Why did the ancestors of the tribe place so many boxes here? It wasn't just a day or two away from the tribe. If there weren't any dangers in the forest, it wouldn't be a long distance. However, there were many dangers in between. Shao Xuan knew that even if it was a thousand years ago, there wouldn't be much difference.
Shao Xuan walked over with a torch. The boxes were tied with some straw ropes, probably to prevent the lids from falling off during transportation. However, if one took a closer look, it was obvious that some of the boxes were tied up in a more complicated way. Even the straw ropes used to tie them were different. The straw ropes were tied into knots and painted with different colors. The knot in the middle was the symbol of a shaman.
As for the other boxes, the straw ropes used were relatively ordinary. However, it couldn't be said that the things in these boxes weren't important. Since the ancestors moved them here, they must have important preservation value.
Shao Xuan planned to take a look at the special boxes with knots. However, he found that the knots were very difficult to untie. The ropes were also very strong. It didn't seem like they had been there for a long time.
Cut them off? Burn them off?
Forget it. If the people in the tribe knew about this, they would definitely have opinions and think that he was disrespectful to the ancestors.
Putting the boxes with complicated knots aside, Shao Xuan turned to look at the other boxes that were tied with more ordinary methods. He raised his hand to untie the knots, but Shao Xuan only touched them with his hand. The straw ropes that tied the boxes broke and shattered into powder.
He pinched the other parts of the straw ropes and found that they were the same. Perhaps because too much time had passed, the straw ropes had lost their original tenacity and were no longer strong.
The previous boxes had a higher density, so the ropes used were different. Now that the density was lower, Shao Xuan didn't feel pressured to look at the things in the boxes.
Opening the boxes, Shao Xuan saw many animal skin rolls neatly placed inside.
Shao Xuan picked up one and unfolded it. This map recorded some things that happened in the Yanjiao tribes in a certain year, such as harvests, disputes, and so on.
Picking up another one, it recorded the various wars between the Flaming Horns tribe and other tribes. It also involved several tribes that Shao Xuan was familiar with, such as the Thousand Masks tribe, the Eight Limbs tribe, etc. Shao Xuan knew of several large tribes in the central region, basically all of them were recorded.
Did the Yanjiao tribe attract so much hatred in the past?
But soon, Shao Xuan found that his guess was wrong. It wasn't that Yanjiao attracted hatred, but that everyone in that era was particularly easy to attract hatred. According to the records in these scrolls, the tribes were not as peaceful as they were now.
Perhaps for the wanderers, the life outside was already very difficult, especially in the resting areas around the bazaar. The traveling teams of various tribes fought with each other every day, and then the fishes in the moat would be implicated.
However, it was nothing compared to what was written on the animal skin scroll. Now it was at most a conflict between traveling teams, but what was recorded on the animal skin scroll was a large-scale conflict between tribes. A small fight every three days, a big fight every ten days. It was as common as eating.
Not pleasing to the eye? Fight!
Fancy someone? Rob!
See something good? Rob again!
Everything depended on strength. If you could beat them, rob them directly. If you couldn't beat them, rob them secretly. If you couldn't rob them secretly, then you could only give up. If you didn't give up, then you would be beaten and killed.
It could be said that in the past, the survival of small tribes was extremely difficult. According to the records, many small tribes were destroyed.
The central region was even more chaotic. Because there were many big tribes, there were wars every two or three days. Today you raided my team, tomorrow I will destroy your whole team!
Even the Mang tribe and the Eight Limbs tribe, which Shao Xuan always thought were good neighbors and close partners, used to be like enemies. Not to mention a bamboo of the Mang tribe on the border of the Eight Limbs tribe, even if there was a green onion that didn't belong to their tribe, the people of the Eight Limbs tribe would pull it out by the roots.
And all the spiders and other things that entered the Mang tribe, as long as they were found and didn't come out again, they were either killed or eaten. Spiders were not delicious? No problem, as long as the people of the Eight Limbs tribe were unhappy, they would eat happily!
Among them, there was a scroll written by an unknown shaman. It wasn't so solemn, but had a lot of bad taste. It also wrote a lot of scandals of other tribes, such as whose family was robbed, who was cuckolded, who was pushed down from the position of chief by his own brother … The words were slightly exaggerated, revealing gossip and excitement. Not all shamans were as serious as the old man now.
The enmity of a family could easily become the enmity of a tribe. For that era, war came too easily. And the physique and strength of the Yanjiao people made a lot of people gnash their teeth in anger, giving others the impression that they were all kinds of rude and unreasonable. But Shao Xuan could see the complacency and pride of the person who wrote these records from these words. No matter who wrote these records, most of them were like this. As one of the strongest tribes in the past, Yanjiao did have the right to be complacent and unreasonable.
It was hard to imagine that the chaotic environment in the past had become much more stable now. Although it was still full of all kinds of barbaric violence and killing, compared with what was recorded in these animal skin scrolls, it was really a world of difference.
Why did the tribes that didn't like each other in the past coexist peacefully now? When Shao Xuan was with the traveling team, he also inquired about it, but he didn't know much about it. Anyway, in the past two or three hundred years, there were no big wars. Except for the Wanshi tribe, which always harassed the small tribes, the other big tribes in the central area didn't really fight with each other.
Speaking of the Wanshi tribe, Shao Xuan only saw the name of the Wanshi tribe in two animal skin scrolls, and the recorded shaman predicted that the tribe would disappear in five hundred years. But in fact, this tribe, which was more unreasonable and brutal than the Yanjiao tribe in the past, had survived until today, and had become one of the big tribes in the central area.
Between the big tribes, they abandoned their former enmity and put down their hatred. Although they didn't coexist peacefully, at least they seemed to have a cooperative relationship. Shao Xuan could only think of one most likely reason for such a change — they had a common enemy, and this enemy made them afraid. One or two tribes alone were not enough, they had to band together.
The Yanjiao tribe? No, even if the Yanjiao tribe used to be strong, it wasn't strong enough to make these tribes band together for such a long time.
Another thing that Shao Xuan felt strange was that there was no record of slave owners. At that time, there were captives, and those who were defeated would be dragged back to work. But there was no record of slave owners, not even one.
In addition to these, Shao Xuan went through several other boxes with weak straw ropes, and learned a lot of information. It wasn't all about the wars between the tribes, but included all aspects, such as records of farming and animal husbandry.
Thousands of years ago, the Yanjiao tribe also mainly hunted. After all, it was close to the mountains, and most of the food was taken directly from the mountains. But there were also plantations, just like the murals that Shao Xuan saw. There were records of plantations, breeding, harvesting … These records were all in the books. Maybe now the shaman of the tribe also had some of these records, but Shao Xuan believed that the records here were much more detailed than those in the shaman's hands.
Thinking about it, when the ancestors of the Yanjiao tribe left the old haunt, they were mainly fleeing for their lives. Naturally, they didn't bring many records of plantations and breeding with them. Maybe they didn't even bring them with them when they left, because when the ancestors left, they didn't expect to be gone for so long. The records in the shaman's hands were probably written by the people who left later on based on their own experiences.
There were too many animal skin rolls in the box. It was inconvenient for Shao Xuan to read them with a torch inside, and he was worried that the torch would damage the animal skin rolls. So he moved the box to the entrance of the cave, and opened them one by one under the light of the cave.
Shao Xuan didn't doubt the authenticity of these records. It was the shaman who recorded them. On some animal skin rolls that recorded important events, there were some seemingly meaningless words at the beginning, but these were actually the language of the shaman. Whether something needed to be recorded or not, if there was a conflict within the tribe, the right to decide was given to the fire seed and the totem. These seemingly meaningless words were actually a kind of solemn words, indicating that these were decided by everyone together or through sacrifice, and there was no falsehood.
In addition to farming, fishing, hunting, and animal husbandry, there were also handcrafts, astronomical phenomena, construction, medicine, war, political life, and so on. Although many of the records were vague and not detailed, and it could be seen that the tribe wasn't proficient in them at that time. For example, there were many limited records on astronomical phenomena and handcrafts, and they could only be regarded as immature. But Shao Xuan was still shocked to see so many records.
What was the most important thing for the Yanjiao tribe?
Fire crystals? Various kinds of crystal shellfish as property? Or other precious stones?
No, none of them! In fact, all of these were at the bottom of the list.
The more Shao Xuan knew, the more he understood what was important to the shaman of this tribe.
In the tribe, the most important thing was to figure out their own members, origins, totems, and so on. Secondly, they had to set the rules of the tribe, important marriage and funerals, the establishment of a leader, meetings, and so on. The important things were production, war, sacrifice, and so on. These were undoubtedly the contents that the shaman needed to record and pass on to future generations.
And these contents, in layman's terms, were what people called "history"!
In the eyes of the shaman, the longer the "history" and the longer the tribe existed, the more it could prove the strength of the tribe. As for why the Yanjiao's "history" was kept here, perhaps it was because they couldn't take it away, and they were afraid that it would be put in danger in the old haunt, so they had people bring it here and hide it. After all, few other tribes dared to directly rush into the Ferocious Beasts Mountain Forest.
The people in the cave had been dead for a long time, and the only thing left was the power that Shao Xuan had felt before. For the invaders, it was a destructive force, but for this cave, it was like a guardian. It had not changed for thousands of years, quietly guarding here, guarding Yanjiao's "history", and waiting for future generations to come back.
However, to Shao Xuan's regret, there was no detailed record of the fire seed among the books he had seen. Perhaps, the older things were sealed in those unopened boxes.
Forget it, when he brought them back and let the shaman open them, he would ask the shaman. As long as it was not a secret, the shaman would let him see it.
Shao Xuan wondered if he should take these boxes and the seven ancestors back now, and then say to the people in the tribe, "Look, I found the ancestors again."
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