原文已被隐藏，你可用 快捷键 - 或点击 显示原文 按钮来查看原文
第1段
1 .<-NARRATOR:->Listen to part of a lecture in an Art History class.The professor has been discussing the origins of art.
旁白：请听艺术历史课上的一段演讲。教授这几节课都在讲艺术的起源。
第2段
1 .<-MALE PROFESSOR:->Some of the world's oldest preserved art is the cave art of Europe, most of it in Spain and France.
教授：世界上保存的最古老的艺术之一即欧洲洞窟的艺术，其中大部分在西班牙和法国。
2 .And the earliest cave paintings found to date are those of the Chauvet Cave in France discovered in 1994.
而至今发现的最早的洞窟壁画是那些于1994 年在法国发现的的肖韦洞窟。
第3段
1 .And you know, I remember when I heard about the results of the dating of the Chauvet paintings, I said to my wife, "Can you believe these paintings are over 30,000[thirty thousand] years old?"and my 3-year-old daughter piped up and said, "Is that older than my great-grandmother?" [amused sounds from audience]
我记得当我听说肖韦洞窟壁画的年代勘测结果之后， 我对我的妻子说：“你敢相信这些壁画已经有超过三万年的历史之久吗？”而我的三岁女儿便开始大声说话：“那比我老祖母还老吗？”
第4段
1 .But, uh, That was the oldest age she knew.
老祖母的年龄是她知道的最老的年龄。
2 .And you know, come to think of it, It's pretty hard for me to really understandhow long 30,000 years is too.
我自己想想，三万年到底有多久，也是难以想象的。
第5段
1 .I mean, we tend to think that people who lived at that time must have been pretty primitive..., but I'm gonna show you some slides in a few minutes, and I think you'll agree with me that this art is anything but primitive-They are masterpieces.
我的意思是，我们倾向于这样想，生活于那个时候的人们一定非常原始粗糙。但我将在几分钟后给你们展示几张幻灯片，我想你们也会像我一样觉得，这种艺术跟原始粗糙一点都不搭边。这些作品都是佳作。
2 .And they look so real, so alive that it's very hard to imagine that they are so very old.
他们看起来非常真实，栩栩如生，我们很难想象这些作品已经历史悠久了。
第6段
1 .Now, not everyone agrees on exactly how old.
现在，不是每个人都对其确切年龄持一致看法。
2 .A number of the Chauvet paintings have been dated by a lab to 30,000 or more years ago.
根据某一实验室的测定，若干肖韦洞窟壁画可以追溯到三万年前甚至更古远。
3 .That would make them not just older than any other cave art, but about twice as old as the art in the caves at Altamira or Lascaux, which you may have heard of.
这使得这些壁画不仅比其他洞窟艺术更为古远，更是阿尔塔米粒和拉斯科洞窟中的艺术作品年代的两倍，你可能听过这两个洞窟的名字。
第7段
1 .Some people find it hard to believe Chauvet is so much older than Altamira and Lascaux, and they noted that only one lab did the dating for Chauvet, without independent confirmation from any other lab.
某些人难以相信肖韦洞窟比其他两个洞窟的年代都要久远。根据他们的记录，曾经只有一个实验室有关于肖韦洞窟的年代记录，该记录是没有得到其他实验室的独立确认的。
第8段
1 .But be that as it may, whatever the exact date, whether it's 15,000, 20,000 or 30,000 years ago, the Chauvet paintings are from the dawn of art, so they are a good place to start our discussion of cave painting.
但是不管怎样，不管确切的年代是何时，1.5 万，2 万或是3 万年前也罢，肖韦洞窟处于艺术的开端。所以，这些艺术作为我们开始讨论洞窟壁画是一个好的选材。
第9段
1 .Now, one thing you've got to remember is the context of these paintings.
现在，你们还记得的一件事是这些壁画的背景。
2 .Paleolithic humans - that's the period we are talking about here, the Paleolithic, the early stone age, not too long after humans first arrived in Europe.
旧石器时代的人类——这就是我们现在讨论的时代。在旧石器时代早期，即人类到达欧洲后不久。
3 .The climate was significantly colder then, and so rock shelters-shallow caves-were valued as homes protected from the wind and rain.
当时的气候要比现在寒冷得多，所以岩石防空洞和浅洞窟是被当做挡风避雨的避难所。
4 .And in some cases at least, artists drew on the walls of their homes.
而至少在某些情况下，艺术家们将画画在了墙上。
5 .But many of the truly great cave art sites-like Chauvet-were never inhabited.
而很多像肖韦洞窟这种真正的洞窟艺术遗址从来没被居住过。
6 .These paintings were made deep inside a dark cave, where no natural light can penetrate.
这些壁画都在黑洞深处，没有太阳光渗透进去。
7 .There's no evidence of people ever living here-Cave bears, yes, but not humans.
也没有证据证明人们曾经在那里生活过。洞窟黑熊是有的，但是没有人类的踪迹。
8 .You would have had to make a special trip into the cave to make the paintings, and a special trip to go see it, and each time you'd have to bring along torches to light your way.
如果想看洞深处的壁画，你必须进行一次非同寻常的探险。每次你都必须随身携带火把。
9 .And people did go see the art-there's charcoal marks from their torches on the cave walls, clearly dating from thousands of years after the paintings were made, so we can tell people went there.
人们确实也有去看了洞底的艺术壁画，他们的火把在洞窟墙壁上留下了木炭痕迹，这些痕迹明显是在壁画创作之后几千年才出现的。所以我们知道，以前那里有人去过。
10 .They came but they didn't stay.
他们来了但是没有停留。
11 .Deep inside a cave like that is not really a place you'd want to stay, so, why?
在这样深的一个洞窟，没有人想停留，那么是什么原因呢？
12 .What inspired the Paleolithic artists to make such beautiful art in such inaccessible places?
是什么东西鼓舞了旧石器时代的艺术家在这样无法进入的地方创造出这样精美的艺术品？
13 .We'll never really know, of course, though it's interesting to speculate.
尽管探究起来很有趣，但是我们当然不会知道结果。
第10段
1 .But, um, getting to the paintings themselves.
但是，嗯，再回到壁画本身。
2 .Virtually all Paleolithic cave art represents animals, and Chauvet is no exception.
事实上所有新时期时代的洞窟艺术象征的都是动物，而肖韦洞窟的也不例外。
3 .The artists were highly skilled at using-or even enhancing-the natural shape of the cave walls to give depth and perspectives to their drawings.
艺术家们在使用或是改善洞窟墙壁自然外观上技艺高超，他们这样做是为了给自己的画作提供足够的深度和广度。
4 .The sense of motion and vitality in these animals-Well, wait till I show you the slides.
动物的动感和真实感，嗯，等会儿给你们展示幻灯片。
第11段
1 .Anyway, most Paleolithic cave art depicts large herbivores.
不管怎样，大多数新石器时代的洞窟艺术描绘的是大型的草食动物。
2 .Horses are most common overall with deer and bison pretty common too. Probably animals they hunted.
总的来说马是最为普遍的动物，鹿和野牛也挺平常的。这些动物很可能就是原始人捕猎的对象。
3 .But earlier at Chauvet, there is a significant interest in large dangerous animals.
但是在肖韦洞窟形成的早些时候，人们的捕猎对象更多是大型危险动物。
4 .Lots of rhinoceros, lions, mammoth, bears...remember that the ranges of many animal species were different back then, so all these animals actually lived in the region at that time-but the Chauvet artists didn't paint people.
像犀牛，狮子，猛犸和黑熊。。。要知道当时很多动物种类范围与现在不同，所以事实上当时所有这些动物就生活在这个区域，但是肖韦洞窟的艺术家们并没有描绘人类的图片。
5 .There is a half-man-half-bison creature and there is outlines of human hands, but no depiction of a full human.
不过有一种生物，半身是野牛半身是人，其显示出人手的形状但是没有完整的人形。
第12段
1 .So, why these precise animals? Why not birds, fish, snakes?
那么为什么是这些动物呢？而不是其他，像鸟，鱼和蛇?
2 .Was it for their religion? Magic? Or sheer beauty?
是出于他们的宗教信仰？制造神秘之美抑或单单是出于美感？
3 .We don't know, but whatever it was, it was worth it to them to spend hours deep inside a cave with just a torch between them and utter darkness.
我们不得而知。但不管怎样探险家们还是值得一试，在洞内花上几个小时，用火把照亮一片黑暗。
4 .So..., on that note, let's dim the lights, so we can see these slides and actually look at the techniques they used.
那么，在了解了这些情况之后，我们现在开始看些幻灯片，看看他们究竟应用的是什么技术。