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It's made in polished green stone, and it's hollowed out at the back-so in fact it's a miniature mask.
這個石頭面具是奧爾梅克人制造的。這副面具由拋光的青石制成，與石雕頭像不同，它的后半部是空的。
The dark stone is flecked with white, snake-like streaks, which gives it its name, 'serpentine'-and when you look more closely, you can see the face has been pierced, and has been ritually scarred.
暗色石上如同蛇皮的白色花紋便是“蛇紋石”這個名稱的由來。如果你湊近看，還會發現面具上有穿孔的痕跡，應該在儀式上佩戴過。
The people of this mask are the Olmec, who ruled in what's now Mexico for around a thousand years, from 1400 to 400 BC. They've been called the mother culture-the 'cultura madre'-of Central America, and it was this Olmec mother culture that produced this unsettling face.
他們在公元前一千四百年到公元前四百年間統治如今的墨西哥地區長達千年，被稱為中美洲的母體文化。
So far this week the objects in this world history have taken me along the royal roads of the Persian Empire, into mythical battles in Athens and to some heavy drinking in northern Europe.
之前的幾件物品讓我們沿著波斯帝國的大道奔馳，走進了雅典的神話戰役，也看過了北歐人的狂飲。
Each object has shown how the people who made it defined themselves and the world around them about two and a half thousand years ago.
每一件物品都展示了兩千五百年前的 制作者如何看待自己以及周遭的世界。
In Europe and Asia it's striking that that self-definition was usually in distinction to others-partly by imitation, but usually in opposition.
在亞洲和歐洲，很顯然，人們自我定義的方式通常是找出自己與別人的不同：有時也模仿，但更多的時候是與他人對立。
Today I'm on the continent of the Americas-to be precise, in the lowland rainforests of south-east Mexico, and my object, this Olmec face-mask, shows me a culture looking only at itself.
而我們現在看到的這副來自美洲墨西哥東南部低地雨 林的奧爾梅克面具，則向我們展現了一種只審視自己的民族文化。這正是與埃及一樣古老，又極具延續性的墨西哥文化的一大特點。
