評論
打印
What does the past sound like? Of course, when we're as far back in deep time as we are this week, we can have no real idea.
過去的世界聆聽起來如何？當然，即使我們像本周一樣，努力追溯回宇宙洪荒的遠古時代，我們仍舊沒能得到任何確切的答案。
We can imagine the unchanging sounds of nature - wind, rain, sea, river - but for us, history is silent.
我們可以想象大自然里永恒不變的聲音——風聲雨聲，或蒼海河流的濤聲依舊。
But if we can't hear the past, we can certainly see it. I'd like to introduce you to an object that's 13,000 years old, made by one of our ancestors who wanted to show his own world to himself and, in doing so, relayed that world with astonishing immediacy, to us.
然而歷史對于我們，卻是沉默的。但或許我們無法聆聽歷史，我們卻可以看得到它。我想向你介紹這件擁有一萬三千年歷史的物品，也許當初我們某一位遠古祖先想把自己生存的世界展示給自己，其結果恰好也將那世界以無比親密、讓人驚嘆的方式傳達給今天的我們。
'You can feel that here's somebody making this, who was projecting themselves with huge imaginative generosity into the world around, and saw and felt in their bones that rhythm.'
“你可能感受到制作這藝術品的人運用巨大的想象力去感知自己周遭的世界，審視那節奏，并將其融合他們的骨雕作品中去?！?/p>
It is, I think, a masterpiece of Ice Age art, and it's also evidence of a huge change in the way in which the human brain was working.
我認為這是一件冰河時代的藝術杰作，同時它也是人類運轉方式產生巨大變化的鮮明證據。
'Something, between say 100,000 and 50,000 years ago, happens in the human brain, that allows this fantastic creativity, imagination, artistic abilities, to emerge.'
“大約在五至十萬年前之間，人類大腦產生了變化，允許了這夢幻般的創造力、想象力，審美能力的涌現。”
The swimming reindeer made from mammoth tusk, carved around 10,000 B.C. , and found in France
猛犸象象牙雕“一對游水的馴鹿”，大約在公元前10,000 年完成，出土于法國。
In the last two programmes, we looked at stone tools, which raised the question of whether it's making 'things' that makes us human.
在上次兩期節目中，我們介紹了石制工具，并因些提出這個問題：是否制造“物品”使我們人類之所以成為人類呢？
Could you conceive of being human without using objects to negotiate the world? I don't think I can. But there's another question that follows quite quickly once you start looking at these very ancient things.
你能否想象作為人類，卻不使用物品去應付這個世界？我不能想象。然而當你再次審視這些非常古老的物品時，卻引發了另一個問題。
Our modern human species, 'homo sapiens' ('thinking man' in the Latin), evolved in Africa at least 150,000 years ago.
我們的現在人種“智人”（拉丁語中意為“有思想的人”）是至少約十五萬年前，在非洲進化而來的。
But around 50,000 years ago, something dramatic seems to have happened to the human brain, because across the world, humans start to make patterns that decorate and intrigue, to make jewellery to adorn the body, and representations of the animals that share their world with them.
然后大概就在約五萬年前，人類大腦似乎發生在某些戲劇性的變化；因為當時全世界各地的人類紛紛不約而同，開始使用形形色色的裝飾性與或滿足好奇心的圖案，使用珠寶首飾來裝飾身體，創造出大自然分享給他們的各種動物的栩栩形態。
