You might think, “Oh, I’m trapped in the past, time to kill a lion and do that thing where you skin it and then put its head on top of your head so you can wear a lion’s head like a hat.” This is a bad idea. Without tanning, animal skins quickly rot, and even dried ones become hard, inflexible, and brittle. Tanning transforms these skins into leather: a substance so resistant to rot that leather shoes from 3500 BCE have survived into the modern era. It’s something you’ll definitely want to do, but you should keep in mind that preparing animal skins for tanning involves not only skin
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