【TED演讲稿】对于人类历史以及不平等之根源的新认识

TED演讲者：David Wengrow / 大卫.温格罗

演讲标题：A new understanding of human history and the roots of inequality / 对于人类历史以及不平等之根源的新认识

内容概要：What if the commonly accepted narratives about the foundation of civilization are all wrong? Drawing on groundbreaking research, archaeologist David Wengrow challenges traditional thinking about the social evolution of humanity -- from the invention of agriculture to the formation of cities and class systems -- and explains how rethinking history can radically change our perspective on inequality and modern life.

关于文明的基础，如果一般广为接说的说法都是错的，怎么办？根据开创性的研究结果，大卫?温格罗要挑战传统上对于人类社会演化的想法——从农業的发明到城市以及阶级体制的形成——并解释为什么重新思考历史能够大大改变我们对于不平等以及现代生活的观点。

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【1】In the summer of 2014, I was in Iraqi Kurdistan with a small team of archaeologists, finishing a season of field excavations near the border town of Halabja.

2014 年夏天, 我身在伊拉克庫德斯坦, 我们在边境小镇哈拉布贾附近进行了

【2】Our project was looking into something which has puzzled and intrigued me ever since I began studying archeology.

我们的计画所研究的主题, 就一直感到困惑且着迷的题材。

【3】We're taught to believe that thousands of years ago, when our ancestors first invented agriculture in that part of the world, that it set in motion a chain of consequences

我们所学的是,数千年前, 当我的祖先初次在世界上的那个地区 发明了农業, 就启动一连串的连锁效应,

【4】that would shape our modern world in a particular direction, on a particular course.

型塑了我们现代社会的前进方向, 以及前进的路线。

【5】By farming wheat, our ancestors supposedly developed new attachments to the land they lived on.

藉由耕种小麦, 我们的祖先

【6】Private property was invented.

私有财产被发明出来。

【7】And with that, the need to defend it.

随之,也出现了需要保护它的需求。

【8】Along with new opportunities for some people to accumulate surpluses, came new labor demands, tying most people to a hard regime of tending their crops while a privileged few received freedom and the leisure to do other things.

随着某些人有新机会可以累积盈余, 新的劳动需求也出现了, 让大部分人被照顾自家 作物的辛苦起居给绑住, 只有少数有特权的人 以及闲暇时间可以做其他的事。

【9】To think, to experiment, to create the foundations of what we refer to as civilization.

可以去思考、去实验、 去创造我们所谓文明的基础。

【10】Now, according to this familiar story, what happened next is that populations boomed, villages turned into towns, towns became cities, and with the emergence of cities,

根据这个耳熟能详的故事, 接下来发生的就是人口激增, 村落变成了小镇,小镇变成了城市, 随着城市出现,

【11】our species was locked on a familiar trajectory of development where spiraling populations and technological change were bound up with the kind of dreadful inequalities that we see around us today.

我们这个物种就被熟悉的 发展轨道给限制住了, 在这个轨道上,不断增加的人口 会连带着可怕的不平等, 现今我们在身边都能看到。

【12】Except, as anyone can tell you, who's looked at the evidence from the Middle East, almost nothing of what I've just been saying is actually true.

只是说,只要看过中东的证据,就能知道, 我刚才说的几乎都不是真的。

【13】And the consequences I'm going to suggest are quite profound.

而我接下来要讲的推论, 相当深奥。

【14】Actually, what happened after the invention of agriculture around 10,000 years ago, is a long period of around another 4,000 years in which villages largely remained villages.

事实上,在大约一万年前 农業发明之后所出现的 是一段长达约四千年的时期, 在这段时期,村落 多半都仍然是村落,

【15】And actually there's very little evidence for the emergence of rigid social classes, which is not to say that nothing happened.

事实上,几乎没有证据显示 有死板的社会阶级出现, 这并不表示什么都没有发生。

【16】Over those 4,000 years, technological change actually proceeded apace.

在那四千年间, 科技的改变以飞快的速度展开。

【17】Without kings, without bureaucracies, without standing armies, these early farming populations fostered the development of mathematical knowledge, advanced metallurgy.

没有国王、 没有官僚、没有常备军, 这些早期的务农人口 先进的冶金术。

【18】They learned to cultivate olives, vines and date palms.

他们学会种橄榄、葡萄树、枣椰树。

【19】They invented leavened bread, beer, and they developed textile technologies: the potter's wheel, the sail.

他们发明了发酵的面包、啤酒。 他们开发了纺织技术: 拉坯轮车、帆。

【20】And they spread all of these innovations far and wide, from the shores of the eastern Mediterranean, up to the Black Sea, and from the Persian Gulf, all the way over to the mountains of Kurdistan, where our excavations were taking place.

且他们把所有这些创新都 散播到很广、很远的地方去, 范围从东地中海的沿岸 直达黑海, 且从波斯湾 一路到庫德斯坦的山区, 也就是我们进行挖掘的地方。

【21】I've often referred, half jokingly, to this long period of human history as the era of the first global village.

我常会半开玩笑地把 这段很长的人类历史称为 第一个地球村的时代。

【22】Because it's not just the technological innovations that are so remarkable, but also the social innovations which enabled people to do all these things without forming centers and without raising up a class of permanent leaders over everybody else.

因为,不仅科技创新非常卓越, 社会创新也同样不凡, 让大家能够去做所有这些事, 且不需要形成中心, 也不需要拉抬出 一个永久领导者的阶级,

【23】Now, oddly enough, this efflorescence of culture is not what we usually refer to as civilization.

奇怪的是, 这段文化的全盛期却不是我们通常所谓的文明。

【24】Instead, that term is usually reserved for harshly unequal societies, which came thousands of years later.

反之,那个词通常是保留给 数千年后出现的极不平等社会。

【25】Dynastic Mesopotamia. Pharaonic Egypt.

王朝时期的美索不达米亚、 法老时期的埃及、

【26】Imperial Rome.

帝国时期的罗马

【27】Societies that were deeply stratified.

分层非常明显的社会。

【28】So in short, I've always felt that there was basically something very weird about our concept of civilization, something that leaves us lost for words, tongue tied.

简言之, 我一直觉得我们对于文明的观念 在根本上就有着非常奇怪之处, 让我们无话可说,无言以对。

【29】When we're confronted with thousands of years of human beings, say, practicing agriculture, creating new technologies, but not lording it over each other or exploiting each other to the maximum.

当我们面临到数千年的人类去做…… 比如实行农業、创造新科技, 但不去统治彼此, 或把彼此剥削到极致。

【30】Why don't we have better words?

为何我们没有更好的词？

【31】Where is our lexicon for those long expanses of human history in which we weren't behaving that way?

当遇到行为模式并非 那样的人类长历史时, 我们的词彙表在哪里？

【32】Over the past ten years or more, I worked closely together with the late, great anthropologist David Graeber to address some of these questions.

在过去十多年间, 我有位密切的合作伙伴,是已故的 伟大人类学家,大卫?格雷柏, 我们试图处理这类问题。

【33】But we did it on a much larger scale because from our perspective as an archaeologist and an anthropologist, this clash between theory and data, between the standard narrative of human history and the evidence that we have before us today is not just confined to the early Middle East.

但我们做的规模更大许多, 因为以我们身为 考古学家和人类学家的身份, 理论和资料间的这种冲突, 人类历史的标准说法 与我们现今眼前证据 之间的这种冲突, 并不只发生在早期的中东。

【34】It’s everything: out whole picture of human history that we’ve been telling for centuries, it’s basically wrong.

比比皆是: 数世纪以来我们一直 诉说的人类历史全貌 基本上是错的。

【35】I'm going to try and explain a few more of the reasons why.

我接下来会试着用 几个理由来解释为什么。

【36】Let's go back to some of those core concepts, the stable reference points around which we've been organizing and orchestrating our understanding of world history for hundreds of years.

咱们回到那些核心观念, 也就是那些牢靠的参照点, 我们一直根据它们 来整理和协调

【37】Take, for instance, that notion that for most of its history, the human species lived in tiny egalitarian bands of hunter gatherers, until the advent of agriculture ushered in a new age of inequality.

以这个见解为例: 在大部分的人类历史上, 人类以狩猎采集者组成的 小队群形式过生活, 直到农業出现,

【38】Or the notion that with the arrival of cities came social classes, sacred kings and rapacious oligarchs trampling everyone else underfoot.

或者这个见解:随着城市出现, 神圣的国王及贪婪的寡头政治执政者

【39】From our very first history lessons, we're taught to believe that our modern world, with all of its advantages and amenities, modern health care, space travel, all the things that are good and exciting, couldn't possibly exist without that original concentration of humanity into larger and larger units and the relentless buildup of inequalities that came with it.

我们最早接触到的历史课 就教我们要相信,我们现代的世界 以及它所有的优点、便利措施、 现代健康照护、 太空旅行,所有美好且让人兴奋的一切, 之所以会存在, 靠的就是原先将人类集中 成为更大单位的做法, 以及随之而来

【40】Inequality, we're taught to believe, was the necessary price of civilization.

我们学到的是要相信,不平等 是文明的必要代价。

【41】Well, if so, then what are we to make of the early Middle East?

如果是这样,那我们又要 如何看待早期的中东？

【42】Perhaps one might say there was just a very, very, very long lag time, 4,000 years, before all these developments took place.

有人可能会说,那只是非常 非常非常长的时间延搁, 延了四千年, 发展才出现。

【43】Inequality was bound to happen, it was bound to set in.

不平等注定会发生,注定会出现,

【44】It was just a matter of time.

只是时间早晚。

【45】And perhaps the rest of the story still works for other parts of the world.

也许故事剩下的部分还能用, 用在世界上的其他地方。

【46】Well, let's think a bit about what we can actually say today about the origin of cities.

咱们来稍微想想看, 我们现今能够怎么说 城市的源头。

【47】Surely, you might think, with the appearance of cities came the appearance of social classes.

你可能会想,当然,随着城市出现, 社会阶级就会出现。

【48】Think about ancient Egypt with its pyramid temples.

想想古埃及以及它的金字塔神殿,

【49】Or Shang China with its lavish tombs.

或中国商朝和它的铺张的坟墓,

【50】The classic Maya with their warlike rulers.

或古马雅以及它那些好战的统治者,

【51】Or the Inca empire with its mummified kings and queens.

或印加帝国以及它被制成 木乃伊国王及皇后。

【52】But actually, the picture these days is not so clear.

但,实际上,我们对 那些时期的样貌并不清楚。

【53】What modern archeology tells us, for example, is that there were already cities on the lower reaches of the Yellow River over 1,000 years before the rise of the Shang.

比如,现代考古学能告诉我们 黄河的下段很早就已经有城市了, 时间比商朝的兴起还早了一千多年。

【54】And on the other side of the Pacific, in Peru’s Rio Supe, we already see huge agglomerations of people with monumental architecture 4,000 years before the Inca.

且在太平洋的另一头, 在秘鲁的苏佩河, 很早就已经有大型的 人类聚落以及巨大的建筑, 时间比印加还早了四千年。

【55】In South Asia, 4,500 years ago, the first cities appeared at places like Mohenjo-daro and Harappa in the Indus Valley.

在南亚,四千五百年前,最早的城市 出现在印度河流域的摩亨佐—达罗 以及哈拉帕等地。

【56】But these huge settlements present no evidence of kings or queens.

但这些大型的定居地都没有证据

【57】No royal monuments, no aggrandizing art.

没有皇家遗迹, 没有吹捧的艺术品,此外,

【58】And what's more, we know that much of the population lived in high-quality housing with excellent sanitation.

我们知道大部分的人都生活在 高品质住房中,卫生良好。

【59】North of the Black Sea, in the modern country of Ukraine, archaeologists have found evidence of even more ancient cities going back 6,000 years.

在黑海的北方, 在现在的乌克兰, 考古学家找到证据, 证明有更古老的城市存在, 可回溯到六千年前。

【60】And again, these huge settlements present no evidence of authoritarian rule.

同样的, 这些大型定居地也没有证据 能证明有专治的统治存在。

【61】No temples, no palaces, not even any evidence of central storage facilities or top-down bureaucracy.

没有神殿,没有宫殿, 甚至没有证据显示有中央的储存机构 或由上而下的官僚制度。

【62】Actually what we see in those cases are these great concentric rings of houses arranged rather like the inside of a tree trunk around neighborhood assembly halls.

事实上,在这些例子中,我们 看到的是宏伟的房舍同心圆, 房舍的排列像是在排树干中一样, 以邻坊的集会堂为中心。

【63】And it stayed that way for about 800 years.

且约八百年来都维持如此。

【64】So what this means is that long before the birth of democracy in ancient Greece, there were already well-organized cities on several of the world's continents which present no evidence for ruling dynasties.

这意味着,在古希腊的 民主诞生之前很久, 就已经有组织良好的城市了, 好几个大陆上都有, 且通通都没有统治王朝存在的证据。

【65】And some of them also seem to have managed perfectly well without priests, mandarins and warrior politicians.

其中有一些还管理得非常好, 不需要祭师、官吏,以及战争政客。

【66】Of course, some early cities did go on to become the capitals of kingdoms and empires.

当然,当中也有些城市后来成了 王国与帝国的首都。

【67】But it's important to note that others went in completely the opposite direction.

重要的是要注意到, 其他城市却完全走向 相反的方向。

【68】To take one well-documented example, around the year 250 AD, the city of Teotihuacan, in the valley of Mexico, with a population of around 100,000 people,

举一个记录完整的例子,时间大约是 西元 250 年, 特奥蒂瓦坎这个城市, 位在墨西哥谷, 人口大约十万,

【69】turned its back on pyramid temples and human sacrifices and reconstituted itself as a vast collection of comfortable villas housing most of the city's population.

它背弃了金字塔神殿以及活人祭祀, 将它自己重新改组, 变成由大量的舒适庄园组成,

【70】When archaeologists first investigated these buildings, they assumed they were palaces.

考古学家最初在调查这些建筑物时, 还假设它们是宫殿,

【71】Then they realized that just about everyone in the city was living in a palace with spacious patios and subfloor drainages, gorgeous murals on the walls.

后来他们发现,几乎城市中的每个人 都住在宫殿里,有宽敞的露台, 地下有排水系统, 墙上有华丽的壁饰。

【72】But we shouldn't get carried away.

但我们不能兴奋过头。

【73】None of the societies that I've been describing was perfectly egalitarian.

我刚才所描述的所有社会通通都不是 完美的平等社会。

【74】But then we might also remember that fifth-century Athens, which we look to as the birthplace of democracy, was also a militaristic society founded on chattel slavery, where women were completely excluded from politics.

但我们也别忘了第五世纪的雅典, 它被我们视为是民主的诞生地, 它也是个军国主义社会, 那时的女性完全不能参与政治。

【75】So maybe by comparison, somewhere like Teotihuacan was not doing so badly at keeping the genie of inequality in its bottle.

所以,也许,比较之下, 特奥蒂瓦坎这种地方不算太糟, 还能把不平等的精灵关在瓶子里。

【76】But maybe we can just forget about all that, we can look away.

但,也许我们可以把这一切 抛诸脑后别去看。

【77】Perhaps all of these things I'm talking about are basically outliers.

也许我说的这一切基本上都是特例。

【78】Maybe we can still keep our familiar story of civilization intact.

也许我们仍然可以原封不动 保有我们熟悉的文明故事。

【79】And after all, if cities without rulers were really such a common thing in human history, why didn't Cortéz and Pizarro and all the other conquistadors find any when they began their invasion of the Americas?

毕竟, 如果没有统治者的城市 那么,科尔特斯、皮萨罗, 及所有其他的征服者为何不 在他们开始入侵美洲时 去找这类城市？

【80】Why did they find only Moctezuma and Atahualpa lording it over their empires?

为什么他们只遇到 蒙特苏马和阿塔瓦尔帕 统治着他们的帝国？

【81】Except that's not true either.

不过,那也不是真的。

【82】Actually, the city where Hernan Cortéz found his military allies, the ones who enabled his successful assault on the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, was exactly one such city without rulers: an indigenous republic by the name of Tlaxcala, governed by an urban parliament, which had some pretty interesting initiation rituals for would-be politicians.

事实上,埃尔南?科尔特斯 在一个城市中找到军事盟友, 让他能够成功地攻击 特诺奇提特兰的阿兹特克首都, 这个城市正是这种 没有统治者的城市: 一个原住民共和国, 名为特拉斯卡拉, 由城市议会负责管理, 对于想要成为政治家的人, 他们有些很有意思的进入仪式。

【83】They'd be periodically whipped and subject to public abuse by their constituents to sort of break down their egos and remind them who's really in charge.

他们定期会被鞭打, 并被他们的选民公开辱骂, 目的是要打破他们的自负,提醒他们

【84】It's a little bit different from what we expect of our politicians today.

和我们现今对于 政治家的期望有些不同。

【85】And archaeologists, by the way, have also worked at this place Tlaxcala, excavating the remains of the pre-conquest city, and what they found there is really remarkable.

顺道一提,考古学家也有 在特拉斯卡拉这个地方作業, 挖掘在征服之前的城市的遗迹, 而他们的发现相当值得注意。

【86】Again, the most impressive architecture is not temples and palaces.

同样的,

【87】It's just the well-appointed residences of ordinary citizens arrayed along these grand terraces overlooking district plazas.

而是一般市民设备完善的住所, 以梯田的方式排列,十分壮观,

【88】And it's not just the history of cities that modern archaeological science is turning on its head.

现代考古科学要大翻盘的, 不只是城市的历史。

【89】We also know now that the history of human societies before the coming of agriculture is just nothing like what we once imagined.

我们现在也知道,在农業 出现之前的人类社会历史 也和我们以前的想像完全不同。

【90】Far from this idea of people living all the time in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, actually, what we see these days is evidence for a really wild variety of social experimentation before the coming of farming.

并不是以前认为的,人类总是以 狩猎采集者的小队群形式生活, 事实上,我们现今 所找到的证据能证明 在农業出现之前就有非常多样化的 社会实验。

【91】In Africa, 50,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers were already creating huge networks, social networks, covering large parts of the continent.

在非洲, 五万年前, 狩猎采集者已经创造了很大的网路, 社会网路,涵盖了 大陆上大部分的地方。

【92】In Ice Age Europe, 25,000 years ago, we see evidence of individuals singled out for special grand burials, their bodies suffused with ornamentation, weapons and even what looked like regalia.

在冰河时期的欧洲,两万五千年前, 我们找到证据证明有些人 他们的尸体上满是装饰、 武器,甚至有看起来 像是盛装的东西。

【93】We see public buildings constructed on the bones and tusks of woolly mammoth.

我们发现有公共建筑物 是用长毛象的骨头和象牙

【94】And around 11,000 years ago, back in the Middle East, where I started, hunter-gatherers constructed enormous stone temples at a place called G?bekli Tepe in eastern Turkey.

大约一万一千年前, 在中东,我最初开始的地方, 狩猎采集者建造了巨大的石神殿, 地点在哥贝克力山丘,

【95】In North America, long before the coming of maize farming, indigenous populations created the massive earthworks of poverty point in Louisiana, capable of hosting hunter gatherer publics in their thousands.

在北美, 远在玉米耕种都还没有出现之前, 原住居民就建造了 巨型的波弗蒂角土墩, 位在路易斯安那, 能够容得下数千多狩猎采集者民众。

【96】And then Japan, again, long before the arrival of rice farming, the storehouses of Sannai Maruyama could already hold great surpluses of wild plant foods.

接着,在日本, 三内丸山的仓庫已经能够容纳大量 过剩的野生植物食物。

【97】Now what do all these details amount to?

所有这些细节代表什么？

【98】What does it all mean?

这一切有什么意涵？

【99】Well, at the very least, I'd suggest it's really a bit far-fetched these days to cling to this notion that the invention of agriculture meant a departure from some egalitarian Eden.

最少最少,我认为, 现今,我们不该再那么牵强地 紧紧抱持着这个想法: 农業的发明意味着

【100】Or to cling to the idea that small-scale societies are especially likely to be egalitarian, while large-scale ones must necessarily have kings, presidents and top-down structures of management.

或者也不适合再抱持 这样的想法:小规模社会 特别有可能是平等的, 而大规模社会则一定会有 国王、总统,以及 由上而下的管理结构。

【101】And there are also some contemporary implications.

此外,还有一些当代的意涵。

【102】Take, for example, the commonplace notion that participatory democracy is somehow natural in a small community.

以这个常见想法为例: 参与式民主在小社群里面总是很自然的,

【103】Or perhaps an activist group, but couldn't possibly have a scale up for anything like a city, a nation or even a region.

或者在激进的团体里, 但却绝对不可能扩大到 城市这样的规模, 或者国家,甚至地区的规模。

【104】Well, actually, the evidence of human history, if we're prepared to look at it, suggests the opposite.

事实上,人类历史的证据, 如果我们准备好看去看它们的话, 证明实情恰恰相反。

【105】If cities and regional confederacies, held together mostly by consensus and cooperation existed thousands of years ago, who's to stop us creating them again today

如果主要靠共识和合作 所形成的城市和区域性联邦 在数千年前就已经存在, 现今谁又能阻止我们 再次创造出它们？

【106】with technologies that allow us to overcome the friction of distance and numbers?

我们可以用上让我们克服 距离和数字障碍的技术 来创造它们。

【107】Perhaps it's not too late to begin learning from all this new evidence of the human past, even to begin imagining what other kinds of civilization we might create if we can just stop telling ourselves that this particular world is the only one possible.

也许现在还不算太迟,可以开始从关于人类过往的 这些新证据中学习, 甚至开始想像 我们还有可能创造出 哪些其他类型的文明, 如果我们能停止不断告诉自己 现在的这个世界

【108】Thank you very much.

非常谢谢。

【109】(Applause)