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What do you take with you when you travel? Most of us would embark on a long list that begins with a toothbrush and ends with excess baggage. But for most of human history, there was only one thing that you really needed in order to travel - a stone handaxe.
當你旅行時隨身攜帶的物品是什么？我們中大多數人會開出一張長長的清單，以牙刷開頭，直到用超重的行李包結尾。但是在人類歷史上的多數階段，你旅行中真正需要的可能僅僅是一把石制手斧。
"Pretty sharp, around the edges, isn't it?"
“周邊邊緣真是鋒芒銳利，是吧？”
"I think whoever made this, did it very beautifully and carefully."
“我覺得制造這工具的人，手藝堪稱鬼斧天工啊！”
It looks pretty straightforward, but in fact, it is extremely tricky to make and, for over a million years, it was literally the cutting edge of technology.
它看起來相對簡單，但其實制造一把手斧的工夫卻是非常棘手，而且在超過近百萬年時光里，這一直領先的前沿工藝。
"And once they'd been invented, if you want to use that word, they just never changed the design ... and I think that is the ultimate compliment to the design of a superb tool."
“一旦它們被發明出來，其名字確認下來，設計再也不曾被修改過。我覺得這種‘從來被模仿，不曾被超過’真是對一種超極工具的終極評價!”
It accompanied our ancestors through half of their history, and was the main reason they spread first across Africa and then across the world.
它伴隨著我們老祖宗渡過近一半的人類歷史，同時也是他們得以走出非洲，遍布全球的原因。
Olduvai handaxe (made 1.2 - 1.4 million years ago) found in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, East Africa
奧杜威手斧，距今約一百二十至一百四十萬年前，出土于東非坦桑尼亞奧杜威峽谷
For a million years the sound of making handaxes provided the percussion of everyday life. Anyone choosing a hundred objects to tell a history of the world would have to include a handaxe. All of this week I'm looking at objects from the very earliest moments of human history.
在將近百萬年的時光里，制造手斧的聲音宛如人們日常生活里打擊樂器的樂聲。任何人企圖選擇百件物品來講敘一段世界歷史的，這石斧肯定是必選之物。本周以來我一直在尋找著一些來自于最早期人類歷史的物品。
Every object I've chosen is a document of the world in which it was made, but also marks a critical stage in the process by which we became fully human. And what I think makes this stone axe so interesting is how much it tells us, not just about the hand, but about the mind that made it.
我所選擇的每件物品本身都一份文件，承載著制造它那個世界的信息，同時也標志著讓我們成為完整人類過程中的某個關鍵階段。我覺得讓這把石斧如何有趣，是因為它不僅可以告訴我們其制造者手中的工藝，還有制造者腦里的想法。
I am holding a handaxe now,The Olduvai Gorge handaxe now. It doesn't, of course, look anything like a modern axe - there's no handle and there's no metal blade. It's in fact a piece of grey-green volcanic rock, a very beautiful grey-green, and it's in the shape of a tear-drop, and it's a lot more versatile than a modern straight axe would be.
奧杜威峽谷手斧肯定外表同現代斧頭是兩回事，既沒有手柄，也沒有金屬刀刃。其實這是一塊灰綠色的火山巖石，很漂亮的灰綠色，淚珠狀，同時它更比現代斧頭更加的多功能多用途。
