaving only a gap the size of the sieve at the downstream point.
The water flowed through the crevices between the stones, but the fish could not. Near the narrow opening, the current became much stronger.
He had four women block the narrow opening with the sieve while the rest took the long fiber cloth and went upstream. The cloth was just about as wide as the river, and with its finger-sized gaps, it didn't create much resistance in the water.
A dozen women, along with Chen Jian, stretched the cloth across the river and began walking slowly downstream. The frightened fish sensed danger, but they couldn't swim upstream through the cloth barrier. Their only option was to flee downstream. They soon encountered the stone weir, which had only a single, one-meter-wide gap. The witless fish rushed toward it one after another.
This wasn't true net fishing and wouldn't work in large rivers, but it was perfect for a narrow, shallow one like this. This river had flowed here for ages, but no one had ever fished it this way. Countless small fish of various colors surged downstream, mixed with crayfish and water turtles.
Within the V-shaped enclosure, the school of fish was in a panic.
"Fish! Fish!"
Yu Qian'er and several children pointed in astonishment at the fish churning in the water. Trapped in the reduced space, the fish swarmed together, rushing right into the sieve. The water drained through the thumb-sized mesh, but the fish remained, piling up.
White bellies flashed as they thrashed about. A few large carp with powerful tails managed to leap over the sieve, but the smaller fish weren't so lucky. They couldn't pass through the mesh and were trapped, jumping helplessly as more and more fish piled in. The big ones got away, but the palm-sized fish accumulated rapidly. The women cheered and jumped for joy. This was enough food for several days, gathered with so little effort!
Yu Qian'er looked at the small pouch on her shoulder, then hurried to the sieve. She reached in, grabbed fish, and tossed them into her handmade bag.
The other women followed suit, running over to fill their bulging bags. Occasionally, someone would scream in pain and try to flick off a crayfish that had latched onto their finger, which only made it grip tighter, drawing laughter from the others.
The cheers attracted the men who were hunting in the nearby woods. They stared in amazement at the countless fish. Many had already been thrown onto the bank, and the sieve was still overflowing.
Yu Qian'er stood in the water, staring blankly at the four fish in her bag, looking extremely distressed. After a moment of thought, she took one out and threw it onto the shore.
Now she could happily count the fish in her bag—one, two, three. She was very pleased.