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Jade is extremely hard, and difficult to work, so much effort must have gone into the shaping of it.
玉石的質地極為堅硬，難以加工，為它塑形一定耗費了不少功夫。
It's likely that it was first of all roughly sculpted in northern Italy, and then carried hundreds of miles across Europe to north-west France.
有可能一開始，它先在意大利北部經過了初步加工，然后被帶到幾百英里之外的法國西北部，
It was probably polished there, because it's like a number of other ones found in southern Brittany, where there seems to have been a fashion for acquiring exotic treasures like this.
在那里進行打磨，因為我們在布列塔尼發現了數把類似的斧頭，擁有這種遠方的奇珍似乎曾是當地潮流。
They even carved impressions of the axes into the walls of their vast stone tombs.
布列塔尼人甚至在他們巨大的石頭墓室的墻壁上雕刻出斧頭的圖案。
In Britain, six thousand years ago, the rarity, the beautiful working and the distant origins of this foreign material would have given our axe a very high value, and it would have been an exceptional gift-the equivalent of a luxury watch perhaps, or an expensive piece of jewellery.
6000年前的英國, 這件稀世罕有，做工精美并且源遠流長的異物會使得我們的斧頭具有很高的價值,在那時肯定是一件特殊的禮物—相當于一款高檔手表,或者一件昂貴的首飾。
We can only speculate how the hierarchies of prehistoric British society might have regarded this rare and beautiful thing, or what they might have done with it.
我們只能推測史前英國社會的等級制度如何評價這件罕見的稀世珍寶,或者他們可能會對它做過些什么。
Similar axes in less valuable stones have also been found unworn, and their equally pristine condition implies that they may have served special, perhaps ritual, purposes.
類似更有價值的斧頭也被完好無損的發現,而它們同樣的狀況意味著自身可能的特別之處,也許是用于儀式的目的。
Mark Edmonds again:
馬克埃德蒙茲認為其中的含義是：
"Beyond the practical tasks that you can use one of these things for, axes had a further significance-a significance that came from where they were found, who you got them from, where and when they were made, the sort of stories that were attached to them.
斧頭除了實際用途之外還有進一步的意義。這種意義來自它們是在什么地方被發現的，從誰那里得到的，是在何時何地制作的等等這些它們身上附帶的故事。
Sometimes they were tools to be used and carried and forgotten about in the process, at other times they would come into focus as important symbols to be held aloft, to be used as reminders in stories about the broader world,
有時它們只是人類使用的工具，被遺忘在帶出去使用的過程中。有時它們是放在高處的重要象征，提醒我們別忘了更廣闊的世界。
and sometimes to be handed on-in an exchange with a neighbour, with an ally, with somebody you'd fallen out with, and perhaps in exceptional circumstances, on someone's death, the axe was something that had to be dealt with.
有時你要把它們交給別人，鄰居、同盟或和你有糾紛的人。在特別的情況下，斧子在葬禮上也有用途，它需要像尸體一樣被分解，或是像尸體一樣被埋葬。
