纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 006巴布亚新几内亚鸟形杵（2）

Temperatures increased by as much as seven degrees centigrade in a hundred years, and sea levels rose by over 100 metres. Ice turned to water and snow gave way to grass, and the result was slow but profound changes in the way that humans lived. Over the course of this week, I will be covering about seven thousand years of human history when, as the Ice Age ended, people in many different parts of the world began to breed animals, grow plants and eat differently.

百年之内气温上升高达七摄氏度，海平面上升超过三百英尺，即一百米。冰川融化成水流，积雪让位给绿草。这过程是缓慢的，然后给人类生活方式带来的改变却是深远的。在本周的各期目里，我将涵盖人类历史之河中将近七千年的历史；当冰河时代结束，全球各地的人类开始了繁殖牲畜、种植庄稼，而且饮食方式也大大改观了。

Ten thousand years ago, the sound of daily life began to change across the world, as new rhythms of grinding and pounding prepared the new foods that were going to change our diets and our landscapes. For a long time, our ancestors had used fire to roast meat but, in the sense that we would use the word today, they were now 'cooking'.

一万年前，日常生活中与人类朝夕相伴的声音在全世界范围内都改变了，随着人类开始采用新方式来准备新食物，真可谓是日日砧杵动，家家捣捶声了，而我们的饮食与周遭环境也将迎来新改观。漫漫岁月中，曾几何时，我们祖先们已经学会了取火烧肉。也许某种意义上，按我们现代人的说法，他们现在会进行“烹饪”了。

There's an enormous range of objects in the British Museum that we could have chosen to illustrate¹ this particular moment in human history, when people literally² start putting down roots and cultivating plants that will feed them all year round.

于是人类真真正正地开始落地生根，培育起庄稼，这些植物将能够常年到头为他们提供食物；而在大英博物馆数量庞大的藏品中，能被挑选出来描绘这特殊历史时刻的物品，简直是随手可得。

The beginning of this sort of farming is a process that seems to have happened in many different places at more or less the same time, and we've recently discovered that one of these places was Papua New Guinea, that huge island just to the north of Australia, where this bird-shaped stone pestle³ comes from.

这种耕作方式的开始，几乎是一个在全球范围内同步发生的过程；我们最近发现的这些地方之一便是巴布亚新几内亚，那座澳大利亚以北的巨大岛屿，我们这鸟形杵就是从那里出土的。

We think it's about eight thousand years old, but a pestle then would have been used exactly as it is now - to grind food in a mortar⁴ and break it down, so that you can make it edible⁵.

我们估计它大概有八千年的历史，一根舂杵，纵使历练悠悠岁月，不变的是它当初的使用功能；它仍然可以胜任研磨研钵里食物的工作，供人们食用。

It's a big pestle, it stands just over a foot tall about 35 cm, and the business end is a stone bulb, about the size of a cricket ball, and you can feel that it's been much used. Above the bulb, the shaft⁶ is very easy to grasp and the upper part of the handle, or the shaft, has been shaped in a way that's got nothing to do with making food at all - it looks like a slender, elongated⁷ bird with wings outstretched and a long neck dipping forward; it looks a bit like Concorde.

这根舂杵满大的，直立起来大概有一英尺高，约三十五厘米长，它的下头是一个大石球，板球大小，看得出被常年使用过。石球上端的长柄很好抓取，这长柄或杆子的上端部分，却被塑造成一种与舂捣谷物无关的造型，它看上去像一只纤细而被拉长的鸟，张开双翅，长长的脖子优雅地弯向前，看上去真有点像只协和式飞机。

We're very familiar now with the idea that making food unites us, either as a family or a society, and we all know how much family memory and emotion is bound up in the pots and pans and wooden spoons of childhood. These sorts of associations seem to date from around ten thousand years ago; from the very beginning of cooking implements⁸, roughly the period of our pestle. The chef Madhur Jaffrey is still very attached to her pestle, which her mother gave her when she left India, and she came to look at ours:

现在众所周知，是食物将我们团结起来，构成家庭或者社会，而且大家都有多么亲切的关于家的记忆与情感，那岁月中锅碗瓢盆与木汤匙的童年。这样子的情感纽带似乎早在一万年前就开始形成了，在烹饪厨具开始被运用起来的最早期，大概与我们这根舂杵是同一时代的。厨师梅赫尔·杰弗瑞仍旧相当依恋她的舂杵，那是当年她离开印度时，她母亲送给她的。当她观察我们的这把舂杵时，说道

1 illustrate   

v.举例说明，阐明；图解，加插图

参考例句：

• The company's bank statements illustrate its success.这家公司的银行报表说明了它的成功。
• This diagram will illustrate what I mean.这个图表可说明我的意思。

2 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

3 pestle   

n.杵

参考例句：

• He ground the rock candy with a mortar and pestle.他自己动手用研钵和杵把冰糖研成粉。
• An iron pestle can be ground down to a needle.只要功夫深，铁杵磨成针。

4 mortar   

n.灰浆，灰泥；迫击炮；v.把…用灰浆涂接合

参考例句：

• The mason flushed the joint with mortar.泥工用灰浆把接缝处嵌平。
• The sound of mortar fire seemed to be closing in.迫击炮的吼声似乎正在逼近。

5 edible   

n.食品，食物；adj.可食用的

参考例句：

• Edible wild herbs kept us from dying of starvation.我们靠着野菜才没被饿死。
• This kind of mushroom is edible,but that kind is not.这种蘑菇吃得，那种吃不得。

6 shaft   

n.(工具的)柄，杆状物

参考例句：

• He was wounded by a shaft.他被箭击中受伤。
• This is the shaft of a steam engine.这是一个蒸汽机主轴。

7 elongated   

v.延长，加长( elongate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Modigliani's women have strangely elongated faces. 莫迪里阿尼画中的妇女都长着奇长无比的脸。
• A piece of rubber can be elongated by streching. 一块橡皮可以拉长。 来自《用法词典》

8 implements   

n.工具( implement的名词复数 )；家具；手段；[法律]履行（契约等）v.实现( implement的第三人称单数 )；执行；贯彻；使生效

参考例句：

• Primitive man hunted wild animals with crude stone implements. 原始社会的人用粗糙的石器猎取野兽。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• They ordered quantities of farm implements. 他们订购了大量农具。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》