I am a Primitive Man

"Come, use the chisel here. Leave a mark."

Seeing Shaman and the others' blank stares, Han Cheng smiled inwardly, though he appeared calm and unaffected. He pointed at the mark made by the wooden stick that Shaman had twisted and made.

"This is the center," he explained. "We’ll mark it now to avoid finding the center again later."

"Ah... okay!"

The Mu Tou, still staring blankly at the rudimentary compass, snapped out of his stupor. He quickly used the chisel to carve a permanent mark in the spot.

Han Cheng then used the same method to draw another circle on a separate stone slab, ensuring the radius matched the previous one.

This time, Mu Tou didn't need much prompting. He promptly took the iron hammer and chisel in hand and carved a shallow groove along the circle.

As for the makeshift compass, it had now made its way to Shaman's hands.

Like a child who had just discovered a new toy, Shaman was delighted, enthusiastically drawing circles of various sizes on the ground.

Shi Tou and Lame also showed interest, waiting for Shaman to finish before fetching ropes and sticks to join in the fun, drawing circles on the ground themselves.

Before long, the ground of the Green Sparrow Tribe was dotted with many circles of different sizes.

After finishing their drawings, they stood back, admiring their work with silly grins, proud of their creations.

"These guys, completely inexperienced," Han Cheng thought, "It’s just a simple compass. Why is it so entertaining?"

As it turned out, the simple compass was a source of amusement.

Not long after, Han Cheng, too, joined in the circle-drawing activity.

His skill with the simple compass was far superior to Shaman, Shi Tou, and the Lame.

The regular pentagon shape, made of five half-circle arcs within the circle, amazed them.

Apparently, this tool could not only draw circles, but also intricate and beautiful patterns, which was quite remarkable.

With Han Cheng’s participation, the others, who had previously lost interest, were now re-energized and eager to play again.

This simple yet fun tool quickly became popular in the Green Sparrow Tribe, especially among the younger members, who were thrilled by the novelty.

Soon, circles appeared everywhere in the tribe, from walls to dirt floors—nothing was spared in this circle-drawing frenzy.

With his mask, Mu Tou had been tirelessly hammering and chiseling for the past few days.

A stone mill gradually took shape as small bits of stone fell away.

Having learned from the previous experience with the circles, Han Cheng decided to take matters into his own hands this time. Instead of letting the wooden man carve the grooves on the bottom of the stone mill, he used a small wooden board and stone pieces to draw long and short lines. ꭆἈNo͍ꞖÊŜ

He then instructed the wooden man to chisel along these lines.

Of course, these lines were not radii extending from the center to the edge of the circle because such a design would result in sparser grooves as they moved outward, making it ineffective for grinding. Instead, the lines were parallel.

Drawing parallel lines on a circle wasn't easy, except for those that followed the diameter and were arranged on either side.

The stone mill was far more effective than radial lines by this method.

Han Cheng divided the circle into sections and then drew parallel lines within each section, ensuring the lines within each section were evenly aligned.

In this way, the grooves on the stone mill would be as numerous as possible. Since these grooves aren't perpendicular to the edge of the mill, this could prevent the awkward situation where beans fall out of the grinding hole without being ground and simply run along the grooves.

One can imagine that the earliest inventors of the stone mill, those clever ancient people, certainly didn’t create the stone mill this way. Instead, they discovered its flaws through continued use and gradually made improvements until it eventually became the form we recognize today.

This is the advantage of time travelers – standing on the shoulders of giants to pick fruit, directly drawing from the wisdom that countless generations have refined and passed down.

Han Cheng was even more fortunate than most travelers, as he was familiar with stone mills. This was thanks to his childhood when his family had a mill at home.

He had often helped with tasks like grinding pea flour to make cold noodles or flour paste.

When Han Cheng had finished drawing the lines, and the wooden man started chiseling along them, it was time to harvest the rapeseed.

Rapeseed shouldn’t be harvested until it's fully mature; it can be cut as soon as it turns slightly yellow.

This urgency is due to the fact that every plant acts like a good mother, finding ways to get its seeds to leave its embrace and grow independently. Dandelions equip their seeds with little parachutes so that the wind can carry them away, while burdock coats its seeds with tiny hooks that catch on passing animals, sending them off to distant places.

Rapeseed and beans rely on sunlight to disperse their seeds. Once fully ripe, their pods split open, allowing the seeds to fall into Mother Earth's embrace.

Han Cheng certainly didn’t want this to happen too early, as letting the rapeseed fall to the ground prematurely would make the tribe's efforts this year futile.

However, compared to previous years, the rapeseed harvest and subsequent processing were much quicker and easier, thanks to the increased number of slaves in the Green Sparrow Tribe.

The rapeseed was harvested and processed in just a few days, with everyone working together.

Taking advantage of the good weather, the land where the rapeseed had been grown was turned over and planted with late millet.

After planting the millet, the next task was preparing to sow soybeans.

"If only we had wheat..." Han Cheng thought regretfully.

If there were wheat, he could rotate it with soybeans, perfectly timing the planting and harvesting for two crops per year, which would be ideal. Moreover, soybean roots would gather a type of fertilizer, like 'nitrogen,' which wheat needs. Under such a rotation, not only would the wheat yield not decrease, but it would increase.

Rotating soybeans with millet wasn't very practical, though, as their growing seasons conflicted.

If soybeans were planted after the millet harvest, the most likely scenario would be that just when the beans began to flower, a frost would come...

Soybeans could be rotated with rapeseed, although the two were not the best combination.

Despite this, soybeans will not be paired with rapeseed this year, mainly because there are simply too few soybeans.

After some hesitation, Han Cheng finally kept five pounds of soybeans to make tofu; the rest were planted in the ground.

He didn’t scatter the seeds by hand but used a deer-drawn plow to sow them.

Before sowing, he had to remove the wooden board blocking the plow's funnel and enlarge the opening.

Otherwise, a single soybean, much larger than a grain of millet, wouldn’t fall out.

Even after adjusting the opening to the smallest size possible and sowing as sparingly as he could, only about two acres of land were planted with the thirty pounds of soybeans.

This was thanks to the small size of the soybeans at this time, about one-third the size of those in later generations. The planting area would have been even smaller if they were the same size as modern soybeans.

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