Chapter 69 (1/2)

It's really hard for the stone bear to imagine how the North American Indians without iron or steel made all kinds of tools out of hard rock if they didn't see it with their own eyes.

After seeing it, the stone bear really admired the patience of these people.

Although they have a lot of iron tools in their hands, they still use the old method when making stone mills.

This method is simple, but also time-consuming. They smash stones with stones, and then grind them with abrasives made of obsidian, which is the most common high hardness tool used by North American Indians.

This makes the stone bear very helpless, but also a little egg pain. These guys obviously have iron tools in their hands, but why are they still making stone tools in this primitive way?

Shi Xiong asked several clansmen, and the answers given by these clansmen were almost the same

Hammers, chisels and other tools in their hands are obviously used to deal with stones, but they are reluctant to use them for fear of destroying them in the process of using them.

For these people, the iron in their hands is a family heirloom. How can it be used in such a ”dangerous” work of making stone tools?

In this regard, the stone bear said he did not understand.

But there was nothing he could do.

Fortunately, these guys didn't delay the stone bear's business. Even though they still used the original way to make stone mills, it took only two days, and more than ten pairs of stone mills with a diameter of almost two feet were made one after another.

Then the stone mills were moved to the newly made carts, and the tamed bison pulled them to the salt mountain.

North American Indians had no wheeled transport before. Even if they came into contact with European colonists, vehicles did not spread among their tribes.

In this regard, the stone bear once again said egg pain.

Therefore, when casting tools, he specially cast more than ten pairs of thick bearing shells.

With these bearings, even if we can't get the bearings out for the time being, we can add boiling butter to the bearings, so that the wooden axle can rotate freely, and the basic conditions for building a four-wheel bullock cart are solved.

Perhaps the Indians had invented vehicles with wheels a long time ago, but they couldn't solve the problem of wear between the wooden axle and the frame. In addition, the early Indians were all hunting people, and they didn't need cars to pull a lot of things, so the transportation tools with wheels gradually lost their market.

Before the appearance of bearings and industrial grease, the wheels of vehicles were fixed with the axle, and the axle rotates with the wheel. In this way, the joint between the axle and the frame will produce huge wear.

If the axle is worn, it's better to say that it's much easier to replace the axle than the frame. But the problem is that the axle and frame are made of wood, and the friction is mutual. In the process of axle wear, the frame will also wear.

North American Indians didn't know how to smelt steel before, so even if they had vehicles, they still couldn't solve the problem of friction between wood and wood. In addition, vehicles didn't have much use for North American Indians, so vehicles were not popular in North America.