What destroyed the civilisation of Easter Island 什么破坏了复活节岛的文明 剑桥雅思11Test2Passage2阅读原文翻译
剑桥雅思11阅读第二套题目第二篇文章探索了复活节岛上文明消失的原因。文章分为7段，介绍了Jared Diamond与Hunt和Lipo不同的观点。下面是具体每一段的翻译。
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雅思真题阅读词汇 剑桥雅思11 test 2 passage 2 复活节岛文明civilisation of Easter Island
What destroyed the civilisation of Easter Island 剑桥雅思11Test2Passage2阅读答案解析
剑桥雅思11 Test2 Passage2阅读原文翻译
段落A
Easter Island, or Rapu Nui as it is known locally, is home to several hundred ancient human statues – the moai. After this remote Pacific island was settled by the Polynesians, it remained isolated for centuries. All the energy and resources that went into the moai – some of which are ten metres tall and weigh over 7,000 kilos – came from the island itself. Yet when Dutch explorers landed in 1722, they met a Stone Age culture. The moai were carved with stone tools, then transported for many kilometres, without the use of animals or wheels, to massive stone platforms. The identity of the moai builders was in doubt until well into the twentieth century. Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer, thought the statues had been created by pre-Inca peoples from Peru. Bestselling Swiss author Erich von Däniken believed they were built by stranded extraterrestrials. Modern science – linguistic, archaeological and genetic evidence – has definitively proved the moai builders were Polynesians, but not how they moved their creations. Local folklore maintains that the statues walked, while researchers have tended to assume the ancestors dragged the statues somehow, using ropes and logs.
复活节岛，也被当地人成为拉帕努伊岛，是数百个古代人类雕像（摩艾像）的所在地。这个遥远的太平洋岛屿在被波利尼西亚人定居之后，在好几个世纪里都保持着与世隔绝的状态。所有用于建造摩艾像的能源和资源都来自岛屿本身。其中一些摩艾像有10米高，重量超过700公斤。然而，当荷兰探索者在1722年踏上该岛屿时，他们见到的是尚处于石器时代的文明。摩艾像用石头工具雕刻，然后在不使用动物或轮子的情况下，运输好几公里，到达巨大的石头平台上。摩艾像建造者的身份直到20世纪都处于争议之中。挪威人种研究者、探险家Thor Heyerdahl认为，雕像由来自秘鲁的前印加时代的人建立。瑞士畅销书作家Erich von Däniken认为他们由滞留的外星人建造。现代科学-语言学，考古学和基因学的证据-证明摩艾像的建造者确实是波利尼西亚人，但尚不清楚他们如何移动自己的作品。当地人认为雕像会自己走动，而研究者则倾向于假定他们的祖先利用绳子和滚木以某种方式拖拽雕像。
段落B
When the Europeans arrived, Rapa Nui was grassland, with only a few scrawny trees. In the 1970s and 1980s, though, researchers found pollen preserved in lake sediments, which proved the island had been covered in lush palm forests for thousands of years. Only after the Polynesians arrived did those forests disappear. US scientist Jared Diamond believes that the Rapanui people – descendants of Polynesian settlers – wrecked their own environment. They had unfortunately settled on an extremely fragile island – dry, cool, and too remote to be properly fertilised by windblown volcanic ash. When the islanders cleared the forests for firewood and farming, the forests didn’t grow back. As trees became scarce and they could no longer construct wooden canoes for fishing, they ate birds. Soil erosion decreased their crop yields. Before Europeans arrived, the Rapanui had descended into civil war and cannibalism, he maintains. The collapse of their isolated civilisation, Diamond writes, is a ‘worst-case scenario for what may lie ahead of us in our own future’.
当欧洲人到来的时候，拉帕努伊岛是一片草地，只有少许几棵枯瘦的树木。然而，20世纪70年代和80年代，研究者文章来自老烤鸭雅思在湖泊沉积物中发现了花粉。这证明岛屿曾经在上千年的时间里被茂密的棕榈树林所覆盖。只是在波利尼西亚人到达之后，这些森林才消失。美国科学家Jared Diamond认为拉帕努伊人-波利尼西亚定居者的后代-破坏了他们自己的环境。他们不幸定居在一个生态环境极度脆弱的岛屿上-干燥，寒冷，太过遥远以至于无法受益于风吹来的火山灰从而变得富饶。当岛上居民为了柴火和农耕而清除森林时，森林无法恢复。随着树木变得稀少，他们无法继续建造木制独木舟来捕鱼，只能以鸟类为食。水土流失降低了他们的粮食产量。他认为，在欧洲人到达之前，拉帕努伊人沦落到内战和以人为食的地步。Diamond写到，他们孤立文明的崩溃，是我们自己的未来可能出现的最坏情况。
段落C
The moai, he thinks, accelerated the self-destruction. Diamond interprets them as power displays by rival chieftains who, trapped on a remote little island, lacked other ways of asserting their dominance. They competed by building ever bigger figures. Diamond thinks they laid the moai on wooden sledges, hauled over log rails, but that required both a lot of wood and a lot of people. To feed the people, even more land had to be cleared. When the wood was gone and civil war began, the islanders began toppling the moai. By the nineteenth century none were standing.
他认为，摩艾像加速了这一自我毁灭的过程。Diamond将它们解释为敌对首领之间的力量展示。他们被困在遥远的小岛上，缺乏其他方式来维护自己的统治。他们通过建造更大的雕像来互相竞争。Diamond认为，他们将摩艾像置于木制的雪橇上，在原木轨道上拖动。但这需要大量的木头和人力。为了供养这些人，更多的土地被清理出来。当木头用完，内战开启的时候，岛上居民开始推翻摩艾像。到19世纪时，已经没有任何摩艾像站立着了。
段落D
Archaeologists Terry Hunt of the University of Hawaii and Carl Lipo of California State University agree that Easter Island lost its lush forests and that it was an ‘ecological catastrophe‘ – but they believe the islanders themselves weren’t to blame. And the moai certainly weren’t. Archaeological excavations indicate that the Rapanui went to heroic efforts to protect the resources of their wind-lashed, infertile fields. They built thousands of circular stone windbreaks and gardened inside them, and used broken volcanic rocks to keep the soil moist. In short, Hunt and Lipo argue, the prehistoric Rapanui were pioneers of sustainable farming.
夏威夷大学考古学家Terry Hunt与加利福尼亚州州立大学Carl Lipo同意复活节岛失去了茂密的森林，而这是一场生态灾难。但他们认为这并不是岛上居民的错，也当然不是摩艾像的错。考古发掘表明拉帕努伊人做出了巨大的努力来保护他们受狂风席卷并且不肥沃的土地资源。他们建造了上千个环形石头防风林，在其中耕作，并利用破碎的火山岩来保持土壤湿润。简而言之，Hunt和Lipo认为，史前的拉帕努伊人是可持续农业的先驱者。
段落E
Hunt and Lipo contend that moai-building was an activity that helped keep the peace between islanders. They also believe that moving the moai required few people and no wood, because they were walked upright. On that issue, Hunt and Lipo say, archaeological evidence backs up Rapanui folklore. Recent experiments indicate that as few as 18 people could, with three strong ropes and a bit of practice, easily manoeuvre a 1,000 kg moai replica a few hundred metres. The figures’ fat bellies tilted them forward, and a D-shaped base allowed handlers to roll and rock them side to side.
Hunt和Lipo认为摩艾像的建造是一项帮助维持岛屿居民之间和平的活动。他们也认为，移动摩艾像并不需要多少人力，也不需要木头，因为他们可以直立行走。Hunt和Lipo说，在这个问题上，考古证据支持拉帕努伊人的民间传说。最近的实验表明，3条结实的绳子再加上一些练习，只要18个人就可以轻易控制一座1000公斤的摩艾像复制品移动几百米。雕像硕大的腹部使它们向前倾斜，而D型底座让操作人员可以把他们从一侧滚向另外一侧。
段落F
Moreover, Hunt and Lipo are convinced that the settlers were not wholly responsible for the loss of the island’s trees. Archaeological finds of nuts from the extinct Easter Island palm show tiny grooves, made by the teeth of Polynesian rats. The rats arrived along with the settlers, and in just a few years, Hunt and Lipo calculate, they would have overrun the island. They would have prevented the reseeding of the slow-growing palm trees and thereby doomed Rapa Nui’s forest, even without the settlers’ campaign of deforestation. No doubt the rats ate birds’ eggs too. Hunt and Lipo also see no evidence that Rapanui civilisation collapsed when the palm forest did. They think its population grew rapidly and then remained more or less stable until the arrival of the Europeans, who introduced deadly diseases to which islanders had no immunity. Then in the nineteenth century slave traders decimated the population, which shrivelled to 111 people by 1877.
此外，Hunt和Lipo坚信，定居者并不应该承担岛屿上树木消失的全部责任。考古研究发现，已经灭绝的复活节岛棕榈树的坚果上有微小的凹槽。这是由波利尼西亚老鼠的牙齿造成的。老鼠与定居者一同来到这里。Hunt和Lip计算，在几年的时间里，它们就充斥了整个岛屿。它们会阻碍生长缓慢的棕榈树再次播种。因此，即便没有定居者对森林的砍伐，它们也注定导致拉帕努伊岛森林的毁灭。毫无疑问，老鼠也会吃鸟蛋。Hunt和Lipo也没有发现任何证据表明，拉帕努伊文明随着森林的毁灭而崩溃。他们认为，其人口迅速增长，并在欧洲人到达之前保持稳定。欧洲人带来了致命的病毒，而岛上居民对此没有任何免疫能力。随后，19世纪里，奴隶贩子大量屠杀居民，导致其人口在1877年时缩减到了111人。
段落G
Hunt and Lipo’s vision, therefore, is one of an island populated by peaceful and ingenious moai builders and careful stewards of the land, rather than by reckless destroyers ruining their own environment and society. ‘Rather than a case of abject failure, Rapu Nui is an unlikely story of success’, they claim. Whichever is the case, there are surely some valuable lessons which the world at large can learn from the story of Rapa Nui.
因此，在Hunt和Lipo看来，这个岛屿居住着和平而具有独创精神的摩艾像建造者，他们小心翼翼地维护土地，并没有不计后果的破坏自己的环境和社会。他们认为：“拉帕努伊是一个不太可能发生的成功故事，而非凄惨的失败”。无论事实如何，世界一定可以从拉帕努伊的故事中学到一些宝贵经验。
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