Volume 3: Confrontation! The Run of Civilization Chapter 558 The Beginning of the Theory of Evolution
In the early morning, puffs of green smoke began to rise from the dense primeval forest. The team called "Indian Independence Army" led by Tiya began to eat breakfast in circles of 20 to 30 people.
Looking at the thick smoke that was shrouding the camp due to the burning of fresh trees rich in water, Zhu Shengmiao frowned and said, "I am a top student from the Daming Royal Military Academy. Although I am a businessman and have no idea about fighting, it will be easy to be exposed if you do this."
"Yes, but what can I do? We Indians don't have the technology to preserve food. Here, the potatoes are ready to be roasted. Eat them while they are hot."
"Eating barbecue early in the morning..."
"So what do you want, porridge? We don't grow rice in America."
"Hehe." Zhu Shengmiao smiled evilly: "According to the professors of Fangshan School, potatoes have enough starch, but lack protein. Long-term consumption of potatoes as the staple food is not good for intelligence. In my opinion, it is okay for men to drink porridge in the morning. For women, the best breakfast is two eggs, a fried dough stick, and finally a bowl of soy milk. In this way, protein and energy are all available."
"Zhu Shengmiao, you idiot! Don't think that I can't understand what you mean just because I've only learned Chinese for a few years."
"What did I say? What did you think of? Oh, how can you have such a dirty mind! Come on, stop it. I have something serious to tell you."
"you say!"
"I am happy to see that your team has expanded so much this time, but I am also a little worried. The simplest problem is that with more people, there are more mouths to feed, and the food reserves needed by the troops will also increase accordingly. And you and I both know that the Spaniards will sooner or later send elite troops from their homeland, and then you will no longer have the advantage in equipment. In this way, future battles will be very difficult, and as for food, in many cases, you absolutely cannot make a big fire and cook like today."
"What you said makes sense , but what should we do?" Diya's beautiful big eyes rolled around. "How about you bring me some canned food from the Ming Army when you go back this time? I've eaten that stuff when I was training in the field at the academy. It's ready to eat once it's opened, and you can eat while marching. It saves time, and it's high in salt and oil, so it doesn't make you hungry. To be honest, I've wanted that stuff for a long time."
"My Ming Dynasty still has such a thing? Oh, you are not a warrior, so you don't know. Okay, I'll make a note of this matter and handle it as soon as I return." Zhu Shengmiao put his arm around the other's waist and said, "But it will take at least half a year for me to go back and forth. It's not enough to help in an emergency. You have to consider the issue of food reserves now."
"I..." Seeing the Indians around her looking at her, Tia gently slapped Zhu Shengmiao's hand away: " When I was studying at the Military Academy, I took all the elective courses to learn shooting and fighting, and I didn't attend the logistics support courses much."
"Oh, so... never mind, I'll stay a few more days and teach you how to make dried potatoes and bacon."
"real?"
Seeing the surprise that the woman showed spontaneously, Zhu Shengmiao's heart could not help but be moved: "Really. But in this case, the original plan will have to be slightly adjusted. Wait for me, I will go and discuss it with the other two."
The so-called other two, of course, is because Zhu Shengmiao's team is not purely for the Indian Independence Army to transport weapons and ammunition. They also have a mission, which is to carry Zheng Guangyuan and Xu Xiake, two great travelers, to America for field research.
In fact, since he was granted the title of Imperial Attendant in 1620 and had Xu Xiake as his partner, Zheng Guangyuan had been traveling around for six years. In the past six years, they had traveled all over East Asia and Southeast Asia, and even visited Mongolia and Xinjiang, which had been included in the Ming Dynasty's rule not long ago.
In the past six years, thanks to Zhu Youdong's strong support, the two had no shortage of funds and various experimental equipment. Not only that, Zhu Youdong personally ordered Liu Shimin, the eunuch of the Imperial Horse Administration, to select 60 elite soldiers and 30 Fangshan students who were interested in natural history to serve as their guards and assistants.
However, as the investigation time extended, he visited more places and gained more knowledge. Zheng Guangyuan's idea of compiling an encyclopedia became more and more daunting: there are so many unknown things in this world, and it may be impossible to see even one ten-thousandth of them in his lifetime, so how can he compile an encyclopedia?
After communicating with Zhu Youdong through letters, Zhu Youdong suggested that they should not edit the encyclopedia for the time being, but edit "Botany" and "Zoology". He also defined the classification method of phylum, class, order, family, genus and species for the two people.
Of course, even if you want to revise these two books, it will take a long time: if you discover a new plant, it will take at least one to two years to understand its properties, right? In this regard, Zhu Youdong's suggestion is: As a pioneer, you should first achieve breadth. Depth is something that your descendants will continue to work hard on based on your foundation.
Therefore, adhering to this concept, the two people led the team to many places in the past six years and discovered many new species. After they did a period of initial work in East Asia, it happened that Zhu Shengmiao's fleet was going to the Americas for the third time, so the two left some assistants in the newly established biological laboratory in Fangshan to continue research and observation, while they took more than 30 team members and followed Zhu Shengmiao to South America.
When Zhu Shengmiao came to the outside of the two people's tent, he heard a heated argument coming from inside the tent.
"Ridiculous! It's really ridiculous! My dear brother Su Hua, because of you, I have traveled across most of Asia over the years, fulfilling my life's ambition, so I am very grateful to you. But your point of view now is really ridiculous!"
"Brother Zhenzhi, I just made a guess, why are you reacting so strongly?"
"How can I not be so excited? Listen to what you just said? Different kinds of animals are likely to have certain kinship, and may even have evolved from a certain kind of animal? What kind of nonsense is this?"
"I don't think it's a weird theory. You see, after we came to South America, the most common thing we saw in this rain forest was various frogs. Although these South American frogs have different shapes, sizes, and living habits, we found after dissecting them that their physiological structure is similar to that of frogs in our Ming Dynasty and even East Asia. So, we can be sure that they are frogs.
But, although they are frogs, their limbs and even torso are somewhat different from the frogs in my Daming Pond. In my opinion, these special structures make them more adaptable to survival in the rainforest.
So the question is, how come there are such similar frogs in East Asia and America, separated by the vast Pacific Ocean? If they have no common ancestor, then what causes them to look so similar? And the differences between them are all in line with their various living environments, which shows that it is possible for organisms to adapt to the environment and continue to evolve. "
"Brother, if you say that living things can evolve, then why haven't we humans shown any obvious evolution over the past hundreds or thousands of years?"
"How can there be no such thing? According to what I heard when I was studying in Fangshan, in the pre-Qin period, the average height of Chinese men was less than 1.5 meters, but now, men in the Ming Dynasty are generally around 1.6 meters tall. Isn't this evolution? Besides, we don't know how long this world has existed, and the time for biological evolution is estimated to be tens of thousands of years. Therefore, a few hundred or a thousand years is too short for biological evolution."
Seeing Xu Xiake still unconvinced, Zheng Guangyuan said, "Brother Zhenzhi, how about this? We are not only studying frogs here. We are in the Indian camp right now, so we have plenty of manpower. Let them capture animals unique to this place, especially snakes. Then we can study these animals. I firmly believe that many of the animals here are similar to those in my Ming Dynasty, but they are also different. As long as we study them in depth, we will surely find that these differences are due to the different living environments, and they have evolved to adapt to the local environment!"
“Hahaha~”
"Who's laughing outside?"
"Gentlemen, this is me."
Zhu Shengmiao opened the tent curtain and walked in with a smile: "I was just about to inform you that we may have to stay here for a few more days. I was worried that you two gentlemen would be unhappy, but now it seems that it's just right. That, Mr. Zheng, there is no problem , I will ask their leader to arrange it for you later."
"Haha, we are all very relieved about this. Because Boss Zhu is a real talent. He not only makes people's money, but also their bodies."
"Ahem, ahem." Zhu Shengmiao smiled awkwardly and said, "Mr. Xu, you are joking. I was just being emotional and not being polite."
The civil society in the Ming Dynasty was actually very open at that time, so Xu Xiake and Zheng Guangyuan did not mind Zhu Shengmiao's behavior. However, men are very amused by these things. After listening to Zhu Shengmiao's explanation, the two did not speak, but just squinted their eyes and stared at him and smiled.
"Ahem." Zhu Shengmiao, feeling uncomfortable being stared at, quickly changed the subject: "Mr. Zheng, I just happened to hear your brilliant remarks outside the tent, and I found them very interesting. This can be a big topic, right? What name are you going to give it?"
"Eh? Boss Zhu, this is a good suggestion." After thinking seriously for a while, Zheng Guangyuan clapped his hands and said, "I got it. Let's call it the theory of evolution!"
