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 story tellers 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.
我們從書籍中可讀到5,000 年前近東發(fā)生的事情，那里的人最早學(xué)會了寫字。但直到現(xiàn)在,世界上有些地方，人們還不會書寫。 他們保存歷史的唯一辦法是將歷史當(dāng)作傳說講述，由講述人一代接一代地將史實(shí)描述為傳奇故事口傳下來。人類學(xué)家過去不清楚如今生活在太平洋諸島上的波利尼西亞人的祖先來自何方，當(dāng)?shù)厝说膫髡f卻告訴人們：其中一部分是約在2,000年前從印度尼西亞遷來的。
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，和我們相似的原始人生活的年代太久遠(yuǎn)了，因此，有關(guān)他們的傳說既使有如今也失傳了。于是，考古學(xué)家們既缺乏歷史記載，又無口頭傳說來幫助他們弄清最早的“現(xiàn)代人”是從哪里來的。
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， 幸運(yùn)的是，遠(yuǎn)古人用石頭制作了工具，特別是用燧石，因?yàn)殪菔^之其他石頭更容易成形。他們也可能用過木頭和獸皮，但這類東西早已腐爛殆盡。石頭是不會腐爛的。因此，盡管制造這些工具的人的骨頭早已蕩然無存，但遠(yuǎn)古時代的石頭工具卻保存了下來。
