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【簡譯】中世紀美洲的氣候異常現(xiàn)象

2023-03-07 09:54 作者:神尾智代 0人讀過 | 我要投稿

To climatologists, the period of seven to twelve centuries ago was known as a "Climate Anomaly" or a "Warm Period" (800-1300 CE). To archaeologists, it was a time of great change, a period when cultural patterns were put into place that lasted into the modern era. Although the medieval period is better known in Europe and the Old World, it was a global phenomenon. It happened in the New World, too.

? ? ? ? ? ?對氣候?qū)W家來說，七至十二世紀前的時期被稱為“氣候異常”或“溫暖”期（公元800-1300年）。對考古學家來說，這是一個巨變時代，是一個文化模式被建立起來并持續(xù)到現(xiàn)代的時代。雖然中世紀時期在歐洲和舊世界更為人所知，但它是一種全球現(xiàn)象，這種變化也發(fā)生在新世界。

溫暖時期的新世界文化

In the Mississippi valley, this was the era of the Mississippian culture. In North Mexico and the American Southwest, it encompassed the Puebloan, Hohokam, Mogollon, and early Casas Grandes cultures. In Mesoamerica, which is to say from about Culiacan, Mexico, on the Pacific coast to Tampico, Mexico, on the Gulf coast and south to Nicaragua, the era encompassed the Epi-Classic, Terminal Classic, and early Postclassic periods and included the so-called Toltec, Huastec, and Maya civilizations, among others. Whatever the names and whomever the people, all appear to have been part of a phenomenon – a cult or cults of Thunderers or Winds-that-bring-rain gods – that swept the continent over the course of 200-300 years.

? ? ? ? ? 在密西西比河谷，這一時期是密西西比文化的時代。在墨西哥北部和美國西南部，它包括普韋布洛文化、霍霍坎文化、莫戈隆文化和早期的大卡薩斯文化。在中美洲，即從太平洋沿岸的墨西哥庫利亞坎到墨西哥灣沿岸的坦皮科，再往南到尼加拉瓜，這個時代包括史前古典時期、終結(jié)古典時期和后古典時期早期，包括所謂的托爾特克、瓦斯特克和瑪雅文明等。無論名字和民族如何，他們似乎都是在 200 到 300 年的時間里在整個大陸蔓延的一種現(xiàn)象（一種或多種雷神崇拜或風神崇拜）的一部分。

The sweeping effects were profound, leaving lasting imprints on diverse peoples and their civilizations and establishing ways of life that were to last through the arrival of Europeans. These effects were observed by the earliest European conquistadors and colonists in the 1500s –unbeknownst to them – long after the world had moved past the medieval era. Indeed, we base some of what we think happened in the medieval era on later Spanish observations. That said, some of these earliest European intruders make poor guides. They include Hernán Cortés, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, Hernando de Soto, and Juan de O?ate. These men cared little about the native history and heritage that they were assaulting.

? ? ? ? ? 這些影響是深遠的，在不同的民族和他們的文明中留下了持久的印記，并建立了一直持續(xù)到歐洲人到來的生活方式。在世界已經(jīng)過了中世紀很久之后，16 世紀早期的歐洲征服者和定居者（他們并不知道）觀察到了這些影響。事實上，我們認為中世紀發(fā)生的事情的一部分是基于后來西班牙人的觀察。話雖這么說，但其中一些早期的歐洲闖入者并不是很好的向?qū)?。他們包括埃爾南·科爾特斯、弗朗西斯科·巴斯克斯·德·科羅納多、埃爾南多·德·索托和胡安·德·奧尼亞特。這些人根本不關(guān)心本土歷史和遺產(chǎn)。

But other European explorers, especially the four men who survived the failed Pánfilo de Narváez expedition of 1528-1536, are quite good guides. These four men, the most notable of whom was Alvar Nú?ez Cabeza de Vaca, crisscrossed much of the same territory covered in this book, meeting colonial-era descendants of medieval peoples who had caused many of the historic changes that gave shape to the provinces that the Spaniards later called La Florida, Nuevo Galicia, Nuevo Espa?a, and the Yucatan.

? ? ? ? ? 其他歐洲探險家，特別是1528-1536年潘菲洛·德·納爾瓦埃斯探險隊失敗后幸存的四人，都是很好的向?qū)?。這四個人，其中最著名的是阿爾瓦·努涅斯·卡韋薩·德·巴卡，在本書所涉及的大部分地區(qū)縱橫馳騁，他們遇到了殖民時代中世紀人民的后裔，也造成了許多歷史性的變化，促使了西班牙人后來稱之為佛羅里達、新加利西亞、新西班牙和猶加敦等省份形成。

álvar Nú?ez Cabeza de Vaca and his three companions, about to travel on their long journey west in 1535, had chided the Avavare people for their story of the Bad Thing, never considering that the story might have been the myth of an evil creator god – Tezcatlipoca or perhaps Xolotl – lord of the night winds or underworld, counterpart to a bearded beneficent creator god – Quetzalcoatl. Yet the Avavares and subsequent groups met by Cabeza de Vaca, Estevanico, Castillo, and Dorantes, considered the bearded foreigners to be the Children of the Sun – god-men who journeyed west. Cabeza de Vaca himself had carried seashells from group to group during his years as an itinerant middleman in the Texas interior. How often had he placed a shell up to his ear to wonder about the sounds of wind and crashing waves inside?

? ? ? ? ? 阿爾瓦·努涅斯·卡韋薩·德·巴卡和他的三個同伴在1535年即將踏上西行的漫長旅程時，曾責備Avavare（得克薩斯州南部的一個鮮為人知的美洲印第安人部落）關(guān)于壞事的故事，卻從未考慮過這個故事可能是一個邪惡的創(chuàng)世神（Tezcatlipoca或 Xólotl）夜空或冥界的主宰，與一個長著胡子的仁慈的創(chuàng)世神（Quetzalcóa(chǎn)tl）相對應。然而，Avavare認為這些長著胡子的外國人，如阿爾瓦·努涅斯·卡韋薩·德·巴卡、埃斯特瓦尼科、卡斯蒂略和多蘭特斯等他們所遇到的外來者，是太陽之子，即向西旅行的神人。阿爾瓦·努涅斯·卡韋薩·德·巴卡本人在德克薩斯內(nèi)陸地區(qū)擔任旅行中間人期間，曾在各個團體之間攜帶貝殼。他曾多少次把貝殼放在耳邊，想知道里面的風聲和海浪聲？

Pánfilo de Narváez 和 Cabeza de Vaca 的遠征（1527-36 年）

神廟和紀念碑

Now, consider the prominence and number of such shells, along with circular shrines, at a number of medieval-era archaeological places: Aztec, Cahokia, Chaco, Cherry Valley, Chichen Itza, Crenshaw, Cuicuilco, Calixtlahuaca, Emerald, George C. Davis, Ixtlan del Rio, Las Flores, Los Guachimontónes, Paquime, Tamtoc, Tenochtitlan, Trempealeau, and Tula Chico. Those shells meant something profound to descendants of peoples who lived through the Medieval Climate Anomaly. And those shells were often associated with wind, water, and circular temples, shrines, and pyramids that were frequently, in turn, paired with square platforms, buildings, or pyramids. They were connected to temples, sacred fires, and the realm of the dead by elevated causeways sometimes to or through water and occasionally with reference to a great water-bringer spirit – the Moon. And they were connected to or through upright poles and twisted ropes that reached up into the sky to the winds and clouds from whence lightning flashed.

? ? ? ? ? 現(xiàn)在讓我們考慮一下這種貝殼以及圓形圣殿在中世紀時期一系列考古遺址中的重要性和數(shù)量：阿茲特克、卡霍基亞、查科、櫻桃谷、奇琴伊察、克倫肖、奎奎爾科、Calixtlahuaca, Esmeralda, George C. Davis, Ixtlán del Río, Las Flores, Los Guachimontónes, Paquime, Tamtoc, Tenochtitlán, Trempealeau 和 Tula Chico。（沒找到中譯）這些貝殼對經(jīng)歷過中世紀氣候異常的人們的后代來說意義深遠。而這些貝殼往往與風、水和圓形的寺廟、神殿和金字塔有關(guān)，而這些又通常與方形平臺、建筑物或金字塔配對。它們與神廟、圣火和亡靈界通過高架通道相連，有時與水相連或穿過水，偶爾還會提到一個偉大的承載水的精靈：月亮。它們與直立的柱子和扭曲的繩索相連，這些柱子和繩索伸向天空，直達風和云，閃電從那里閃過。

Obviously, the various cultures north and south of the Pánuco developed on their own and were not all the same. Yet the peoples of these various regional traditions still communicated with each other, in one way or another, sharing certain understandings of the world around them, adopting the bundled practices of their neighbors near and far, and arriving in the modern era as distinctive peoples who nevertheless shared deeply enmeshed concepts and engrained practices. Circular shrines and monuments came to be central to the religious and urban complexes of the people in the volatile climatic regime of the Medieval Warm Period. Members of surrounding communities, one might presume, came to water shrines routinely to pray for rain or to be healed.

? ? ? ? ? 顯然，帕努科南北各種文化各自發(fā)展，并不完全相同。然而，這些不同地區(qū)的傳統(tǒng)人民仍然以這樣或那樣的方式相互交流，分享關(guān)于周圍世界的某些概念。他們采用遠近鄰居的帶狀實踐，并作為獨特的民族來到現(xiàn)代，分享了深刻交織的概念和根深蒂固的實踐經(jīng)驗。在中世紀溫暖時期氣候變化無常的城鎮(zhèn)中，圓形圣殿和紀念碑占據(jù)了宗教和城市綜合體的中心位置。我們可以推測，周圍社區(qū)的成員經(jīng)常到水神廟祈求雨水或得到治療。

For farmers, there would have been very little more important in the world than healing the body, soul, community, and cosmos. These were the laborers who did the tilling and planting, the tending and harvesting, the cleaning and processing, and the storage and hauling of all the foodstuffs without which no city could have existed. Their fields were subject to floods and droughts and their bodies were subject to the aches and pains and illnesses and injuries of the sort that laborers are always disproportionately prone. They understood the plants they grew and the animals that might raid their fields. But as for how to be healed or how to control the weather – these were the jobs of shamans, priests, and elites who had access to the gods and who understood the cosmos.

? ? ? ? ? 對于農(nóng)民來說，世界上幾乎沒有比治愈身體、靈魂、社區(qū)和宇宙更重要的事情了。他們是從事耕作和種植、照料和收獲、清洗和加工以及儲存和運輸所有食品的勞動者，沒有這些，任何城市都不可能長存。田地受到水災和旱災的影響，人們的身體受到疼痛和病痛的影響，而勞動者總是更容易受到這些影響。他們了解自己種植的植物和可能襲擊他們田地的動物。但至于如何被治愈或如何控制天氣，這些都是薩滿、祭司和能接觸到神靈并了解宇宙的精英們的工作。

Farmers needed them. They needed the blessings and healing power of the spirit world. They needed to get right with the gods. And so growers, pilgrims, and the curious from far away came into the sacred shrines and the cities that grew up about them. They carried in their ailing aunts and sick cousins, fathers, and mothers. They came into the shrines to pray to the gods, celebrate life, drink the healing waters, and be blessed inside the steamy dark chambers. In the process, the histories of Mesoamericans, Chichimecs, Caddos, Cahokians, Chacoans, and so many more to the north became intertwined.

? ? ? ? ? ?農(nóng)民們需要他們。他們需要精神世界的祝福和治愈能力。他們需要與眾神保持一致。因此，種植者、朝圣者和來自遠方的好奇者來到了神圣的圣地和圍繞它們生長的城市。他們帶著生病的姨媽和表妹、父親和母親。他們來到神殿，向神靈祈禱，慶祝生命，喝下治愈的圣水，并在蒸汽繚繞的暗室中接受祝福。在此過程中，中美洲人、奇奇梅克人、卡多人、卡霍基亞人、查科人以及許多來自北方的人的歷史交織在一起。

None of these original indigenous cultures, with their overlapping philosophies and ontologies, developed in a vacuum. Rather, across North America, history swirled around medieval climatic shifts like the wind in a conch shell. If you listen carefully, you can still hear it. The atmosphere and the people were one, and so climate happened through people, and climate history was human history. It is the central lesson of America's medieval period and its gods of Thunder, from the Maya westward into Central Mexico, northward into the American Southwest and southern Plains, and, finally, up the Mississippi.

? ? ? ? ? 這些原始的土著文化，及其重疊的哲學和本體論都不是憑空發(fā)展起來的。相反，在整個北美，歷史就像海螺殼里的風一樣，圍繞著中世紀的氣候轉(zhuǎn)變而旋轉(zhuǎn)。如果你仔細聽，還是能聽出來的。大氣與人是一體的，氣候是通過人產(chǎn)生的，氣候的歷史就是人類的歷史。這是中美洲中世紀時期及其《雷霆之神》(Gods of Thunder)的核心要點。從瑪雅向西進入墨西哥中部，向北進入美國西南部和南部平原，最后到達密西西比河上游。