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Listen to part of a lecture in an art conservation class.
聽一段藝術(shù)保護課程。
So far we have been talking all semester about restoring and preserving pieces of art, like ancient frescoes, early oil paintings, etc.
直到現(xiàn)在為止，我們整個學(xué)期講的都是修復(fù)和保護藝術(shù)作品，像古代壁畫，早期的油畫等等。
But although our field is called art conservation, it also involves… what?
但盡管我們研究的領(lǐng)域是叫“藝術(shù)保護”，其中還包括了……什么？
Um...preserving other types of cultural materials too.
保護其它種類的文化資料。
Very good. Not just art. Old artifacts are very valuable when they represent early technologies, all contain important historical information.
很好。不只是藝術(shù)。古器物是非常珍貴的，它們代表早期科技，其中都含有重要的歷史信息。
In fact, let me give you an example.
讓我舉個例子。
You've heard about the Greek scholar, Archimedes, who lived more than 2000 years ago, I am sure.
你們都聽說過古希臘學(xué)者阿基米德，他生活在兩千多年前，我很確定。
Archimedes was a great mathematician.
阿基米德是一位偉大的數(shù)學(xué)家。
For example, he discovered the formula for the volume of a sphere.
舉個例子，他發(fā)現(xiàn)了計算球體容量的等式。
Not much of his work has survived, but what has survived is brilliant.
他的作品沒有多少能留存下來，但留下來的都非常棒。
And then in 1906, a palimpsest of Archimedes' writing was discovered.
然后，在1906年，人們發(fā)現(xiàn)了一份有阿基米德筆跡的重寫本。
Now, a palimpsest is a type of manuscript that contains writing that's hidden because something else was written over it later.
重寫本是一種手稿，其中包含了隱藏的筆跡，因為在此之后有別的東西寫在上面了。
I'll explain in a minute.
我過一會兒會解釋。
This Archimedes palimpsest, as it's now called, is by far the most important palimpsest anyone has ever seen, because it contains the only known existing copy of Archimedes' treatise, called Method.
這份現(xiàn)在所謂的“阿基米德重寫本”，是至今為止人們見過最重要的重寫本，因為其中包含了人們所知的唯一一份阿基米德著作，《阿基米德方法》。
Archimedes shows in it how math can be applied to physics and physical reasoning back to math problems, which is how he calculated the volume of a sphere, for example.
阿基米德向人們展示了怎樣將數(shù)學(xué)應(yīng)用于物理，而物理推理怎樣反過來運用于數(shù)學(xué)問題，他計算出球體容量就是一個例子。
This maybe commonplace today, but was revolutionary in his time.
現(xiàn)在看來是很平常的事，但在當(dāng)時是具有革命性的。
A few years ago, the palimpsest was sold at an auction for two million dollars.
幾年前，在一場拍賣會上，重寫本以兩百萬美元售出。
It could have ended up tucked away in a private collection, but fortunately, the collector who bought it has agreed to have experts restore every single word Archimedes wrote, so the contents can be shared with the world and studied.
本來它可能會變成私人收藏里妥善保管的一份藏品，但幸運的是，買下它的收藏家同意讓專家來修復(fù)阿基米德寫的每一個字，那么重寫本的內(nèi)容就能與全世界分享，供人們研究了。
