Only the most primitive and unrestrained dance and passionate shouting.
Around the huge bonfire, there were more than a dozen young women kneeling on the ground, holding various wild fruits, dried meats, animal skins, pottery, etc. in their hands and worshiping the sky.
Hundreds of men wearing furs and covered in oil paint, holding stone knives, stone axes, spears, and sticks, danced in circles around the bonfire and the women.
The witch wore floor-length animal skins, held a crutch that was taller than a man, and led the chiefs of six tribes. Amidst enthusiastic cheers and dances, the shaman sang to the mountains and valleys in the distance, which was completely incomprehensible.
of songs.
This is a mysterious spell inherited from ancient times. It has a completely different system from the language used in daily speech. Only witches can learn and use it.
Its function is to communicate with the gods of heaven and earth, and pray that the gods can bless the tribesmen with health and safety, and obtain enough food and wild animals to survive.
The witch master, Xu Chen has now slowly understood, should actually be called the witch blessing, an ancient inheritance ritual to pray to the gods to bless mankind.
Whether this kind of blessing is effective or not is another matter, but it is an indispensable activity for human beings in the primitive and barbaric era to understand the nature of heaven and earth.
Witches are a special group that gradually emerged as humans struggled with the harsh living environment.
They possess wisdom that transcends the ethnic group and can judge and analyze the impact of celestial phenomena, climate, year, month, time, etc. on production and life through some natural phenomena, so as to guide tribes in gathering and hunting, harvesting in autumn and storing in winter, and getting rid of diseases, etc.
For all primitive humans who have not yet understood the structure of heaven and earth and natural changes, all natural phenomena are related to God, and some accidental events are considered to be instructions from God.
Therefore, we offer harvests to the gods through some activities and show our strength, in order to pray for the recognition and care of the gods.
God is a kind of natural worship produced by human beings in the long process of evolution.
Witches are the bridge of communication between gods and humans.
Ritual is an important way for shamans to communicate with gods.
This ceremony was extremely grand, with hundreds of people dancing in circles around the fire, and the sounds of "ho-ho-ha-ha-ha" were neat and rhythmic, resounding throughout the valley.
Look at these primitive savages who are extremely excited.
Xu Chen's face twitched in the midst of it, but at the same time he felt that the trip was worthwhile.
This is much more lively than the primitive campfire performances in tourist attractions in Yunnan and Guizhou. It is completely authentic primitive singing and dancing, and it is also the oldest and most authentic kind.
This grand witchcraft ceremony lasted for more than an hour before it was announced to be over. Next came the highlight of the witchcraft conference, the tribal hunting competition.
The hunting ground is on the vast and huge impact plain outside the valley.
Hundreds of people, led by the leader of the tribe, surrounded the great witch and walked out of the valley.
At this time, a red sun has risen high, shining on the earth from the east downstream of the river.
A small river meanders for several miles on the vast plain, and finally merges into the rushing river.
Groups of large and small wild beasts were foraging on the river beach, and flocks of birds were flying and playing on the river beach. In the clear sky, goshawks spread their wings and circled. Occasionally, the roars of wild beasts could be heard in the mountains.
Under the early morning sunshine, the two rivers are like rippling golden light, reflecting the surrounding rolling mountains and vast river beaches, making the scene look extremely magnificent.
Hundreds of the youngest and most powerful hunters selected from the six tribes are ready to go.
Everyone's face was covered with paint, and they were nervous and excited as they clutched their weapons.
Among them, the most eye-catching ones are the hunters of the Ba tribe. They have the smallest number, only six, but their attire and weapons are different. They wear linen clothes and a rattan armor on their upper body. They are not holding spears, but bows and arrows.
"Wooga!"
After stopping for a moment in an open space at the mouth of the valley to make arrangements, Wu raised the wooden stick in his hand to signal the start of the hunt.
"Uga~~"
A group of impatient hunters rushed out.
The onlookers, men, women and children also cheered.
Amidst the sounds of ghosts crying and wolves howling, the overwhelming number of birds on the river beach fluttered and circled in the sky, and countless small animals ran and fled among the thorns and weeds. The tranquility on the river beach instantly turned into a bustle and chaos.
More than a hundred hunters, for a primitive tribe with only a few hundred people in total, are already a very powerful force, but after being scattered on this vast desert beach, they are sparse and even invisible in the blink of an eye.
Most of this large river beach is covered with wild grass at least half a person's depth, and there are many forests in it. Therefore, it looks spectacular from a distance, but in fact, once inside, it is like a maze.
At this time, under the influence of the frightened flock of birds, the herds of animals near the valley entrance began to become alarmed.
Some of the large beasts may have seen the presence of humans, and began to move restlessly to distant feeding sites. So standing at a high place, you can see groups of beasts starting to disperse and flow like quicksand.
.
Xu Chen didn't know the judging criteria for hunting competitions, but he speculated that they were related to two factors, one was quality and the other was quantity.
The quality must depend on the type of beast, its ferocity, and its size.
The quantity naturally depends on how many are hunted.
As for the bravest warrior, it must be the hunter who inflicts the greatest trauma on the beast. If he can kill a tiger or leopard in this kind of competition, he will definitely win the first place.
Although Xu Chen had great confidence in the lethality of bows and arrows.
But in fact, with their numerical advantage extremely low, the Ba people did not have much confidence in winning.
He had already seen the power of spear throwing in the Ba tribe. Feng's arm strength was the strongest, and he could easily throw a spear weighing seven or eight kilograms nearly a hundred meters.
The lethality of throwing spears is far greater than that of bows and arrows. As long as they are hit, small animals such as wild sheep and deer will lose the ability to escape on the spot, and may even be killed in one hit. However, large animals such as wild boars, buffaloes, wild deer, and wild horses will only be killed if they are hit.
Even if you are injured, you will almost never escape death.
However, throwing spears has one biggest weakness, and that is that the hit rate is extremely low.
This kind of parabolic throwing is very strict about the distance. The farther the throw is, the lower the hit rate. To hit a beast at a distance of 100 meters, even a large beast like a buffalo or wild horse, requires a lot of luck.
Because even if a hunter has good accuracy, animals have legs and are moving all the time. Therefore, it is understandable that it is difficult to hunt moving targets in motion. Not only the distance must be considered, but also the movement direction and speed of the prey.
Another biggest flaw is the number of attacks.
A person usually only carries one spear of this kind. Carrying too many will seriously affect the running speed. Once the spear is thrown, he can only rely on the attack of his companions.
Therefore, from discovering prey to launching an attack, in addition to speed and strength, it is also necessary to focus on the dispersion and cooperation of the group. Hunting is the only way to deal with large beasts and ferocious beasts.
In other words, it all depends on the crowds.
Although bows and arrows are not as lethal as spears, they are easy to carry. A person can carry dozens of arrows and launch attacks one after another during pursuit. As long as the target is hit once, the movement of the beast will be greatly affected.
The big impact is that if three or five people are hunting, as long as the prey does not escape the encirclement, the hunting success is almost guaranteed.
Therefore, although the two main hunting weapons currently have their own advantages and disadvantages, bows and arrows should be superior.
The disadvantage of the Ba people is that their number is too small.
At this time, hunters were already attacking on the river beach in the distance.
Their target was a herd of bison.
This kind of bison is huge, with two forward-facing horns. Now is the time of late autumn when the body is fat and strong. Therefore, although it is a herbivore, it has great strength, long blood tank, thick skin and rough flesh, so it is very difficult to hunt.
difficulty.
This herd of bison was huge in number, with visual estimates of at least hundreds of them. As a group of hunters slowly approached, the herd started to run after being startled, and then soon gathered into a roaring sound like thunder and rolled forward. The encirclement was not yet completely formed.
The herd of cattle had already gone away. The few hunters who were chasing behind them threw their spears, but all of them fell far behind the cattle butts.
The first hunting operation at the beginning of the game failed in just ten minutes.
The crowd watching on the mounds near the valley let out a depressed sigh, but there were also some sarcastic words of gloating among different tribes, which then led to a burst of swearing, quarreling and pushing.
But because the clan leader is here, these little commotions and quarrels will soon subside.
On the river beach, the hunters from other tribes had almost begun to select their targets at this time and began to disperse to a wider area. Gradually, some of them could not distinguish the tribes clearly, and they could only see some figures chasing and running.