纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 002奥杜瓦伊石质切割工具（4）（在线收听）

Without those extra chips on the edge of the chopping tool, this whole series would be impossible,

倘若没有那额外的几次敲击，也就不会有这些后话，

because those chips tell us that right from the beginning, we - unlike other animals -

这些敲敲打打说明人类一开始便与众不同，

have wanted to make things more complicated than they need to be. You see, objects carry powerful messages about their makers,

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，

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.

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.

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。

Leakey's discoveries in the warm earth of the Rift Valley did more than push humans back in time,

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，

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 -

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，

we all have Africa in our DNA and all our culture began in the same place.

我们的DNA中均含有非洲的遗传密码，我们的文明一脉相承。

Wangari Maathai is a Kenyan environmentalist and a Nobel Peace Prize winner:

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.

“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。

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,

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，

and we look all the time for reasons to be different from each other -

而且我们追求与众不同，

it must be surprising to some of us to realise that what differentiates us is usually very superficial,

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。

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.

事实上，我们本是同根生。

So, I think that as we continue to understand ourselves and to appreciate each other, and especially when we get to understand,

我想，当我们不断尝试了解自己、欣赏他人，

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.

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.

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。

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,

因此，我们记起普遍人性的理念不止是一个启蒙的梦想，

but a genetic and a cultural reality. It's something we'll see again and again in this series.

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 -

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，

it's been called the Swiss Army knife of the Stone Age ... it's the hand axe.

它有“石器时代的瑞士军刀”的美誉——手斧。