BBC 100件藏品中的世界史002:Olduvai Stone Chopping Tool奥杜瓦伊石质切割工具

BBC 100件藏品中的世界史

002 : Olduvai Stone Chopping Tool 奥杜瓦伊石质切割工具

Abstract摘要 :

Olduvai stone chopping tool (made 1.8 million years ago) found in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, East Africa.

奥杜瓦伊(Olduvai)石质切割工具(180万年前)，出土于东非坦桑尼亚奥杜瓦伊(Olduvai)峡谷

【MP3听力原文】

Perhaps the best thing of all about being Director of the British Museum, and one that still gives me the most enormous thrill is that, now and then, I'm allowed to take some of the objects out of the cases and hold them.

作为大英博物馆馆长，大概最美好一件事便是我偶尔可以拿出展柜中的某些物品握在手中。我至今仍为之心潮澎湃。

And today I'm being allowed to hold something absolutely astonishing. I've got to admit that if any of us saw this just lying on the ground, we'd probably walk past it, but in fact it's the oldest object in the British Museum, and it was made nearly two million years ago, in Africa. It looks like a large, chipped grey cobble. The naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough is, along with me, the latest hominid to handle it:

今天，我就被批准拿出一样极其惊世骇俗的物品。我得承认，如果我们只是看到它毫不起眼地摆在地上，很可能就一带而过了，但事实让，它可是大英博物馆最古老的展品。它来自于200万年前的非洲大陆，看上去就像一块人为切割过的灰色大卵石。我和博物学家兼广播员大卫∙阿滕伯勒爵士(Sir David Attenborough)是最近一次触摸过它的人科动物。

"Holding this, I can feel what it was like to be out on the African savannahs, needing to cut flesh for example, needing to cut into a carcass, in order to get a meal."

“握着它，我便能感受到非洲大草原上的野外生活——为了一顿饭，要剔骨剜肉。”

This is one of the first things that humans ever consciously made. And holding it puts me directly in touch with them. In this history of the world that I'm trying to tell through 'things', this chipped stone from Africa - from modern Tanzania - is where it all begins.

这是人类自觉制作的首批工具之一，一拿起它，我就能感受到与祖先一脉相承的联系。在这个以人造物为线索的世界简史系列节目中，这件来自当今坦桑尼亚地区的非洲打制石器乃人类世界万物之端。

One of the points of any museum is to allow you to travel through time, but our understanding of just how much time there is for us to travel through has expanded dramatically since the British Museum opened its doors in 1759. At that point, most of the visitors would probably have agreed that the world had begun in 4004 BC, to be precise at the very beginning of Sunday 23 October.

所有博物馆的目标之一就是引领你穿越时间，然而，自1759年大英博物馆开启重门以来，我们时光之旅的界限便与日俱增。过去，也许大多参观者的共识是世界开始于公元前4400年，更精确地说，是10月23日星期天的零点。

This astonishingly exact date had been calculated by the mathematically-minded clergyman Archbishop Ussher, who preached just down the road in Lincoln's Inn. Ussher had carefully trawled the Bible totting up the lifespan of everyone descended from Adam and Eve to reach his date but, as you and I know, we don't now celebrate 23 October as Start the World Day and that's because, in the last couple of centuries, archaeologists, geologists and museum curators have steadily been pushing back the chronology of human history - back from Archbishop Ussher's six thousand years to an almost unimaginable two million.

这一精确得不可思议的时间是由一位颇具数学头脑的神职人员厄舍(Ussher)计算出来的，他布道的地点就在本街的林肯律师学院。他一丝不苟地查阅了《圣经》，统计亚当夏娃所有后裔的寿命才得出这一结果，但就我们所知，没有人庆祝10月23号的“世界开始日”，因为几个世纪以来，考古学家、地质学家以及博物馆馆长一直在把人类历史纪年不断推延——从厄舍大主教的6000年到难以置信的200万年。

So if the scientists have been suggesting that Adam and Eve no longer stood at the beginning of human time in the Garden of Eden in 4004 BC, who did? And where? There are many theories, but no conclusive answers and certainly no conclusive date until 1931, when a young archaeologist called Louis Leakey set off on a British Museum-sponsored expedition bound for Africa.

既然科学家推测公元前4400年伊甸园中的亚当夏娃已非人类的先驱，那么彼何人斯，彼何处斯?曾有过许多理论，但直至1931年，有一位名为路易斯∙李基(Louis Leaky)的青年考古学家在大英博物馆的资助下远征非洲，他的考古发现为这个问题做出了明确的解答。

Leakey's goal was Olduvai Gorge, a deep crack in the flat savannah of northern Tanzania, not far from the border with Kenya. It's part of the East African Rift Valley, a massive tear in the earth's surface, thousands of miles long. It was here that time had been frozen within exposed layers of geology where, as Leakey examined the rocks shaped by the sun, the wind and the rain on the savannahs, he reached a layer where the rocks were also shaped by something else - human hands.

李基(Leakey)的目的地是北坦桑尼亚与肯尼亚交界附近的奥杜瓦伊(Olduvai)峡谷——平坦大草原上一道幽深的裂痕。它所隶属的东非大裂谷是地球表面长达几千英里的巨大缝隙，在这里，时光凝结在那些饱经大草原风吹日晒雨淋的裸露的地质层中。考古过程中，李基(Leakey)检测到其中一个岩层由某种非自然力塑造而成——那是人类的双手。

They were found next to bones, and it was clear that these stones had been shaped into butchering tools to strip meat and break into the bones of animals killed on the savannah. The layer where the tools were found was roughly two million years old. This was archaeological dynamite

这些石器发现于散落的骨骼周围，显然是用于剔骨剜肉的屠宰工具。该地质层粗略估计约200万年历史。这一发现在当时的考古学界可谓爆炸性的新闻。

Leakey's excavations produced the oldest humanly made things anywhere in the world, and they demonstrated that not only human beings, but human culture, had begun in Africa. Our stone chopping tool was one of the ones that Leakey found.

李基(Leakey)发掘出的是全世界最古老的人造物，它们表明，不仅是人类，甚至于人类文明，皆发端于非洲。我们要介绍的打制石器就是李基(Leakey)挖掘的文物之一。

"Picking it up, your first reaction is it's very heavy, and if it's heavy of course it gives power behind your blow. The second is that it fits without any compromise into the palm of the hand, and in a position where there is a sharp edge running from my forefinger to my wrist.

“你拿起它，第一反应就是它沉甸甸的，这样它的重力为击打提供冲力。其次它恰到好处地符合你的手掌，锋利的刀刃正好位于食指和手腕之间。那现在我手里握着一把锋利的刀。

So I have in my hand now a sharp knife. And what is more, it's got a bulge on it so I can get a firm grip on the edge which has been chipped specially, which is sharp ... I could perfectly effectively cut meat with this. That's the sensation I have that links me with the man who actually laboriously chipped it once, twice, three times, four times, five times on one side. One, two, three ... three times at the other ... so eight specific actions by him, knocking it with another stone, to take off a flake, and to leave this almost straight line, which is a sharp edge." (David Attenborough)

此外，特别制作的凸起部分有助于我稳稳地握住利刃两端……我能用它非常有效地切肉。这种感觉让我和它的制作者息息相通，他费力地在一边敲击了一，二，三，四，五……五次，另一边一，二，三……三次。他用另一块石头总共敲击了八次来剥落多余的部分，打制出这道近于笔直的利刃。”——大卫∙阿滕伯勒 (David Attenborough)

In the British Museum, we've recently made a new chopping tool using the same techniques as would have been used in Olduvai Gorge. If I now hold that new one in my hand, it becomes very clear how well you can use it to strike meat off an animal. We don't have any African wildebeests to hand, so I can try it using a bit of roast chicken.

最近，大英博物馆仿奥杜瓦伊(olduvai)峡谷工艺制作了一个新的切割工具。我现在拿着它剃肉，切身感受其操作方式。我们手头没有非洲牛羚，所以我用一块儿烧鸡来小试牛刀。

But these chopping tools are marvellous and quick at getting the meat off the bone and then, with one sharp blow, I could break the bone and we'd be able to get to the marrow. But you can of course use a tool like this also to strip bark off trees or roots, so that you could eat them as well.

这些工具剃起肉来非常轻松，而且我只要重重一击，就能打断骨头得到骨髓。当然，你还可以用它剥掉树皮和根皮食用。

This is, in fact, a very very versatile kitchen implement. The early humans who used chopping tools like this were probably not hunters themselves, but they were brilliant opportunists - they waited until lions, leopards or other beasts had killed their prey and then they moved in with their chopping tools, secured the meat and the marrow, and hit the protein jackpot.

它可真是一个多功能厨房用具呢!使用诸如此类工具的早期人类也许本身并非狩猎者，而是聪明的机会主义者：他们静候狮子、豹子以及其他野兽杀死猎物时，便带着切割工具紧随其上，护住肉和骨髓，然后享用这笔富含蛋白质的飞来横财。

Marrow fat doesn't sound tremendously appetising, but it is hugely nutritious - fuel not just for physical strength but also for a large brain. The brain is an extremely power- hungry mechanism. Although it accounts for only 2 per cent of our body weight, it consumes 20 per cent of our entire energy intake, and it requires constant nourishment. Our ancestors of nearly two million years ago, secured their future by being really rather sneaky.

骨髓虽不是什么美味，但营养丰富，既能增强体力，又能滋养大脑。人脑是非常耗能的生理结构，尽管重量仅为体重的2%，却可消耗20%的能量摄入，并需要源源不断的养分供给。200万年前，我们的祖先正是用这样一种相当卑鄙的方式保障了他们的未来。那些强壮、迅捷、凶猛的狩猎者乘凉休息时，我们的祖先便伺机而动，寻找食物。

When stronger, faster fiercer predators were at rest out of the heat, 'they' were able to look for food. Using tools like this one to obtain bone marrow, the most nutritious part of a carcass, they set in train an ancient virtuous circle. This food for body and mind, meant that larger-brained individuals would survive to breed larger-brained children, capable in their turn of making ever more complex tools, and you and I are just the latest iteration of this continuing process.

他们利用这类工具获得最有营养的骨髓，建立起了远古时代的良性循环系统：脑体积较大的原始人生存下来，相应地繁衍出脑体积较大的后代，这些后代继而能制作出更加复杂的工具，你我不过是这一周而复始的循环过程的终端。

Lots of animals use objects, particularly of course apes, but what sets us apart from them at this moment in our evolution is that, unlike them, we make tools before we need them. And once we have used them we keep them to use again. It's the beginning of the tool box.

能够利用物品的动物不在少数，类人猿就是一典型代表。但在人类进化史的这一点上，能将我们和这些动物相区别的是，我们可以依据需求制作工具，使用过后，我们会保存工具以备不时之需——这就是工具箱的由来。

The human brain then carries on evolving steadily over thousands of years. And what's really interesting, is that our brain starts to become asymmetrical as it gets to grips with a whole range of different functions - logic, language, the co-ordinated movement needed for tool-making, imagination and creative thought - quite unlike the ape's brain, which remains smaller and symmetrical. So what we're looking at in this chopping tool is the moment at which we became distinctly smarter and with an impulse not just to make things, but to imagine how we could make things 'better'.

随后的几千年，人脑稳步进化。有趣的是，随着人脑功能的分化，衍生出逻辑、语言、以及与制作工具、想象力和创造性思维相关的协调运动等，人脑开始变得不再对称，与类人猿小而对称的大脑形成对比。所以，这个工具记录了这样一个时刻，我们不仅拥有了更加聪明的头脑和制作工具的冲动，而且尝试着精益求精。

"This object sits at the base of a process which has become almost obsessive amongst human beings. This object is something created from a natural substance for a particular purpose, and in a particular way, with a notion in the maker's mind of what he needed it for.

“这件工具是人类苛求完美的最初表现。这件物品是制作者依据需要，利用自然物加以创造，为特殊的目的服务，用特殊的方式打制。

Is it more complex than was needed to actually serve the function which he used it for? I think you could almost say it is. Did he really need to do one, two, three, four, five chips on one side and four on the other? Could he have got away with two? I think he might have done so.

那么这件工具的复杂程度是否已经超出所需?我想你可以这样讲。他真的需要在一面炮制一，二，三，四，五次，另一面四次吗?两次行不行?我想他本可以这样做。

I think the man or woman who held this, made it just for that particular job and perhaps got some satisfaction from knowing that it was going to do it very effectively, very economically and very neatly. In time, you'd say he'd done it beautifully but, maybe not yet ... the start of a journey." (David Attenborough)

我想拿着这件特别设计的工具的人，当预料到那些复杂工序将使它操作起来非常有效、省力、灵活时，大概是获得了某种满足感。最终，你会承认他把工具做的很精美，但现在还为时过早……这才仅仅是千里之行的第一步。”——大卫∙阿滕伯勒(David Attenborough)

Without those extra chips on the edge of the chopping tool, this whole series would be impossible, because those chips tell us that right from the beginning, we - unlike other animals - have wanted to make things more complicated than they need to be. You see, objects carry powerful messages about their makers, and the chopping tool is the beginning of a relationship between humans and the things they create, which is both a love affair and a dependency.

倘若没有那额外的几次敲击，也就不会有这些后话，这些敲敲打打说明人类一开始便与众不同，总是尝试着制作出比实际需要更加复杂的东西。你看，物品能强烈地传达出其制作者的信息，这件切割工具便反映出人和人造物之间的最初关系——既是爱恋，又是依赖。

From this point on, we can't survive without the things we make and, in this sense, it is making things that makes us human. Leakey's discoveries in the warm earth of the Rift Valley did more than push humans back in time, they made it clear that all of us descend from those African ancestors, that every one of us is part of a huge African diaspora - we all have Africa in our DNA and all our culture began in the same place. Wangari Maathai is a Kenyan environmentalist and a Nobel Peace Prize winner:

自这一刻起，我们离了人造物便无法生存。从这个角度讲，是制作物品造就了人类。在东非大裂谷温暖的泥土里，李基(Leakey)的发现不仅推延了人类的历史，其更深刻的意义在于它表明我们均为非洲祖先流散在各地后裔，我们的DNA中均含有非洲的遗传密码，我们的文明一脉相承。王盖里∙玛太(Wangari Maathai)是一位肯尼亚环保主义者和诺贝尔和平奖得主：

"So far it seems like the information we have tells us that we came from somewhere within this part of the world in eastern Africa. And that of course for many people must be surprising - because I think we are so used to being divided along ethnic lines, along racial lines, and we look all the time for reasons to be different from each other - it must be surprising to some of us to realise that what differentiates us is usually very superficial, like the colour of your skin or the colour of your eyes or the texture of your hair, but essentially that we are all from the same stem, the same origin. So, I think that as we continue to understand ourselves and to appreciate each other, and especially when we get to understand, for example, that we all come from the same origin - we will shed a lot of the prejudices that we have harboured in the past."

“我们当前所掌握的信息显示我们均源自于这里——东非的某个区域。这个结论听上去匪夷所思，因为我们早已习惯于各种各样的民族划分和种族划分，而且我们追求与众不同，所以当人们意识到我们的区别通常只是肤色、眼珠色和发质这些肤浅的因素时，一定觉得非常不可思议。事实上，我们本是同根生。我想，当我们不断尝试了解自己、欣赏他人，特别是认识到我们同根同源时，那些冥顽不化的偏见便会荡然无存。”

Listening to the news on the radio, it's easy to imagine the world is divided into rival tribes and competing civilisations. So it's good, it's essential in fact, to be reminded that the idea of our common humanity is not just an enlightenment dream, but a genetic and a cultural reality. It's something we'll see again and again in this series.

听着收音机播报的新闻，我们不难想象世界被分割为彼此敌对的部落和相互竞争的文明。因此，我们记起普遍人性的理念不止是一个启蒙的梦想，更是基因和文化的事实，这是非常重要的。这一点将在一系列节目中得到反复验证。

Our next object is the tool that people took with them when they first left Africa and began to spread around the world - it's been called the Swiss Army knife of the Stone Age ... it's the hand axe.

我们下期介绍的是人类首次离开非洲、流向世界时所携带的工具，它有“石器时代的瑞士军刀”的美誉——手斧。

小编补充：

The Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, retells the history of human development from the first stone axe to the credit card, using 100 selected objects from the Museum.

大英博物馆馆长尼尔∙麦克∙格雷戈尔(NeilMacGregor)通过精选的100件展品，向我们重述了人类由石斧头到信用卡的进化史。

Neil goes back two million years to the Rift Valley in Tanzania, where a simple chipped stone marks the emergence of modern humans.

尼尔(Neil)重返200万年前的坦桑尼亚裂谷，那里出土的一件拙朴的打制石器标志着晚期智人的诞生。

One of the characteristics that mark humans out from other animals is their desire for, and dependency on, the things they fashion with their own hands. Faced with the needs to cut meat from carcasses, early humans in Africa discovered how to shape stones into cutting tools. From that one innovation, a whole history of human development springs.

人类与其他动物的一大区别特征就是人类对亲手创作的物品的渴求和依赖。应剔骨剜肉的需求，非洲大陆的早期人类发现了将石头打造成切割工具的方法。从此，人类的进化史开始跨越式发展。

Neil tells the story of the Olduvai stone chopping tool with contributions from flint napper Phil Harding, Sir David Attenborough and African Nobel Prize winner Dr Wangeri Maathai.

尼尔(Neil)协同燧石拉毛工匠费尔∙哈丁(Phil Harding)，大卫∙阿滕伯勒爵士(Sir David Attenborough)以及非裔诺贝尔奖得主王盖里∙玛太(Wangeri Maathai)博士为我们讲述奥杜瓦伊(Olduvai)石质切割工具的历史。

This chopping tool is the oldest humanly made object in the British Museum. It could be used for many purposes including chopping bones, plants and wood. By using a stone hammer to knock flakes off of a pebble our ancestors could make a tool with a sharp, functional edge. Olduvai is part of the great East African Rift Valley torn open by massive earthquakes. Many skulls and bones of our early ancestors have been found along this valley.

该切割工具为大英博物馆最早的人造物。它用途繁多，既能切断兽骨，也能砍伐植物和木材。我们的祖先用石锤敲击卵石，剥落下一些碎石片，将其塑造成锋利、实用的刀刃。奥杜瓦伊(Olduvai)是地震撕裂的东非大裂谷的一段，沿途出土了大量我们祖先的颅骨和骨骼。

Can we be human without objects?

倘若没有这些人造物，我们还能被称为人类吗?

The invention of the first tools is one of the most important moments in human history. Making, using and sharing things played a key role in developing human behaviour. The ability to make tools allowed humans to adapt to new environments and out-compete other animals. Gradually it would lead to humans becoming the most successful animal in the world. All modern technology began with these first chopping tools.

早期工具的发明可谓是人类历史上举足轻重的一刻。制作，使用以及分享工具在人类行为进化过程中扮演重要角色。制作工具的能力帮助人类适应新环境和战胜其他动物，并使人类逐渐演变为世界上最强大的动物。这些早期的切割工具是一切现代科技的鼻祖。