Lesson 38 The first calender 最早的日歷

　　Future historians will be in a unique position when they come torecord the history of our own times. They will hardly know which facts toselect 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 andCD-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 historianattempting to reconstruct the distant past is always faced with a difficulttask. He has to deduce what he can from the few scanty clues available. Evenseemingly insignificant remains can shed interesting light on the history ofearly man.

　　Up to now, historians have assumed that calendars came into beingwith the advent of agriculture, for then man was faced with a real need tounderstand something about the seasons. Recent scientific evidence seems toindicate that this assumption is incorrect.

　　Historians have long been puzzled by dots, lines and symbols whichhave been engraved on walls, bones, and the ivory tusks of mammoths. The nomadswho made these markings lived by hunting and fishing during the last Ice Agewhich began about 35,000 B.C. and ended about 10,000 B.C. By correlatingmarkings made in various parts of the world, historians have been able to readthis difficult code. They have found that it is connected with the passage ofdays 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 notsimply a form of artistic expression. They had a definite meaning, for theywere as near as early man could get to writing. It is possible that there is adefinite relation between these paintings and the markings that sometimesaccompany them. It seems that man was making a real effort to understand theseasons 20,000 years earlier than has been supposed.

　　未來的歷史學家在寫我們這一段歷史的時候會別具一格。對于逐漸積累起來的龐大材料，他們幾乎不知道選取哪些好，而且，也不必完全依賴文字材料。電影、錄像、光盤和光盤驅動器只是能為他們提供令人眼花繚亂的大量信息的幾種手段。他們能夠身臨其境般地觀看我們做事，傾聽我們講話。但是，歷史學家企圖重現遙遠的過去可是一項艱巨的任務，他們必須根據現有的不充分的線索進行推理。即使看起來微不足道的遺物，也可能揭示人類早期歷史的一些有趣的內容。

　　歷史學家迄今認為日歷是隨農業的問世而出現的，因為當時人們面臨著了解四季的實際需要，但近期科學研究發現，好像這種假設是不正確的。

　　長期以來，歷史學家一直對雕刻在墻壁上、骨頭上、古代長毛象的象牙上的點、線和形形色色的符號感到困惑不解。這些痕跡是游牧人留下的，他們生活在從公元前約35，000年到公元前10，000年的冰川期的末期，以狩獵、捕魚為生。歷史學家通過把世界各地留下的這種痕跡放在一起研究，終于弄懂了這種費解的代碼。他們發現代碼與晝夜更迭和月亮圓缺有關，事實上是一種最原始的日歷。大家早就知道，畫在墻上的狩獵圖景并不是單純的藝術表現形式，它們有著一定的含義，因為它們已接近古代人的文字形式。有時，這種圖畫與墻壁上的刻痕共存，它們之間可能有一定的聯系。看來人類早就致力于探索四季變遷了，比人們想像的要早20,000年。

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