[C10T3P3]Beyond The Blue Horizon
Ancient Voyagers Who Settled the Far-Flung Islands of the Pacific Ocean
An important archaeological discovery on the island of Efate in the Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu has revealed traces of an ancient seafaring people, the distant ancestors of today’s Polynesians.
有关埃法特岛（坐落在太平洋群岛上的瓦努阿图）的一项考古重要发现揭开了一个古老的海上游牧民族，也就是现在波利尼西亚人遥远的祖先。
The site came to light only by chance.
这个小岛是偶然进入大家的视线的。
An agricultural worker, digging in the grounds of a derelict plantation, scraped open a grave—the first of dozens in a burial ground some 3,000 years old.
一位农民在挖一个废弃的农场时发现了一个坟墓——这个坟墓有 3000 多年的历史了，而且只是深埋在地下的几十个中的第一个而已
It is the oldest cemetery ever found in the Pacific islands, and it harbors the remains of an ancient people archaeologists call the Lapita.
。这是在太平洋岛上发现的最古老的墓地，里面有古代人的遗骨，考古学家说他们是拉皮塔人。
They were daring blue-water adventurers who used basic canoes to rove across the ocean.
他们不惧蓝色大海的危险，使用小木船横渡大洋。
But they were not just explorers.
但是他们不仅仅是探险家，
They were also pioneers who carried with them everything they would need to build new lives—their livestock , taro seedlings and stone tools.
他们还带上了创建新生活所需的所有家当——家畜、芋头苗和石头工具。
Within the span of several centuries, the Lapita stretched the boundaries of their world from the jungle-dad volcanoes of Papua New Guinea co the loneliest coral outliers of Tonga.
在几个世纪之内，拉皮塔人将他们的世界从巴布亚新几内亚扩展到四处不着边际的汤加珊瑚岛周边。
The Lapita left precious few dues about themselves, but Efate expands the volume of data available to researchers dramatically .
拉皮塔人几乎没有给未来留下关于他们的宝贵记录，但是埃法特极大地丰富了研究者可以得到的资料。
The remains of 62 individuals have been uncovered so far, and archaeologists were also thrilled to find six complete Lapita pots.
到目前为止已经有 62 个人的遗骸被发现，而且 6 个完整的拉皮塔人使用过的罐的发现使考古学家非常兴奋。
Other items included a Lapita burial urn with modeled birds arranged on the rim as though peering down at the human remains sealed inside.
发现的其他物品还有拉皮塔人的一种缸，边上有一些鸟，好像在俯瞰封在里面的人骨。
‘It’s an important discovery’, says Matthew Spriggs, professor of archaeology at the Australian National University and head of the international team digging up the site, Tor it conclusively identifies the remains as Lapita.’
澳大利亚国家大学的考古学教授、这次考古挖掘国际团队的负责人 Matthew Spriggs 说：“这是个非常重要的发现，因为它确定了这些是拉皮塔人的遗骨。”
DNA teased from these human remains may help answer one of the most puzzling questions in Pacific anthropology : did all Pacific islanders spring from one source or many?
从这些人类遗骨中提出的 DNA 可能帮助回答太平洋人类学中最难回答的问题之一：是不是所有的太平洋岛国人都是同一个祖先？
Was there only one outward migration from a single point in Asia, or several from different points?
亚洲移民都是从某一个点出发向外延伸移民，还是从不同的地方去向那边？
‘This represents the best opportunity we’ve had yet,’ says Spriggs, ‘to find out who the Lapita actually were, where they came from, and who their closest descendants are today.’
Spriggs 说：“这次的发现是到目前为止发现拉皮塔人究竟是谁、他们来自于哪里以及现在哪些人是他们最密切后代的最好机会。”
There is one stubborn question for which archaeology has yet to provide any answers: how did the Lapita accomplish the ancient equivalent of a moon landing, many times over?
目前有一个很顽固的问题，考古学家对此尚未提供任何答案，这个问题是：拉皮塔人是怎么在古代那样的环境下实现了类似登月一样难度的事情，而且是多次成功完成？
No-one has found one of their canoes or any rigging , which could reveal how the canoes were sailed.
没有人发现一个他们曾经用过的小木船或者能带动小木船航行的任何缆索。
Nor do the oral histories and traditions of later Polynesians offer any insights, for they turn into myths long before they reach as far back in time as the Lapita.
而且后来波利尼西亚人的口头历史和传统没有提供任何线索，因为他们也在很久之前成为了谜，和拉皮塔人一样。
‘All we can say for certain is that the Lapita had canoes that were capable of ocean voyages, and they had the ability to sail them,’ says Geoff Irwin, a professor of archaeology at the University of Auckland.
“我们现在可以确定的是拉皮塔人有可以横渡大洋的木船，而且他们有能力驾驶木船。”奥克兰大学的考古学教授 Geoff Irwin 如是说。
Those sailing skills, he says, were developed and passed down over thousands of years by earlier mariners who worked their way through the archipelagoes of the western Pacific , making short crossings to nearby islands.
他说：那些航行技术被最早期的船员发展并传递下去，这些船员主要在西太平洋群岛附近工作，在附近的小岛间短途穿行。
The real adventure didn’t begin, however, until their Lapita descendants sailed out of sight of land, with empty horizons on every side.
真正的探险那时还没有开始，而是始于他们的拉皮塔人后代航行出了岛屿的边缘，
This must have been as difficult for them as landing on the moon is for us today.
这对于他们来说肯定跟我们现在登上月球一样艰难。
Certainly it distinguished them from their ancestors, but what gave them the courage to launch out on such risky voyages?
当然，这也使他们区别于他们的祖，但是，是什么勇气使他们航海出发开始这样危险的航程？
The Lapita’s thrust into the Pacific was eastward, against the prevailing trade winds, Irwin notes.
Irwin 说：拉皮塔人奔向太平洋的推力是东向，是当时的盛行风——信风。
Those nagging headwinds, he argues, may have been the key to their success.
他认为那些扰人的逆风是他们成功的关键。
‘They could sail out for days into the unknown and assess the area, secure in the knowledge that if they didn’t find anything, they could turn about and catch a swift ride back on the trade winds.
“他们能够航行很多天进入未知的地区，是因为他们确信如果什么都没发现也可以借着信风顺利返回。
This is what would have made the whole thing work.’
这可能是促成所有事情的关键。”
Once out there, skilled seafarers would have detected abundant leads to follow to land: seabirds, coconuts and twigs carried out to sea by the tides, and the afternoon pile-up of clouds on the horizon which often indicates an island in the distance.
曾经，经验丰富的海员可能已经发现促使他们去的丰富资源：海鸟、椰子、被海浪带过来的树枝，以及下午天边集聚的云朵，这也意味着远方有岛屿。
For returning explorers successful or not, the geography of their own archipelagoes would have provided a safety net.
对于返回的探险家，无论成功与否，他们都提供了一个自己群岛内安全的地理线路。
Without this to go by, overshooting their home pores, getting lost and sailing off into eternity would have been all too easy.
如果没有这条线路，跑出他们家乡的港口，或者迷路，或者直接就航行到来世都是太容易的事了。
Vanuatu, for example, stretches more than 500 miles in a northwest-southeast trend, its scores of intervisible islands forming a backstop for mariners riding the trade winds home.
比如说，瓦努阿图向西北、东南方向延伸了 500 公里左右，他们相互可见的岛屿之间的界线，成了航海人的后盾，可以帮助他们乘着信风回家。
All this presupposes one essential detail, says Atholl Anderson, professor of prehistory at the Australian National University: the Lapita had mastered the advanced art of sailing against the wind.
澳大利亚国立大学史前教授 Atholl Anderson 说：所有这些都假定一个非常重要的细节——拉皮塔人当时已经掌握了逆行风的航行技术，
'And there's no proof they could do any such thing,' Anderson says.
“但没有证据证明他们已经掌握了。”
‘There has been this assumption they did, and people have built canoes to re-create those early voyages based on that assumption.
“先有了这个假设后，人们再在这个假设基础上想到木船，再创造那些早期的航行。
But nobody has any idea what their canoes looked like or how they were rigged.'
但是没有人知道这些木船长得什么样或者他们用了什么缆索带动木船。”
Rather than give all the credit to human skill, Anderson invokes the winds of chance.
与其把所有的原因都归结于人类的技术，Anderson 更相信风的作用。
El Nino, the same climate disruption that affects the Pacific today, may have helped scatter the Lapita, Anderson suggests.
他认为现在还在影响太平洋的具有破坏性的天气厄尔尼诺，可能也是帮助拉皮塔人迁徙的因素。
He points out chat climate data obtained from slow-growing corals around the Pacific indicate a series of unusually frequent El Ninos around the time of the Lapita expansion.
他认为：从缓慢成长的珊瑚里获得的气候数据暗示厄尔尼诺在拉皮塔扩张的时候出现过，而且频率非常高。
By reversing the regular east-to-west flow of the trade winds for weeks at a time, these super El Ninos' might have taken the Lapita on long unplanned voyages.
这些“超级厄尔尼诺”每次连续几周逆转平时信风自东向西的风向，这样把拉皮塔人随意地带向很远的地方。
However they did it, the Lapita spread themselves a third of the way across the Pacific , then called it quits for reasons known only to them.
不管怎样，拉皮塔人做到了，他们横跨太平洋的三分之一，然后他们停止了，而理由只有他们自己知道。
Ahead lay the vast emptiness of the central Pacific and perhaps they were too thinly stretched to venture farther.
前方是广袤的太平洋中心，或许他们太弱小了，不能够再向外拓展。
They probably never numbered more than a few thousand in total, and in their rapid migration eastward they encountered hundreds of islands - more than 300 in Fiji alone.
他们的人口可能总共也没有超过几千人，但在他们迅速向东迁移的时候遇到了上百个岛屿——其中光斐济就 300 多个了。
