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But, should he and his possessions be here anyway? Questions like this crop up frequently -where do things from the past belong now? Should everything be exhibited where it was originally made? I'll be coming back to these questions at various points in the programmes. But I asked the Egyptian writer Ahdaf Souief how she felt about seeing so many Egyptian antiquities so far from home:
但是，他和他的财产应该陈列在这里吗？这样的问题经常出现：这些古董属于哪里？它们是否应陈列在发源地？在这一系列节目中，我会时常回到这些问题。我问埃及作家阿达芙·苏耶夫(Ahdaf Souief)，看到大量的埃及展品“背井离乡”，她感觉如何：
'Ultimately it's probably no bad thing to have Egyptian obelisks and stones and statues sprinkled all over the world. It reminds us of ages of colonialism, yes, but it also reminds the world of our common heritage.' It's that idea of a common heritage that's become more and more apparent and more important to me, the longer I spend working in the British Museum. Personally, I think it's never been more important than now to think about the history of the world as one shared story.
“从根本上说，也许埃及方尖碑、石碑及雕塑流落于世界各地不是件坏事。这一事实虽然不断提醒我们埃及长达几个世纪的殖民史，但也同时提醒世界这些古董是人类的共同财产。”在大英博物馆工作的时间越长，我越能感受到“人类共同财产”这一概念的明确性和重要性。我个人认为，当前最重要的就是将世界历史看做一部全人类共同参与的历史。
'If I could decree a universal education programme, I would make every child in the world learn a brief history of the entire world that focused on the common ground. It would examine how people perceive their relationship to each other, to the planet, and to the universe, and it would see human history as a kind of ongoing joint project, where one lot of people picked up where another had left off.' (Ahdaf Soueif)
“如果我可以开展一场全民教育活动，我将让世界上的每个孩子学习以共同基础为重点的世界简史，探究人类如何感知自己同他人、地球和宇宙的关系。人类的历史将被视为一项联合，互补，持续不断的伟大工程。”——阿达芙·苏耶夫(Ahdaf Soueif)
I started this programme with the sound of a star whose explosion was seen across half the world around 1066. But the story of people making things began nearly two million years ago. And once again, the radio telescope can let us tune in to the echo of another dying star that those ancestors, nearly two million years ago, would have been able to see - but at this point all our ancestors lived in Africa.
节目开始时，我们播放了一颗恒星发出的声音，半个地球的人于1066年左右见证了它的大爆炸。然而，人类造物的故事始于近200万年前。通过无线电天文望远镜，我们再次听到了另一颗即将陨落的恒星的回响，而200万年前，我们的祖先能用肉眼观察到它，但当时，我们所有人的祖先都生活在非洲大陆。
If at that moment, 1.8 million years ago, you had been gazing up at the exploding star from the Rift Valley of East Africa, you might well have heard the sound of the earliest human hands, creating the oldest known humanly made 'thing'. Those hands were shaping stone tools; tools that represent the first step on the great journey of shaping our world. For me, it's making 'things' and then coming to depend on 'things' that sets us apart from all other animals and, ultimately, turns us into the humans we are today. It's one of those very first stone tools that I'm going to be looking at in the next programme.
如果180万年前的那一刻，你正立于东非大裂谷仰望着那颗爆炸的恒星，也许你还能听到初民用双手创造已知的最古老的“人造物”的声响。那双手在塑造石质工具，它们象征着人类改造世界伟大征程的第一步。我认为，正是制作物品和依赖物品把我们同动物区别开来，并最终使我们进化成今天的人类。下期节目我要介绍的正是一件初民时期的石质工具。
