纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 003奥杜威手斧（4）（在线收听）

Of course we've no idea what the maker of our handaxe might have said, but it seems probable that he would have had roughly the language abilities of a seven-year-old child. But whatever the level, this early speech would clearly have been the beginnings of a quite new capacity for communication - and that would have meant that people could sit down to exchange ideas, plan their work together or even just to gossip. If you can make a decent handaxe like this one, it's a good bet that you're well on the way to something we would all recognise as society.

当然我们无法知道当时我们那制造石斧的祖先可能说出什么，但极有可能他当然已经拥有约等同于七岁左右小孩子的语言能力。然而无论他当时水平如何，显然这种早期的语言是一种全新沟通能力的开始；同时这也意味着同时的人类已经能够坐下来交流思想，或共同计划下大家的工作，或就只是单纯的闲聊拉呱。假如你有能力制造出那么体面的手斧，那么我敢打赌当已经相当具有某些我们现代社会能够认可的共性。

So, 1.2 million years ago, where are we? We can make tools like our handaxe, that help us control our environment and in fact transform it - the handaxe gives us not just better food, but can also skin animals for clothing and strip branches for fire or shelter.

所以一百二十万年前，我们究竟在哪里？我们能够制造出像这种手斧一样的工具，能有效帮我们控制我们的环境，甚至改变环境；这手斧不仅可以给我们提供更好的食物，而且能剥兽皮来当衣服，扒树皮来取火或者建造庇护场所。

Not only this; we can now talk to each other and we can imagine something that isn't already in front of us. What next? The handaxe is about to accompany us on a huge journey; because with all these skills, we're no longer tied to our immediate environment.

不仅如此，我们现在已经能够彼此交流，能够想象出那些还没发生在我们面前的事物。下一步呢？这手斧将伴随着我们继续我们的伟大征途，因为拥有这些技能，我们将不再依赖于眼前的直接环境。

If we need to - even if we just want to - we can move. Travel is possible, maybe even desirable, and we can spread beyond the warm savannahs of Africa and survive, perhaps even flourish, in a colder climate.

假如我们有需要，甚至只是我们有意愿，我们可以迁徙。现在长途旅行已经可能了，也许甚至是更可取的，我们可以超越这温暖的非洲大草原，在更寒冷的气候里存活，甚至繁衍生息。

The handaxe is our passport to the rest of the world, and in the study collections of the British Museum you can find handaxes from all over Africa - Nigeria, South Africa, Libya - but also from Israel and India, Spain and Korea - even from a gravel pit near Heathrow airport.

这手斧是我们探索世界其他各角落的通行证。仔细观察下大英博物馆里的各种藏品，你就能够找到出土于非洲各地的手斧——尼日利亚的，南非的，利比亚的；同时你还能找到来自以色列、印度、西班牙、韩国等地；甚至在希思罗机场附近的砾石坑也有手斧的出土呢。

And as they moved north, these early handaxe-makers became the first Britons. Nick Ashton has been excavating on the Norfolk coast

随着他们的北迁，这些早期的手斧制造者们其中有些成为了首批英国人。尼尔·阿什顿在Happisburgh地区的诺福克海岸进行过挖掘：

'In Happisburgh we have these 30-foot (or 9-metre) cliffs, which are composed of these clays and silts and sands, and these were laid down by massive glaciation around about 450,000 years ago, which even reached the outskirts of north London. But it's beneath these clays that a local who was walking his dog found a handaxe, embedded in these organic sediments.

“在Happisburgh那里有大概三十英尺，即九米高的悬崖，由粘土、粉砂及沙石构成；这些地质层都大约形成于四十五万年前的大规模冰川时期，当时冰川延伸到现伦敦北部的郊区。某天一个当地人在溜狗时，无意发现在一把手斧镶嵌在这些粘泥层下的有机沉积物中。

But these tools - which were first being made in Africa 1.6 million years ago - arrived in southern Europe and parts of Asia just under a million years ago, and reached Britain somewhere between 600,000 and 500,000 years ago.

这种最早出土于一百六十万年前非洲地区的工具，在不到一百万年前抵达了欧洲南部及亚洲部分地区，并且在约五十至六十万年前抵达了英国地区。