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In 1919, long after the lake had vanished, a geologist named J. W. Gregory was scouting the area for mineral prospects
1919年，在湖泊早已干涸之后，一個名為J.W.格里高利的地質學家來到這一地區尋找礦石。
when he came across a stretch of open ground littered with anomalous dark stones that had clearly been shaped by human hand.
他穿越一個開闊地帶時，突然發現地上散落著一些黝黑的古怪石頭，上面有明顯的人工打磨的痕跡。
He had found one of the great sites of Acheulean tool manufacture that Ian Tattersall had told me about.
他發現了伊恩.塔特薩爾曾經跟我說起過的阿舍利工具最重要的制造點之一。
Unexpectedly in the autumn of 2002 I found myself a visitor to this extraordinary site.
2002年秋，一個偶然的機會，我來到了這個神奇的地方。
I was in Kenya for another purpose altogether, visiting some projects run by the charity CARE International,
當時我在肯尼亞完全是為了另一個目的，考察美國援外合作署的一些援助項目，
but my hosts, knowing of my interest in humans for the present volume, had inserted a visit to Olorgesailie into the schedule.
但主人知道我為了寫作本書正在搜集有關人類起源的一些資料，便將訪問奧洛戛薩里列入了考察的日程中。
After its discovery by Gregory, Olorgesailie lay undisturbed for over two decades
在地質學家格里高利發現這個地方之后，有20多年的時間沒有人光顧奧洛戛薩里。
before the famed husband-and-wife team of Louis and Mary Leakey began an excavation that isn't completed yet.
之后，由著名的路易斯.利基和瑪麗.利基夫婦組成的考古隊來到這一地區開始挖掘，這一工作直到今天仍未完成。
What the Leakeys found was a site stretching to ten acres or so,
利基夫婦所發現的是一個約4萬平方米的地方，
where tools were made in incalculable numbers for roughly a million years, from about 1.2 million years ago to 200,000 years ago.
從約120萬年前到20萬年前，在大約100萬年時間里，那里曾有無數的石器被制作。
Today the tool beds are sheltered from the worst of the elements beneath large tin lean-tos and fenced off with chicken wire to discourage opportunistic scavenging by visitors,
今天，制作石器的地方用了鐵皮大棚來遮風擋雨，并且用鐵絲網攔起來，以防心懷叵測的來訪者偷盜。
but otherwise the tools are left just where their creators dropped them and where the Leakeys found them.
除此以外，石器依然保存在制作者扔下它們的地方，同時也是利基夫婦發現它們的地方。
Jillani Ngalli, a keen young man from the Kenyan National Museum who had been dispatched to act as guide,
吉拉尼.安哥里，肯尼亞國家博物館一位干練的小伙子，被指派擔任我的向導。
told me that the quartz and obsidian rocks from which the axes were made were never found on the valley floor.
他告訴我說，原始人類制作手斧的石英石和黑曜石在谷底根本找不到。
"They had to carry the stones from there," he said, nodding at a pair of mountains in the hazy middle distance, in opposite directions from the site: Olorgesailie and Ol Esakut.
“他們不得不把石頭從那里搬過來。”他邊說邊點頭示意對面不遠處云霧繚繞的兩座大山：奧洛戛薩里山和奧爾埃斯庫特山。
