纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 065泰诺仪式用椅（2）

 

Within a century of the arrival of the Spanish, most of the Taino would have died of European diseases, and their land would have been shared out among the European conquerors¹. It was a pattern that we repeated across the Americas, but the Taino were in the front line, and they suffered more than perhaps any other American people. They had no writing, and so it's only thanks to a small number of objects, like this stool, that we can even begin to grasp how the Taino imagined their world, and how they sought to control it.

The term Taino is generally used to describe the dominant² group of people that inhabited the larger Caribbean islands: Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico - and Hispaniola, now divided between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, where our stool was found. Across the islands, ritual artefacts have been found that give us some idea of Taino life and thought. There are face-like masks designed to be worn on the body, wooden statuettes, and inhalers for sniffing³ - or perhaps better, snorting - a mind-altering substance. The most evocative of all these surviving traces of the Taino are the carved ceremonial stools known as 'duhos'. The duho is the physical expression of a distinctive⁴ Taino world view.

自一四九二年西班牙人登上这片土地后的一百年间，大多数泰诺人因感染了他们带去的疾病而死亡，家园也被这群征服者瓜分。这种情形在美洲一再重演，但泰诺人是首批面对外来欧洲人的族群之一，他们遭受的苦难也许比其他美洲土著都要深重。他们没有文字，因而我们只能通过为数不多的长凳一类的物品，一窥他们对所处世界的想象和他们所寻求的掌控世界的方式。

“泰诺”一词泛指曾经居住在加勒比群岛中几个较大岛屿—一古巴、牙买加、波多黎各、伊斯帕尼奥拉岛（如今分属海地和多米尼加共和国）一上的主要族群，这里便是长凳的发现地。在这些岛屿上发现的宗教用品能让我们多少了解泰诺人的生活与思想，其中包括用来佩戴的人脸面具、木制小雕像，以及一种用于吸食某种致幻物的器具。泰诺人留下的这些物品中，最能生动表现他们生活面貌的，便是这种被称为“都何”的祭祀用长凳，它们是承载着泰诺人世界观的实体。

 

1 conquerors   

征服者，占领者( conqueror的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The Danes had selfconfidence of conquerors, and their security precautions were casual. 这些丹麦人具有征服者的自信，而且他们的安全防卫也是漫不经心的。
• The conquerors believed in crushing the defeated people into submission, knowing that they could not win their loyalty by the victory. 征服者们知道他们的胜利并不能赢得失败者的忠心，于是就认为只有通过武力才能将他们压服。

2 dominant   

adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因

参考例句：

• The British were formerly dominant in India.英国人从前统治印度。
• She was a dominant figure in the French film industry.她在法国电影界是个举足轻重的人物。

3 sniffing   

n.探查法v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的现在分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说

参考例句：

• We all had colds and couldn't stop sniffing and sneezing. 我们都感冒了，一个劲地抽鼻子，打喷嚏。
• They all had colds and were sniffing and sneezing. 他们都伤风了，呼呼喘气而且打喷嚏。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

4 distinctive   

adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的

参考例句：

• She has a very distinctive way of walking.她走路的样子与别人很不相同。
• This bird has several distinctive features.这个鸟具有几种突出的特征。