纪录片《文明》 第34期 创世纪的第二个瞬间（34）（在线收听）

There were ceramic vessels and there were murals too.

有陶器 也有壁画

And out of the Mayan delight in making pictures

玛雅人以绘画为乐 并由此发明了

developed a fully-fledged script.

一套非常成熟的文字体系

Writing made up of glyphs or word pictures.

用象形文字[文字图片]来书写

They were brushed onto paper made from wild fig tree bark,

然后画到用野无花果树树皮制成的纸上

painted onto beautiful ceramic pottery

或是精美的陶器上

or, like this one, carved into limestone.

亦或是像这种 雕刻在石灰岩上

They were everywhere in Maya city states.

它们在玛雅城邦中随处可见

The Maya were the wordiest of all ancient cultures.

玛雅文化是所有古代文化中最富文字表达的文化

So that this,

所以这个

which looks like something purely decorative, ornamental,

看起来像是单纯的装饰品

a bestiary with all these animals,

是一部包含所有这些动物的寓言集

there's a monkey,

这有一只猴子

there's a magnificently complacent frog,

这有一只洋洋自得的青蛙

there in the middle is an extremely scary killer rabbit,

在中间有一只非常可怕的杀手兔子

in fact, all these are words which make a text.

事实上 所有的这些都是表意文字

Each glyph is not a single word, but it's a syllable, in fact,

每个象形文字不是独立的字词 而是一个音节

and you put them together and you have a sentence, a paragraph.

把它们合在一起 就成为一个句子 一段话