I am a Primitive Man
Chapter 24 – The tribe’s name is Green Sparrow
“Rabbit.”
Han Cheng pointed to the two black characters on the stone tablet, gestured to the rabbit Elder Brother had brought back today, and began to pronounce.
“Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit.”
After some time, the children, who had become accustomed to this routine, followed Han Cheng in repeating it three times.
Energetic and loud, they already had a bit of the appearance of elementary school students in later generations.
“Achoo!”
A floating little feather took advantage of Han Cheng inhaling and slipped into his nostrils. He couldn’t help but let out a loud sneeze.
Then…
Then, the cave resounded with three synchronized sneezes, “Achoo, Achoo, Achoo.”
Seeing these students earnestly learning, Han Cheng couldn’t help but feel speechless.
This scene was quite common in the cave, and people no longer find it strange.
The current situation in the cave was that those making gloves and socks were sitting together, doing their work while watching the Divine Child teaching the children the language and writing of the gods.
They also occasionally followed along and learned a few sentences.
Of course, most didn’t learn from Divine Child but rather from their children.
After learning the language of the gods, they would pass it on to their elders and relatives. This was a task assigned to these children by Han Cheng.
In this way, these children could consolidate what they had learned and reduce Han Cheng’s burden, preventing him from having to do everything himself.
People are different, and everyone has their preferences and strengths. Just talking about recognizing characters, the one who learned the fastest and best wasn’t the seemingly agile Elder Brother’s son, Hei Wa (Black Baby), but a boy named Stone, who was only about five or six years old. He is the youngest son of Junior Brother, Sandy.
Each time new characters were taught, it didn’t take long for Stone to read and write them accurately, and his pronunciation was very authentic. This made Han Cheng feel like he was teaching not primitive people but modern elementary school students.
Of course, it wasn’t the kind of elementary school students who were good at playing mobile games.
Han Cheng’s education was far from being as strict as in later generations. They could do their things as long as they learned what he taught. Therefore, Stone became an object of envy for many people.
With punishment and Stone setting an example on the side, the other children noticeably accelerated their learning.
Of course, Han Cheng knew the principle of being too greedy and not chewing well. He only taught five characters daily, commonly used Chinese characters, totaling just over three thousand. Teaching all of them wouldn’t be too difficult.
Han Cheng gave Stone and Hei Wa names based on some of their characteristics.
For example, Hei Wa was dark-skinned, and Stone looked sturdy, like a little stone.
Now, Han Cheng finally knew the name of the tribe.
This was something he found out after carefully observing the totem pole.
On the totem pole, the most prominent figure was a somewhat abstract bird, which also looked like a chicken. This was the god worshipped by the tribe.
Knowing the truth, Han Cheng couldn’t help but shed tears. He couldn’t help but twitch his face when he realized that the god he had been waving the big flag for was either a bird or a chicken.
Now that he was called the Divine Son, what had he become?
Birdman?
Eggman?
Chickenman?
Egg?
He must change the name.
After discovering the truth, Han Cheng immediately made up his mind to change the name of the tribe’s totem pole.
Even if he didn’t want to involve himself personally, just being referred to as the Bird Tribe or Chicken Tribe by the tribe was enough to make Han Cheng uncomfortable.
After much thought, without changing the tribe’s totem, Han Cheng decided to rename it to “Green Sparrow.”
Although fundamentally still a bird, it sounded much more high-end than just a bird or chicken, at least several dozen floors higher.
The totem in the tribe was a bird, which was evident not only from the bird-shaped image on the totem pole but also from the fact that men, women, and children in the tribe liked to decorate their hair with collected beautiful feathers.
As the weather gradually warmed up, when Han Cheng taught the tribe’s students to count from one to a hundred, the snow outside had completely melted.
The ice in the river had also melted a lot. Han Cheng specifically instructed them not to go on the ice to catch fish to prevent any accidents.
With more melting ice and more places for fish to breathe, it was no longer as easy as in winter to spearfish effortlessly.
But there was no need to worry about the tribe’s food supply because, over the winter, the cave had stored a lot of fish, to the point that some had already spoiled and needed to be discarded.
And with the thawing of ice and snow and the arrival of spring, Elder Brother and the others could go hunting again.
With the supplement of meat, the importance of fish, which was not as delicious as meat in relative terms, wasn’t as significant as in winter.
As the weather warmed up, small grasses emerged from the clumps of dry grass, peeking out with their yellow and thin heads, mischievously observing the world.
The trees, silent throughout the winter, sprouted buds. Some eager ones even bloomed.
The entire world seemed to come alive all at once.
The happiest were the children who had spent the winter in the cave. They were like young foals let out of their pens, leaping and jumping around in joy.
Laughter echoed in the woods in front of the cave.
Of course, for safety reasons, they couldn’t run too far and were limited to the area in front of the cave.
But that was enough to make them happy.
Shaman would sometimes come out, basking in the sun, too.
With the increase in meat consumption, salt accumulation in their bodies increased, and everyone’s stamina had somewhat recovered. However, eating salt directly would have been better, but Elder Brother and the others didn’t know what salt was. Also, due to his young age, Han Cheng couldn’t travel with the hunting party to different places, so the matter of salt had to be temporarily set aside until later.
Nevertheless, Han Cheng was still very happy, not only because he could step outside the cave and breathe fresh air freely but also because he could finally do something he had imagined many times before—pottery.
Yes, pottery.
It was difficult to sip hot water at this time.
Whether bronze, iron, or aluminum, they were all nonexistent. The quickest way for Han Cheng to have hot water was to make pottery.
Whether it was a pottery bowl, basin, jar, or some oddly shaped pottery, as long as it was pottery and could hold water, Han Cheng dared to put it over the fire to boil water.
After witnessing the horrifying infant mortality rate in the tribe, Han Cheng felt it was necessary to make pottery and promote drinking boiled water throughout the tribe.
Even just the ability to kill parasite eggs would be enough.