38 · 最早的日历
The First Calender
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Future historians will be in a unique position when they come to record the history of our own times. They will hardly know which facts to select from the great mass of evidence that steadily accumulates. What is more, they will not have to rely solely on the written word. Films, videos, CDs and CD-ROMS are just some of the bewildering amount of information they will have. They will be able, as it were, to see and hear us in action. But the historian attempting to reconstruct the distant past is always faced with a difficult task. He has to deduce what he can from the few scanty clues available. Even seemingly insignificant remains can shed interesting light on the history of early man.
Up to now, historians have assumed that calendars came into being with the advent of agriculture, for then man was faced with a real need to understand something about the seasons. Recent scientific evidence seems to indicate that this assumption is incorrect.
Historians have long been puzzled by dots, lines and symbols which have been engraved on walls, bones, and the ivory tusks of mammoths. The nomads who made these markings lived by hunting and fishing during the last Ice Age which began about 35,000 B.C. and ended about 10,000 B.C. By correlating markings made in various parts of the world, historians have been able to read this difficult code. They have found that it is connected with the passage of days and the phases of the moon. It is, in fact, a primitive type of calendar. It has long been known that the hunting scenes depicted on walls were not simply a form of artistic expression. They had a definite meaning, for they were as near as early man could get to writing. It is possible that there is a definite relation between these paintings and the markings that sometimes accompany them. It seems that man was making a real effort to understand the seasons 20,000 years earlier than has been supposed.
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整篇课文
Future historians will be in a unique position when they come to record the history of our own times. They will hardly know which facts to select from the great mass of evidence that steadily accumulates. What is more, they will not have to rely solely on the written word. Films, videos, CDs and CD-ROMS are just some of the bewildering amount of information they will have. They will be able, as it were, to see and hear us in action. But the historian attempting to reconstruct the distant past is always faced with a difficult task. He has to deduce what he can from the few scanty clues available. Even seemingly insignificant remains can shed interesting light on the history of early man.
Up to now, historians have assumed that calendars came into being with the advent of agriculture, for then man was faced with a real need to understand something about the seasons. Recent scientific evidence seems to indicate that this assumption is incorrect.
Historians have long been puzzled by dots, lines and symbols which have been engraved on walls, bones, and the ivory tusks of mammoths. The nomads who made these markings lived by hunting and fishing during the last Ice Age which began about 35,000 B.C. and ended about 10,000 B.C. By correlating markings made in various parts of the world, historians have been able to read this difficult code. They have found that it is connected with the passage of days and the phases of the moon. It is, in fact, a primitive type of calendar. It has long been known that the hunting scenes depicted on walls were not simply a form of artistic expression. They had a definite meaning, for they were as near as early man could get to writing. It is possible that there is a definite relation between these paintings and the markings that sometimes accompany them. It seems that man was making a real effort to understand the seasons 20,000 years earlier than has been supposed.
未来的历史学家在记录我们这个时代时，将拥有一种独特的优势。史料不断积累，数量如此庞大，他们恐怕反而不知道该选取哪些事实。更何况，他们不必只依赖文字。电影、录像、CD和只读光盘，都只是那海量资料中的一小部分。可以说，他们能够亲眼看见、亲耳听见我们的活动。可历史学家若想重现遥远的过去，面对的总是一项艰巨任务：只能从少得可怜的线索中尽量推断。不过，即使是看起来微不足道的遗存，也可能为了解早期人类的历史提供有趣的线索。
一直以来，历史学家都认为，日历是随着农业出现才产生的，因为到了那个时候，人们才真正需要了解四季变化。最近的科学证据却似乎表明，这个推测并不正确。
墙壁、骨头和猛犸象牙上刻下的点、线与符号，长期以来一直困扰着历史学家。这些标记出自最后一次冰河时代的游牧者之手，他们以狩猎和捕鱼为生；那次冰河时代大约始于公元前35,000年，结束于公元前10,000年。历史学家把世界各地的标记联系起来比较，终于逐渐读懂了这套难解的符号，发现它与日子的推移和月相变化有关，实际上就是一种原始日历。人们早已知道，墙上描绘的狩猎场景不只是艺术表达，它们有明确的含义，是早期人类最接近文字的一种表达方式。这些图画与有时伴随出现的标记之间，可能存在明确联系。看来，人类为理解季节变化而付出的努力，比人们原先设想的还要早两万年。
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译文依据整理稿，由本站按中文表达重新校订；解析据吴应时、何景霖整理资料及首轮审校稿；词伙与练习提示为本站学习设计。原PDF第125—128页，2022年2月第3版。