Frodo left the two teenagers practicing their binary taps on the stone and made his way back through the bustling cavern to the rear alcove, where he had assigned the Logistics task to Elara and Vash.
Upon entering the shadowed area near the newly dug permafrost cellar, his attention was quickly drawn to three distinct piles of processed mammoth resources.
He noticed that the crippled hunter, Bael, who had been tasked with monitoring the women, was standing near a third pile, his hands covered in dried red dust.
As Frodo saw that they were adding the finishing touches to their respective storage mounds, he stood quietly, crossing his arms and waiting for them to finish so he could inspect the results.
These piles represented the lifeline of the tribe. Frodo had decided to implement strict food preservation standards after calculating the caloric burn rate of a tribe trying to survive the brutal winters of the Last Glacial Maximum.
In his past life a failure in the cold chain meant millions of dollars in spoiled goods. Here, a failure in preservation meant thirty people slowly starving to death in the dark.
While Frodo was lost in his thoughts about his plans for a centralized rationing system, the women, along with Bael, stepped back from their piles.
"We are finished, Frodo," Elara announced.
Jolted awake from his calculations, Frodo looked around and saw the neat categorization of the once-chaotic pile.
He nodded as he walked over to inspect the first preservation method.
Frodo stepped up to Elara’s pile.
It was simple and visually clean. He looked at the elderly woman and asked, "Explain your process."
With a confident nod, Elara responded, "I took the raw meat, packed it tightly into the deep snow dug from the cavern walls, and layered it with pine needles. Finally, I covered the mound with a mammoth hide and placed boulders on top to keep the scavengers away. The cold will keep the rot away."
Frodo took a moment to consider the dynamics of the method. He then instructed Bael to bring a skin-pouch of water that had been heated near the central fire and pour it directly over the hide.
As he expected, the warm water seeped through the edges of the hide, melting the snow underneath and forming warm, stagnant puddles directly against the raw meat.
He knew that this method of freezing meat was commonly used by every tribe in this era. It was quick, required very little caloric expenditure, and relied entirely on the environment.
But Frodo also knew that the Last Glacial Maximum was prone to sudden, brief warming periods... false springs. The source of this chapter is g.com.
Frodo realized that this method could be employed in an absolute emergency, perhaps for a hunting party stranded in the deep forest. However, it was unsuitable for the tribe’s primary, long-term strategic reserve.
If the ambient temperature inside the cave rose by just a few degrees from the central fires, the ice would melt, and the entire stockpile would rot in days...
Next, he examined Vash’s pile.
It was different. The chunks of meat were dark, hard, and smelled strongly of pine smoke.
He was impressed by the consistency and asked the second elderly woman how it had been constructed.
Vash explained, "I took the meat and hung it over a smoking fire of wet pine for half a day to drive out the moisture. Then, I took the fat of the Great Tusk and coated every single piece in a solid layer of grease. The smoke keeps the flies away, and the fat seals it from the air."
Frodo nodded. To test its durability and practicality, he took a jagged piece of flint and scraped it hard across the meat; the fat acted as a protective armor.
Additionally, he poured the remaining warm water over the pile, but due to the grease plastering, the water didn’t adhere at all and simply ran off into the dirt.
Frodo decided to reject this idea as their primary standard... not because he was disgusted by the thick layers of animal fat, but because he was concerned about the labor and maintenance costs.
While he understood that fat-sealing was an excellent waterproof barrier, the immense amount of firewood and time required to smoke the meat was a massive drain on their resources.
Additionally, the use of rendered fat in such large quantities meant they couldn’t use that fat for emergency calories or fuel for their lamps.
The maintenance cost in labor and fuel was simply too high for a tribe that needed to focus on building weapons.
As Frodo walked to the last pile, which Bael stood proudly behind, he was surprised by its texture.
It wasn’t chunks of meat at all. It was a massive pile of coarse, dry, prickly powder packed into sewn gut-skin bags. I Follow the newest chapters on novelping.com.
He inquired about the construction of this strange pile, and the crippled hunter explained.
"I watched the women work, and I looked at the lever you built for me. For this pile, I first cut the meat into paper-thin strips and let the freezing wind dry them until they were like brittle twigs."
Bael patted the beam of his crushing machine. "Then, I placed the dry meat under the lever. I crushed the meat into a fine dust, mixed it with dried summer berries I found in the old caches, and poured just a tiny fraction of hot fat to bind it together. I packed it into these gut-bags and flattened it with a boulder. The main raw material here is nothing but crushed dust and pressure."
Frodo was immensely pleased with this idea.
He realized that Bael had just independently invented Pemmican... the ultimate survival ration of the frontier.
By pulverizing the meat and removing all the moisture, it became dense in calories and hostile to bacterial growth.
To assess the ration’s properties, Frodo poured a handful of water directly onto the dry cake.
The water beaded up and rolled off the tightly packed, fat-bound fibers without penetrating.
He then threw the gut-bag against the cave wall; it collided with it, refusing to break or spoil.
Satisfied with these results, Frodo turned to the crippled hunter and asked, "How did you know to do this, Bael?"
The man grinned. "When I saw the lever crush the thigh bone of the mammoth into powder, I realized that pressure destroys the shape of things. If I used the lever to destroy the shape of the meat, it would squeeze all the weakness and water out of it, just like the earth squeezes water from the moss."
Without any doubt, Frodo appointed Bael as the Head of Logistics and Resource Management.
He also appointed Vash as the Head of Short-Term Rations for her excellent innovation in fat-sealing, which would be perfect for feeding the hunters during the week.
Furthermore, Frodo quickly gathered the three of them and spent the next hour explaining the concept of ’shelf-life’ and caloric density.
He taught them how to calculate exactly how many days a bag of powdered meat would sustain a grown man.
Finally, Frodo had found the talented individuals he needed...