评论
打印
It's clear that sugar changed the modern world - perhaps irrevocably so.
很明显，糖改变了现代世界——也许是以一种不可改变的方式。
But that leaves a question unanswered: how did the modern world arise?
但这留下了一个悬而未决的问题：现代世界是如何产生的？
In his book, Against the Grain, James C.Scott lays out the generally-accepted story of civilization: sedentism, or the practice of living in one place for a long time, arose from the cultivation of cereal grains like wheat and barley - especially the need to irrigate arid climates, which takes lots of time and labor.
詹姆斯·C·斯科特在《反对谷物》一书中阐述了人们普遍接受的有关文明起源的故事：人类能够定居，或者说长期生活在一个地方，是由于小麦和大麦等谷物的种植，尤其是在气候干旱的时候，灌溉作物需要大量的时间和劳动力。
Scott then spends a couple hundred pages dunking on most of the assumptions underpinning that story, and questions whether it's at all appropriate to view the "civilizing process" as one of generally uninterrupted progress.
斯科特用了几百页的篇幅阐述了用于支撑这个故事的大量假设，并质疑“文明进程”是否真的从不间断。
Archaeological evidence actually indicates that sedentism predates crop field cultivation of grains by several millennia.
实际上，有考古证据表明，在用庄稼地种植谷物之前，人类已经有几千年的定居史。
Early settlers probably cultivated wild grains for thousands of years as part of a diverse food production strategy, but the shift to a near monoculture of deliberately domesticated cereal grains seems to have arisen much later.
早期的定居者可能数千年来都在种植野生谷物，以此让粮食种类更加多样，但近乎单一化地种植栽培谷物的时间似乎更晚一些。
(Cereal grains, by the way, just refer to the edible grains of grasses. They account for about 50% of worldwide caloric consumption today, for both human beings and livestock).
（顺便说一句，谷物仅指因其可食用谷粒而种植的草类。它们占当今世界人类和牲畜热量消耗的50%左右）。
Research from landscape archaeologists like Jennifer Pournelle suggests the "arid" Southern Mesopotamia was, in fact, vastly different during the first instances of sedentism in the region.
珍妮弗·波内尔等景观考古学家的研究表明，事实上，在“干旱的”美索不达米亚南部地区，第一个有证据表明定居者存在的地方，当地的情况与斯科特的说法有很大出入。
Rather than a dry area surrounded by rivers in need of labor-intensive irrigation, higher sea levels at the time rendered it "... a forager's wetland paradise," in Scott's understanding, full of diverse food sources.
在斯科特的理解中，美索不达米亚地区海拔较高，使其“……成为觅食者的湿地天堂”，拥有各种各样的食物，并不是被河流包围，食物的种植需要大量劳动灌溉的干旱地区。
He notes that other early settlements, from coastal China to Teotihuacan near present-day Mexico City, also benefited from natural wetland abundance.
他指出，其他早期人类定居点，从沿海地区的中国到今天墨西哥城附近的特奥蒂华坎，也受益于丰富的自然湿地。
In those regions, incidentally, the dominant cereal grains would've been rice and maize, respectively.
顺便说一句，在这些地区，作为主粮的谷物将分别是水稻和玉米。
Today, more people rely on rice for sustenance than any other grain, and corn is the most produced grain worldwide, by tonnage.
如今，更多的人以大米为主食，而玉米是世界上产量最大的谷物，产量可以按吨计算。
So while we're going to follow Scott's book and focus on wheat and barley for the insights they can give us about the emergence of the first known states in Mesopotamia, it's worth remembering that the story has near analogues throughout the world with different cereal grains.
所以，虽然我们将根据斯科特的书，重点关注小麦和大麦——它们可以帮助我们了解美索不达米亚出现的世界上第一个已知的国家——但值得一提的是，这个故事在世界各地都有不同的版本，各地作为主粮的谷物各有不同。
You can practically add a parenthetical "and rice and corn" to almost everything I'm going to say about wheat.
你甚至可以在我要说的几乎每一件关于小麦的事后面加上一个括号（还有大米和玉米）。
Scott's central premise is that grain domestication didn't lead to sedentism as much as it led to statehood, which he defines along a "stateness" continuum consisting of things like city walls, social hierarchy, soldiers, and - critically - taxation.
斯科特观点的核心前提是，谷物的栽培不是定居行为出现的原因，而是导致国家地位出现的原因，他将国家定义为一个由城墙、社会阶层、士兵和——最关键的一点——税收等事物组成的连续统一体。
Grains like wheat are uniquely disposed to taxation, in Scott's telling.
按照斯科特的说法，像小麦这样的谷物十分适合征税。
They are "visible, divisible, assessable, storable, transportable, and 'rationable.'"
它们是“可见的、可分割的、可评估的、可储存的、可运输的以及可配给的”。
Tubers may offer similar caloric density, but they could be safely hidden underground for years from the tax-man's prying eyes.
块茎可能提供类似的卡路里密度，但它们可以安全地潜藏在地下多年，不被税务人员发现。
Lentils were grown widely, but don't have a determinate harvest - because they can be picked at various times, they're worse candidates for taxation.
扁豆的种植十分普遍，但它可以在不同的时间采摘，无法确定收成，因此更不适合征税。
Against the Grain draws out some fascinating connections between grains, taxation, and statehood.
《反对谷物》揭示了谷物、税收和国家地位之间一些有趣的联系。
The earliest writings from Mesopotamia, for example, were almost single-mindedly concerned with state administration, especially as it pertains to the rations and taxation of barley.
例如，美索不达米亚最早的文字记录几乎全是关于国家行政管理，特别是关于大麦的配给和税收。
More than 500 years separate this type of administrative writing and literary or religious writing in the archaeological record, suggesting the critical role state-based accounting played in the emergence of written language.
考古记录显示，这种类型的行政文书与文学或宗教写作出现的时间相隔500多年，表明以国家为基础的会计工作在书面语言的形成上发挥了关键作用。
