The suspended rope bridge conceived by the protagonist is actually a rope tied to both sides of the river to allow ants to pass.
If there are prototypes of suspended rope bridges in human society, they are probably these two.
One is a flexible suspension bridge.
Suspension bridges, also known as suspension bridges, are composed of suspension cables, bridge towers, suspenders, anchors, stiffening beams and bridge deck systems. Suspension bridges can be divided into two types: flexible and rigid. The deck of a flexible suspension bridge generally does not have stiffening beams, so its stiffness is small. Under load, the deck will deform in an S-shape as the shape of the suspension cable changes. However, its structure is simple and it is generally used as a temporary bridge. In ancient suspension bridges, most of the suspension cables were ropes.
The second is the zipline.
The zipline is the original tool for crossing rivers. It was called Chong in ancient China. In "Guangji of Sichuan" written by Cao Xuequan of the Ming Dynasty, "dusuo looks for the bridge of collision", which probably refers to the zipline. Use two or one rope to tie to trees or other fixed objects on both sides of the river. One end is high and the other is low, forming an incline. There are seats or chains for riding on the suspension ropes. Riders can quickly slip over by gravity. .
Ziplines are the main means of transportation for ethnic minorities in southwest China. The Tibetan, Lisu, Nu, Dulong and other ethnic groups living in the Jinsha River, Nujiang River, and Lancang River often use ziplines with simple structures to make transitions due to the mountainous terrain and rivers.
Abroad, the Peruvian Andes in South America also has rugged terrain, and the Incas living here also used ziplines as a tool to cross rivers. The zipline can not only ferry people, but also goods, livestock, etc.
The suspended rope bridge that the protagonist is planning to use is similar in structure to a zipline, with only one rope hanging between the two banks. But moving in it is not by sliding, but mainly by walking like a suspension bridge. It can be said that it combines the characteristics of both.
After the plan was completed, the protagonist immediately returned to "Linshui City" and began to direct the worker ants to weave ropes.
In the past, ants would also use natural plant fibers, usually as nest bedding, or use single loose fibers as strings, but they did not know the weaving skills.
The protagonist taught the simple weaving skills to the big-headed ants, and now they can weave double-strand ropes, three-strand ropes and other simple products. Theoretically, cloth with interlaced warp and weft can also be woven, but currently the protagonist has no need for this - the ants don't wear clothes, so they have no need for cloth yet.
Weaving is a process in which plant branches, leaves, stems, bark, etc. are processed and then weaved by hand.
Weaving is also one of the oldest handicrafts of mankind. According to the "Book of Changes" records, in the Paleolithic Age, humans woven plant bast into mesh, filled it with stone balls, and threw it out to hunt animals. Woven fabrics or evidence thereof have been unearthed at Banpo, Miaodigou, Sanliqiao and other sites in Xi'an, and Hemudu in Yuyao, Zhejiang. From the Zhou Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty, it was very common to weave straw mats with cattails and rushes. Today, rattan weaving from Guangdong, Fujian, willow weaving from Cangzhou, Hebei, and wheat straw weaving from Puzhou, Shanxi are all famous handicrafts.
Rope braiding is the simplest of the braiding techniques and is not difficult to master. After the protagonist gave the order, a large number of worker ants immediately started working.
The worker ants first prepared the workplace. Since this time we need to weave a rope that is thirty to forty meters long, a lot of space is required. The worker ants prepared three adjacent larger nest chambers. The middle one is used as a weaving workshop, the left one is used as a raw material storage room, and the right one is a finished product storage room.
The raw materials stacked by the worker ants in the raw material stacking room are various natural plant fibers, mainly various natural hemps, including: hemp, flax, jute, green hemp and ramie, etc. These are annual or perennial herbaceous dicotyledonous plants.
Ants dig up the roots of these plants in summer and autumn, and then invest a lot of manpower to separate the bast fibers from their cortex to make spare raw materials.
The types of these raw materials are relatively complex, and there are many kinds of hemp, and different hemp types have different shapes and uses. For example, the cell walls of hemp, flax, and apocynum are not lignified, and the thickness and length of the fibers are similar to cotton. They can be used as textile raw materials and woven into various cloths; while the cell walls of bast fibers such as jute and kenaf are lignified and the fibers are short. It is only suitable for spinning ropes and sacks for packaging.
However, what the protagonist needs now is a rope with low technical content and low raw material requirements, so all kinds of hemp are enough for the task. In addition, the amount of each raw material is small and mixed together. The protagonist simply didn’t choose, and was going to weave a mixed hemp rope.
The way humans use to weave hemp rope is by rubbing it.
In this method, you must first tie a knot at the beginning of the loose hemp, sit on the knotted rope with your buttocks, and then rub the rope out with your hands, or rub the rope on your thighs with your hands, and then continue to add hemp to lengthen the rope. In some areas, auxiliary tools such as hemp drums are also used when twisting hemp rope.
The size of the ants obviously cannot be used in this processing technology. Fortunately, being small has the advantage of being small, and they have their own method that suits them.
In the weaving workshop, the protagonist first used his magical power to help the worker ants bury a wooden stick, and then the worker ants tied the tops of the five hemp sticks with knots to fix them.
Then, five smart and dexterous worker ants each held a tied hemp fiber and shuttled between their companions and the fiber at a fixed clockwise speed and direction like a dance. The rope was like a living thread snake. , entwined and intertwined with each other, the appearance of the wrapped hemp gradually showed a spiral library, and the hemp rope was slowly being woven into small sections.
The worker ants responsible for weaving constantly adjust the position of their bite on the fiber forward to adapt to the growing length of the hemp rope. When a hemp fiber is used up, the worker ant will leave the team, and another worker ant that has been waiting nearby will immediately come in with a new hemp fiber in its mouth. There are four more worker ants on standby.
The other four worker ants who were weaving the rope also paused. After the new worker ants and the hemp fibers were in place, the four worker ants continued to work. After the new hemp fibers were wrapped around the other four and fixed, the newly added worker ants We also officially joined the group dance-like knitting work.
The weaving work officially begins and continues to progress in a dance-like rhythm and melody. Raw materials are continuously moved into the weaving workshop, and after the finished hemp ropes are accumulated to a certain length, they are transported to the finished product stacking room on the right, where they are coiled together and stored.
After all, ten worker ants can weave one decimeter of hemp rope per hour, which is not very fast. If you work in three shifts around the clock, you can weave more than two meters in one day, and you can complete a sufficient length of hemp rope in less than twenty days.
While taking advantage of the day of braiding rope, the protagonist still has one more thing to do.
