如果普遍接受的關(guān)于文明基礎的敘述都是錯誤的怎么辦？利用開創(chuàng)性研究，考古學家大衛(wèi)·溫格羅挑戰(zhàn)了關(guān)于人類社會進化的傳統(tǒng)思維——從農(nóng)業(yè)的發(fā)明到城市和階級制度的形成——并解釋了重新思考歷史如何從根本上改變我們對不平等和現(xiàn)代生活的看法。

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

2014 年夏天，?我和一小隊考古學家在伊拉克庫爾德斯坦，?在邊境城鎮(zhèn)哈拉布賈附近完成了一個季節(jié)的野外挖掘工作。?自從我開始學習考古學以來，我們的項目一直在尋找令我困惑和感興趣的東西。

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?that would shape our modern world in a particular direction,?on a particular course.?By farming wheat,?our ancestors supposedly developed new attachments to the land they lived on.?Private property was invented.?And with that, the need to defend it.?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.?To think, to experiment,?to create the foundations of what we refer to as civilization.

我們被教導要相信，幾千年前，當我們的祖先?在世界的那個地區(qū)首次發(fā)明農(nóng)業(yè)時?，它引發(fā)了一系列后果，這些后果將在特定方向、特定路線上塑造我們的現(xiàn)代世界。通過種植小麥，我們的祖先據(jù)說對他們所居住的土地產(chǎn)生了新的依戀。私有財產(chǎn)被發(fā)明了。因此，需要捍衛(wèi)它。隨著一些人積累剩余的新機會出現(xiàn)，新的勞動力需求也隨之而來，將大多數(shù)人束縛在耕種莊稼的艱苦制度中，而少數(shù)特權(quán)階層則獲得了自由和閑暇去做其他事情。?去思考，去實驗，?去創(chuàng)造我們所說的文明的基礎。

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,?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.

現(xiàn)在，根據(jù)這個熟悉的故事，?接下來發(fā)生的事情是人口激增，?村莊變成城鎮(zhèn)，城鎮(zhèn)變成城市，?隨著城市的出現(xiàn)，?我們的物種被鎖定在一個熟悉的發(fā)展軌跡上?，人口螺旋式上升和技術(shù)變革相?結(jié)合與?我們今天在我們周圍看到的那種可怕的不平等現(xiàn)象相提并論。

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.?And the consequences I'm going to suggest?are quite profound.?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.?And actually there's very little evidence for the emergence of rigid social classes,?which is not to say that nothing happened.?Over those 4,000 years,?technological change actually proceeded apace.?Without kings,?without bureaucracies, without standing armies,?these early farming populations fostered the development of mathematical knowledge,?advanced metallurgy.?They learned to cultivate olives, vines and date palms.?They invented leavened bread, beer,?and they developed textile technologies:?the potter's wheel, the sail.?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.

除了，任何人都可以告訴你，?誰看過中東的證據(jù)，?我剛才所說的幾乎沒有什么是真的。?我要提出的后果?是相當深遠的。?實際上，大約一萬年前發(fā)明農(nóng)業(yè)之后發(fā)生的事情，?是另外一個大約四千年的漫長時期，村莊基本上還是村莊。實際上，很少有證據(jù)表明僵化的社會階層的出現(xiàn)，這并不是說什么都沒有發(fā)生。在這 4000 年里，技術(shù)變革實際上進展迅速。沒有國王，沒有官僚機構(gòu)，沒有常備軍，這些早期的農(nóng)業(yè)人口促進了數(shù)學知識和?先進冶金學的發(fā)展。?他們學會了種植橄欖、葡萄藤和棗椰樹。?他們發(fā)明了發(fā)酵面包、啤酒，?并開發(fā)了紡織技術(shù)：?陶輪、帆。?他們將所有這些創(chuàng)新廣泛傳播，?從東地中海沿岸，?到黑海，?從波斯灣，?一直到庫爾德斯坦的山區(qū)，我們的挖掘工作就在那里進行。

I've often referred, half jokingly, to this long period of human history?as the era of the first global village.?Because it's not just the technological innovations that are so remarkable,?but also the social innovations?which enabled people to do all these thingswithout forming centers?and without raising up a class of permanent leaders over everybody else.

我經(jīng)常半開玩笑地把這段人類歷史的漫長時期?稱為第一個地球村的時代。?因為不僅技術(shù)創(chuàng)新如此引人注目，?而且社會創(chuàng)新也使人們能夠在?沒有形成中心的情況下做所有這些事情?，也無需培養(yǎng)出超越其他人的永久領(lǐng)導者階層。

Now, oddly enough,?this efflorescence of culture is not what we usually refer to?as civilization.?Instead, that term is usually reserved for harshly unequal societies,?which came thousands of years later.?Dynastic Mesopotamia. Pharaonic Egypt.?Imperial Rome.?Societies that were deeply stratified.?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.?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.

現(xiàn)在，奇怪的是，?這種文化的蓬勃發(fā)展并不是我們通常所說的?文明。?相反，這個詞通常是為幾千年后出現(xiàn)的嚴重不平等的社會保留的。?美索不達米亞王朝。法老埃及。羅馬帝國。層次分明的社會。所以簡而言之，我一直覺得我們的文明概念基本上有一些非常奇怪的東西，讓我們說不出話來，結(jié)結(jié)巴巴。當我們面對幾千年的人類，比如說，從事農(nóng)業(yè)，創(chuàng)造新技術(shù)，但沒有互相統(tǒng)治或最大限度地互相剝削。

Why don't we have better words??Where is our lexicon for those long expanses of human history?in which we weren't behaving that way?

為什么我們沒有更好的詞？?我們在人類歷史上沒有這樣表現(xiàn)的那些漫長的人類歷史的詞典在哪里？

Over the past ten years or more,?I worked closely together with the late,?great anthropologist David Graeber?to address some of these questions.?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.?It’s everything:?out whole picture of human history that we’ve been telling for centuries,?it’s basically wrong.?I'm going to try and explain a few more of the reasons why.

05:46

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.?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.?Or the notion that with the arrival of cities came social classes,?sacred kings and rapacious oligarchs trampling everyone else underfoot.?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 existwithout that original concentration of humanity?into larger and larger units?and the relentless buildup of inequalities that came with it.?Inequality, we're taught to believe,?was the necessary price of civilization.

讓我們回到其中的一些核心概念，?數(shù)百年來我們一直圍繞著這些穩(wěn)定的參考點來組織和協(xié)調(diào)我們對世界歷史的理解。?例如，在歷史的大部分時間里，人類都生活在狩獵采集者的狹小平等主義群體中，直到農(nóng)業(yè)的出現(xiàn)開啟了一個不平等的新時代。或者認為隨著城市的到來，社會階層、神圣的國王和貪婪的寡頭將其他人踐踏在腳下。從我們的第一堂歷史課開始，我們就被教導要相信我們的現(xiàn)代世界及其所有優(yōu)勢和便利設施、現(xiàn)代醫(yī)療保健、太空旅行、?如果沒有人類最初集中到越來越大的單位以及隨之而來的不平等的無情累積，所有美好而令人興奮的事情都不可能存在。?我們被教導相信不平等是文明的必要代價。

Well, if so, then what are we to make of the early Middle East?Perhaps one might say there was just a very, very, very long lag time,?4,000 years,?before all these developments took place.Inequality was bound to happen, it was bound to set in.?It was just a matter of time.?And perhaps the rest of the story still worksfor other parts of the world.

好吧，如果是這樣，那么我們要如何看待早期的中東？?也許有人會說，?在所有這些發(fā)展發(fā)生之前，只有一個非常、非常、非常長的滯后時間，即4000 年。?不平等必然會發(fā)生，必然會發(fā)生。這只是時間問題。也許故事的其余部分仍然適用于世界其他地區(qū)。

Well, let's think a bit about what we can actually say today?about the origin of cities.?Surely, you might think, with the appearance of cities?came the appearance of social classes.?Think about ancient Egypt with its pyramid temples.?Or Shang China with its lavish tombs.?The classic Maya with their warlike rulers.?Or the Inca empire with its mummified kings and queens.?But actually, the picture these days is not so clear.?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.?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.?In South Asia, 4,500 years ago,?the first cities appeared at places like Mohenjo-daro?and Gorakhpur in the Indus Valley.?But these huge settlements present no evidence of kings or queens.?No royal monuments, no aggrandizing art.?And what's more, we know that much of the population?lived in high-quality housing with excellent sanitation.?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.?And again,?these huge settlements present no evidence?of authoritarian rule.?No temples, no palaces,?not even any evidence of central storage facilities?or top-down bureaucracy.?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.?And it stayed that way for about 800 years.

好吧，讓我們想一想我們今天實際上可以說?的關(guān)于城市起源的內(nèi)容。?當然，你可能會想，隨著城市?的出現(xiàn)，社會階層也出現(xiàn)了。想想古埃及的金字塔神廟。?或者擁有奢華陵墓的商代中國。?經(jīng)典的瑪雅人及其好戰(zhàn)的統(tǒng)治者。?或者印加帝國及其木乃伊國王和王后。但實際上，這些天的情況并不那么清晰。?例如，現(xiàn)代考古學告訴我們的?是，在商代興起之前?，黃河下游?已經(jīng)有1000多年的城市了。在太平洋的另一邊，?在秘魯?shù)?Rio Supe，?在印加文明之前 4,000 年，?我們已經(jīng)看到了大量擁有不朽建筑的人群。在 4500 年前的南亞，?第一批城市出現(xiàn)在印度河流域的摩亨佐達羅?和戈拉克布爾等地。?但這些巨大的定居點沒有國王或王后的證據(jù)。?沒有皇家紀念碑，沒有夸大其詞的藝術(shù)。?更重要的是，我們知道大部分人口?居住在衛(wèi)生條件良好的優(yōu)質(zhì)住房中。?在黑海以北?的現(xiàn)代國家烏克蘭，考古學家發(fā)現(xiàn)了?可以追溯到 6000 年前的更多古老城市的證據(jù)。?再一次，這些巨大的定居點沒有提供專制統(tǒng)治的證據(jù)。?沒有寺廟，沒有宮殿，?甚至沒有任何中央儲藏設施?或自上而下的官僚機構(gòu)的證據(jù)。實際上，我們在這些案例中看到的是這些巨大的同心圓房屋，它們的排列方式就像?鄰里大會堂周圍的樹干內(nèi)部一樣。?并且這種狀態(tài)持續(xù)了大約 800 年。

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.?And some of them also seem to have managed perfectly well without priests,?mandarins and warrior politicians.Of course, some early cities did go on?to become the capitals of kingdoms and empires.?But it's important to note that others went?in completely the opposite direction.

所以這意味著，早在古希臘民主誕生之前，?世界上幾個大陸上就已經(jīng)存在組織良好的城市?，沒有任何統(tǒng)治王朝的證據(jù)。他們中的一些人在沒有牧師、官吏和政治家的情況下似乎也表現(xiàn)得很好。當然，一些早期的城市確實繼續(xù)成為王國和帝國的首都。但重要的是要注意，其他人則完全相反。

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,?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.?When archaeologists first investigated these buildings,?they assumed they were palaces.?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.

舉一個有據(jù)可查的例子，?大約在公元 250 年，?墨西哥山谷的特奧蒂瓦坎市（Teotihuacan）?擁有約 10 萬人口，?它背棄了金字塔神廟和人類祭祀?，將自己重組?為一個龐大的收藏品。舒適的別墅居住著這座城市的大部分人口。?當考古學家第一次調(diào)查這些建筑物時，他們認為它們是宮殿。?然后他們意識到，幾乎城里的每個人都?住在一座有寬敞天井?和底層排水系統(tǒng)的宮殿里，墻上掛著?華麗的壁畫。

But we shouldn't get carried away.?None of the societies that I've been describing?was perfectly egalitarian.?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.?So maybe by comparison,?somewhere like Teotihuacan was not doing so badly?at keeping the genie of inequality in its bottle.

但我們不應該得意忘形。?我所描述的社會中沒有一個?是完全平等的。?但隨后我們可能還記得，我們視為民主發(fā)源地的五世紀雅典?也是一個建立在動產(chǎn)奴隸制基礎上的軍國主義社會，女性被完全排除在政治之外。所以也許相比之下，像特奧蒂瓦坎這樣的地方在將不平等的精靈留在瓶子里方面并沒有做得那么糟糕。

But maybe we can just forget about all that, we can look away.Perhaps all of these things I'm talking about are basically outliers.Maybe we can still keep our familiar story of civilization intact.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??Why did they find only Moctezuma and Atahualpalording it over their empires?

但也許我們可以忘記這一切，我們可以把目光移開。?也許我所說的所有這些事情基本上都是異常值。?也許我們?nèi)匀豢梢员３治覀兪煜さ奈拿鞴适峦暾麩o缺。?畢竟，?如果沒有統(tǒng)治者的城市在人類歷史上真的很普遍，?為什么科爾特斯和皮薩羅以及所有其他征服者?在他們開始入侵美洲時沒有發(fā)現(xiàn)任何東西？?為什么他們發(fā)現(xiàn)只有 Moctezuma 和 Atahualpa?統(tǒng)治著他們的帝國？

Except that's not true either.?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.?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.?It's a little bit different from what we expect of our politicians today.?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.?Again, the most impressive architecture is not temples and palaces.?It's just the well-appointed residences of ordinary citizens?arrayed along these grand terraces overlooking district plazas.

但這也不是真的。?實際上，埃爾南·科爾特斯找到他的軍事盟友的城市，也正是?那些幫助他成功襲擊?阿茲特克首都特諾奇蒂特蘭的城市，?正是這樣一個沒有統(tǒng)治者的城市：?一個名為特拉斯卡拉的土著共和國，?由一個城市議會管理?，為潛在的政治家舉辦了一些非常有趣的入會儀式?。?他們會定期?受到選民的鞭打和公開辱罵，?以打破他們的自尊心并提醒他們誰才是真正的負責人。?這與我們今天對政治家的期望有點不同。?順便說一句，考古學家也在特拉斯卡拉這個地方工作過，?挖掘征服前城市的遺跡，?他們在那里發(fā)現(xiàn)的東西真的很了不起。?同樣，最令人印象深刻的建筑不是寺廟和宮殿。?它只是排列在這些俯瞰地區(qū)廣場的宏偉露臺上的普通市民的設備齊全的住宅。

And it's not just the history of cities?that modern archaeological science is turning on its head.?We also know now that the history of human societies?before the coming of agriculture?is just nothing like what we once imagined.?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.?In Africa,?50,000 years ago,?hunter-gatherers were already creating huge networks,?social networks, covering large parts of the continent.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.?We see public buildings constructed on the bones and tusks of woolly mammoth.?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.?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.?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.

現(xiàn)代考古學正在顛覆?的不僅僅是城市的歷史。我們現(xiàn)在也知道?，農(nóng)業(yè)出現(xiàn)之前的人類社會歷史和?我們曾經(jīng)想象的完全不一樣。?事實上，我們現(xiàn)在所看到的遠不是人們一直生活?在小群狩獵采集者中的想法，而是?在農(nóng)業(yè)出現(xiàn)之前進行了非常廣泛的社會實驗的證據(jù)。在50,000 年前的非洲，狩獵采集者已經(jīng)建立了龐大的網(wǎng)絡、社交網(wǎng)絡，覆蓋了非洲大陸的大部分地區(qū)。在 25,000 年前的歐洲冰河時代，?我們看到有證據(jù)表明有人被挑選出來進行特殊的盛大葬禮，?他們的尸體上布滿了裝飾物、?武器，甚至看起來像王權(quán)的東西。?我們看到公共建筑建在猛犸象的骨頭和象牙上。?大約 11,000 年前，?在我開始的中東，?狩獵采集者?在土耳其東部的一個叫做哥貝克力石陣的地方建造了巨大的石廟。?在北美，?早在玉米種植出現(xiàn)之前，土著居民就?在路易斯安那州的貧困點建造了大規(guī)模的土方工程，?能夠容納成千上萬的狩獵采集者公眾。然后日本，再次，早在水稻種植到來之前，?三內(nèi)丸山的倉庫已經(jīng)可以儲存大量剩余?的野生植物食品。

Now what do all these details amount to??What does it all mean?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.?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.?And there are also some contemporary implications.?Take, for example, the commonplace notion?that participatory democracy is somehow natural in a small community.?Or perhaps an activist group,?but couldn't possibly have a scale up for anything like a city,?a nation or even a region.

現(xiàn)在所有這些細節(jié)意味著什么？?這是什么意思呢？?好吧，至少，我認為現(xiàn)在堅持?農(nóng)業(yè)的發(fā)明意味著背離某種平等主義的伊甸園的觀念確實有點牽強。?或者堅持認為小規(guī)模社會特別可能是平等主義的，而大規(guī)模社會必須有國王、總統(tǒng)和自上而下的管理結(jié)構(gòu)。還有一些當代意義。以一個普遍的觀念為例，即參與式民主在小社區(qū)中是自然而然的。或者也許是一個激進組織，?但不可能擴大到像城市、?國家甚至地區(qū)這樣的地方。

Well, actually, the evidence of human history,?if we're prepared to look at it,?suggests the opposite.?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?with technologies that allow us to overcome the friction?of distance and numbers??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.

嗯，實際上，人類歷史的證據(jù)，?如果我們準備好審視它，就會?發(fā)現(xiàn)相反的情況。?如果幾千年前主要通過共識和合作建立起來的城市和地區(qū)聯(lián)盟存在，那么?今天誰來阻止我們用能夠克服距離和數(shù)量摩擦的技術(shù)再次創(chuàng)造它們？也許現(xiàn)在開始從人類過去的所有這些新證據(jù)中學習還為時不晚，甚至開始想象如果我們不再告訴自己這個特定的世界是唯一可能的世界，我們可能會創(chuàng)造出什么樣的文明。