This bottleneck is not just purely technical, but is reflected in many aspects, and some cannot even be broken.

The first is the driving force for innovation.

The current technological innovation of "Dongyang Castle" is entirely dependent on the personal promotion of the protagonist.

Other ants have been living in this way for countless generations, and it can be said that apart from a few advances such as the use of fire and the establishment of warfare, the social structure and lifestyle of ants today have not changed much from their ancestors millions of years ago.

And the big-headed ants, including the males with higher IQs, don't think there's anything wrong with their current lives. Although the protagonist's innovation has brought a lot of progress to "Dongyang City", at least all the ants have more meat. But most of the ants are still at peace with what they encounter, and now they are living a good life, and they continue to live their original lives and continue to improve their lives? That's not necessary!

The protagonist can only think of one word to describe the mentality of these ants - get by.

Therefore, in the entire "Dongyang City", except for the protagonist, there is not a single ant who wants to actively seek technological progress and improve life.

Whenever I think about this, the protagonist feels like a loner.

The protagonist will also unconsciously think about the big-headed ant who used fire first, and what kind of mentality he used to support him to bring the fire back to the main nest, and then let the other ants accept the existence of fire.

The protagonist has also thought of replacing independent innovation with other ways.

For example, the protagonist orders the secretary to lead a group of workers to improve the production of pottery, which is a thorough way to promote innovation through executive orders.

The ants can be meticulous in fulfilling the protagonist's commands. However, work such as scientific and technological research and development is not something that can be completed only by hard work, but requires creative thinking.

The ants lack this kind of pioneering thinking, so the protagonist has to make his own experimental plan. For example, he asked them to constantly adjust the composition of the clay, add minerals such as talc to it, adjust the proportion, adjust the furnace temperature, etc., and then experiment with the final product.

This kind of experiment is not so much an innovation, but a step-by-step operation according to the arrangement of the protagonist. But that's it, it's already the biggest achievement that the protagonist can make the ants innovate on their own.

The only thing that comforts the protagonist is that the secretary has a certain openness, and she is able to find out the rules according to the experimental arrangement made by the protagonist, and make simple suggestions accordingly. This is the embodiment of logical thinking ability.

The second bottleneck is intellectual.

Among the big-headed ants, the vast majority of ants have very low intelligence, which is much lower than that of humans in primitive societies.

Speaking of the aforementioned creative thinking, neither soldier ants nor worker ants have this ability (the only exception is Xiao Mi, parasitic ants also have a higher intelligence performance of worker ants).

Soldier and worker ants are intelligent enough to do the tasks that the nest requires them to do, such as gathering food, repairing nests, and fighting foreign wars, and they can also follow the orders of the males.

But if they are expected to have any initiative, it is impossible. For example, the protagonist can command them to hunt a prey, which both soldier ants and worker ants can do diligently. But if they were to do something like catching prey alive and then raising it that they had never done before, they would certainly not be able to do it unless the order was broken down into many steps, each of which was understood by the soldier and worker ants.

Not all ants in the nest have such intelligence, like rolling, Rambo Fei, public security and other male ants, their intelligence is no worse than that of primitive humans. Male ants have the abilities that intelligent beings must have: perception, memory, understanding, association, emotion, logic, discrimination, calculation, analysis, judgment, decision, etc.

The female ant or queen, according to the protagonist's feelings and judgment, has an IQ similar to that of the male.

With the IQ of male and female ants, if properly guided, the protagonist believes that they can complete complex scientific research, innovation and other work just like individual humans.

However, this is also the result of idealization, in fact, since the male ants have always had a high status in the ant world, they care a lot about this status and honor.

Therefore, the males are keen to be the ruling class, they like to participate in the war as commanders, but they want them to improve their crafts or agricultural skills, they will feel that this is the work of soldier ants or worker ants, and they will rather die than obey. Like before, the protagonist wanted the Flyhawk to be a messenger, but he sternly refused.

The male ant can't go this way, and the protagonist has also thought about how to improve the IQ of ordinary worker ants and soldier ants, after all, there has been a precedent for a small secret.

However, this involves the difference between male, female, soldier and worker ants, and it is unclear what factors are responsible for the difference in status, size, strength, and IQ between the four ants.

But obviously, at least the difference between the IQs of the four can be compensated, and Xiao Mi is a good example. And the parasitic ants can also cultivate intelligent pale gold large worker ants and large worker ants, and even domesticate parasitic dung beetles, which are not stupid at all than male ants. The protagonist is now bent on exploring the secrets.

The third bottleneck that is difficult to overcome is the disadvantage of the ant's own body shape.

Humans are very suitable for evolution into intelligent creatures, and they have a moderate height and weight.

If a sapient being is too big, it needs to consume too much food and energy. This will bring several serious problems: first, you must spend more time foraging, and lack free time to think and create; Second, the size of the community is inevitably small, and it is difficult to develop a division of labor, and it is impossible to accelerate the development of society.

And even if the body size is too small, even if the body is very intelligent, it will not be able to use the intelligence to create a very good competitive advantage for itself in the food chain. For example, no matter how strong ants are, they can't withstand the trampling of an elephant.

The reason why ants can develop civilization in this world is that the protagonist thinks that there are no more advanced and huge creatures in this world than insects. Traveling to the present, the protagonist has never seen mammals, birds, etc., and he believes that insects are the highest life forms in this world.

Without the threat of large animals, ants can become the most intelligent and advantageous species in such a small size.

But being too small has many disadvantages for the development of civilization.

For example, when using fire, an epoch-making resource, ants have to spend a lot of time and energy to maintain the fuel for the flame, and a person can easily collect a large bundle of firewood, but ants have to use a lot of labor and resources to do the same thing.

And projects such as opening roads, which change the natural terrain to a certain extent, are almost impossible tasks for the ants.

This bottleneck is even more terrifying than the first two, as the protagonist can't think of any way to overcome it.