纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 070复活节岛雕像（2）

 

This week we've glimpsed some of the variety of gods that people around the world were engaging with about seven hundred years ago, and the objects that they made to get close to them. It's a constant of human history that societies devote huge amounts of time and resource to ensuring that the gods are on their side, but few societies have ever done it on such a heroic scale as Rapa Nui. The population was probably never more than about 15,000, but in a few hundred years the inhabitants of this tiny island quarried¹, carved and erected² over a thousand massive stone sculptures. Hoa Hakananai'a was one of them. He was probably made around the year 1200, and was almost certainly made to house an ancestral spirit. He's a stone being, which an ancestor may from time to time visit and inhabit.

有个主题在人类历史上不论何种社会始终如一，即世人会耗费大量的时间和资源来确保自己得到神的卷顾，但很少有哪个能做到拉帕努伊岛上这样惊人的规模。

岛上居民大概从未超过一万五千人，但在几百年间，他们开采、雕琢并竖起了超过一千座巨型石像。何瓦何卡纳奈阿便是其中之一。他大约制作于公元一千二百年，几乎可以肯定，他是用来给先人灵魂居住的躯壳，是可以让先人时常拜访与居住的石像。

 

1 quarried   

v.从采石场采得( quarry的过去式和过去分词 )；从（书本等中）努力发掘（资料等）；在采石场采石

参考例句：

• The workmen quarried out a huge block of marble. 工人们从采石场采得一块很大的大理石。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The large limestone caves are also quarried for cement. 同时还在这些大石灰岩洞里开采水泥原料。 来自辞典例句

2 ERECTED   

adj. 直立的，竖立的，笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立，建立

参考例句：

• A monument to him was erected in St Paul's Cathedral. 在圣保罗大教堂为他修了一座纪念碑。
• A monument was erected to the memory of that great scientist. 树立了一块纪念碑纪念那位伟大的科学家。