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The result was as profound a transformation for human beings as any revolution in history. This process of settling down did, of course, make you more vulnerable to a crop failure, pests, diseases, above all to the weather, but while things were good, society boomed.
這種結果與人類歷史上任何一次革命性轉變一樣，產生的影響是極其深刻的。定居生活的過程中，確實使人類更加容易遭受各種威脅——谷物失收、蟲災、疾病等，幾乎都由氣候變化決定；然而遇上風調雨順的好年頭，人類社會就會蓬勃發展。
A guaranteed abundant food source fuelled a sustained population explosion, and people began to live in large villages of between two or three hundred - the highest concentration of people the world had yet seen. When your larder is stocked, the pressure is off and you've got time to think, and these rapidly growing, settled communities had the leisure to work out new social relationships and to contemplate the changing pattern of their lives.
這種很有保障的豐富食物來源成就了持續性的人口大爆炸，人們開始生活在兩三百人組成的大村落里，這樣的規模是史無前例的。當你家里的儲藏架上填得滿滿的，壓力便降低了，你開始有閑心進行思考；再加上生活在這快速發展、落戶安居的村落里，人們也開始有閑心來培養出新的社會關系，并且認真地考慮關于他們生活模式的各種轉變。
Our little sculpture of the entwined lovers may be a response to this new way of living - a different way of thinking about ourselves. What does it mean to depict the sexual act in this way, at this time? Archaeologist Ian Hodder has done a lot of work on this period and he sees here a process he calls the 'domestication of the mind':
我們這件纏繞緊擁的戀人小雕塑也許恰恰代表了這種嶄新的生活方式，一種看顧人類自身的不同思維。在歷史上這個時期，采用這種表現手法來描繪性愛行為，這究竟意味著什么呢？斯坦福大學的考古學家伊恩·霍德對這段歷史時期研究頗深，他將這里觀察到的現象稱之為“心靈的馴化”過程：
'The Natufian culture is really before fully domesticated plants and animals, but you already have a sedentary society. And so, I think that this particular object, because of its focus on humans and human sexuality in such a clear way, is part of that general shift towards a greater concern with domesticating the mind, domesticating humans, domesticating human society, being more concerned with human relationships rather than on the relationships between humans and wild animals, and on the relationships between wild animals themselves.'
Natufian文化其實存在于人類完全馴化植物與動物之前，然而當時已經產生了一個定居社會。因此，我覺得因為這件特殊物品如此清晰地集中刻畫出人類性行為，也反映人類心靈上馴化、身體上馴化、社會上馴化、過程中思維變遷的一種巨大轉折；人們變得更加關注人與人之間的關系，而不是像以前一樣，只關心那些人與野獸，野獸與野獸之間的關系。
As you hold the Ain Sakhri pebble and turn it round, what's striking is not just that there are clearly two human figures rather than one, but that it's impossible, because of the way the stone has been carved, to say which is male and which is female could that generalised treatment, that ambiguity, have been a deliberate intention on the part of the maker?
當你把玩著這枚Ain Sakhri卵石，轉過來轉過去地觀察，讓人感嘆的不僅僅是這是一件雙人而非單人雕像，更重要的是從這石頭雕刻的方式，根本就區分不清哪個是男，哪個是女。這種模糊處理，這種模棱兩可性，當年雕塑家是否是有意而為之的呢？
We just don't know, but we don't know either how this little statue would have been used. Some scholars think it might have been connected with fertility, but Ian Hodder takes a different view:
我們無從知曉，同時我們也無法弄清這件小小雕像當年的真正用途。有些學者認為可能與生育有關，但伊恩·霍德采取不同的看法：
'This object is one that could be read in many ways, and I think that earlier on, one would have often thought that these notions of sexual coupling, and sexuality itself, were linked to ideas of the mother goddess, because it's been assumed that when you have the first farmers their main concern is the fertility of the crops.
“這物品顯然可以有不同的詮釋方式，而且我覺得在人類早期，很容易就可以把性愛及性行為本身與母系女神本身聯系起來，因為大家都在覺得，當最早期的農耕人類出現了，自然而然的他們主要關心的使是農作物的生育能力。”
