纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 006巴布亚新几内亚鸟形杵（4）（在线收听）

So we went for the difficult food, we went for things like the small hard grass seeds we call cereals, that are indigestible if eaten raw and may even be poisonous, and we have to pulp them up and turn them into things like bread and dough. And we went into the poisonous giant tubers, like the yam and the taro, which also had to be leeched, ground up and cooked before we could eat them. And that was our competitive advantage - other animals that didn't have the big brain couldn't think several steps ahead to do that.'

因此我们另开蹊径，去寻找那些要获取的话，相当困难的食物。我们寻找到了那种被我们称之为谷物的草籽，又小又硬，生吃的话，肯定消化不了，甚至可以有毒性；于是我们学会了把它们浸泡成浆，再做成类似面包或面团之类的东西。我们也寻找到了那些带有毒性的、个头颇大的块茎，像山药、芋头，这些在食用之前得经过榨取、提炼和烹饪。这就是我们人类的竞争优势，其他动物可没有具备像我们这么发达的大脑，能够有预见性，超前跳跃式的进行思考。”

So it takes brains to get to cookery. We don't know what gender the cooks were who used our pestle to grind taro in New Guinea, but we do know from archaeological research in the Middle East that cookery there was primarily a woman's activity.

所以烹饪也是需要动脑筋的。我们无法知道这根使用舂杵的厨师性别是男是女，但中东地区的考古成果显示通常烹饪是女性主导的。

From examining burial sites of this period, scientists have discovered that the hips, ankles and knees of mature women are generally severely worn - the grinding of wheat then would have been done kneeling down, rocking back and forth to crush the kernels between two heavy stones.

通过研究这一时期的墓葬遗址，科学家们发现成年女性的臀部、脚踝与膝盖部位严重磨损——那时研磨小麦，通常需要双膝下跪、利用前后两块沉重石头来回滚动，反复研磨，直到把谷物碾碎。

This arthritis-inducing activity must have been very tough, but the women of the Middle East and the new cooks everywhere were cultivating a small range of nourishing basic foods that could sustain much larger groups of people than had been possible before. Most of these new foods were pretty bland, but the pestle and mortar can also play a key part here in making them more interesting. Madhur Jaffrey again:

这种活动会导致关节炎，肯定是相当艰苦的。不过中东这些妇女与世界其他地区的新厨师们正在培育出一种最基本的滋补食品，品种虽少，却可以养活史无前例庞大数目的人口。这种新型食品大部分嚼之无味，但是这研钵与舂杵却很关键使一切变得更加丰富有趣。梅赫尔·杰弗瑞再次说道。

'If you take mustard seeds, which were known in ancient times, if you leave them whole they have one taste, but if you crush them, they're like Jekyll and Hyde; they become pungent and bitter, so you change the very nature of a seasoning by crushing it.'

“比如芥菜籽吧，远古时代的人类认识它了。如果整颗的话，尝起来是一种味道；而如果碾碎了，就像是‘变身博士’了，它的味道就变得辛辣、苦涩。因此你可以通过碾磨来从本质上改变一种调料。”

And Martin Jones believes that in due course, this early farming changed the whole pattern of our society:

马丁·琼斯认为，这种早期农耕形式最终顺理成章地改变了我们的社会模式：

'We specialise in those smaller number of foods - not stopping the others - but emphasising a smaller number of foods, and that's how agriculture emerges, and it allows people to interact in different ways, to share food in different ways and to make contact with each other in different ways.'

“现在我们专注于品种较少的食物，没有停止食用其他种类，但却更注重于若干种类的食物；于是产生了农业，促使人类互动的方式多样化起来，来分享食物，来与彼此交流沟通。”

These new crops helped create new kinds of communities because, if you were lucky with the weather, they could produce surpluses which could then be stored, exchanged or simply consumed in a great feast. Our pestle's long, thin elegant body looks far too delicate to have been able to withstand the vigorous daily pummelling of taro, so we should perhaps think of it more as being used to prepare special meals; meals where people gathered, as we might do today, to trade, to dance, or to celebrate key moments in life. Sharing food is one of the most basic ways of binding people together.

这些新兴农作物有助于人类社区的建立，因为假如你运气够好，遇上风调雨顺的气候，收成好了，就可以囤存余粮，就可以彼此交换，或者直接大家聚一起大快朵颐,饱餐一顿。我们这根舂杵纤长优雅的身形，看上去似乎承受不了常日生活里大力碾磨芋头那种粗活苦活，也许我们应该把它看作来用准备特殊膳食的，一场人们欢聚一堂的盛宴，就像我们今天也可能做的一样。盛宴上大家进行物物交换，欢歌乐舞，庆祝生命中的关键时刻。分享食物是巩固人与人之间纽带的一种最基本方法之一。