Century Dream War of Faith Chapter 2 'The Origin of Domestic Dogs'
[You once swore to me that you would dedicate your life to this moment, and now you are at this moment] Zate heard the will of the god he served for the second time in his dream. He only remembered that the place in the dream was on a mountain shrouded in clouds and mist, and it was at hand.
A steel cable is necessary to climb the nearly vertical and extremely smooth steep mountain wall. The fallen leaves of a big red maple that breaks out of the rock at the top of the mountain are constantly falling, which is a kind of lonely beauty.
Zate only vaguely felt that the Lord God asked him to go in a certain direction, but he had no idea what to do. However, he still had to make this his top priority. For this reason, Zate temporarily left his companions and took the hair ball with him.
The spirit body sets off into the distance.
Out of love and a strange sense of responsibility, Zat used up all the remaining incense and gave as much of his soul as possible to the spirit body of Hairball.
The hairball has become more and more skillful in controlling his own, and he is usually as affectionate as a weaned kitten holding its own milk bottle.
Like a wind knight practicing asceticism in a strong wind, this time Zate ate the wind and drank the dew alone and walked persistently in the direction of his goal.
Time: January 4, ninth year.
Region: unknown
Environment: wind and snow
One hand was placed in front of his forehead to block the wind and snow, and he squinted against the reflected light on the snow to prevent snow blindness. Zate had not encountered a creature that could speak for half a year.
[Um, hold on Zate, you can definitely do it] She moved forward step by step with difficulty, the girl's heart was full of determination.
At this moment, the fur ball meowed and turned around to alert Zate to the situation, and several wolves with green eyes and fur that said they were white or gray surrounded Zate in a roundabout way.
"Yeah, I got it." Zate nodded slightly, indicating that he understood the situation, and then carefully observed how many wolves were nearby, trying to confirm their current situation and combat effectiveness through magic.
If you look carefully, you will know that they are low-level monsters at most, or just wild beasts? After all, they are also enduring the biting cold wind, and they don't seem to be that resistant to freezing.
Without taking into account the ambush of protective wolves that could not be seen clearly in the distance, Zat could be sure that there were only six wolves in total.
Zate hummed the warrior song softly and prayed in his heart. Then, the girl turned into a giant wolf in the wind and snow and let out a deafening roar. Like the incarnation of nature, the aura and dignity she brought seemed to oppress the surrounding wolves.
group.
The six wolves were so frightened that they ran away, and then Zate canceled her transformation and stopped singing. [I hope they won't come again.] Then she picked up her spirits a little and continued to move forward.
What happened was counterproductive. Just as Zat advanced a little further, the wolves circled Zat's path and lay in the biting snow, exposing their soft bellies to Zat who was still in human form.
"By the way, why don't you leave yet?" Zate sighed as he looked at the scene in front of him, wanting to go up and communicate with them through animal communication.
But she remembered the habits of wolves and the like, and looking at the appearance in front of her, she must have succumbed to her own roar.
The girl sighed, stepped forward and rubbed the belly of one of the wolves. "Um, although I don't know what to say, are you willing to go with me? I am about to go to a distant place, of course you can also choose to stay,
I have no objection." Zate tried to express his feelings vaguely to a few wolves.
Anyway, seeing that Zat had no intention of driving them away, the six wolves got up, shook off the ice stubble, started wagging their tails wildly, and then followed Zat.
They would cooperate in hunting near Zate every day and catch some small animals such as snow foxes, snow rabbits, and snow mice. Although these were not enough for them to eat, they still let Zate choose first. This completely regarded Zate as their leader.
He looks like a wolf, even though Zat did not fulfill his obligations as the alpha wolf.
Another week passed, and Zate finally saw people. He saw a village by the cedar forest from a distance. It was the time to burn firewood for cooking at sunset.
[Finally I saw people, I hope nothing will happen.] Zate prayed in her heart. After settling the six wolves, she wanted to go to the village alone. Just expel them. Although it was a bit unbearable, she wanted to let them return.
Nature seems to be a good thing too.
The hem of her skirt swayed with the wind and snow, as erratic as the girl's expression at the moment. Zate looked at the six wolves following him. Although he didn't have the consciousness of being the alpha wolf, after all, they had been together for a week, and he had some feelings.
Emotional.
[What to do] Zate will definitely not lead the wolf directly into the village, as that may cause a series of bad things to happen.
"It would be great if I knew how to cast special spells." If Sophia or Hitz were here, I'm afraid the problem would be easily solved.
He also had some feelings of regret. If he and Sophia had learned more simple and practical low-level spells, this embarrassing situation might not have happened. Looking at the village next to the cedar forest in front of him, Zate fell into a brief thought.
.
In the howling cold wind, the wolf demi-human girl who looked like an ascetic but was dressed in gorgeous clothing recalled the past. Her hometown was equally cold, but the grass stalks that were properly eaten by livestock always had strong vitality and could always grow back in the next spring.
However, the plants in this snowfield are mainly moss. Human settlements may not be able to form a stable livestock chain. However, considering this cedar forest, it is enough to provide the village in front with meat, and maybe nuts or berries.
grow.
The Lord God did not explain to Zate what to do specifically. It is necessary to complete the thinking process independently. It is more like a trial than an oracle.
[Well, maybe you can try that.] Zate thought for a while, looked at the cedar forest and the surrounding environment, and roughly understood the current situation of the village. [If the wolf is allowed to carry enough food, maybe it won't happen.
The people in the village were too frightened.】
If it is an ordinary small animal, you can let the wolf hunt it, while you can collect pine cones or berries on the side. [And if there is danger, you can handle it yourself. 】
So Huzat made up his mind and took six wolves to the cedar forest to hunt animals. He should not be too far away from the wolves to avoid accidents.
Although Cheng Zate thought about it for a long time, the most critical part seemed not to have occurred to him until he recalled what happened in the past.
It was a rainy night, and Chiujiu stood on Heath's shoulder and listened to Sophia talking about a book she had read called "The Origin of Domestic Dogs."
Although Zate was not interested in this, he still remembered some of the sentences based on his strong memory.
When humans were still in the most primitive social stage, the technologies they relied on to break away from the age of fishing and hunting were primitive agriculture, pottery making, domesticated livestock, and grinding stone tools.
Regardless of the primitive agriculture that finally appeared, let’s start with pottery. The pottery made at that time had no color and luster and was a simple container, because people needed to spend most of their time picking fruits, poking stems, and hunting animals and spearing fish. There was not enough
of time and energy to improve.
However, from the beginning of primitive agriculture, although sowing and harvesting took a lot of time, the food collected after that could support the settlement for about a year, so that people did not need to spend all their time on gathering, fishing and hunting.
In particular, not everyone in the settlement needs to engage in agriculture. Some of them can produce enough food, which allows the rest to do other jobs, such as hunting animals, spearing fish, cutting vines and making baskets, polishing stone tools, building furnaces and making pottery, etc.
Or raise animals.
People who specialize in making pottery will appear in the settlement. They have the energy to try the method of making pottery embryos, adjust the firing temperature, and design the shape of the pottery. In the end, the quantity and quality will be enough to become farmers' daily utensils.
During the fishing and hunting period, because people spent most of their time looking for food, where did they have time to grind stone tools? Ordinary stone tools are convenient and quick, and will not hinder the search for food. But the more important reason is that during the fishing and hunting period
There is no need for people to use ground stone tools. Whether they are shooting wild animals with spears, spearing fish with wooden spears, or cutting vines, branches and meat with forged stone axes, there is no need for ground stone tools to be involved.
After entering the agricultural era, great changes took place. Sufficient and large amounts of food supported a larger population and promoted fertility. However, caves were not enough, which forced settlements to build stronger houses.
Digging soil, planing wood, chiseling stones, and hammering stone tools could no longer meet the needs. People had to try to sharpen stone tools. After that, wooden houses suddenly popped up like some strange plants called bamboo shoots after the rain.
In addition to processing wood, primitive agriculture uses thin pointed sticks to drill holes in the ground to sow seeds, which is time-consuming and labor-intensive. There is no digging of the land or harvesting with sickles. Stone axes are used to chop wood, and stone chisels are used to drill holes in the wood.
, people discovered that they could use stone tools to dig up the land, sow seeds, and harvest crop straw.
Hoes, shovels, shovels, sickles, millstones, stone mortars, ground stone spears, stone arrowheads, stone knives, and even fishing net pendants and so on.
Primitive agriculture increased the population, and the increase in population promoted the need for building houses, which in turn led to the advancement of stone tools. The progress of stone tools in turn promoted the development of agriculture, and the output of food further increased, forming a virtuous cycle.
.
The abundant food sources in the tropics have nothing to do with the origin of domestic dogs, let alone that.
When food sources began to become abundant and stable, domesticated livestock appeared naturally. Similar to primitive agriculture, pottery making and grinding stone tools, people have known the principles and methods of domesticating animals for a long time. There is no reason for its popularity, it is just the environment.
and lifestyle did not create this need.
During the fishing and hunting period, in areas where food was scarce, people did not have the time and energy to catch live prey and did not have extra food to feed and domesticate. In areas where food was abundant, people had no need to raise animals and could only rely on gathering and hunting.
If you have enough to eat, why bother raising animals?
When the population increased during the agricultural period, the number of prey species that had previously multiplied in large quantities also decreased due to the increase in hunting. Meat changed from staple food to supplementary food. The contradiction between the demand for taste and the diminishing harvest caused the value of meat to rise.
This prompted the rise of a trend among settlements to raise prey in captivity.
Even primitive agriculture does not require all members to work full time every day, and the work of making pottery and stone tools cannot absorb many idle people, so there is enough manpower to take care of animals. Equally important, the surplus grain produced by primitive agriculture is because
If storage is inconvenient, you can raise animals.
Familiar domestic animals such as pigs, chickens, sheep, and cows were not first domesticated. What was first domesticated was the subject of this article, the wolf, the predecessor of the domestic dog.
The emergence of stone arrows brought the hunting ability of humans, who were almost at the top of the food chain at that time, to a new level. Compared with throwing guns and spears, it was easier to hunt animals and it also reduced the casualties in fighting with ferocious beasts.
Some wolves with a smaller number will follow the crowd and eat some of the meat and bones abandoned by humans, reviving fear and understanding at the same time.
Wolves and humans are both social animals that live in groups. People have leaders, and wolves also have leaders. The differences between men and women and the distribution of food are also quite similar. It can be said that the social structures of the two are almost identical. Because wolves have rivals to surrender to.
primitive instinct, then it is obvious what will happen when a member of the human race accidentally takes on the role of the alpha wolf.
There are still many opportunities. Humans have also learned the hunting method of wolf packs. There have even been cases where wolves attack together when humans target the same group of prey and attack. The two groups have the same goal, forming cooperation and complementarity.
If it is a herd of deer and sheep, people will carry the deer back to the settlement for a dinner, and the wolf will also take away part of the prey. When the prey is replaced by a herd of cattle or even the legendary elephant herd, then the wolf will most likely not be able to kill it.
prey, and even suffered a large number of casualties.
People who benefit from cooperation will not abandon the wolves that participated in the attack. After the humans take away most of the fat meat and leave, the wolves can eat on the spot and use the remaining parts as dinner.
As early as before the agricultural period, humans would occasionally adopt wolf pups left behind by wolves, which furthered the relationship between the two species. However, domestic wolves at this stage were far from being called domestic dogs, regardless of their intelligence.
Despite their cunning, domestic wolves are still ferocious, but the most important point is that domestic dogs can digest crops to obtain nutrients, but wolves cannot.
After entering the agricultural period, some of the omnivorous wolves gradually became domestic dogs, while the carnivorous domestic wolves either ended up in human bellies or were released back into the wilderness, maintaining awe of each other.
Recalling this point, it is impossible to verify what period this author was from. The area he was referring to is unlikely to be the Harvin Province, and there are no Inuya people at all.
For Sophia, who pursues knowledge, the speculation ends here, while Jiujiu and others just listened to a story.
There were two more guesses as to what the Lord God meant. And from the moment he felt some power reshaping part of his memory on the door of the ruins of the inverted pyramid structure, Zate understood that he had received some kind of power and even his position.
It cannot be used as a descended body by the gods.
If it were some extreme church, people might consider it a heresy if they knew about it. Of course, the god Zat loved had never issued any will, but his songs still contained his power.
As the praying priest of Cirile, Zat did not put all his energy into understanding the magic. How much of the essence of being a praying priest did he inherit? He has never brought real happiness to a few people, nor has he served the gods.
He offered a prayer dance, and did not preach the epic poem. Even after leaving the province of Haven, he did not let anyone know the honorable name of the god and the teachings of the church.
The only singing voice that I'm good at relies on a lot of memorized skills brought by the Origin Core, but even so, God still loves His believers.
The demi-human girl from the Swan tribe who is the same age as Zat became the designated next high priest at a young age. It seems that she is not the so-called outstanding talent. There is no shortcut in faith. She just puts her heart and soul into it. And Zat
Te traveled all over the four countries, and even came to the Principality of Cyrus, which he could only reach after a long voyage, but he never conducted missionary activities, and the gods showed no preference.
Zat can't do what other priests can do, so what can only Zat do to respond to God's gaze and blessing?
If it comes to knowledge and power, there is indeed no priest who can be like Zat
"Agriculture, domestic animal training, and so on." She looked through her past memories and thought calmly.
[It turns out that I have always been loved by God.] I have never brought joy and happiness to the people around me, nor have I performed a prayer dance for God, nor have I spread the church’s teachings or the honorable name of God.
The girl gradually returned to reality from the profound memories, looking at the sky not knowing what she was looking at.
When he came back to his senses, Zate seemed to have strayed away from the small town and entered the cedar forest.
Even so, she was loved by God. This was her fault, but God was merciful. She walked further in silence and found a suitable place to pray on the snow.
"Lord God..." Zate recalled that it seemed that after leaving the church, he followed Alexander and Sophia, met Nina on the way, and met many things.
On the way to defeat the evil god, I accumulated a lot of insights and gained more power in order to help my partners.
But he never conveyed the teachings of the church to the world, did not perform a prayer dance for his beloved god, and did not bring much happiness to the people around him.
He also obtained power that was suspected to be related to God in that inverted pyramid. If it were another church, it would have been cleared away in the name of betraying the church.
However, he can still feel the power of God still flowing in his singing, and God still loves this lost half-wolf. God is merciful, so Zate will not and cannot live up to God's love.
Perhaps, the purpose of the oracle issued by God is also like this. "Lord God, beloved Lord God..." Zate sang hymns, accompanied by the wind and snow, and offered prayers to the gods in the cedar forest.
dance
"I followed everyone on the road to defeat the evil god, but I did not convey the church's teachings to the world, nor did I offer a prayer dance to God, nor did I make many people around me happy. My suspicion seems to be blaspheming God's power.
I also neglected my own teachings, but God still loves his believers, and I have come to repent for this, and I feel deeply ashamed of this."
"So, Lord God, I will use the insights and strength I have gained on the road to strengthen my faith, and ask Lord God to give me new guidance and lead me on the right path."
After that, Zate continued to pray for the gods and performed a prayer dance in the wind and snow. She had already repented in her heart, and now she wanted to make up for everything.
She hopes to bring real happiness to others in the future, and she is willing to dedicate what she sees, hears, and powers to the gods. This is the only thing a girl can do for the gods.
"Dear God, I ask for your guidance, I ask for your grace to guide me which enemies I should defeat." The girl kept dancing and praying in the wind and snow.
The half-wolf praying in the wind and snow will probably keep dancing until there is a response, so that the guilt and confusion in his heart can be resolved.