BBC 100件藏品中的世界史005:Clovis point 克洛维斯石矛头
005: EPISODE 5 - Clovis point 克洛维斯石矛头
Clovis point (made over 13,000 years ago). Stone spearhead found in Arizona
第五集——克洛维斯石矛头，距今约于一万三千年前以上，出土于美国亚利桑利州。
Imagine. You're in a green landscape studded with trees and bushes. You're working in a team of hunters quietly stalking a herd of mammoths.
想象一下,你所在之处，一片绿树荫荫、灌木繁茂，收眼尽是舒心的绿。你是一群猎人中的成员，正在采取团队作战术悄悄地盯梢着一群猛犸象群。
One of the mammoths, you hope, is going to be your supper. You're clutching a light spear with a sharp, pointed stone at the end of it.
你期望着这其中某头猛犸象将会成为你今天的晚餐。你握紧手中轻盈的长矛，尖端上石制的矛尖锋芒毕露。
You get closer - you hurl your spear - and it misses. The mammoth you wanted to kill snaps the shaft under its foot.
你期望着这其中某头猛犸象将会成为你今天的晚餐。你握紧手中轻盈的长矛，尖端上石制的矛尖锋芒毕露。
That spear is useless now. You take another one, and you move on. And you leave behind you on the ground something that's not just a killing tool that failed, but a thing that's going to become a message across time, because thousands of years after the mammoth trod on your spear, humans will find that pointed stone spearhead and know that their ancestors were in this place far earlier than anyone had imagined.
现在那把长矛成了废物了。你拿起另一把长矛，继续你的旅程。然而那被你刚刚遗弃到地上的物品，可不止止是一件失败的杀器，它将成为一个跨越时光的使者;因为在那猛犸象踩碎了你的长矛之后的几千年后，后来人将会发现这件尖尖的石矛头，从而知道原来很久很久以前，超出他们想象的早，他们遥远的祖先曾经在这里留下了足迹。
'It looks so tiny and then it's only sort of two or three inches in length.' (Michael Palin)
“它看起来是真小啊，才差不多两三寸英寸长。”迈克尔·佩林说道。”
'These are people on the move - explorers, and I can really feel quite a bit of empathy, and I can really feel what it must've been like to enter a country that nobody had told you about, that nobody had actually been in before you.' (Professor Gary Haynes)
“这些人类永远在旅行中，是探险者。我还真有点跟他们产生共鸣了;当你走进一个你一无所知的国家，没有告诉你这是一片前人从来踏足过的土地时，那种感觉，我可以真切地感受到。”加里·海恩斯教授说道。
It's 13,000 years ago, and you're in America. Things that are thrown away or lost can tell us as much about the past as any objects carefully preserved for posterity.
现在从概是一万三千年前，你所在的地方是美洲。其实被丢弃或遗失的东西，也如同那些被视如珍宝一样精心保存的物品，能向我们诉说那过去的故事。
Broken things tell poignant stories - in fact, mundane everyday items discarded long ago as rubbish, are as much a defining characteristic of being human as great art, and these modest but essential things can tell us some of the most important stories of all in human history.
残破的物品诉说着凄美的往事。事实上，当年那些当成日常垃圾抛弃掉的物品，在多年后的今天极可能与那些不朽艺术品同样拥有定义我们作为人类本质特性的力量，并且往往是这些不太体面却十分纯粹的东西，向我们进述了人类历史上那些最重要的故事。
In the case of this programme, how modern humans - the toolmakers and the artists we've been following this week - took over the world. How, after populating Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe, they finally got to America.
在这期节目中，这故事是关于现代人类，像我们前两期已经介绍过的那些工匠与艺术家们，是如何改造这个世界;又是如何继非洲、亚洲、欧洲之后，最后到达了美洲大陆。
In the North American gallery of the British Museum, among the magnificent feather headdresses, and in a case beside the totem poles, is a very interesting bit of rubbish indeed. It is the business end of a deadly weapon; a spear - the shaft, of course, is long gone.
在大英博物馆的北美洲展馆部分，众多五彩缤纷的羽毛头饰与华丽壮观的图腾柱中间，一颗不起眼却很有趣的小“垃圾”静静地躺在一个小展台上。它便是一件致命武器的最尖端。这根长矛的矛杆当然早就腐朽在漫漫岁月中了。
It's made of stone and it was lost by a person like you or me in Arizona over 13,000 years ago.
一万三千年前，这石制矛头被某个像你我一样的人类遗弃在亚利桑那州。
The spearhead is made of hard flint and it's about the size of a small, slim mobile phone, but it's in the shape of a long thin leaf. The point is still intact and still very sharp. The surface of both sides has beautiful ripples and, when you look closely, you can see that these are the scars from its making, where the flakes of the flint have been carefully chipped off.
这矛头是由一颗坚硬的燧石制成的，大概一部超薄手机大小，细细长长的叶子状。它的矛锋完好无损，仍然相当的尖锐。表面的两侧有美丽的涟漪痕迹。细细观察下来，就可以看出那是打磨过程中留下来的。当年工匠精工细磨，慢慢地在这燧石片上敲下片片碎石，就留下了道道的痕迹。
It's a lovely thing to touch and it's very well adapted to its lethal purpose - a thing of beauty and a kill forever!
它把弄起来玲珑可爱，但却十足胜任了它生来赋于的致命使命——永恒的美丽、永恒的凶器!
This spearhead raises many questions. But perhaps the most surprising fact is that it was found in America. After all, for most of our history we humans have been a resolutely land-locked African, Asian and European species. So how did the people who made spears like this get to America, and who were they?
这矛头引出了许多问题。但也许其中最让人吃惊的一点是它出土于美洲。毕竟在我们历史的绝大部分时期，人类这物种总是生存繁衍在非洲、亚洲及欧洲等内陆地区。当然，当初这些制造类似这种长矛的人类，是如此到达美洲的?他们又是谁呢?
This stone spearhead is by no means unique; it is just one of thousands that have been found across North America, from Alaska to Mexico. They're known as Clovis points, after the small town in the US State of New Mexico where they were first discovered in 1936, alongside the bones of the animals they'd killed. And so the makers of these stone points, the people who hunted with them, are known as Clovis people.
这石矛头决不是独一无二的，仅仅是几千件之一;出土的大量石矛头遍布了从阿拉斯加到墨西哥的北美各地。它们被称为克洛维斯尖矛头，根据它们首次出土地的那个美国新墨西哥州小镇命名;当时随之出土的还有被这些矛头杀害的动物骨头残骸。因此，这些石制矛头工匠们及其他们的同伴，那些一起狩猎的人类，被称之为克洛维斯人。
The discovery at Clovis was one of the most dramatic leaps forward in our understanding of the history of the Americas. These spearheads are the firmest evidence yet found for the first human beings to inhabit America.
克洛维斯大发现在对我们美洲历史的认知上，可谓是一个最戏剧性的飞跃。这些矛头是有史以来证明美洲首批人类定居踪迹的最有力证物。
Almost identical Clovis points have been found in clusters from Alaska to Mexico, and from California to Florida, and what they show is that these people were able to establish small communities right across this immense area as the last Ice Age was coming to an end, about 13,000 years ago.
从阿拉斯加到墨西哥，从加利福尼亚到佛罗里达州，成批成批的克洛维斯矛头相继出土，几近相同。它们向我们说明了，大概在最后一次冰河时期即将结束的一万三千年前左右，这些人类已经能够在北美这广宽无垠的土地上建立起一处处小聚居的部落。
Are the Clovis people really the first Americans? The leading expert in this period is Professor Gary Haynes:
这些克洛维斯人是否是真正的北美人呢?这时期的领头学者加里·海恩斯教授说道：
'There's some scattered evidence that people were in North America maybe before these Clovis points were made (which would be before 13,000 years ago), but most of that evidence is arguable.
“有些零散的证据表明，也许是在克洛维斯矛头被制造出来前，即在一万三千年前，已经有远古人类的北美洲定居;但是绝大部分证据还是值得商榷的。
The fact is that Clovis look like the first people. If you dig an archaeological site almost anywhere, the bottom levels are going to be about 13,000 years old, and if there are any artefacts, it will be Clovis or Clovis-related.
随便在北美洲一处地方挖掘出一处考古遗址，最底层的地质层总是约在一万三千年前;如果有任何文物出土的话，肯定是克洛维斯或者与克洛维斯相关的。
So it looks like maybe these are the very first dispersers who filled up the continent and became the ancestors of modern Native Americans. The area that was populated by Clovis was just about all of North America, and they came from somewhere up north, because the studies of genetics seem to prove conclusively that the ancestry of Native Americans is north-east Asian.'
因此看上去这些人类似乎就是最早期的传播者、开拓者，在这片大陆上开枝散叶、繁衍生息，成为现代印第安人的祖先。这些克洛维斯人几乎遍布了北美各地，而且他们来自于更加北部的某个地方;因为遗传学研究给出了相当定性的证据，说明土著美洲人的祖先就是东北亚人种。”
So archaeology, DNA, and the bulk of academic opinion, are telling us effectively that everybody in America arrived from north-east Asia less than 15,000 years ago. When history gets re-written like this, it can lead to head-on collision with deeply-held beliefs.
因此，考古学、DNA及大量的学术见解都极明确地告诉大家，最早不过一万五千年前，人类从东北亚抵达了北美洲。当历史即将被重新编写时，它就不可避免地要与根深蒂古的信息迎头相撞。
Historian Gabrielle Tayac is a Piscataway Indian. She works for the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, and she studies how Native Americans are reacting to this new narrative that science is giving them:
历史学家加布里埃尔·塔亚克是一位皮斯卡塔韦印第安人，在史密森安那的美国印第安人国家博物馆工作;她专门研究了土著美洲人对于此项科学新发现的说法反应是如何的：
'This is an affront to their very specific beliefs ... If you look at creation stories, there are certainly people who have very strong beliefs that either they emerged from the earth, or fell from the sky or developed out of the back of a water beetle, depending on where they were ... Native American religions were repressed for a very long time and so people have become very protective.
“这对于他们相当特定的信仰而言肯定是一种冒犯……假如你立刻一下他们的创世故事，部分人们有很强的信念，取决于他们来自哪里，他们要么觉得他们要么是从地心出现的，要么是从天空掉下来的，要么就是从一种水甲虫的背部进化而来的……美洲土著的信仰曾经长年被压抑过，所以现在人们变得防备性相当强。
For some Native people, though not all, the insertion of scientific findings that Native people did not get created from the very site that they emerged from, or that there are findings that might be counter to a specific oral recitation, can be seen as a way of invalidating Native traditions.'
对于某些，尽管不是全部的土著人，这种科学发现的介入，硬生生地说明土著居民根本就是不是从当地进化而来的，或者有些科学发现可能对某种口口相传的民族传说相碰撞，这会被他们看成是一种挑战土著传统权威的方式。”
By about 40,000 years ago, humans like ourselves had spread from Africa all over Asia and Europe, even crossing seas to get to Australia. But no humans had yet set foot in the Americas, and it needed major changes in climate before they could. Firstly, 20,000 years ago, the Ice Age locked up the water in ice-sheets and glaciers, leading to a huge fall in sea level, and the sea between Russia and Alaska (what's now the Bering Straits) became a wide and easily passable land-bridge.
大约到了四万年前，像我你现代人的人类已经走出非洲，遍布了亚洲与欧洲，甚至穿越海洋抵达了澳大利亚。然后仍旧没有任何人类踏足到美洲的土地上，事实上只有到气候产生了重要变化之后，这种时机才能成熟。首先，大约到了两万前年，冰河世纪冰封了冰层与冰川的大量水份，导致海平面的大幅度下降;于是俄罗斯与阿拉斯加之间的海域，也就是如令的白令海峡，出现了一道巨大而容易通行的大陆桥。
Animals - mammals, bison and reindeer - moved across to the American side, and hunting humans followed. The way further south into the rest of America was through an ice-free corridor between the Rocky Mountains on the Pacific side, and the vast continental ice-sheet covering Canada on the other.
各种各样的动物，包括哺乳动物、野牛、驯鹿等开始向美洲方向进行迁徙，狩猎它们的人类也随之而来。当年一道巨大的无冰走廊，一头向着通过太平洋一侧的洛基山脉一路向南延伸至美国各地，另一头深深延伸至被大陆冰层覆盖着的加拿大广袤土地。
15,000 years ago, as the climate warmed up again, it was possible for large numbers of animals, followed again by their human hunters, to get through this corridor to the rich hunting grounds across what is now the United States. This is the new American world of the Clovis points.
一万五千年前，随着气候的再次回暖，极可能在此时数量巨大的动物及跟随着它们的人类猎人，通过这条走廊到达了如今的美国土地上这资源丰富的猎场。这就是克洛维斯矛头出现的美洲新世界。
It was clearly a great environment for those go-getting humans from north Asia but, if you were a mammoth, the outlook wasn't quite so rosy. The ripples on the side of the Clovis point, which I find so beautiful, produce intense bleeding in any animal they hit, so you don't need to be a dead shot and strike a vital organ, you can hit your prey anywhere and the blood loss will gradually weaken it until you can easily finish it off. And by 10,000 BC, all the mammoths and a lot of other big mammals, had been finished off.
显而易见，对于这些来自北亚的掠夺性人类而言，他们寻找到了一片乐土;但假如你不走运的身为一头猛犸象，那你的处境可就堪忧了。克洛维斯矛头边缘上那些我看起来如此美丽的涟漪磨痕，可以对受到攻击的任何动物造成严重出血。因此你根本不需要是一名神枪手，一出手便是命中致命要害;你可以往猎物身上任何部位乱砸一通，一旦被打中，猎物就会因为失血过多而慢慢虚弱下来，然后你轻轻松松就可以一下两下解决掉它了。大约在公元前一万年前，差不多所有猛犸象与其他大型哺乳动物就被这样解决掉了。
How far it's the Clovis people that are responsible for these extinctions is a matter for debate, but Gary Haynes thinks they were:
究竟克活维斯人对于这些物种的灭绝要负多大责任，是一个长年备受争论的话题，不过加里·海恩斯认为他们肯定要负责任：
'I think there's a direct connection between the first appearance of people and the last appearance of many of the large mammals - if not all of them - that disappeared in North America. You can actually trace this sort of connection across the world, wherever modern 'homo sapiens' turns up. There had never been a human population before this. It's almost invariable that large mammals disappeared - and not just some animals, it's a large proportion. In North America it's something like two-thirds to three-quarters.'
“我觉得人类的最初亮相与许多，即使不是全部的大型哺乳动物的最后消失在美洲之间有着相当直接的联系。事实上，你可以轻易地在全世界任何现代“智人”所到之处寻找到这种联系的踪影。假如某地区在此之前从来没有人类群体踏足过，一旦人类来了，大型哺乳动物的灭亡几乎是不可避免的;而且不仅仅是部分动物，而是相当大比重的动物。在北美，因此消亡的物种高达三分之二至四分之三。”
This was going to become a familiar story. By around 12,000 years ago, the Clovis people and their descendants had not only spread across North America, but had also reached the southernmost tip of South America. Not long after this, warming climate and melting ice raised sea levels sharply so that the land-bridge to Asia flooded once again. There was no way back.
接下来的故事你我似曾相识。大约在一万两千年前，克洛维斯人与他们的后裔，不仅仅已经遍布北美，同时到达了南美洲的最南端。没过多久，全球气候变暖，冰川融化，海平面大幅度回升，再次淹没了通往亚洲的大陆架。没有退路了。
For the next nine thousand years, in fact until European contact in the sixteenth century AD, the civilisations of the Americas would develop on their own. So, 12,000 years ago, we had reached a key moment in human history. With the exception of the islands of the Pacific, human beings had settled the whole habitable world.
于是在接下来的九千多年，直到公元十六世纪左右欧洲探险者重新发现了美洲，在此之间的悠悠岁月里，美洲文明将独立发展，自成一体。因此，一万两千年前，我们到达了人类历史上的关键时刻。随了太平洋岛屿以后，人类差不多生息繁衍在了世界任何可居住的角落。
We seem to be hard-wired to keep moving, to want more, to find out what's beyond the next hill. Broadcaster and traveller Michael Palin has covered a good deal of the globe - what does he think drives us on?
我们似乎与生俱来有一种永远向前的天性，想要得到更多，发现更多，去跨越下一座山峰。广播员与旅行家迈克尔·佩林差不多走遍全世界了，那他又是什么力量驱动这种人性执着呢?
'In myself I've always been very restless and, from when I was very small, interested in where I wasn't, [in] what was over the horizon, [in] what was round the next corner. And the more you look at the history of 'homo sapiens', it's all about movement, right from the very first time they decided to leave Africa.
“对于我自己而言，我一向就很不安分了，就是呆不住。很小很小的时期，我对所有我没去过的地方都感兴趣，想去看看地平线之外有什么，下个转弯处之后又有什么。而且当你看了越多的“智人”历史，你就越感觉从他们决定离开非洲的那一刻起，那便是一部旅行探索的历史。
It is this restlessness which seems a very significant factor in the way the planet was settled by humans. It does seem that we are not settled, we think we are, but we are still looking for somewhere else where something is better - where it's warmer, it's more pleasant.
现在看来似乎这种躁动不安的天性恰恰是一种非常重要的因素，决定了人类在这地球上的定居方式。其实并不是说我们没能安居下来，我们觉得我们安顿好了，然而我们还是自然而然地想往别外寻找更好的地方，更温暖，更恰人的地方。可能这是一种元素，精神元素。
Maybe there is an element, a spiritual element, of hope in this whole thing. You know, that you are going to find somewhere that is going to be wonderful. It's the search for paradise, the search for the perfect land - maybe that's at the bottom of it all, all the time.'
你知道你就是得去寻找这片乐土。这是在寻找天堂，在寻找极乐世界。也许这追求在是整个人类历史上很本质的，一直就是。
Hope, as the defining human quality - wouldn't that be an encouraging note in which to end this first week of our history of the world?
希望是一种定义人性的要素，拿它来结束我们《百件物品中的世界历史》这系列第一周五集节目岂不鼓舞人心?
What's stood out for me in this week's long journey of nearly two million years, is the constant human striving to do things better; to make tools that are not only more efficient but also more beautiful, to explore not just environments but ideas, to struggle towards something not yet experienced. The objects I've looked at this week have tracked that move - from tools for survival not so different from what other animals might use, to a great work of art and the beginnings of religion.
本周我们经历了将近两百万年的漫长旅程，感受最深的一点是人类总是不断努力着把事情做得更好，把工具制造得不仅仅更高效，而且更漂亮;探索的不仅仅是周围的环境，而且是思想;向未知事物奋斗着。本周我介绍的各件物品，从一件可能动物也能使用、效用不高的生存工具开始，以一件意味着宗教起点的伟大艺术作品结尾。
Next week, I'm going to be looking at how, about ten thousand years ago, we began to transform the natural world by starting to farm. In the process, changing not just the landscape, but plants, animals and, above all, ourselves. And I'm going to be focussing on two favourite pastimes - food and sex.
下一周，我将继续去探索近万年前，我们是如何去将自然世界改造成农场。在此过程中，改变的不仅仅是地貌景观，还有植被、动物，还有最重要的我们自身。而且我将聚集于人类最喜爱的两种消遣方式——食欲与性欲的满足。
