Writing seems to have emerged independently in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and Central America-all of them expanding population centres-but there's fierce debate and much rivalry about who got to writing first. 文字似乎在各个人口规模很大的中...
The creation of new sound signs was probably quite a fast-moving process, 创造新表音符号的过程很可能极快。 and as they developed, the signs would have had to be listed-the earliest dictionaries if you like, 随着符号逐渐增多,...
Our little beer-rationing tablet is divided into three rows of four boxes each, and in each box the signs-typically for this date-are read from top to bottom, 我们这块记录啤酒配给的小黏土板分为三行,每行四格,每格里的符号...
Clay may not seem to us the ideal medium for writing, but the clay from the banks of the Euphrates and the Tigris proved to be unbeatable for all kinds of purposes, from building cities to making pots, or even, as with our tablet, for giving a quick...
What's amazing for me is of course this is a society where the economy is in its first stages, there is no money, there is no currency. 这是一个经济处于最初级阶段的社会,没有钞票或其他通货。 So how do they get around that? 他...
Beer was the staple drink in Mesopotamia and was issued as rations to workers. 啤酒是美索不达米亚的主要饮料,用以分配给工人饮用。 Money, laws, trade, employment; this is the stuff of early writing, 金钱、法律、贸易、雇...
When, around five thousand years ago, the earliest cities and states grew up in the world's fertile river valleys, one of the challenges for leaders was how to govern these new societies. 五千年前,当世界上肥沃的大河流域开始出现最早...
Can you imagine a world without writing? Without any writing at all? 想象一个没有文字的世界,完全没有任何文字的世界? No forms to fill in of course, no tax returns, but also no literature, no science, no history. 当然就不需要填...
It had to be broken up like the body, or buried like the body, and we do have hundreds-if not thousands-of axes in Britain that appear to have been given that kind of treatment; 它需要像尸体一样被分解,或是像尸体一样被埋葬。在英...
Jade is extremely hard, and difficult to work, so much effort must have gone into the shaping of it. 玉石的质地极为坚硬,难以加工,为它塑形一定耗费了不少功夫。 It's likely that it was first of all roughly sculpted in nort...