发现化石人
课文学习台
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。
课文精读第1 / 3段
本课原文与译文
展开完整文本 · 便于查阅与检索
第1段
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.
我们能读到5000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。但世界上仍有一些地方，人们至今还不会书写。他们保存历史的唯一办法，就是把往事作为传说，由讲述者一代代口耳相传。这些传说很有价值，能让我们了解远古人类的迁徙情况；那些人生活在很久以前，当时还没有人能用文字记录自己的经历。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。这些民族的传说提供了线索：其中一部分人的祖先大约在2000年前从印度尼西亚迁来。
第2段
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.
但是，第一批与我们相似的人类，因生活的年代太过久远，即便他们有过传说，也早已失传了。于是，考古学家们为了弄清第一批“现代人” 从何而来，既无史料可寻，亦无传说可考。
第3段
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.
然而，好在古人是用石头，尤其是燧石制作的工具，因为燧石较之其它石材更易塑造。他们也可能用过木材和不同的兽皮，但全都腐烂不见了。石头不会腐烂，因此远古时期的石制工具保存了下来，尽管当初制造工具的人们，遗骨都已消逝得无影无踪了。
学完这一课
选一个可以讨论的判断，说明依据，再加上一句限制或不同情况。
译文与解析据吴应时整理资料及本站首轮审校稿；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。