Chapter 761: A Single Wood Canoe
In the days before human beings were enlightened, giant trees in the forests grew wildly and towered into the sky.
Until the mountain torrents broke out, the big trees were knocked down and floated on the water. The humans who were swept into the torrent had no chance of survival. The fast-flowing water and the huge rocks rushing down at high speed were all deadly threats of death.
Only a very few lucky ones can climb onto trees in the water to escape and cross the river.
Gradually, humans realized that the giant trees could keep them afloat.
Later, humans developed more uses for the logs. They learned to use trees to actively cross dangerous rivers. However, using primitive trees was still very dangerous. They were slippery and easy to roll. People could not stand on the logs for a long time and might still be attacked by some dangerous creatures in the river.
So people learned a simpler method: tie several logs together with ropes, thus forming a small piece of floating ground that would not roll over and was safer.
But such rafts can easily fall apart , and only people with superb skills can master a good enough raft-making method.
It was not until after a long period of river crossing practice that a clear realization emerged: as long as a piece of wood was flattened and hollowed out, it could be made into a sturdy, durable and easy-to-operate means of transportation - a canoe.
“One tree makes a canoe, and that’s how the canoe came to be.”
As the second big tree fell to the ground, Bifang sat on the tree, breathing slightly.
Using an axe to chop down a huge tree with a diameter of more than half a meter is quite physically demanding. It took an hour just to chop down the tree.
"Some people record that people in Fuxi's time mainly used rafts, and boats did not appear until Huangdi's time. In other words, rafts came first and boats came later. Of course, there is no way to verify whether this statement about which came first is true or false."
"Canoes appeared at least 7,000 years ago. In 2002, a canoe wreckage was unearthed at the Kuahuqiao site in Xiaoshan, Zhejiang. The wreckage was more than five meters long and half a meter wide, dating back about 8,000 to 7,000 years."
Canoe wreckage is very rare. The wood is buried in the soil and is extremely easy to decay and rot under the action of microorganisms.
"The original object is a whole piece of Masson pine wood, which was first charred by fire and then processed with a stone adze. The whole section of the canoe is well preserved and is one of the oldest canoes in the world."
What is a stone adze?
"A stone adze is a kind of polished stone tool. It is rectangular and has a single-sided blade. Some stone adzes have a piece of the top ground off, which is called a 'stone adze with a section'. It can be used for chopping and digging soil with a wooden handle. It was a typical tool for making canoes at that time."
"This tool is one of the most distinctive production tools in the vast coastal area of eastern China. It has been unearthed in large quantities in many sites, including the Hemudu site. It can be used in the manufacture and production of boats. It has also been found in many places around the world, becoming one of the important physical evidences for exploring the migration of early humans across the ocean."
[Historian Fang, online]
[Another wasted day of study]
[Although I don’t know what the use of learning it is, I will learn it first]
[I can brag about it when I chat with my friends in the future (laughs)]
After resting for a while and regaining some strength, Bifang stood up and looked at the two big trees lying across the ground.
The visual effect of the palm trees after they fell to the ground is even stronger. These two trees may not only be over fifteen meters tall, but even close to twenty meters!
Bifang swung the axe again and cut off the extra branches.
"The structure of the early canoes was very simple. They were usually made by taking a grooved piece of rotten wood and tidying up the inside, or by cutting a tree trunk into a groove and then cutting off the branches and twigs outside."
"The main tools used to make canoes at that time were stone knives and stone axes. It was difficult to make a canoe with such simple tools, especially to dig grooves on a whole tree trunk. So fire had to be used when making a canoe."
After cutting off all the extra branches, Bifang dug a hole next to the two trees.
The tree was too big for him to move by himself, so he had to make it on the spot.
The resort manager had no objection to this and instead welcomed it.
" It's not as simple as using tools to chop a groove into a canoe. The wood is hard and it's hard to control our strength when chopping. So we might accidentally miss a groove and then all our efforts would be wasted. If we use small tools to chop little by little, it would take too long."
"Moreover, canoes were generally invented in the late Paleolithic period, not in the Iron Age. The tools used were basically stone, and using stone to carve wood was extremely inefficient."
"The method of making a canoe at that time was to apply wet mud to the outside of the whole wood, burn the dry wood in the middle of the wood into charcoal, and then chisel it away with a stone tool. In this way, the whole wood was chiseled inwards layer by layer with a stone tool, and finally a canoe was carved out."
Bifang dug two large holes on the land nearby with a shovel, piled branches in one of the holes, and then used flint to light a fire to make a bonfire.
The other one brought water to make a puddle, then poured soil into it and mixed it into mud.
He also planned to burn it first and then cut it.
"Of course, this is a more common method, but there is also a less common method that is unique to the local Aboriginal people of Australia."
"Compared to the method I just described, the method used by the local Australian Aboriginals is much more lightweight and imaginative."
"They would first find a thick tree, use a stone knife to break the bark at the bottom of the tree in a circular pattern, then break the bark high up in the trunk in a circular pattern. The distance up and down depends on the length of the canoe they want to make, and then they would strip the bark off in one piece."
"Put the peeled bark in water and soak it for a few days to allow it to swell fully, then roast it over a fire to soften it. Fold one end of the roasted bark in half."
"The roasted bark is often very elastic, so you need to find two small trees with trunks growing side by side and use them to clamp the folded end of the bark."
"In order to prevent the other parts from becoming narrow due to one end being folded in half, you can use a short stick to support it. After a few days, the shape of the clamped bark is fixed, and then you can use a stone knife to drill holes along the edge and sew the front and back ends together with rattan, and a canoe is successfully made."
"The soaked bark absorbs a lot of water and is very heavy. It often takes the combined strength of several adults to successfully build a canoe."
"Of course, I can't choose this method. On the one hand, I'm alone and it's too hard to do. On the other hand, it takes a long time. Whether it's peeling the bark and soaking it, or fixing the shape and then stitching it, it takes a lot of time."
"If there is a leak somewhere, all the previous efforts will be wasted, and the cost is too high, so I still choose the simplest and most common firing method."
Bifang smeared mud on the palm trees.
Everyone is looking forward to it.
