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Most of us don't learn a lot about Central American civilisations at school;
大部分英國人在上學(xué)時都沒怎么學(xué)習(xí)過中美洲文明。
we're all taught about the Parthenon, and we've all heard of Confucius as a great Chinese thinker,
我們可能學(xué)過帕臺農(nóng)神廟和孔子，
but we don't know a lot about the great civilisations occurring at the same time in Central America.
但并不怎么了解在同一時期出現(xiàn)在中美洲的偉大文明。
Yet the Olmecs were a highly sophisticated people, who built the first cities in Central America, mapped the heavens, developed the first writing and probably evolved the first calendar there.
奧爾梅克人擁有極高的智慧，他們修建中美洲最早的城市，繪制了天文圖，發(fā)明了當(dāng)?shù)刈詈档奈淖郑⒑芸赡軇?chuàng)制了當(dāng)?shù)氐臍v法。
They even invented one of the world's earliest ball games-which the Spanish would encounter about three thousand years later.
他們甚至還發(fā)明了世界上最早的球類游戲之一，西班牙人要在三千年后才首次接觸它。
It was played using rubber balls-rubber being readily available from the local tropical gum trees-and although we don't know what the Olmecs called themselves, it's documented that the Aztecs called them Olmen, meaning 'the rubber country'.
游戲使用的是橡膠球，而橡膠取自當(dāng)?shù)氐臒釒鹉z樹。盡管我們并不知道奧爾梅克人如何自稱，但有記錄顯示，阿玆特克人稱他們?yōu)閵W爾曼人，奧爾曼，即“橡膠之國”。
It's only relatively recently that Olmec civilisation was uncovered from the jungles of Mexico;
從墨西哥叢林中發(fā)現(xiàn)奧爾梅克文明的時間并不算長。
it was after the First World War that their sites, their architecture and above all their sculptures were found and investigated.
一戰(zhàn)后，人們才陸續(xù)找到他們的遺址、建筑和雕像，開始研究。
Finding out when the Olmecs lived took even longer.
人們花了更長的時間才確定了他們生活的時代。
In the 1950s radiocarbon dating came in, and that allowed archaeologists to date the buildings and therefore the people that lived in them.
二十世紀(jì)五十年代，放射性碳定年法出現(xiàn)，考古學(xué)家才最終確定了那些建筑的興建時間，從而估算出居民生活的年代。
The results showed that this great civilisation flourished about three thousand years ago.
結(jié)果顯示，這一偉大文明繁盛于三千年前。
The discovery of this ancient and long-standing culture has had a profound effect on the cultural identity of Mexicans today.
這一古老而悠久的文明的發(fā)現(xiàn)，對墨西哥人的民族認(rèn)同產(chǎn)生了深遠(yuǎn)影響。
We asked the celebrated Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes what it means to him.
我曾問墨西哥著名作家卡洛斯?富恩特斯，這一發(fā)現(xiàn)對他有何意義。
