第38课

旁白 neutral

Future historians will be in a unique position when they come to record the history of our own times.

未来的历史学家在记录我们这个时代的历史时将处于独特的地位。

旁白 neutral

They will hardly know which facts to select from the great mass of evidence that steadily accumulates.

他们将很难知道从不断积累的大量证据中选择哪些事实。

旁白 neutral

What is more, they will not have to rely solely on the written word.

更重要的是，他们不必仅仅依赖书面文字。

旁白 neutral

Films, videos, CDs and CD-ROMs are just some of the bewildering amount of information they will have.

电影、视频、CD和CD-ROM只是他们将拥有的令人眼花缭乱的信息中的一部分。

旁白 neutral

They will be able, as it were, to see and hear us in action.

他们将能够，可以说，看到和听到我们的行动。

旁白 neutral

But the historian attempting to reconstruct the distant past is always faced with a difficult task.

但是，试图重构遥远过去的历史学家总是面临一项艰巨的任务。

旁白 neutral

He has to deduce what he can from the few scanty clues available.

他必须从仅有的稀少线索中推断出他所能推断的一切。

旁白 neutral

Even seemingly insignificant remains can shed interesting light on the history of early man.

即使看似微不足道的遗迹也能为早期人类的历史提供有趣的线索。

旁白 neutral

Up to now, historians have assumed that calendars came into being with the advent of agriculture,

迄今为止，历史学家一直认为日历是随着农业的出现而产生的，

旁白 neutral

for then man was faced with a real need to understand something about the seasons.

因为那时人类确实需要了解一些关于季节的知识。

旁白 neutral

Recent scientific evidence seems to indicate that this assumption is incorrect.

最近的科学证据似乎表明这个假设是错误的。

旁白 neutral

Historians have long been puzzled by dots, lines and symbols which have been engraved on walls, bones, and the ivory tusks of mammoths.

历史学家长期以来一直对刻在墙壁、骨头和猛犸象牙上的点、线和符号感到困惑。

旁白 neutral

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.

制造这些标记的游牧民族在最后一次冰河时期（约公元前35,000年开始，约公元前10,000年结束）靠狩猎和捕鱼为生。

旁白 neutral

By correlating markings made in various parts of the world,

通过关联世界各地制作的标记，

旁白 neutral

historians have been able to read this difficult code.

历史学家已经能够解读这个难懂的密码。

旁白 neutral

They have found that it is connected with the passage of days and the phases of the moon.

他们发现它与日子的流逝和月亮的盈亏有关。

旁白 neutral

It is, in fact, a primitive type of calendar.

事实上，这是一种原始的日历。

旁白 neutral

It has long been known that the hunting scenes depicted on walls were not simply a form of artistic expression.

长期以来人们都知道墙壁上描绘的狩猎场景不仅仅是一种艺术表现形式。

旁白 neutral

They had a definite meaning, for they were as near as early man could get to writing.

它们具有明确的含义，因为它们是早期人类最接近书写文字的形式。

旁白 neutral

It is possible that there is a definite relation between these paintings and the markings that sometimes accompany them.

这些绘画与有时伴随它们的标记之间可能存在明确的关系。

旁白 neutral

It seems that man was making a real effort to understand the seasons 20,000 years earlier than has been supposed.

看来人类早在比人们猜测的20,000年前就在真正努力理解季节了。