Chapter 41: Drying Salt
Because the primitive people here, the living environment is very bad, one or several people want to survive, it is basically impossible, so everyone is a clan as a unit, hundreds of people live together, in this way, everyone takes care of each other, hugs together, and fights against the harsh environment, so compared to later generations, everyone's status is still very equal, and primitive people have not yet produced the consciousness of enslaving others, so there is no slave here, and there is no slavery.
When a tribe develops to a certain extent, due to the continuous increase of the tribe, the tribe consumes more and more food every day, plus at this time, agriculture has not yet appeared, food basically relies on hunting and gathering, hunting and gathering is equivalent to exhausting the water and fishing, resulting in less and less food they get from around the tribe, in order to obtain more food sources, the tribe will go farther away to hunt and gather, and over time, it will touch the territory of other tribes, so the tribes often fight between each other because of food and territory, and the victorious tribe, under normal circumstances, will not slaughter or enslave the people of the defeated tribe, the people of the defeated tribe, usually two more choices, either choose to join the victorious tribe, or choose to join other nearby tribes.
If each tribe wants to be stronger, there must be more people to join the tribe, although there is one more mouth to eat, but the strength is also relatively speaking, stronger, so the people of the defeated tribe, after joining the new tribe, are not discriminated against because they are defeated, and, if you are strong enough, in the new tribe, you will also be respected.
However, not everyone on the defeated side can be lucky enough to join the new tribe, and the victorious side generally only accepts women and young and strong men, and those who are old, weak, sick and disabled have only one final fate, that is, to fend for themselves.
Of course, Fu Xi would not treat the captives of the Yan tribe so cruelly, he told these captives that as long as they wanted, the Long Snake Tribe would accept all the captives, and Fu Xi also showed these captives the strength of the Long Snake Tribe, and because the natural salt production of the Yan tribe is getting smaller and smaller, and the quality is getting worse and worse, resulting in less and less food in exchange for them, otherwise they would not be in a hurry and attack the Long Snake Tribe three times and twice, so these captives are finally willing to join the Long Snake Tribe, and they are also grateful to the Long Snake Tribe for their benevolence and righteousness, and they have said that after joining, they will make more efforts for the tribe。
Under the persuasion and explanation of Lü Wa, the chief finally acquiesced to the fact that the Long Snake tribe annexed the salt tribe, and also strongly supported Fu Xi's approach in Lü Wa, agreeing that the Long Snake tribe would accept all the captives of the salt tribe, and finally finalized the matter in the tribal discussion.
In order to let the people of the salt tribe sincerely join the long snake tribe, Fu Xi also persuaded the chief to agree to transport the soldiers who died in battle of the salt tribe to the long snake tribe for burial, this matter is not difficult, only need to open another cemetery at the foot of Fengli Mountain, specifically to bury the dead people of the salt tribe, so the chief agreed.
In the next two days, Fu Xi and Lu Au divided their work, Fu Xi took the men to Death Lake to study how to refine salt, and Lu Au took the women to make pottery.
Fuxi asked the people who originally had a salt tribe, and learned that there was very little rain in the area of Death Lake, and basically the sun was roasting and drying every day, so he decided to use the method of drying salt to refine salt, which could not only save time and effort, but also avoid cutting down a large number of trees as fuel, and the yield was also very high, although he had not dried salt, but the basic principle was still understood, after a few days of exploration and attempts, he finally figured out a set of procedures for drying salt, which was basically similar to the process of drying salt in later generations, which was nothing more than the salt field method, which was built on the flat tidal flat land of Death Lake, and the salt field was divided into two parts, namely the evaporation pond and the crystallization pondFirst of all, the salt water in the lake of death is introduced into the evaporation pool, after the sun, the water evaporates almost, and then the brine with high salt content is introduced into the crystallization pool, and continues to be sun-dried, and soon the brine is dried into a saturated solution of salt, and then the salt will gradually precipitate out of the salt, this salt is coarse salt, which can be eaten directly, if you want to get higher quality salt, you can manually remove impurities, then dilute, then sun-dry, re-crystallize, and then remove solid impurities, so repeated two or three times, you can get high-quality refined salt。
However, coarse salt has basically been able to meet the body's demand for salt, so Fu Xi did not bother to refine refined salt, because refining refined salt is time-consuming and laborious, and when he has the opportunity in the future, he will refine refined salt.
In order to avoid leaking the process of drying salt, the people involved in drying salt are the most loyal and most interested people in the tribe, and Fuxi refined thousands of catties of salt at one time, which is enough for the tribe to use for a long time, and then Fuxi destroyed all the salt-drying salt-drying fields, and restored them to their original appearance, and it is not very troublesome to build salt-drying fields, and the next time they refine salt, they can rebuild the salt-drying fields, so as to ensure that people from other tribes cannot get the process of salt-drying salt.
When Bai Huahua's salt was placed in front of the chief and others, these people were shocked, they didn't expect that there was such a snow-white salt in the sky, they had never seen it.
The chief stretched out his right hand tremblingly, took a grain of white salt, put it in his mouth and tasted it, the old face immediately shook violently, and even her breathing was much heavier, she raised her head and looked at Fu Xi with both eyes, the pair of cloudy eyes actually shone brightly, and the withered old face seemed to regain its youth again: "This...this...really salt, how did you do it?"
Xi was also curious to grab a few grains of salt and put them in her mouth, she soon tasted an unprecedented salty taste, and little stars of worship immediately appeared in her eyes, and an excited smile appeared on her face, jumping up and down and shouting: "It's really salt, Fuxi, you are so amazing!"
When the four elders heard this, they immediately grabbed a handful of salt and stuffed it into their mouths, Fu Xi wanted to stop it, but it was too late.
"Ahem, ahem, ahem, it's so salty, it's bitter, but I've never eaten such salty, so clean!"
One of the elders shouted excitedly, almost out of shape.
The other elders also shouted in flaps, their faces unable to hide their joy and excitement.
Fu Xi understood these gaffe elders very well, because these days, he had personally experienced the pain of tastelessness, and he deeply felt the beauty of salt, which he had never felt before, he smiled and explained to the chief: "Our previous tribe lived next to the salt lake, and we usually eat this kind of salt, as for the refining method, it was handed down by our ancestors!"
The chief excitedly took a handful of snow-white table salt, brought it to the end of his nose, and then took a deep breath of the smell of sodium chloride, which was somewhat pungent, but very charming, with these snow-white table salt, it would be even more delicious to eat those meat foods in the future.
Everyone else also grabbed some salt and put it in their mouths to taste, all of them jumped up excitedly, and even many people danced with their hands, especially those who originally had salt tribes, they couldn't believe that the lake of death, which they had always thought was losing its use value, could still refine such high-quality salt, how did Fuxi do it?