With the conclusion of the Witch Lords Conference, the Ba Valley, which had been lively for seven or eight days, once again returned to its former peace.
The river beach was densely covered with earthen cooking stoves and piles of ashes from burning bonfires.
A large number of vegetation and tree branches left behind after setting up the tent were also scattered for miles.
After the excitement, the ground was in a mess, and the Ba people needed to slowly clean it up.
Sitting in his room, looking through the gate of the compound as the tribesmen on the riverbank were busy using horse-drawn carriages and man-powered carts to clean up and transport away the firewood and garbage left behind, Xu Chen's face twitched, which made him even more determined to move the venue to the venue as soon as possible.
Plans to go to Gong Fire Basin.
However, to complete this task, a lot of work still needs to be done. After all, I am not familiar with Gonghuo Basin, and the transportation is difficult due to the long distance, and many things cannot be arranged as conveniently as in the Ba tribe.
The first thing is to build the road. This matter was arranged yesterday. After the officers and hunter leaders of each tribe return, they will arrange for people to go out to explore the path. In addition, the general plan is already in place. After he goes to inspect some of the tribes where conditions permit,
The road construction will start soon.
However, building roads requires a large number of tools, such as copper axes, copper knives, copper saws, hoes and picks. Only with a large number of these bronze tools can the project be completed faster. However, the copper inventory is currently running low, with less than two hundred kilograms left.
.
In addition, the charcoal has also been exhausted.
Therefore, if you want to build roads on a large scale, you must first smelt more copper and burn more charcoal. The autumn and winter seasons are now the prime time for mining and smelting metals and felling and burning charcoal. Otherwise, you will have to be busy farming in the spring and make more charcoal in the summer.
If heavy rains continue, both projects will be stopped.
Xu Chen looked away and looked at a crooked silver-white tin bowl placed on the table.
This bowl was extremely ugly. Compared with the several tin bowls, cups and other tin utensils that Xu Chen made next to it, it looked like an ugly duckling mixed into a group of swans, which made him feel unbearably tragic.
Rather than saying it is a bowl, it is more like a concave tin block.
But you have to admit that this is a real metal container that can be used to hold food, water, and things, and it can replace pottery bowls as daily utensils.
Moreover, this bowl is stronger and more durable than a pottery bowl. Even if it is dropped on the ground, it will only be a little more deflated. It will definitely not break like a pottery bowl.
This was given to him by a powerful witch from a poor tribe when he left after the witchcraft conference.
He was still stunned for a long time at that time, but looking at the flattering smile of the great shaman of the Youqiong tribe who seemed to be slightly humble but full of strange emotions, he knew that the Youqiong tribe was still a foreigner after all, and he began to have his own thoughts about tin.
From the time he taught the poor people to start mining and smelting tin, Xu Chen knew that they would eventually discover more uses for tin, but he didn't expect that they would discover it so quickly. In just over half a year, they had begun to learn how to use tin.
Making tools.
This bowl looked like it was made of a whole piece of tin and was slowly beaten with a stone. The thickness was uneven and the shape of the bowl was crooked. In his eyes, it was useless. However, this discovery allowed the poor to change from a pure raw material supplier to a manufacturer.
business, with certain innovation and market competitiveness.
Perhaps they wanted to use tin utensils to exchange more items with the Gonghuo and Ba tribes.
In fact, Xu Chen was not very surprised that some poor people had this idea, because it was only a matter of time. Tin is soft, malleable and easy to process, so it was easy to research it.
Just like when he discussed smelting lead with the deceased Great Witch in the Five Ghost Clan, she also raised the idea of using lead to make eating utensils, but she gave up after Xu Chen suggested that it was poisonous.
But tin is not poisonous, so tin bowls are theoretically better than pottery, and of course more expensive. After all, the smelting of tin and the processing of tin ware are much more complicated and slower than pottery, but the emergence of this thing is also
It marked that the poor began to escape from their control, and they wanted to use tin to enhance the strength of the poor.
In the future, poor people may not be as active in sending smelted tin to the Gonghuo people as before. After all, it can be processed into more advanced items for exchange.
However, Xu Chen couldn't help but twitch the corner of his mouth slightly again.
It's a nice thought, but in reality it's not what the poor people expected.
Tinware is indeed strong and can be made very beautifully, but for all the poor tribes who are still struggling for food and clothing, tinware is not a necessity.
Of course, these tins are not valuable in the first place, but they become valuable when they are made into tin bowls. In order to turn them into real wealth, some poor people may sell them for the same price as pottery. One or two animal skins are not enough.
question.
Therefore, in the future, poor people may be able to use tin ware to increase their wealth.
It's just that the cost is a bit high and will consume a lot of manpower and time.
Xu Chen thought over and over in his mind whether he should suppress the poor people, but he thought about it while holding the tin bowl and decided to let them go first.
After all, suppressing innovation is not a good phenomenon. He does not want to imitate the hegemonic Americans of later generations to do such despicable things.
Human civilization needs to develop through continuous innovation. The Ba people have already completed the initial stage of civilization evolution. The next step is to set their sights on more ambitious goals.
Such small innovations as the poor people will not pose any threat to the Ba people.
He can suppress it anytime he wants.
For example, he can guide the Ba people to make tin utensils that are ten times and a hundred times better than those of the poor people. Not only bowls, but also any daily utensils that come to mind can be made, and they can even be inlaid with gold and jade to make them extremely exquisite and luxurious.
The simplest thing is to reduce the price of pottery or simply teach the production technology to others.
After all, pottery is no longer particularly scarce for many tribes. Even after a year or two of exploration, the kiln workers of many tribes have begun to be able to make some relatively simple pottery, such as pottery bowls and plates.
Gradually, I was able to cook it myself, and the only scarcity items left were large and medium-sized pots, pots, pots, pots and other utensils.
Once pottery loses value, it will become popular faster, and tin wares, which are much more expensive than pottery, will lose their market.
What's more, due to the melting point problem, tinware can only be used as daily eating utensils such as dishes, cups, and cups. It cannot be heated at high temperatures, so its application range is very narrow. In fact, it is more likely to be used as decorations or handicrafts.
But in this era, there is no market at all for decorations and handicrafts. If you want to trade them, they are like gold, silver and gems, which look good but have little value.
If it weren't for the fact that bronze can be smelted, the role of tin would be almost negligible.
At present, because the demand for tin in bronze ware is relatively small, the bottleneck restricting the large-scale manufacturing of bronze ware is still the mining and smelting of copper.
It seems that we need to go to the Uzbek people and talk to them about increasing the scale of copper mining and smelting.
Otherwise, if we miss the autumn and winter, next year's large-scale road construction plan will not be carried out.
As for other things, I can put them aside for now.
However, some planned projects of the Ba people must be arranged as soon as possible in winter.
The first is the renovation and expansion project of the Temple of the Mother of God.
The second is the construction of the Eye of God Altar at the entrance of the valley.
The third is the filling and uplift project of the river embankment and courtyard dam in front of the compound.
The fourth is the construction of embankments and ditches in the farmland on the other side of the river.
Last summer, 20 to 30 acres of farmland on the other side of the river were flooded, resulting in a large-scale reduction in production. Although a historic harvest was finally achieved based on the total area, agriculture is the foundation of development, and we should try to avoid it as much as we can.
this loss.
Therefore, embankments need to be built in some low-lying areas on the opposite bank, and drainage and irrigation ditches need to be properly dug to lay a solid foundation for ensuring crop yields during droughts and floods.
Only by ensuring a stable income from farmland can he liberate most of the tribe's labor force and invest in manufacturing and other industries.
After Xu Chen figured it out, he left the crooked tin bowl and went to find his mother and grandmother to discuss and arrange these matters.
…
Two days later.
Xu Chen took Gu Heju and seven or eight hunters on horseback to the Wu tribe.
Everyone in the Uzbek tribe was very enthusiastic about Xu Chen's sudden arrival. The little witch sister took the leader of the Uzbek tribe and a group of family leaders to the river beach to greet him. Long Ye led the hunter team in full gear to be inspected.
Just three days after the Wu Zhu Conference ended, Xu Chen suddenly arrived, which made the entire Uzbek people very surprised and puzzled. However, after learning that Xu Chen was here to inspect copper mining and smelting, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
The Uzbek people have undergone great changes in the past two years. The large area of houses under the mountain looks spectacular. The hillside where they used to live has been completely abandoned. Now the road up the mountain is completely obscured by thorns and weeds.
Several smelting furnaces are located at the foot of the mountain where Wushui flows. Now is the best time for mining and smelting. Therefore, the four smelting furnaces are billowing with smoke, and the entire valley is filled with a choking atmosphere.
Inside and outside the smelter, there were many Uzbek men carrying ore and wood back and forth, and the atmosphere was lively and noisy.
"Your Majesty the Witch King, it's not that we don't want to smelt more copper, it's just that we don't have enough manpower and it consumes too much!"
As a die-hard supporter of Xu Chen, Long has always been serious about matters arranged by Xu Chen. In order to supervise the smelting of copper, he arranges people to inspect all aspects of mining and smelting almost every day, urging the speed of smelting. Unfortunately, the conditions are too primitive.
Even if you want to go faster, it won't be much faster.
Although there are currently a large number of bronze tools sponsored by the Ba people or half-purchased and half-given, the mining and logging speed has been accelerated a lot, but in the end, to smelt the ore into copper, you have to slowly burn the wood with wood, which is extremely time-consuming.
and human resources aspects.
Xu Chen naturally knew that Long was telling the truth.
The Uzbek people have just begun to develop in the past two years. Building a large number of houses in the mountains and cultivating a large amount of farmland already require a lot of manpower and time, and they are all done in autumn and winter. Therefore, mining and smelting naturally cannot free up more manpower.
It is very difficult to maintain the status quo. If you want to increase production, you must continue to invest more manpower and material resources.
However, even the food security of the Uzbek people has not yet been solved. The food just harvested is only enough for the entire tribe to consume for three or four months. Gathering and hunting are still the main ways of survival.
It will take at least two to three years for the Uzbek people to finally reach the living standards of the Ba people.
However, the large amount of food cultivated and harvested has given the Uzbek people a lot of confidence, that is, at least in the winter and spring seasons, people will no longer starve to death. Using the months of winter and spring, they can earn 500 kilograms per month.
Copper output can still be guaranteed, but if there is more, problems will arise.