01 · 发现化石人
Finding Fossil Man
区分观点、依据、例子与限制，用自己的话准确重建论述。
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We can read of things that happened 5,000 years ago in the Near East, where people first learned to write. But there are some parts of the world where even now people cannot write. The only way that they can preserve their history is to recount it as sagas—legends handed down from one generation of storytellers to another. These legends are useful because they can tell us something about migrations of people who lived long ago, but none could write down what they did. Anthropologists wondered where the remote ancestors of the Polynesian peoples now living in the Pacific Islands came from. The sagas of these people explain that some of them came from Indonesia about 2,000 years ago.
But the first people who were like ourselves lived so long ago that even their sagas, if they had any, are forgotten. So archaeologists have neither history nor legends to help them to find out where the first "modern men" came from.
Fortunately, however, ancient men made tools of stone, especially flint, because this is easier to shape than other kinds. They may also have used wood and skins, but these have rotted away. Stone does not decay, and so the tools of long ago have remained when even the bones of the men who made them have disappeared without trace.
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整篇课文
We can read of things that happened 5,000 years ago in the Near East, where people first learned to write. But there are some parts of the world where even now people cannot write. The only way that they can preserve their history is to recount it as sagas—legends handed down from one generation of storytellers to another. These legends are useful because they can tell us something about migrations of people who lived long ago, but none could write down what they did. Anthropologists wondered where the remote ancestors of the Polynesian peoples now living in the Pacific Islands came from. The sagas of these people explain that some of them came from Indonesia about 2,000 years ago.
But the first people who were like ourselves lived so long ago that even their sagas, if they had any, are forgotten. So archaeologists have neither history nor legends to help them to find out where the first "modern men" came from.
Fortunately, however, ancient men made tools of stone, especially flint, because this is easier to shape than other kinds. They may also have used wood and skins, but these have rotted away. Stone does not decay, and so the tools of long ago have remained when even the bones of the men who made them have disappeared without trace.
我们能读到五千年前古近东地区发生的事情，因为那里的人最早学会了书写。不过，世界上有些地方的人至今仍不会书写。他们保存历史的唯一办法，是把往事讲成传说，由一代代讲述者口耳相传。这些传说很有价值，能让我们了解远古人类的迁徙情况，尽管那些人自己没有留下文字记录。人类学家曾想弄清，如今生活在太平洋诸岛上的波利尼西亚各民族，其远祖究竟来自哪里。他们的传说提供了线索：其中一部分人大约在两千年前从印度尼西亚迁来。
可是，最早那批与我们相似的人类生活在极其遥远的年代，即使曾有过传说，如今也早已失传。因此，考古学家在探寻最早的“现代人”来自何处时，既没有历史记载，也没有传说可供参考。
好在远古人类用石头制作工具，尤其常用燧石，因为它比其他石材更容易加工成形。他们可能也用过木材和兽皮，只是这些东西都已腐烂。石头却不会腐烂，所以那些古老的工具得以保存下来，哪怕制造工具的人连遗骨都已消失得无影无踪。
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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10—15页，2022年2月第2版。