I am a Primitive Man
Chapter 8 – Embarrassing, being taught how to read by primitive people…
With food in his belly and a series of uninterrupted sleep, Han Cheng’s spirit had improved a lot.
He stood there, observing everything in the cave like a sculpture.
The adults in the cave had already left, but the tools they took with them had changed significantly compared to yesterday. There were fewer clubs, stones, and bone knives, but many more animal skins.
Moreover, today five or six half-grown children accompanied them, indicating that today’s activities were not very dangerous.
Because they used animal skins to wrap the fruits, Han Cheng felt they were most likely going for a collective harvest.
Han Cheng used a rough method to judge whether primitive people were adults, which was their height.
The people in the tribe were much shorter compared to modern standards. After his anxious visual estimate, most women were between 1.4 and 1.5 meters, and men were taller, mostly between 1.45 and 1.6 meters. Those shorter than this were all underage.
This wasn’t just a random guess by him. He had seen some underage primitive people staying in the cave who, when they had nothing to do, would stand next to a stone wall in the cave for comparison.
Two horizontal lines were drawn on that stone wall, with the higher one approximately 1.45 meters and the lower one around 1.4 meters.
Especially today, several underage people selected to go out were measured in front of these lines before being allowed to go out. This scene made Han Cheng even more convinced of his speculation.
The old primitive man continued his tireless work diligently, and many new pictorial-like characters had been added to the blank slate.
Han Cheng had always believed that pictographs were the earliest and most vivid form of writing, and this was indeed the case.
Every stroke and line in it was derived from life, unlike alphabetical writing, which was truly abstract.
As his thoughts went here, Han Cheng suddenly remembered a news report he had seen before he transmitted. It said that a scholar in the Magnesium country concluded that for China to completely internationalize, it should abandon Chinese characters and switch to alphabetical writing.
Han Cheng wanted to pull that so-called expert over and open his head to see if it was filled with shit.
Han Cheng could roughly understand some things the old primitive man depicted. If he guessed correctly, what he recorded these two days was his origin.
The first character, or rather, a painting, was a large oval with many fine slashes in the middle and several thick lines in the middle of the slashes. Connecting it to the scene he saw when he first woke up, Han Cheng thought this recording was about the phenomenon in the sky before he appeared.
This painting or character represented the weather at that time, with dark clouds covering the sky and lightning tearing through the dark clouds.
The second painting was also the same sky, with dark clouds and lightning, but the difference was that something else had appeared under this sky. From the top to the bottom of the drawing, it could be seen that this thing had descended from the sky.
The third painting was…
The old primitive man recorded it in great detail, including what the others told him when they returned.
Looking at these, Han Cheng suddenly understood why the big brother stopped the second brother from eating him when he first saw himself and why the old primitive man personally came and took care of him.
All of this was recorded in these records, his mysterious origin.
The big brother and the others were hunting nearby, and the weather suddenly changed. They witnessed him falling from the sky, and later, unable to contain their curiosity, they came over.
The big brother stopped the second brother from eating him because of his strange origin.
When he pretended to be dead, he had already fooled them. They came the next day because they had told the old primitive man about their discovery.
Through these two days of observation, Han Cheng had confirmed that the old primitive man was indeed the shaman of this unnamed tribe.
The shaman held a high position in the tribe not only because he could read and write, heal diseases, and possess a wealth of knowledge, making him the tribe’s wise man, but also because the shaman could communicate with the spirits, acting as a messenger sent by the gods.
It was precise because he held a sacred position that, upon learning about his miraculous origin, the shaman tirelessly had the elder brother, and others take him to the place where he fell, personally inspecting it. They brought him back when they discovered he was a living being.
Han Cheng couldn’t help but smile wryly at the unexpected twists in the story of being picked up by primitive people.
Thinking back to that night when wild beasts roamed nearby, but none approached to eat him, he initially believed that these primordial bigwigs were picky eaters and didn’t like the taste of his charred meat. Now, he realized it might not be that simple.
The most likely reason was the thunder and lightning that accompanied his appearance.
Although Han Cheng was not aware of it at the time, from the shaman’s recorded information and the scene of ashes he saw when he woke up, as well as his current charred and immobile state, it could be inferred how powerful the thunderstorm was at that moment.
Fear of thunder is an animal instinct, and these primordial bigwigs were no exception. Even though the thunder had disappeared later, these sensitive beings could still feel the lingering breath of the thunder.
Unexpectedly, he managed to escape and be saved from the mouths of wild beasts due to these reasons.
Writing became tedious for the shaman, so he took a short break, turning his head to see Han Cheng deeply pondering over the characters he had drawn. A smile appeared on the shaman’s face – the smile of someone confident in their abilities.
After observing Han Cheng for a while and realizing his fascination, the shaman turned his body slightly, pointing to the topmost character, and said, “#$^&*”.
Coming out of his contemplation, Han Cheng looked at the elderly shaman with some confusion.
“#$^&*,” the shaman repeated, pointing to the character at the top.
Han Cheng puzzled, tried pronouncing it silently in his mind. His head was confused, not understanding this “#$^&*.”
He blinked.
Seeing Han Cheng’s attention was fully captivated, the shaman smiled again, pointing to the character and saying, “#$^&*.”
Han Cheng inwardly sighed at his embarrassment. He never thought that after transmigrating, instead of educating the ancients with his future knowledge, he ended up being educated by them. This was done by ancient people from the Stone Age.
Criticizing aside, he still needed to learn the language. It would be quite uncomfortable if he eventually broke free from his current state and couldn’t communicate with the people here. After all, communication couldn’t rely solely on gestures and confirming eye expressions.