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Listen to part of a lecture in an archeology class.
聽一段考古學課堂講座。
OK, we've been talking about early agriculture in the near east.
各位同學，我們一直討論關于近東地區早期農業的話題。
So let's concentrate on one site and see what we can learn from it.
現在，讓我們把精力集中在 一個遺址，看看我們能從中學到什么東西。
Let's look at Catalhoyuk.
咱看一下 Catalhoyuk。
Ah?I'd better write that down.
嗯...這個名字還是給大家寫出吧。
Catalhoyuk, that's about as close as we get in English.
Catalhoyuk，英語這樣讀算是最接近的了。
It's Turkish, really.
這是土耳其語，不騙你們。
The sites in modern day Turkey, and who knows what the original inhabitants called it.
遺址在現代土耳其境內，至于最初土著人怎么叫咱就不用管了。
Anyway, uh Uatalhoyuk was not the first agricultural settlement in the near east, but it was pretty early,
總之，嗯...雖然 Catalhoyuk 不是近東地區最早的農業定居點，但也是相當早的，
settled about 9000 years ago in the Neolithic period.
大約在 9000 年前的新石器時代就有人定居耕作。
And ... umm ... the settlement ... ah ... town really, lasted about a thousand years and grew to a size of about eight or ten thousand people.
還有...嗯...定居...城市延續了一千年，并且發展到八千至一萬人口規模（的城市）。
That certainly makes it one of the largest towns in the world at that time.
這在當時肯定是世界上最大的城市。
One of the things that make the settlement of this size impressive is the time period.
讓這個聚居點的規模變得如此驚人的原因之一是這個時代——
It's the Neolithic, remember, the late Stone Age.
新石器時代。記住，是較晚的石器時代。
So the people that lived there had only stone tools, no metals.
居住在那里的人只有石器，沒有金屬工具。
So everything they accomplished, like building this town, they did with just stone, plus wood, bricks,
他們做的每一件事，諸如修建城鎮，用的都是石頭和木頭，
that sort of thing.
磚頭之類的建材。
But you got to remember that it was not just any stone they had, they had obsidian.
但大家注意一點，他們所用的石頭并不都是普通的石頭，還有黑曜石。
And umm ... obsidian is a black, volcanic, well, almost like glass.
哦...黑曜石是一種黑色，火山巖質類似玻璃的石頭。
It flakes very nicely into really sharp points.
它能成片剝落而形成精致的尖角。
The sharpest tools of the entire Stone Age were made of obsidian.
整個石器時代最鋒利的工具由黑曜石制成。
And urrr ... the people of Catalhoyuk got theirs from further inland, from central Turkey, traded for it,probably.
同時，嗯...Catalhoyuk 人從更遠的內陸——土耳其中部，采集，甚至交換得到他們的黑曜石。
Anyway, what I wanna focus on is the way the town was built.
總之，我想把精力集中在城市是如何建成的。
The houses are all rectangular, one storey made of sun dried bricks.
所有的房子都是用曬干的土磚砌成，呈矩形，一層高。
But what's really interesting is that there are no spaces between them, no streets in other words,
但真正有趣的是房子間并無間隔，換句話說：沒有街道。
and so generally no doors on the houses either.
因此，房子也一般沒有門。
People walked around on the roofs and entered the house through a hatchway on the roof,down a wooden ladder.
人們在屋頂行走，通過屋頂的天窗(架設) 的木梯進入房子。
You can still see the diagonal marks of the ladders in the plaster on the inside walls.
你在內墻上還能看到用灰泥畫的樓梯對角線標識。
Once you were in the house, there would be one main room and a couple of small rooms for storage.
進入房間后，里面有一個主室和幾個用來存儲的小房間。
The main room had the hearths, for cooking and for heat.
主室里有用來做飯和取暖的壁爐。
It would've been pretty cold during the winters.
那時的冬天很冷的。
And it also looks like they made their tools near the fire.
看上去好像他們也在火邊制造工具。
There tends to be a lot of obsidian flakes and chips in the hearth ashes, but no chimney.
壁爐灰里有大量的黑曜石碎片，對了，沒有煙囪。
The smoke just went out the same hatchway that people used for going in and out themselves.
煙從人們當門使的天窗出去。
So there would have been an open fire inside the house with only one hole in the roof to let the smoke out.
這樣看來，屋里生起一對明火，只有一個天窗來通氣。
You and I would have found it a bit too smoky in there.
我們看來在屋里會覺得有點嗆人。
You can see on the walls, which they plastered and decorated with paintings.
不難看到涂以灰泥和用圖案裝飾過的四壁，
They ended up with a layer of black soot on them, and so did people's lungs.
它們均被煙熏黑，想必當時人們的肺也會近“煙”者黑。
The bones found in the graves show a layer of soot on the inside of the ribs.
在墳墓中找到的骨頭中發現在肋骨內側有一層“嗆黑層”。
And that's another unusual feature of Catalhoyuk, the burial sites.
這是 Catalhoyuk 墓葬遺址又一特征。
The graves have all been found under the houses, right under the floors.
在房子地板的正下方我們發現這些墓葬。
And it maybe this burial custom that explains why the houses were packed in so tightly without streets.
或許這種喪葬風俗解釋了為什么房子間間隔緊湊沒有街道的原因。
I mean, you might think it was for protection or something, but there has been no evidence found yet of any violent attack that would indicate that kind of danger.
我猜你會認為間隔緊湊出于安全的考慮，但是沒有發現能表明存在此種危險的證據。
It maybe they wanted to live as near as possible to their ancestors' graves and be buried near them themselves.
也可能他們想生前死后都與祖先“朝夕相處”。
But it makes a good point.
這樣看來，倒是有幾分道理。
Based on excavations, we can know the layout of the houses and the location of the graves,
通過挖掘，我們了解房子的布局和墓葬的位置,
but we're only guessing when we tried to say why they did it that way.
但是我們前面說過的安全考慮只是瞎猜而已。
That's the way it is with archeology.
考古就需要這樣做。
You are dealing with the physical remains that people left behind.
因為你面對的只是古人留下的實物殘骸。
We have no sure access to what they thought and how they felt about things.
沒有可靠的途徑來了解他們的思想和他們對事物的看法。
I mean it's interesting to speculate.
我想推測也不失為一件樂事。
And the physical artifacts can give us clues, but there is a lot we can not really know.
當然這些古器實物能給我們提供線索，但是很多信息我們仍舊無從得知。
So, for instance, their art.
比如說，他們的藝術。
They painted on the plastered walls and usually they painted hunting scenes with wild animals in them.
他們在灰泥墻上作畫，也常畫有野獸（和有人）的狩獵圖。
Now they did hunt and they also raised cereal crops and kept sheep, but we do not know why so many of the paintings are of hunting scenes.
他們確實打獵，同時也在種植糧食作物、飼養綿羊，但我們不知道為什么有這么多畫都只與狩獵相關。
Was it supposed to have religious or magical significance?
難道有宗教或魔法方面的意義?
That's the kind of thing we can only guess at based on clues.
而這些我們只能基于擁有線索的估測。
And hopefully, further excavation of Catalhoyuk will yield more clues.
所幸的是，對 Catalhoyuk 進一步的挖掘工作將出土更多的實物和線索。
But we'll probably never know for sure.
但這一點誰也不能保證。
