第 1 课 · Finding Fossil Man

Finding fossil man

寻找化石人

We can read of things that happened 5,000 years ago in the Near East, where people first learned to write.

我们可以从文字记载中读到五千年前近东发生的事情，那里的人最早学会了写字。

But there are some parts of the world where even now people cannot write.

可是，世界上仍有一些地方，直到今天那里的人们还不会写字。

The only way that they can preserve their history is to recount it as sagas legends handed down from one generation of storytellers to another.

他们保存历史的唯一办法，是把历史当作英雄史话讲述出来，也就是由讲故事的人一代接一代传下去的传说。

These legends are useful because they can tell us something about migrations of people who lived long ago, but none could write down what they did.

这些传说之所以有用，是因为它们能告诉我们一些关于远古人类迁徙的情况，只可惜那些人没有一个能把自己的所作所为记录下来。

Anthropologists wondered where the remote ancestors of the Polynesian peoples now living in the Pacific Islandscame from.

人类学家一直想知道：如今生活在太平洋群岛上的波利尼西亚人的远古祖先，究竟是从哪里来的。

The sagas of these people explain that some of them came from Indonesia about 2,000 years ago.

这些人的萨迦故事解释说，他们当中有些人是在大约两千年前从印度尼西亚来的。

But the first people who were like ourselves lived so long ago that even their sagas, if they had any, are forgotten.

但是，最早长得和我们一样的人类生活的年代太过久远，即便他们有过史话传说，如今也已被遗忘。

So archaeologists have neither history nor legends to help them to find out where the first 'modern men' came from.

因此，考古学家既没有历史记载，也没有传说，来帮助他们查明最早的“现代人”来自何处。

Fortunately, however, ancient men made tools of stone, especially flint, because this is easier to shape than other kinds.

所幸的是，远古人类用石头制作工具，尤其是燧石，因为石头比其他材料更容易加工成形。

They may also have used wood and skins, but these have rotted away.

他们可能也使用过木头和兽皮，但这些材料都已腐烂殆尽。

Stone does not decay, and so the tools of long ago have remained when even the bones of the men who made them have disappeared without trace.

石头不会腐烂，所以远古的工具得以留存下来，而就连制造这些工具的人，其骨骼也早已消失得无影无踪。