Chapter 757: Building a Ship Without Wood
The hot lava flowed down the streets and hillsides, and rushed into the sky with huge columns of fire and thick smoke.
Volcanic eruptions are catastrophic, destroying homes, cities and entire civilizations as molten lava engulfs everything it touches in flames.
This is how most people imagine a volcanic eruption, with destruction accompanying its appearance.
Yet nature is balanced.
Volcanoes are so violent and destructive, and because of this, they give rise to some of the richest and most lush ecosystems in the world.
These ecosystems are able to not only survive, but thrive in the aftermath of these fiery blasts from the Earth.
There are three giant volcanic craters on the more than 100 square kilometers of land on Easter Island. The largest one, the Ranogu crater, is about 1,600 meters in diameter, more than 200 meters deep, and more than 600 meters deep. It is an important source of drinking water for the islanders.
But such a volcanic island is actually a complete grassland, and there are no trees taller than 3 meters on the island.
This is also the origin of most of Easter Island's "mystery".
If you have seen the construction of the pyramids, you will know that erecting the giant stone statues required a large amount of wood for transportation and for lifting the stones.
However, botanists only found 47 species of herbs on the island, and the rest were shrubs. These trees and plants were obviously not suitable for transporting the stone statues.
So some statements such as "aliens" became popular.
"This is of course the explanation that marketing accounts are most keen on." Bifang shrugged. For explorers like him who travel all over the world, the so-called alien ruins are simply nonsense.
"The reason there are no trees on Easter Island is because of fishing in the dry pond. This is the best example of the game between humans and the environment in evolution."
"The only difference is that in this case, the indigenous people of Easter Island - and perhaps humanity as well - failed miserably. Not almost, but miserably."
【Humanity is completely defeated?】
[How did you lose? Please give details]
[My blind guess is that excessive logging caused environmental damage, which could not be restored after exceeding a certain level, leading to the extinction of a large number of people on the island]
[I traveled back from one hour ago, and the prophet upstairs was killed]
"As for how you were defeated, don't worry about it. Just look over there."
Bifang stopped and pointed into the distance. After walking for nearly twenty minutes, he finally saw a small forest in his sight.
As expected, the trees were short and quite neat.
But it doesn’t matter, Bifang doesn’t need to build a big boat, he just needs a single-person raft, and a three-meter-high tree is enough.
Bifang pulled out a series of tools from his backpack and piled them at his feet.
There are saws, axes, and even planes, all of which are quite simple production tools. All of them are produced by the system and the quality is guaranteed.
"I will use these tools before the official crossing to improve the quality of the raft or boat. Once I go out to sea, I will be traveling light."
[Congratulations, Fang Shen finally got to use the tool. ]
Transition from the Stone Age to the Iron Age
[It’s over. Fang Shen has used modern tools. My youth is over.]
[Fast forward to hammering out the nuclear warhead]
【Small warhead, made by a master! 】
Easter Island is very large, but there are not many types of trees on the island. Most of them are palm trees, and they are very short. The few that are larger still feel a little lacking.
"For shipbuilding, the lighter and tougher the wood, the better. It should be hard and corrosion-resistant. Common fir and pine are both good materials, but people often have to learn to adapt to local conditions."
"Many islands have a fairly uniform tree population, and most of them, like Easter Island, have lots of palm trees, which can actually be used to build boats."
“For example, in Thailand, many villages still retain the traditional craft of building canoes with palm trees.”
Bifang walked around the grove, trying to pick out suitable trees. They didn't have to be very tall , but they had to be wide enough to at least accommodate one person.
He planned to build a canoe first.
However, the palm trees that are more than three meters high are really not good enough...
After walking around, Bifang felt that the trees were too small to be used as a canoe. At most, he could cut down a piece and then take the appropriate part to make a raft.
"Let's wait and see, and then look somewhere else."
Helplessly, Bifang had to give up and go to other places on Easter Island.
"Alas, the current situation is the aftermath of the initial defeat."
Bifang continued the previous topic.
The audience also pricked up their ears.
“There were trees on Easter Island, and they were lush forests.”
"According to the Rongerongwen records of the natives of Easter Island, the first inhabitants of Easter Island were a group of people who were exiled from other islands in the Polynesian Islands. They brought chickens, taro, bananas and sugar cane on their boats. There were seven people leading them. After many days of sailing, they luckily discovered this island."
"After landing on the island, we found that it was a place with lush forests, large tracts of tall palm trees, and many animals in the forest. There were three volcanoes on the island, but fortunately they were all extinct."
"This apparently rich place attracted seven people. The only regret is that the temperature here is a bit low, so there are no coral reefs in the nearby sea. No coral reefs means no fish will settle here, and without fish there will be no fish to eat ."
The residents of the Polynesian Islands are all sea dwellers and do not have sufficient conditions to develop agriculture, so they can only rely on the sea for their livelihood.
The lack of fish is quite fatal, but it doesn't matter much because there are other things to eat on Easter Island, namely dolphins and seabirds.
"Dolphins generally live in the deep sea. The deep here does not refer to the vertical depth, but the horizontal depth, which means it is far from the shore, in the inland sea, so places like Dolphin Bay are actually quite rare."
[Dolphin Bay was whipped again]
[I heard that the person in charge last time has resigned]
【What's the point of resigning? 】
[I guess they must have bowed and apologized.]
"Although the dolphins are in the deep sea, don't forget that the first inhabitants of Easter Island were exiled from other islands 2,000 kilometers away. Navigation technology is their forte, and there are so many tall palm trees on the island that can be used to build large boats."
"The rope can be made from the fiber of a shrub of the Tilia family on the island. The fruits of the big palm trees here are edible. Every year when the fruits are ripe, they cannot be eaten, so they are brewed into wine. The sap of the tree is sweet and can be eaten as syrup."
"After building the big boat, they went to catch dolphins. The birds on the island had never seen humans before. So when the Rapanui people came towards them with their knives sharpened, these stupid birds came forward curiously."
“Everything that follows is predictable.”
