BBC 100件藏品中的世界史006:Bird-shaped Pestle巴布亞新幾內(nèi)亞鳥形杵

BBC 100件藏品中的世界史

006:Episode 6 - Bird-shaped pestle

第六集——巴布亞新幾內(nèi)亞鳥形杵

Bird-shaped pestle (made 4 - 8,000 years ago). Stone, found in Papua New Guinea

鳥形杵，石制，距今約4000至8000年，巴布亞新幾內(nèi)亞。

Lunch here at the British Museum staff canteen has always been a pretty international affair. It's not just the scholars and the curators who come from all round the world; it's also of course the food.

在大英博物館職工餐廳里吃午餐，堪稱是一件相當(dāng)國際化的事情。一則博物館里的學(xué)者與管理員都是來自全球世界，二則當(dāng)然大家所吃的食物也是。

As today is one of my healthy days, I'm at the salad bar, looking in among the greens at a fairly standard run of potato salad, rice, sweetcorn and kidney beans. What I find interesting about these vegetables is not just that they come originally from all over the world, but that none of them would exist in the form they do today if the plants they come from hadn't been carefully chosen, cherished and modified in a long process that began about ten thousand years ago with some intrepid and ingenious Ice Age cooks.

今天恰好是我的“健康日”之一，所以我站在沙拉吧前邊，在一大堆形形式式的蔬菜前面左看看，右瞧瞧。菜式挺標(biāo)準(zhǔn)的，有土豆沙拉、米飯、甜主米、腰豆等等。讓我對這些蔬菜頗感興趣的倒不是它們源產(chǎn)地本來是遍及世界各地，而是假如不是當(dāng)年經(jīng)過一代又一代的人類精心選擇，仔細(xì)培育，品種改良，這些植物也不可能會長得現(xiàn)代這樣子了。而那漫長的過程，早在距今約一萬年前，就由冰河時代那些勇敢而天才的廚師們開始了。

'Everyone did these things, and the families existed as families because you did it not for yourself but for the family.' (Madhur Jaffrey)

“大家都在做這些日?，嵤拢彝ブ源嬖谇∏∈且驗槟悴粌H僅是為了自己，還為了家庭。”梅赫爾·杰弗瑞說道。

'We need some new evolutionary tricks in order to spread out into increasingly hostile environments.' (Martin Jones)

“為了能在日趨惡劣的環(huán)境里開枝散葉、生息繁衍，我們需要擁有更新、更加進化的技能。”馬丁·瓊斯說道。

In previous programmes, we have looked at how our ancestors moved around the world; in this week's programmes I'm going to be focussing on what happened when they settled down. This is a week full of ancient animals, powerful gods, dangerous weather, good sex and even better food.

在之前的節(jié)目里，我們觀察我們的祖先們是如何全世界遷徙;在本周的節(jié)目里，我將聚集于當(dāng)人類開始定居生活后所產(chǎn)生的變化。本周節(jié)目將充滿各種古老動物、強大神靈、惡劣氣候、美好性愛與美食佳肴。

 

 

Around 11,000 years ago, the world underwent a violent and rapid period of climate change, leading to the end of the last Ice Age.

大約一萬年前，這世界經(jīng)歷了劇烈而快速的氣候巨變期，導(dǎo)致了最后一次冰河時代的終結(jié)。

Temperatures increased by as much as seven degrees centigrade in a hundred years, and sea levels rose by over 300 feet (or 100 metres). Ice turned to water and snow gave way to grass, and the result was slow but profound changes in the way that humans lived. Over the course of this week, I will be covering about seven thousand years of human history when, as the Ice Age ended, people in many different parts of the world began to breed animals, grow plants and eat differently.

百年之內(nèi)氣溫上升高達七攝氏度，海平面上升超過三百英尺，即一百米。冰川融化成水流，積雪讓位給綠草。這過程是緩慢的，然后給人類生活方式帶來的改變卻是深遠的。在本周的各期目里，我將涵蓋人類歷史之河中將近七千年的歷史;當(dāng)冰河時代結(jié)束，全球各地的人類開始了繁殖牲畜、種植莊稼，而且飲食方式也大大改觀了。

Ten thousand years ago, the sound of daily life began to change across the world, as new rhythms of grinding and pounding prepared the new foods that were going to change our diets and our landscapes. For a long time, our ancestors had used fire to roast meat but, in the sense that we would use the word today, they were now 'cooking'.

一萬年前，日常生活中與人類朝夕相伴的聲音在全世界范圍內(nèi)都改變了，隨著人類開始采用新方式來準(zhǔn)備新食物，真可謂是日日砧杵動，家家搗捶聲了，而我們的飲食與周遭環(huán)境也將迎來新改觀。漫漫歲月中，曾幾何時，我們祖先們已經(jīng)學(xué)會了取火燒肉。也許某種意義上，按我們現(xiàn)代人的說法，他們現(xiàn)在會進行“烹飪”了。

There's an enormous range of objects in the British Museum that we could have chosen to illustrate this particular moment in human history, when people literally start putting down roots and cultivating plants that will feed them all year round.

于是人類真真正正地開始落地生根，培育起莊稼，這些植物將能夠常年到頭為他們提供食物;而在大英博物館數(shù)量龐大的藏品中，能被挑選出來描繪這特殊歷史時刻的物品，簡直是隨手可得。

The beginning of this sort of farming is a process that seems to have happened in many different places at more or less the same time, and we've recently discovered that one of these places was Papua New Guinea, that huge island just to the north of Australia, where this bird-shaped stone pestle comes from.

這種耕作方式的開始，幾乎是一個在全球范圍內(nèi)同步發(fā)生的過程;我們最近發(fā)現(xiàn)的這些地方之一便是巴布亞新幾內(nèi)亞，那座澳大利亞以北的巨大島嶼，我們這鳥形杵就是從那里出土的。

We think it's about eight thousand years old, but a pestle then would have been used exactly as it is now - to grind food in a mortar and break it down, so that you can make it edible.

我們估計它大概有八千年的歷史，一根舂杵，縱使歷練悠悠歲月，不變的是它當(dāng)初的使用功能;它仍然可以勝任研磨研缽里食物的工作，供人們食用。

It's a big pestle, it stands just over a foot tall (about 35 cm), and the business end is a stone bulb, about the size of a cricket ball, and you can feel that it's been much used. Above the bulb, the shaft is very easy to grasp and the upper part of the handle, or the shaft, has been shaped in a way that's got nothing to do with making food at all - it looks like a slender, elongated bird with wings outstretched and a long neck dipping forward; it looks a bit like Concorde.

這根舂杵滿大的，直立起來大概有一英尺高，約三十五厘米長，它的下頭是一個大石球，板球大小，看得出被常年使用過。石球上端的長柄很好抓取，這長柄或桿子的上端部分，卻被塑造成一種與舂搗谷物無關(guān)的造型，它看上去像一只纖細(xì)而被拉長的鳥，張開雙翅，長長的脖子優(yōu)雅地彎向前，看上去真有點像只協(xié)和式飛機。

We're very familiar now with the idea that making food unites us, either as a family or a society, and we all know how much family memory and emotion is bound up in the pots and pans and wooden spoons of childhood. These sorts of associations seem to date from around ten thousand years ago; from the very beginning of cooking implements, roughly the period of our pestle. The chef Madhur Jaffrey is still very attached to her pestle, which her mother gave her when she left India, and she came to look at ours:

現(xiàn)在眾所周知，是食物將我們團結(jié)起來，構(gòu)成家庭或者社會，而且大家都有多么親切的關(guān)于家的記憶與情感，那歲月中鍋碗瓢盆與木湯匙的童年。這樣子的情感紐帶似乎早在一萬年前就開始形成了，在烹飪廚具開始被運用起來的最早期，大概與我們這根舂杵是同一時代的。廚師梅赫爾·杰弗瑞仍舊相當(dāng)依戀她的舂杵，那是當(dāng)年她離開印度時，她母親送給她的。當(dāng)她觀察我們的這把舂杵時，說道

'I just thought it was beautiful to look at and had a well-honed, worn look, and a patina that made me feel that it was used - and used again and again. It is a fundamental act both of cooking and of living, and living with a family and passing on, at least in India.

“我只覺得它看起來很美麗，打磨精致，有點磨損，古色古香，讓我覺得這是一把曾經(jīng)被反復(fù)使用過的舂杵。至少在印度，使用它，會是一種烹飪與生活中最基本的行為，一種代代相代的家庭生活。”

'When I left India, which was a long long time ago, my mother gave me certain utensils to take with me, and they were all heavy, I remember that. There was a wok, a grinding stone, and a huge mortar and pestle, so those are what I left with, and I have all of them, and I use my mortar and pestle to this day.'

“很多很多年前，當(dāng)我離開印度時，我母親送給我一些廚具帶在身上，我記得它們可真是沉甸甸的呵。有個鍋、研磨石，還有研缽跟舂杵。這些就是我離開家時的所有，現(xiàn)在我還保留著，這研缽跟舂杵還在天天使用。”

Other stone pestles and mortars have also been found in New Guinea, and what they show is that there were farmers growing crops in the tropical forests and grasslands here in ancient times, around ten thousand years ago.

其他石杵與研缽也在新幾內(nèi)亞出土，它們顯示了一萬年前左右，在這些熱帶森森與草原上，已經(jīng)出現(xiàn)在人類從事農(nóng)業(yè)勞作、養(yǎng)育莊稼的身影。

This relatively recent discovery has upset the conventional view that farming began in the Middle East, in what's called the Fertile Crescent, and from there spread across the world.

相當(dāng)近期的考古發(fā)現(xiàn)挑戰(zhàn)了傳統(tǒng)觀點，認(rèn)為農(nóng)業(yè)起源于中東一帶所謂“新月沃土”的地區(qū)，隨后向世界各地蔓延。

We now know that in fact this particular bit of the history of humanity happened simultaneously in many different places.

我們現(xiàn)在知道，其實在這段人類歷史上的特定時期，這種變化在全球范圍內(nèi)是同步產(chǎn)生的。

Clearly a lot of us became farmers at the same time, and wherever people were farming, they began to concentrate on a small number of plants, selectively harvesting these from the wild, planting and tending them.

顯然我們當(dāng)中相當(dāng)多的人開始在這時期轉(zhuǎn)換成農(nóng)民的角色，而且不管人類在何地耕作，他們總是開始把注意力集中到若干類的植物種類上，有選擇性地從野外采集回來，種植起來，用心照料。

In the Middle East, they chose particular grasses - early forms of wheat; in China, wild dry rice; in Africa, sorghum - a grain that looks a bit like grass; and in Papua New Guinea, the starchy tuber, taro.

在中東，人類選擇了一種特殊的草本植物，以最早期的小麥，在中國的是野生旱稻，在非洲是一種看上去有點像野草的高梁，在巴布亞新幾內(nèi)亞， 是芋頭這種淀粉塊莖。

For me, the most surprising thing about these new plants is that in their natural state you very often can't eat them at all, or at least they taste pretty filthy if you do. Why would you choose to grow food that you can eat only once it's been soaked or boiled or ground to make it edible at all?

對我而言，最值得驚嘆的莫過于，這些新植物在自然狀態(tài)下其實是不可食用的，至少很難下咽。為何人類會選擇種植這種得經(jīng)過像浸泡、煮沸或研磨后才可以食用的食物呢?

Martin Jones, Professor of Archaeological Science at Cambridge University, sees this alchemy of food as an essential part of human evolution:

劍橋大學(xué)考古學(xué)教授馬丁·瓊斯把加工提煉食物看成是人類進化過程中的重要組成部分：

'As the human species expanded across the globe, we had to have a competitive edge over other animals going for the easy food.

“隨著人類在全球范圍內(nèi)擴張，我們避免不了在那此唾手可得的食物方面與其他動物進行激烈競爭。

So we went for the difficult food, we went for things like the small hard grass seeds we call cereals, that are indigestible if eaten raw and may even be poisonous, and we have to pulp them up and turn them into things like bread and dough. And we went into the poisonous giant tubers, like the yam and the taro, which also had to be leeched, ground up and cooked before we could eat them. And that was our competitive advantage - other animals that didn't have the big brain couldn't think several steps ahead to do that.'

因此我們另開蹊徑，去尋找那些要獲取的話，相當(dāng)困難的食物。我們尋找到了那種被我們稱之為谷物的草籽，又小又硬，生吃的話，肯定消化不了，甚至可以有毒性;于是我們學(xué)會了把它們浸泡成漿，再做成類似面包或面團之類的東西。我們也尋找到了那些帶有毒性的、個頭頗大的塊莖，像山藥、芋頭，這些在食用之前得經(jīng)過榨取、提煉和烹飪。這就是我們?nèi)祟惖母偁巸?yōu)勢，其他動物可沒有具備像我們這么發(fā)達的大腦，能夠有預(yù)見性，超前跳躍式的進行思考。”

So it takes brains to get to cookery. We don't know what gender the cooks were who used our pestle to grind taro in New Guinea, but we do know from archaeological research in the Middle East that cookery there was primarily a woman's activity.

所以烹飪也是需要動腦筋的。我們無法知道這根使用舂杵的廚師性別是男是女，但中東地區(qū)的考古成果顯示通常烹飪是女性主導(dǎo)的。

From examining burial sites of this period, scientists have discovered that the hips, ankles and knees of mature women are generally severely worn - the grinding of wheat then would have been done kneeling down, rocking back and forth to crush the kernels between two heavy stones. 通過研究這一時期的墓葬遺址，科學(xué)家們發(fā)現(xiàn)成年女性的臀部、腳踝與膝蓋部位嚴(yán)重磨損——那時研磨小麥，通常需要雙膝下跪、利用前后兩塊沉重石頭來回滾動，反復(fù)研磨，直到把谷物碾碎。這種活動會導(dǎo)致關(guān)節(jié)炎，肯定是相當(dāng)艱苦的。

This arthritis-inducing activity must have been very tough, but the women of the Middle East and the new cooks everywhere were cultivating a small range of nourishing basic foods that could sustain much larger groups of people than had been possible before. Most of these new foods were pretty bland, but the pestle and mortar can also play a key part here in making them more interesting. Madhur Jaffrey again:

不過中東這些婦女與世界其他地區(qū)的新廚師們正在培育出一種最基本的滋補食品，品種雖少，卻可以養(yǎng)活史無前例龐大數(shù)目的人口。這種新型食品大部分嚼之無味，但是這研缽與舂杵卻很關(guān)鍵使一切變得更加豐富有趣。梅赫爾·杰弗瑞再次說道。

'If you take mustard seeds, which were known in ancient times, if you leave them whole they have one taste, but if you crush them, they're like Jekyll and Hyde; they become pungent and bitter, so you change the very nature of a seasoning by crushing it.'

“比如芥菜籽吧，遠古時代的人類認(rèn)識它了。如果整顆的話，嘗起來是一種味道;而如果碾碎了，就像是‘變身博士’了，它的味道就變得辛辣、苦澀。因此你可以通過碾磨來從本質(zhì)上改變一種調(diào)料。”

And Martin Jones believes that in due course, this early farming changed the whole pattern of our society:

馬丁·瓊斯認(rèn)為，這種早期農(nóng)耕形式最終順理成章地改變了我們的社會模式：

'We specialise in those smaller number of foods - not stopping the others - but emphasising a smaller number of foods, and that's how agriculture emerges, and it allows people to interact in different ways, to share food in different ways and to make contact with each other in different ways.'

“現(xiàn)在我們專注于品種較少的食物，沒有停止食用其他種類，但卻更注重于若干種類的食物;于是產(chǎn)生了農(nóng)業(yè)，促使人類互動的方式多樣化起來，來分享食物，來與彼此交流溝通。”

 

 

These new crops helped create new kinds of communities because, if you were lucky with the weather, they could produce surpluses which could then be stored, exchanged or simply consumed in a great feast. Our pestle's long, thin elegant body looks far too delicate to have been able to withstand the vigorous daily pummelling of taro, so we should perhaps think of it more as being used to prepare special meals; meals where people gathered, as we might do today, to trade, to dance, or to celebrate key moments in life. Sharing food is one of the most basic ways of binding people together.

這些新興農(nóng)作物有助于人類社區(qū)的建立，因為假如你運氣夠好，遇上風(fēng)調(diào)雨順的氣候，收成好了，就可以囤存余糧，就可以彼此交換，或者直接大家聚一起大快朵頤,飽餐一頓。我們這根舂杵纖長優(yōu)雅的身形，看上去似乎承受不了常日生活里大力碾磨芋頭那種粗活苦活，也許我們應(yīng)該把它看作來用準(zhǔn)備特殊膳食的，一場人們歡聚一堂的盛宴，就像我們今天也可能做的一樣。盛宴上大家進行物物交換，歡歌樂舞，慶祝生命中的關(guān)鍵時刻。分享食物是鞏固人與人之間紐帶的一種最基本方法之一。

Looking at the food in the British Museum canteen, so much of it flown across the world, I'm struck by the fact that while we all travel more and more freely, we depend on food grown by people who cannot move, who must stay on the same piece of land.

在大英博物館職工餐廳里，環(huán)顧四周，這么多的食物都是從世界其它地方空運過來的。讓我十分感概的是在我們擁有越多自由四處旅行的今天，我們?nèi)耘f依賴于那些農(nóng)作物，種植它們的人們相當(dāng)于被固定在那片土地上，無法自由旅行。

We're all increasingly aware of how vulnerable this makes farmers across the world to any change in climate, and this dependence on regular predictable weather led the farmers of ten thousand years ago to identify gods of food and climate, who needed constant placation and prayer in order to ensure the cycle of nature and safe, good harvests. Nowadays, most people look to governments, and to campaigners like Sir Bob Geldof:

這讓我們越來越意識到在各種氣候變化面前，全世界的農(nóng)民與農(nóng)業(yè)是多么的脆弱。其實早在一萬年前，農(nóng)民已經(jīng)學(xué)會了依賴于定期預(yù)測氣候變化，也因此導(dǎo)致他們開始定義出掌管食物與氣候的神靈，這些神靈需要人類不斷的祭拜與祈禱，才會保佑人們風(fēng)調(diào)雨順、谷物豐收。如今，大多數(shù)人把希望寄托到各國政府上，或者像鮑勃·格洋多夫爵士一樣的活動家：

'The whole psychology of food, where it places us, is I think more important than almost any other aspect of our lives. Essentially, the necessity to work comes out of the necessity to eat. So, this central idea of food is the fundamental in all human existence.

“就心理角度而言，我覺得食物比我們生活中其他方方面面幾乎都要更加重要。本質(zhì)上講，勞作的必要性來源于吃的必要性。所以食物的中心思想便是所有人類生存的根本。

It's clear that no animal can exist without being able to eat, but right now, at the beginning of the 21st century, it is clearly in the top three of priorities for the global powers to address. Upon their success or not will depend the future of huge sections of the world population. There simply isn't enough food for the world at the moment. There are several factors, but the predominant one is climate change.'

很顯然，沒有任何動物能不依靠吃而存生。在二十一世紀(jì)開端的今天，它無疑位居全球各力量必須最優(yōu)先解決的三大問題之首。其成功與否將取決于未來世界人口的絕大部分。目前而言世界上根本沒有足夠的食物。其中因素有幾個，但最主要的就是氣候變化。

So a change in climate, like the one that brought us agriculture in the first place, is now threatening our global survival. Just after the Ice Age, the growing population that the new foods allowed was of course not a problem but a positive advantage. The first settled societies increased quickly in numbers and, as long as the weather allowed, they developed new, stable communities.

因此當(dāng)初氣候變化迎來了我們農(nóng)業(yè)的誕生，而今這種氣候變化卻已經(jīng)威脅到我們?nèi)蛉祟惿?。?dāng)初冰河時代后，新興糧食的到來引起的人口增長，并非是個問題，而是一種優(yōu)勢。最早的人類定居群體在人口數(shù)量上增長迅速，而且在氣候允許的情況下，發(fā)展出更多新興、穩(wěn)定的人類群體。

Tomorrow I'll be focussing on the fertility not of the land, but of the people farming it. I'll be looking at a stone sculpture that's the first representation, anywhere, of a couple making love.

明天我的側(cè)重點將不是土地的肥沃力，而是在土地上耕作的人類的生育能力。我將會介紹一件石頭雕塑品，全世界史上最早的男女配偶間性愛活動的象征品