14

A Easter Island, or Rapu Nui as it is known locally, is home to several hundred ancient human statues - the moai. 复活节岛，当地人称它为拉帕努伊，是数百尊古老人像——摩艾石像的故乡。 After this remote Pacific island was settled by the Polynesians, it remained isolated for centuries. 在这座遥远的太平洋岛屿被波里尼西亚人占领之前，它与世隔绝了几个世纪。 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. 这些摩艾石像——有些高达十米、重量超过7 000公斤，所有建造它们的能源和资源都来自于这座岛。 Yet when Dutch explorers landed in 1722, they met a Stone Age culture. 然而当荷兰探险家在1722年到达此地后，他们见到了石器时期的文化。 The moai were carved with stone tools, then transported for many kilometres, without the use of animals or wheels, to massive stone platforms. 摩艾石像是用石头工具雕刻的，然后在不借助动物或者轮子的情况下被运输了很多公里，到达了巨大的石头平台上。 The identity of the moai builders was in doubt until well into the twentieth century. 在20世纪之前，摩艾石像的建造者的身份一致存有疑惑。 Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer, thought the statues had been created by pre-Inca peoples from Peru. 挪威人种学者和冒险家Thor Heyerdahl认为石像是由来自秘鲁的前印加人建造的。 Bestselling Swiss author Erich von Däniken believed they were built by stranded extraterrestrials. 瑞士畅销书作家Erich von Daniken相信石像是由搁浅的外星人建造的。 Modern science - linguistic, archaeological and genetic evidence - has definitively proved the moai builders were Polynesians, but not how they moved their creations. 结合语言、考古和基因证据的现代科学，则最终证实摩艾石像的建造者是波里尼西亚人，但是并不清楚他们是如何移动这些石像的。 Local folklore maintains that the statues walked, while researchers have tended to assume the ancestors dragged the statues somehow, using ropes and logs. 当地的民间传说坚持认为石像是“走”过去的，然而研究者们则猜测祖先们是通过某种方式使用绳子和伐木将石像拖拽过去的。

15

B When the Europeans arrived, Rapa Nui was grassland, with only a few scrawny trees. 当欧洲人到达时，拉帕努伊是一片大草原，只有少数几棵枯瘦的树。 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. 但是，在20世纪70到80年代间，研究者们在湖中沉淀物中发现了残存下来的花粉，这证明这座岛屿在数千年前曾经被茂盛的棕榈树林覆盖过。 Only after the Polynesians arrived did those forests disappear. 只有当波里尼西亚人到达后，森林才消失了。 US scientist Jared Diamond believes that the Rapanui people - descendants of Polynesian settlers - wrecked their own environment. 美国科学家Jared Diamond认为拉帕努伊岛人——波里尼西亚人的后裔毁掉了他们自己的环境。 They had unfortunately settled on an extremely fragile island - dry, cool, and too remote to be properly fertilised by windblown volcanic ash. 他们不幸地居住在了一座极其脆弱的岛屿上，这里干燥、寒冷，并且太偏远以致无法正常地被风吹来的火山灰施肥。 When the islanders cleared the forests for firewood and farming, the forests didn't grow back. 当岛民们为了柴火和农耕砍尽了森林之后，这些森林没能再长出来。 As trees became scarce and they could no longer construct wooden canoes for fishing, they ate birds. 由于树木变得稀缺，他们不能够再修建木船来捕鱼，他们开始食用鸟类。 Soil erosion decreased their crop yields. 土壤侵蚀降低了庄稼产量。 Before Europeans arrived, the Rapanui had descended into civil war and cannibalism, he maintains. 他坚持认为在欧洲人到达前，拉帕努伊人已经陷入内战和同类相食。 The collapse of their isolated civilisation, Diamond writes, is a 'worst-case scenario for what may lie ahead of us in our own future'. 他们远古文化的丧失，Diamond写道，是一个“在我们的未来可能呈现在我们面前的最坏的境况”。

16

C The moai, he thinks, accelerated the self-destruction. 摩艾石像，他认为，加速了这个自我毁灭的进程。 Diamond interprets them as power displays by rival chieftains who, trapped on a remote little island, lacked other ways of asserting their dominance. Diamond将这些石像解读为竞争中的酋长们展示自己力量的方式，这些酋长们被困在荒僻的小道上，缺少其他的方式来宣称自己的统治。 They competed by building ever bigger figures. 他们通过修建越来越大的人像来竞赛。 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. Diamond认为他们将摩艾石像放在木制的雪橇上，通过木轨来拖拽，但是这种方式需要大量的木材和人力。 To feed the people, even more land had to be cleared. 为了让这些人吃饱，不得不清除更多的土地。 When the wood was gone and civil war began, the islanders began toppling the moai. 当木材都被用光，内战开始了，这些岛民开始推翻这些石像。 By the nineteenth century none were standing. 截止到19世纪，一个站立着的石像都没有了。

17

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. 夏威夷大学的考古学家Terry Hunt和加利福尼亚州立大学的Carl Lipo一致认为复活节岛失去了它原有的茂密森林，并且那是一起“生态灾难”——但是他们认为岛民自己并不应该受到责备。 And the moai certainly weren't. 摩艾石像当然也不该被责备。 Archaeological excavations indicate that the Rapanui went to heroic efforts to protect the resources of their wind-lashed, infertile fields. 考古学的发掘指出，拉帕努伊人曾经英勇地保护着他们风力猛烈而又贫瘠的这块土地上的资源。 They built thousands of circular stone windbreaks and gardened inside them, and used broken volcanic rocks to keep the soil moist. 他们修建了数以千计的圆形石头防风墙并且在内部发展园艺，还使用碎裂的火山岩石来保持土壤的湿润。 In short, Hunt and Lipo argue, the prehistoric Rapanui were pioneers of sustainable farming. 简单来说，Hunt和Lipo认为，史前的拉帕努伊人是可持续型农业的先驱。

18

E Hunt and Lipo contend that moai-building was an activity that helped keep the peace between islanders. Hunt和Lipo认为摩艾的修建是一种帮助保持岛民和平的活动。 They also believe that moving the moai required few people and no wood, because they were walked upright. 他们还相信移动这些石像仅需要很小的人力且不需要木材，因为它们是直立地“走”过去的。 On that issue, Hunt and Lipo say, archaeological evidence backs up Rapanui folklore. 在这件事上，Hunt和Lipo称，考古证据支持拉帕努伊的民间传说。 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. 最近的试验表明，只需18个人和3根结实的绳子，并多加几次练习，就可以轻松地控制一个1 000公斤的复制的摩艾石像移动数百米。 The figures' fat bellies tilted them forward, and a D-shaped base allowed handlers to roll and rock them side to side. 雕像的肥肚子将它们倾斜地向前移动，一个D字形状的底座使操作者们能够左右两边滚动和摇晃它们。

19

F Moreover, Hunt and Lipo are convinced that the settlers were not wholly responsible for the loss of the island's trees. 不仅如此，Hunt和Lipo坚信，定居于此的人们并不应该为岛上森林的毁灭负有全部责任。 Archaeological finds of nuts from the extinct Easter Island palm show tiny grooves, made by the teeth of Polynesian rats. 从已经灭绝的复活节岛上的棕榈树的坚果上的考古发现表明，那上面有很小的沟槽，是被波里尼西亚老鼠的牙齿磕出来的。 The rats arrived along with the settlers, and in just a few years, Hunt and Lipo calculate, they would have overrun the island. 这些老鼠随着移民而来，并且经Hunt和Lipo计算，在短短几年时间内，它们已经在整座岛上泛滥。 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. 它们可能阻止了生长缓慢的棕榈树重新播种，因此即使没有移民者的退耕还林运动，这些老鼠也可能使拉帕努伊森林走向毁灭。 No doubt the rats ate birds' eggs too. 毫无疑问这些老鼠也会吃鸟类的蛋。 Hunt and Lipo also see no evidence that Rapanui civilisation collapsed when the palm forest did. Hunt和Lipo也没有找到当棕榈树林消失后拉帕努伊文明也随之消失的证据。 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. 他们认为拉帕努伊的人口迅速增长并且保持稳定，直到欧洲人的到来——他们带来了致命的疾病，而岛民们并没有对该病的免疫力。 Then in the nineteenth century slave traders decimated the population, which shrivelled to 111 people by 1877. 接下来，在19世纪，奴隶贩子大批屠杀岛民，截止到1877年，岛上仅剩111人。

20

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. 因此，Hunt和Lipo的观点是这里曾经居住着的是和平的、灵巧的摩艾建造者，他们用心地管理着这片土地，而不是不顾后果地破坏自己的环境和社会的毁坏者。 'Rather than a case of abject failure, Rapu Nui is an unlikely story of success', they claim. 他们认为，“并非一个凄惨的失败案例，拉帕努伊是一个不像是真的的成功的故事”。 Whichever is the case, there are surely some valuable lessons which the world at large can learn from the story of Rapa Nui. 不管事实如何，一定有很多有价值的经验值得全世界从拉帕努伊的故事中学习。