評論
打印
Lunch here at the British Museum staff canteen has always been a pretty international affair. It's not just the scholars and the curators who come from all round the world; it's also of course the food.
在大英博物館職工餐廳里吃午餐，堪稱是一件相當國際化的事情。一則博物館里的學者與管理員都是來自全球世界，二則當然大家所吃的食物也是。
As today is one of my healthy days, I'm at the salad bar, looking in among the greens at a fairly standard run of potato salad, rice, sweetcorn and kidney beans. What I find interesting about these vegetables is not just that they come originally from all over the world, but that none of them would exist in the form they do today if the plants they come from hadn't been carefully chosen, cherished and modified in a long process that began about ten thousand years ago with some intrepid and ingenious Ice Age cooks.
今天恰好是我的“健康日”之一，所以我站在沙拉吧前邊，在一大堆形形式式的蔬菜前面左看看，右瞧瞧。菜式挺標準的，有土豆沙拉、米飯、甜主米、腰豆等等。讓我對這些蔬菜頗感興趣的倒不是它們源產地本來是遍及世界各地，而是假如不是當年經過一代又一代的人類精心選擇，仔細培育，品種改良，這些植物也不可能會長得現代這樣子了。而那漫長的過程，早在距今約一萬年前，就由冰河時代那些勇敢而天才的廚師們開始了。
'Everyone did these things, and the families existed as families because you did it not for yourself but for the family.'
“大家都在做這些日常瑣事，而家庭之所以存在恰恰是因為你不僅僅是為了自己，還為了家庭。”
'We need some new evolutionary tricks in order to spread out into increasingly hostile environments.'
“為了能在日趨惡劣的環境里開枝散葉、生息繁衍，我們需要擁有更新、更加進化的技能。”
Bird-shaped pestle ,made of stone 4 - 8,000 years old , discovered in Papua New Guinea
鳥形杵，石制，距今約4000至8000年，巴布亞新幾內亞。
In previous programmes, we have looked at how our ancestors moved around the world; in this week's programmes I'm going to be focussing on what happened when they settled down. This is a week full of ancient animals, powerful gods, dangerous weather, good sex and even better food.
在之前的節目里，我們觀察我們的祖先們是如何全世界遷徙；在本周的節目里，我將聚集于當人類開始定居生活后所產生的變化。本周節目將充滿各種古老動物、強大神靈、惡劣氣候、美好性愛與美食佳肴。
Around 11,000 years ago, the world underwent a violent and rapid period of climate change, leading to the end of the last Ice Age.
大約一萬年前，這世界經歷了劇烈而快速的氣候巨變期，導致了最后一次冰河時代的終結。
