Chapter 1253 The Crops that Determine the Fate of North Asia, You Came Just in Time!

"The rice god of the Japanese people was blocked? Well, it seems that the four-fingered translator Watanabe once told me? 'There are seven gods in a grain of rice'... Yes! The Japanese people worship rice very much, just like we worship corn. He also recited an interesting poem to me: 'The small rice field leading to the mountains, the silted rice seedling water. Now the relationship between the two is no longer there, and there has been no news for many days, which is really sad'..."

"I heard from the captured Japanese people that in the Japanese villages in the south, farmers must build long canals to allow the mountain springs to flow slowly and become warmer before irrigating the rice fields. Otherwise, the rice god will be angry and prevent the rice from growing. This shows that the rice god of the Japanese people does not like the cold..."

"Well! The white rice they grow Yellow rice, or what the captives called "rice" and "millet", can't be grown on Mauxili Island? ... So, is it because the climate is colder? Yes, the Far North Peninsula thaws in May, and there is snow in October. The coast is even colder than the inland! And the Kuril Islands and Mauxili Island next to the south must not be much warmer! ..."

"The nomads here on the peninsula are the same. They have never grown crops. They live on deer and fishing. The sweet potatoes, corn, and pumpkins we brought can't be grown at all. Only the most cold-resistant pigeon egg potatoes can grow! ... And even the most cold-resistant potatoes can only be planted once and harvested three times, and they grow very slowly..."

The peninsula is still clean and white in spring, covered with ice and snow. Long grass, moss and shrubs are all covered with snow, hiding their vitality underground. On the hills west of Shennanshan Port, there is a piece of snow that is particularly flat. It is the potato field reclaimed by the port. And this is also the most precious and important thing brought by the kingdom fleet, far more valuable than the two thousand kilograms of gold in the cellar!

"Potatoes are the gift of the southern hummingbird... Its colorful skin is the feathers on the male bird's head. And the light white flowers are the pregnant belly of the female bird. And the rhizome hidden underground, as big as a bird's egg, is the gift left by the hummingbird in the world, the vitality that can be eaten..."

Exploration captain Zuvaro held the girl in his arms, looked at the potato field under the snow, and chanted the inherited mythological poem in a low voice. At this moment, he suddenly realized the specialness of potatoes and the importance of this cold-resistant crop! However, the real importance of this "hummingbird gift", this extreme cold-resistant crop, is far beyond his wildest imagination at this moment...

The potatoes planted by the kingdom are different from the yellow-skinned potatoes commonly seen in later generations and cultivated in modern times. They have colorful skins, and each one is only the size of a bird's egg, which is closer to the originally domesticated wild potatoes. This cold-resistant crop from the cold mountains of the Andes will completely change the land under his feet, and will also change the fate of all tribes in Northeast Asia!

"The rice and millet of the people cannot survive, so their settlements can only stay on the south side of the Great Island of Mauxili. The mountain tribe, deer tribe and tent tribe of the peninsula have no crops, so they can only migrate with their deer... And what about further west? What about the Jurchen tribes and the Mongolian tribal alliance predicted by Your Majesty? What can they grow? How do they live?... Even, beyond these tribes, further west? Further west!..."

Zuwaro let go of the girl in his arms and looked towards the west. His eyes seemed to cross the snow-capped mountains, see through the end of the vast land, see the vast East and West Siberia, West Siberia, and see thousands of miles away!

At the end of the fifteenth century, in this era of continuous entry into the Little Ice Age, there were no extremely cold-resistant crops that could be fought on the entire Old Continent! Rye domesticated from Central Asia can only be cultivated along the warm Baltic Sea coast. It cannot cross the Ural Mountains to the east, nor can it conquer the colder White Sea to the north. They need to be domesticated for another two hundred years before they can cultivate cold-resistant rye adapted to the North Sea coast, not to mention the vast and cold East and West Siberia!

In fact, before the introduction of potatoes, "growing potatoes in Siberia" was just a cold and ruthless fantasy. Even the Russian serfs who could endure the extreme cold could not build settled villages on the land of nomadic tribes. If they wanted to survive, they could only live like the nomadic tribes and be assimilated by them...

And rice from the south, even if it has been domesticated into cold-resistant varieties by Koreans and Japanese, still has its crop limit, far from reaching the cold-resistant ability bred in later generations. At 42 degrees north latitude, the snowy Mausi Island in May, and the Baishan Heishui at the same latitude, are the limits of their extension!

At the beginning of the Little Ice Age, the crop foundation for agricultural development outside Northeast China did not exist. On the contrary, as the climate became colder, the Ming Dynasty continued to shrink, abandoning the increasingly cold northern vassal lands that could not be cultivated by the military households for self-sufficiency. The Nurgan Dusi along the Heilongjiang River had been abandoned for more than half a century. The Jurchen tribes in the northeast also retreated southward under the Ming Dynasty, gradually out of control, and began the initial insignificant and unnoticeable chaos, annexation and fighting...

In terms of the crops themselves, whether it is rice and millet in the East or rye in the West, they are all fruit-eating grasses. Even if the crops can be grown, if the temperature is too low or the temperature drops suddenly, it is common that they cannot bear fruit and have no harvest. Potatoes are Solanaceae, which eat underground tubers. They are one of the greatest crops domesticated by the indigenous people and are naturally more adaptable to severe cold than grass crops! As long as it can be grown, there will inevitably be tuber production, it is just a matter of how much to harvest!

Therefore, when the farming tribes in the Old World had no potatoes and no crops that could withstand extreme cold, they could only stop at the limit of farming and would always fight back and forth with the nomadic, fishing and hunting tribes on the border. Even in the warm centuries, farmers moved in behind the dividing line and established farming villages for a time, just like the great warm period in the Tang Dynasty... these villages and farmers would eventually be assimilated by the local nomads and fishing and hunting as the temperature dropped, and would be assimilated from Xia to Hu!

Therefore, before potatoes were introduced and before more cold-resistant crops were cultivated generation after generation, the Ming Dynasty could only give up the Outer Northeast, which was not enough to cover its expenses. The Russians could only block the west side of the Ural Mountains, the Koreans could only stop at the Tumen River, and the Japanese could only be trapped on the south bank of Hokkaido! ... It's not that they don't want to go further. They have made efforts and attempts, but if there is no harvest of crops and farming cannot survive, the conquest of the shackles will eventually collapse!

At this moment, from the Ural Mountains to Hokkaido, from the 400 mm precipitation line to the low temperature line that crops can tolerate, this is the dividing line between the farming peoples of the East and the West and all the nomadic and hunting peoples of Asia! And behind this dividing line, the farming lifestyle cannot be fixed at all, and there is no advantage to the local nomadic and hunting peoples!

But all this determines the ancient boundary between farming and nomadic herding, the traditions and destiny that have not changed for thousands of years on the cold land of tens of millions of square kilometers in North Asia... At this moment, with the arrival of potatoes from the New World, the first changed and edible tuber was silently buried!

Even if this tuber is only the size of a bird's egg, it will inevitably extend in the long river of time until it covers the entire vast North Asian land, until it completely changes everything that has remained unchanged since ancient times! The god of potatoes, although he walked down from the Andes, he is destined to be the true North Asian god! …

"Huh! The rice god of the Wa people was blocked by the guardian spirits of the Ainu tribes, so they could not grow rice and millet on the Great Island of Mauhiri… The potatoes we brought can be grown on the colder peninsula in the north of the Ainu land, so they can naturally be grown on the Great Island of Mauhiri. Potatoes are also a gift from the divine hummingbird, a gift from the main god!… Shells, do you know what this shows?"

"Ah? Um… Zu?… What does this… show?"

"Haha! This shows that the main god of our Jiao people is a more powerful god than the rice god of the Wa people!… The main god is the god of the Ainu people! So, He was not resisted by the guardian spirits of the three tribes..."

"Ah! Is that so? Yes… That's right!… Zu, it turns out that you are also a guardian tribe on the eastern island ? A branch of the Ainu tribes? …”

“No, Shell. You don’t know the vastness of the world… The vastness and complexity of the Jiao people tribe, the shrouding and immortality of the Lord’s power, will far exceed your imagination! The so-called Ainu land is just a hair on the Lord’s hummingbird, and the real Lord’s land will be as big as countless Ainu lands! As for you Ainu people, you are a branch of the Jiao people, our first separated brothers…”

“Ah? We are a branch of the Jiao people…separated brothers? …Zu! You are wrong, I am a woman. We…we are husband and wife! Zu, let’s go to the tent, I want to fly with you…like a bird…”

At the edge of the icy harbor, Zuwaro’s eyes were vicissitudes, and he told the simple and moving Lord’s myth in an affectionate tone. And this missionary myth, in the ears of the girl Qiandao Shell, sounded like some kind of promised oath.

Join the big family of “Jiao people” and be blessed by a powerful god. The future of the Ainu people, the future of their tribe, the future of her children... Unconsciously, Chishima Shell blushed, and her eyes were filled with emotional anticipation. Until...

"Ah! Ah!"

The Samoyed dog, always alert, began to bark again. And the sled running fast also appeared from the end of the snowfield. More and more wise big dogs fluttered over excitedly, until they were hit by the whip of the mistress in the air, and suddenly stopped obediently.

"Ah... Woo... Woo..."

"Snap! Snap!"

The mountain dog trainer, the female hunter Msona, swung the whip hard and jumped off the stopped sled. She stepped on high deerskin boots, held her chest high, and walked quickly to Zuwaro's side. Seeing the short and timid girl in the other's arms who could be beaten with one hand, she curled her lips in disdain, looked down at her husband, and muttered angrily.

"Zu! It seems that I came at the wrong time!..."

"No, you came at the right time!..."

Zuwaro raised his head and raised a handsome and confident smile. Then, he held the Thousand Island Shell in one hand and opened the other arm to let the female hunter Musona lean on his arms. He hugged the two tribal wives like this and asked with a gentle smile.

"Sona, what did the grandmother say?"

"The grandmother asked me to pass on a message. She wants to see you again before the spring thaws and the tribe moves north..."

The female hunter Musona pursed her lips and leaned in the man's not-so-tall arms. She felt a little relieved and a little uneasy. What made her feel relieved was the other party's identity, her powerful husband, a tribal chieftain who controlled two hundred leather-armored warriors! What made her uneasy was also the other party's identity. The two ships of reinforcements from the Hai Department really arrived on a long ship last year... At present, as the chieftain of two hundred strong warriors and nearly a thousand northern tribes, her husband has the qualifications and possibility to challenge the grandmother! But all these changes happened in just two or three years, and she even just gave birth to a child...

"Zu, will you go to see the grandmother?..."

"Oh? Sona, do you want me to go?..."

"I, I... Zu! You are the chief of the tribe, the alpha wolf appointed by the gods. Your decision cannot be influenced by women, and you should not listen to me! You must consider the tribe and be as fierce and sharp as a wolf at all times!..."

"Well... a chief like a wolf makes his own decisions?..."

Hearing this answer, Zuvaro raised his eyebrows and hugged the tall female hunter tighter. He lowered his voice and asked in a low voice.

"How is the old grandmother?"

"She has the shaman's divine power and can live for a few more years."

"Where is your father, Muquan? I heard that he was officially designated as the successor chief by the old grandmother?..."

"Yes! Father was designated as the successor chief... But because of this, he also led hundreds of people to the north under the order of the old grandmother. He was at the newly built Lutai River Spring Camp, guarding against the driven Lu tribe, and could not easily go south... There is only one chief in the tribe, and only one shaman. The old grandmother never makes mistakes, and she is unshakable!..."

"Hmm..."

Zuwaro narrowed his eyes, pondered for a long time, and then nodded slowly.

"Lord God bless you! In early May, I will personally go north once to pay homage to the respected grandmother! I will also swear a blood oath with the grandmother to formally determine the boundaries of the two tribes' pastures and camps, so that everyone can feel at ease..."

"Ah! Zu, you?... How many people are you going to bring?..."

"Haha! Grandmother is your grandmother and my kind elder, there is no need to bring others. Just me, two hunters from the mountain tribe, and my wife, you!"

"The sacred mountain of the ancestral spirit! Zu, my husband! You... You have so many warriors, why don't you bring more people? Just like last time..."

"Haha! Sona, when I only had one ship of warriors, I would bring them all and let the grandmother see them. But now that I have three ships of warriors, I can't bring them with me. I can't let the grandmother see that she is uneasy..."

Zuwaro smiled slightly and said something like a tongue twister. Then, he continued to smile in Sona's clear eyes as she tried to think.

"In addition, I am going north this time to ask my grandmother... to ask for a marriage with a noble lady from the tribe for the captain of the support fleet, Tami Grass, the chief warrior who stayed in the camp! According to the laws of the kingdom, he is the successor chief after me. He has great respect for my grandmother and hopes to consolidate the sacred alliance with the mountain tribe..."

"And after him, if there are more fleets arriving next year, we will also follow the convention and ask the respected grandmother for a marriage with a noble lady!..."

"The Supreme Lord is witnessing! The mountain tribe and the sea tribe will be relatives and support each other from generation to generation, just like the white mountains and seas of the peninsula, and live side by side in the sacred snow forever!..."