In antiquity, there was a nascent village nestled between a crescent-shaped mountain range and the sea. They worked hard and had plenty of food, so they considered themselves lucky.
Nobody told them how to be a village. It was the sort of thing that was springing up all over the world, at the time. We can scarcely explain, now, why it happened so suddenly, then.
The village started late and evolved slowly. They were amazed when they saw a small, wind-powered vessel approaching the shoreline.
A man emerged from the vehicle and greeted them.
The moon returned to the same phase three times before he learned enough of their language for a meaningful exchange of ideas. During that time the man was able to watch them lead their lives.
Every day, dozens of people went up into the mountains to collect large stones. These large stones were the basis of their economy. They were broken into pieces to make tools, crushed into gravel and grit to make a very primitive form of concrete, and used to do the aforementioned crushing. They were stacked to form low walls that discouraged wildlife from entering the village. Pieces of them were traded as a very-low-fidelity form of currency.
In short, stones quarried from the mountains occupied almost all of this hamlet's time.
The man, whose name turned out to be El, asked about the stones and the town's elder confirmed that they were the basis for life in the village and then added "We're starting to have difficulty with it."
"Why is that?" asked El.
"We don't know. We've tried everything we can imagine."
"Like what?"
The old man eyed El for a second, then said "I suppose anyone who can cross the water probably can't learn much from our secrets."
"You'd be surprised," said the outsider, "but my people have secrets, too. Maybe we can both benefit from sharing what we know."
The old man thought about that, then nodded. "The parties that collect the stones are masters at their art. They can locate the finest crack and use it to cleave a boulder larger than your ship in two. They can harvest a full load of stone in just a few days. We keep learning more about cutting rocks, but it keeps mattering less."
El nodded. "With this problem," he said, "my people are all too familiar."
"Where we grind the stone, we have made amazing strides. We have constructed large, rounded structures out of our building material. Each large stone has smaller holes all around it. We can fit smaller stones into those holes to give the larger stones teeth. Because the large stone is very hard, and its replaceable teeth are doing the crushing, the large stone does not wear very quickly and can last a lifetime. A team of workers can grind a full load of stone into gravel and grit in less than a day."
El smiled. "That is impressive. Would you believe that my people have never achieved such things with rocks?"
The old man shook his head and said "No. I would not. We take the water which is bad for drinking and we mix it with the crushed stone and some other ingredients to make our buildings. We can convert a batch of stone into our building liquid in just a few hours and form it into the shape of a structure by nightfall so it can start to become strong while we sleep."
El slapped his knee and shouted "Amazing! What is the trouble, though?"
"We have tried everything. We crush the stones faster, with bigger rolling-rocks. We refine our mixture to make our building-soup dry more quickly and become harder. We have tried waiting to work with a stone until we know exactly what to do with it. We have tried planning ahead and ensuring a load of stone is used exactly as we anticipated. We have tried working more. We have tried staying rested. We have tried to use as little as we can. We have tried wasting stone with reckless abandon. Nothing works."
"Why is it that you are having trouble?" asked El. "Your teams that work the crushers are small. Your teams that build the buildings are small. The teams that collect the rocks are very skilled. You have many people. Why is it so difficult?"
"We cannot get enough rock in the first place."
"Are you saying your quarry is running out of stone?"
"No," said the elder. "No. It just won't yield what we want."
El thought about this and then asked the obvious question. "What if more people helped at the quarry?"
"We have already tried that. For each of the fingers on my hands, all but one of my people is already dedicated to collecting stone."
"Is the stone very hard to collect?"
"No. As I said, a single load can be cut in two days."
"How much is a single load?"
"As much as a single party of as many as I have fingers can carry."
El frowned. "You use a great deal more rock than I thought. You're saying that most of your villagers bring back as much raw stone as they can carry every other day and you don't have enough?"
"No. Of course not. If we had that much rock, I'm sure we would live our lives without a care. Each party brings as much stone as they can carry in the time it takes for the moon to fully fade and fully restore."
A look of incredulity flashed across El's face and he started to say "How can it take so..." then the look faded and he answered his own question. "The quarry is very far away."
"Yes," said the old man. "It is quite far. It takes many days to walk to the site and many more to walk back while carrying such a heavy burden. Of course, nothing can be done about that."
"Why is it so far away?"
"Long, ago," said the old man, "my grandfather's, grandfather's, grandfather was hunting in the mountains. His spear - a primitive sharpened stick, really - broke and he needed to make a new weapon. Noticed a pile of rocks that he could quickly turn into such a tool. The rocks were good and the party brought back two boars for the tribe, who feasted like nobody could ever before remember.
"The rocks were piled next to a cliff and they were very good. More of the tribe went to the same spot for the good rocks. Eventually, the loose rocks were gone and our people had become dependent. They began to use the rocks they had to cut more rocks from the cliff side."
"I see," said El. "The quarry grew up naturally. Nobody ever thought about where it was."
"Well. By the time I became elder, there was talk. Talk of finding another quarry with the good stone."
"Can you do that?"
"Yes," said the elder. "We've learned much about rock through the generations." He pointed to a nearby outcropping of stone jutting from behind some trees, far in the foreground of the mountains that circled his village.
"That structure," he said, "is made of the good stone."
El hooted and exclaimed, "That can't more than a day's walk!"
"It is less; much less. With proper use of the things we know, we could build a path that allows one to take a trip there and carry rock back four times a day."
"Why don't you use that?"
The old man sighed and shook his head. "We would, if we could, but the investment is more than we can spare. We must cut a path through the woods, clear the dirt away, and set up a proper quarry. We will not be able to get enough stone to sustain ourselves, while we set up the new pit."
El thought about it for a few minutes and then said "Are there no loose rocks that can be collected from the area?"
The village elder cocked his head to one side and pondered. "I suppose there are. Why?"
"Couldn't you collect some loose rocks from the site and bring them back in just a few days?"
"I suppose. It has been lifetimes since we used that kind of loose rock but, with enough of it, we may be able to go back to the older ways."
El said "If a party could bring back enough loose stone to use in less than a moon, could they not spend the rest of the moon preparing the new quarry and building the path?"
For a moment a smile flashed across the elder's face and then it was almost immediately replace with a look of embarrassment. "Your people are indeed brilliant!"
"No," said El, "I just see your problems as an outsider does."
El learned a great deal about stonework in his time at the village. He shared a great deal about the sea in return. He showed them how to make fishhooks and nets, which they could use in their streams. He even showed them the basics of building a raft that could be used to explore the coastline near their home.
Sitting on his little boat, El watched the fledgling civilization dwindle to a little stream of smoke on a distant shoreline. He smiled to himself and thought that of all the insights he'd shared, the most precious had nothing to do with stone or sea. It was a basic law of survival and prosperity:
Never simply accept a problem as part of your environment without first examining it as though you are an outsider.
