2015-02-24

【Aiden in English】

        In our present day life, we would turn on our heating like it was nothing. We go to the grocery store and buy some green beans for dinner without thinking much about it. We would toss a piece of crumbled up paper into the recycling bin and pretend you’re LeBron James shooting from downtown. All these things we do without much of a second thought, but thousands of years ago during the famous Stone Age, these things would’ve been considered the most modern discoveries and ways at the time. In the book The Stone Age News and the articles “Stone Age Recycling” and “Prehistory”, they all talk about the most important and modern discoveries of the Stone Age. In The Stone Age News, the author puts the amazing discoveries at the time into a newspaper, describing each major find in history clearly as they were there. The article “Stone Age Recycling” contains many huge discoveries of recycling long ago. The article “Prehistory” explains the advances in life before events were recorded and written down, or before history. So all the simple, no brainer moves that we all do now were really modern technology thousands of years ago.

        After coming home from work or school during another freezing cold day, most people just turn on their heat and wait for the house to warm up. Yet thousands of years ago, heat was one of the luxuries that not everyone had. Although people back then didn’t have heat, they did have the knowledge about the next best thing. According to the article “Fire” in “Prehistory”, people around a million years ago discovered fire, a very useful heat source. It produced heat almost instantly, and being able to create heat was crucial to human life at the time. With the ability to keep warm, humans could move away from the equator and warmer climates to the colder places. They were able to survive as far north as the Arctic Circle and as far south as the most southern point Cape Horn as South America. Fire also brought along cooked food. With cooked food, people could add flavor to their food. In the “Stone Age News”, the author writes a section about all the different ways food could be cooked with fire. Cooked food also meant fewer germs on meat, and that was a big deal because meat was eaten raw long ago. Now, people have all kinds of ways to cook food, and we have many different ways of using fire to cook food. There’s the usual roasting over a campfire, boiling, frying, and many more.

        Farming is a major source of food, now and thousands of years ago although now, we would simply go to the grocery store for food. If we wished to have broccoli for dinner, drive to the grocery store and buy some broccoli. Same goes for all the other vegetables. Yet thousands of years ago, everyone had to help get food, whether it was hunting or gathering wild berries. In fact, food would probably be one of the major issues of the Stone Age. According to “Prehistory”, farming was discovered by accident. People probably dropped seeds into the ground, and next year, a plant grew in the exact same spot. During the end of the Stone Age, people learned how to use this method to grow their own food. Faming was a major discovery because at that point in history, most people travelled from area to area searching for food. With the ability to produce their own food, people could settle in one place and look into other things. In the Stone Age News, the author talks about the benefits of farming. Without always constantly moving from place to place, some people would be freed to do other occupations. Also, farming produces a surplus of food. In the Stone Age News, the author writes “harvesting a field of grain is hard but rewarding work”. People settled in one place with all the extra food, and humans with special talents were able to focus more on their talents. Nowadays, people have a large portion of their diet from farming. We eat bread, vegetables, and fruit every day to get nutrition. 

        People these days have filling up land fills with trash and junk that could be used again. So recycling is now encouraged to the four corners of the earth to reuse what can be used again. We do this so we are able to keep the environment safe from pollution from littering and landfills. People during the Stone Age were also somewhat recycling, although for different needs. In the text “Stone Age Recycling”, the author writes about discoveries in caves of signs of reusing. Old flint from a battered tool could be mended together with something else. Bone chips left on the ground after crafting a tool could’ve been picked up and used again by someone else. Even though the people thousands of years ago recycled, their purpose was very much different. The humans of the Stone Age reused things to conserve materials and not to get later. They didn’t even think about the environment.

        Thousands of years ago, humans did many things we do now. Although the reasons or importance might be different, their ways of life has a lot of similarities. People used fire to keep warm, farmed for food, and recycled for materials. The Stone Age had a ton of discoveries that built the foundations of civilization today.

【红霞译文】

        在现代生活中，随手打开加热器没啥好稀奇的；为打点晚餐而跑趟杂货店买些青豆回来可谓家常便饭；像勒布朗•詹姆斯那样三分线外投篮将纸屑扔进回收箱内也算是司空见惯的事情。如果倒退至几千年前著名的石器时代，上述常规范例肯定被视作特别时髦的创举。《石器时代新闻》一书和有关“石器时代废物利用”以及“史前”的文章中都曾涉及到当时重大创新和先进技术，其中《石器时代新闻》作者还把这些丰功伟绩编成报纸，以年鉴形式清晰地罗列出来；“石器时代废物利用” 同样指出从前回收屡见不鲜，而“史前”则阐述高级生活方式，即使那时活动记录、文字记载、史书报道尚未成形。由此说来，眼下被我们看似毫无费力的事情其实在几千年前都非同寻常。

        数九寒天下班或放学回家，多数人都习惯打开空调给屋子供暖。几千年前，加热系统尚属罕见的奢侈品，不是所有人都能享用，虽说当时并没有像现在这样的玩艺，但古人早有取热的概念。据“史前”一文有关“火”的论述，人类早在几百万年前就已经发现可以用火来作热源，火能即刻生热，而热对于人类生活意义重大。生存得以保障，人们才有可能从赤道和暖的区域移居到气候寒冷的地方，上至北极圈，下至南美洲最南端合恩角。当然，火又能用来做饭，熟食的引入增加了风味多样性。《石器时代新闻》还具体描述不同熟食的烧烤方法，高温灭菌对于吃惯生肉的古人来说是个不小的变革。今天做饭的方法五花八门，火的用途也不尽相同，常见的就有篝火上烘烤、蒸煮、油炸等等。

        无论过去还是现在，农种一直是食物的主要来源，只不过当今杂货店提供了所需农贸产品。假如晚饭想吃芥蓝，我们可以开车直接到店里去买，包括其它蔬菜。回顾几千年前，古人必须自力更生，想吃肉就得打猎，想吃野果就得外出采摘，事实上，食物可谓石器时代生活基本要素之一。“史前”说过，农种纯属偶然，种子被不经意撒到地里，来年又在原处长出植物，石器时代结束的时候，人们已掌握农业种植技能。农种成为当时主要创新，在此之前，多数人为了寻找食物必须长途跋涉，有法子自给自足的民众才能在一个地方固定下来干起别样活计。《石器时代新闻》讲述农种的优势，一旦先辈们不再忙于从一个地方迁徙到另外一个地方，就能拿出空闲时间来琢磨其它事情，尤其在口粮尚有富余的情况下。“一分耕耘一分收获”，人们欲求安居乐业，首先要解决温饱问题，然后才好深入挖掘潜力提高生活质量。今天我们吃的东西主要来自农种，大都从面包、蔬菜和水果中摄取营养。

        近来大量的农耕土地堆满垃圾废物，而这些垃圾废物完全可被回收利用，因此当务之急就是普天下人积极行动起来，确保环境安全，大气不再污染，垃圾不再乱扔，土地不再浪费，既然回收思想由来已久，不管今昔目的有何不同，我们都应义无返顾。“石器时代废物利用”就有这样的描述，山顶洞人刻画回收图案，破损工具里老打火石能用其它东西代替，不宜制作器械的骨片下脚料可被拿去派上别的用途，不过前辈这么做的出发点与现代人的想法完全不同，他们想节省材料，否则事后无处可找，与环保意识毫无关系。

        几千年前，古人做过许多后人至今继续坚持的事情，虽然原因或意义各有不同，但在用火取暖、种植农产品和废物利用方面，彼此的生活方式却十分相似，祖先诸多创新为我们现代文明打下了坚实基础。