There's something about caves -- a shadowy opening in a limestone cliff that draws you in. As you pass through the portal between light and dark, you enter a subterranean world -- a place of perpetual gloom, of earthy smells, of hushed silence.
山洞散發著一股魅力-- 在石灰懸崖處 迷人的幽暗開口 當你從明亮走進幽暗 你即進入了一個地底世界-- 一個長年昏暗,土味撲鼻,萬籟俱寂的地方
Long ago in Europe, ancient people also entered these underground worlds. As witness to their passage, they left behind mysterious engravings and paintings, like this panel of humans, triangles and zigzags from Ojo Guareña in Spain. You now walk the same path as these early artists. And in this surreal, otherworldly place, it's almost possible to imagine that you hear the muffled footfall of skin boots on soft earth, or that you see the flickering of a torch around the next bend.
在很久以前的歐洲 古人也曾經 遊走過這地底世界 作為他們旅程的印記 他們留下了神秘的刻畫和壁畫 像這組在西班牙Ojo Guareña 的人形、三角形和鋸齒形的圖樣 你正追尋這些早期畫家的踪跡 在這超乎現實世界之處 幾乎難以想像 你能夠聽到皮靴 踩在鬆軟土地上那含糊的腳步聲 或在下一個轉彎處看到 火把的閃爍
When I'm in a cave, I often find myself wondering what drove these people to go so deep to brave dangerous and narrow passageways to leave their mark? In this video clip, that was shot half a kilometer, or about a third of a mile, underground, in the cave of Cudon in Spain, we found a series of red paintings on a ceiling in a previously unexplored section of the cave. As we crawled forward, military-style, with the ceiling getting ever lower, we finally got to a point where the ceiling was so low that my husband and project photographer, Dylan, could no longer achieve focus on the ceiling with his DSLR camera. So while he filmed me, I kept following the trail of red paint with a single light and a point-and-shoot camera that we kept for that type of occasion. Half a kilometer underground.
當我在山洞裡 我常常思考是甚麼東西 推動這些人去深入 如此險窄的通道 來留下他們的印記? 這段短片 是在西班牙Cudon的一個山洞的前半個公里 或者大概三分之一英里的地下道 在某山洞頂部的一系列的紅色壁畫 這區域從未被探究過 當我們繼續往前的軍人式爬行, 洞頂變得越來越低 直到洞頂低到 連我的丈夫和攝影師Dylan 沒辦法用DSLR相機 對焦到洞頂為止 所以當他在拍我的時候 我一直尾隨紅壁畫的踪跡 手裡持著單束光源 還有一架留給這種特別時刻 使用的傻瓜相機 在地底半公里之深。
Seriously. What was somebody doing down there with a torch or a stone lamp?
天啊 在那裡拿著電筒或石燈是要幹嘛?
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
I mean -- me, it makes sense, right?
我是說,是我的話就很合理對吧?
But you know, this is the kind of question that I'm trying to answer with my research. I study some of the oldest art in the world. It was created by these early artists in Europe, between 10,000 and 40,000 years ago. And the thing is that I'm not just studying it because it's beautiful, though some of it certainly is. But what I'm interested in is the development of the modern mind, of the evolution of creativity, of imagination, of abstract thought, about what it means to be human. While all species communicate in one way or another, only we humans have really taken it to another level. Our desire and ability to share and collaborate has been a huge part of our success story. Our modern world is based on a global network of information exchange made possible, in large part, by our ability to communicate -- in particular, using graphic or written forms of communication. The thing is, though, that we've been building on the mental achievements of those that came before us for so long that it's easy to forget that certain abilities haven't already existed. It's one of the things I find most fascinating about studying our deep history. Those people didn't have the shoulders of any giants to stand on. They were the original shoulders. And while a surprising number of important inventions come out of that distant time, what I want to talk to you about today is the invention of graphic communication.
但你知道嗎? 這就是我想要透過我的研究來解答的問題 我研究的是世上最古老的藝術之一 皆出自於歐洲的早期畫家的手中 大約是一萬到四萬年前 而事實上 我不是衝著它們的美而去研究的 雖然某部分是 我感興趣的是現代思維的發展 創意、想像力和抽象思維的演進 以及作為人類的真諦 雖然所有的生物 各自利用自己的方式互相溝通 唯有人類的溝通方式真正鶴立雞群 我們對於分享與合作的嚮往和能力 成為了人類成功的基石 我們的現代世界建立在 全球化的資訊交換網絡之上 一大部分緣於 我們溝通的能力-- 特別是圖像跟文字的溝通 儘管如此 我們承接的 是古人的思想成就 以致於我們容易忘記有些能力 並非該時代的範疇 這是我深入我們的歷史以來 發現到最有趣的體悟。 那些人根本沒有巨人的肩膀可以站 他們就是最原始的巨人肩膀 而雖然大量的重要發明 出自於那遠古的時代 我想要跟你分享的是 圖像溝通的發明
There are three main types of communication, spoken, gestural -- so things like sign language -- and graphic communication. Spoken and gestural are by their very nature ephemeral. It requires close contact for a message to be sent and received. And after the moment of transmission, it's gone forever. Graphic communication, on the other hand, decouples that relationship. And with its invention, it became possible for the first time for a message to be transmitted and preserved beyond a single moment in place and time.
主要的溝通方式一共有三種 口語 手勢-- 像手語之類的 以及圖像溝通 口語和手勢的溝通本質上是短暫的 訊息的傳送需要近距離的接觸 而訊息只要傳送完畢就會永遠消失 反之,圖像溝通打斷這種關係 自從圖像溝通問世,我們首次能夠 讓訊息的傳送和留存 超越當下的時空限制
Europe is one of the first places that we start to see graphic marks regularly appearing in caves, rock shelters and even a few surviving open-air sites. But this is not the Europe we know today. This was a world dominated by towering ice sheets, three to four kilometers high, with sweeping grass plains and frozen tundra. This was the Ice Age.
歐洲是我們最早 發現在岩壁、岩棚 甚至一些僅存的開放區域 有圖樣記號規律出現的地方 但這不是我們所認識的現代歐洲 那是一個被高聳的冰原充滿的世界 各個都三到四公里高 被大片的草原和凍原覆蓋 這,就是冰河時期
Over the last century, more than 350 Ice Age rock art sites have been found across the continent, decorated with animals, abstract shapes and even the occasional human like these engraved figures from Grotta dell'Addaura in Sicily. They provide us with a rare glimpse into the creative world and imagination of these early artists.
自從上個世紀以來 超過350個冰河時期的石畫區 在歐洲大陸被發掘出來 其中刻有動物、抽象圖案 甚至一些少見的人類圖案 像這些在西西里的阿達拉山洞 (Grotta dell'Addaura) 看到的雕刻 它們讓我們一窺 這些早期畫家的創意和想像力
Since their discovery, it's been the animals that have received the majority of the study like this black horse from Cullalvera in Spain, or this unusual purple bison from La Pasiega. But for me, it was the abstract shapes, what we call geometric signs, that drew me to study the art. The funny this is that at most sites the geometric signs far outnumber the animal and human images. But when I started on this back in 2007, there wasn't even a definitive list of how many shapes there were, nor was there a strong sense of whether the same ones appeared across space or time. Before I could even get started on my questions, my first step was to compile a database of all known geometric signs from all of the rock art sites. The problem was that while they were well documented at some sites, usually the ones with the very nice animals, there was also a large number of them where it was very vague -- there wasn't a lot of description or detail. Some of them hadn't been visited in half a century or more. These were the ones that I targeted for my field work.
自從發掘出它們 動物雕刻圖一直都是研究的焦點 像這匹在西班牙的古拉維拉(Cullalvera) 找到的黑馬圖 或是這隻在帕斯加(La Pasiega) 看到的奇特紫水牛 但對我而言,反而是抽像圖案, 所謂的幾何圖形 燃起了我研究這類藝術的興趣。 詭異的是,在大部分的地點 幾何圖形的數量遠超於動物和人類的圖案 可是我在2007年開始從事研究時 這些圖案根本沒有明確的數量和清單 更沒有人有興趣去知道 究竟不同的時間、地點有否出現過相似的圖案 在我還未開始解除我的疑惑之前 需要先編輯一個資料庫 來包含所有石畫地點的所有幾何圖形 問題是,雖然在某些地點的圖案非常明確 這通常都是那些可愛的動物圖案, 仍有一大部分仍然非常含糊不清-- 根本沒有細節或註解可以參考 有些甚至超過半世紀以來都杳無人跡 這些就是我實地考察的重點
Over the course of two years, my faithful husband Dylan and I each spent over 300 hours underground, hiking, crawling and wriggling around 52 sites in France, Spain, Portugal and Sicily. And it was totally worth it. We found new, undocumented geometric signs at 75 percent of the sites we visited. This is the level of accuracy I knew I was going to need if I wanted to start answering those larger questions.
兩年過去了 我不離不棄的丈夫跟我一起 在地底下花了超過300小時 在位於法國、西班牙 和西西里的52個山洞 攀越和爬行 這完全是划得來的 在去過的75%地點中 我們發現全新、不見經傳的幾何圖形 我深知我正需要這種精確的程度 來回答更重要的問題
So let's get to those answers. Barring a handful of outliers, there are only 32 geometric signs. Only 32 signs across a 30,000-year time span and the entire continent of Europe. That is a very small number. Now, if these were random doodles or decorations, we would expect to see a lot more variation, but instead what we find are the same signs repeating across both space and time. Some signs start out strong, before losing popularity and vanishing, while other signs are later inventions. But 65 percent of those signs stayed in use during that entire time period -- things like lines, rectangles triangles, ovals and circles like we see here from the end of the Ice Age, at a 10,000-year-old site high in the Pyrenees Mountains. And while certain signs span thousands of kilometers, other signs had much more restricted distribution patterns, with some being limited to a single territory, like we see here with these divided rectangles that are only found in northern Spain, and which some researchers have speculated could be some sort of family or clan signs.
那讓我們去尋找答案吧 排除一堆異類之外,剩下32中幾何圖形 歷遍三萬年的時間,橫跨整個歐洲版圖 只有32個符號 多麼渺小的數字啊 如果這些只是隨意的塗鴉或裝飾 理論上應該會看到更多樣化的圖案 可是我們發現同樣的符號 經年累月的在各地不斷的重複著 有些符號先盛後衰 有些則是比較後期的創作 但65%的符號在那段時間內不斷的出現-- 比如線條、四方形 三角形、橢圓形和圓形 接近冰河時期末開始 出現在庇里牛斯山上的萬年山洞 有些符號的分佈範圍長達幾千公里 有些的分佈則比較受限 甚至當中只分佈在單一區域 像這些被劃分的四方形 只出現在北西班牙 而有些學者認為 這些可能是家族或氏族的象徵符號
On a side note, there is surprising degree of similarity in the earliest rock art found all the way from France and Spain to Indonesia and Australia. With many of the same signs appearing in such far-flung places, especially in that 30,000 to 40,000-year range, it's starting to seem increasingly likely that this invention actually traces back to a common point of origin in Africa. But that I'm afraid, is a subject for a future talk.
順帶一提 從法國到西班牙以及自印尼到澳洲 出現的早期石畫的相似度驚人地高 當中相同的符號在相隔很遠的地方同時出現 尤其在三萬到四萬年前這段時間內 我越來越認為 這些創作的共同發源地能夠追朔到非洲 但恐怕那又會是下次演講的主題
So back to the matter at hand. There could be no doubt that these signs were meaningful to their creators, like these 25,000-year-old bas-relief sculptures from La Roque de Venasque in France. We might not know what they meant, but the people of the time certainly did. The repetition of the same signs, for so long, and at so many sites tells us that the artists were making intentional choices. If we're talking about geometric shapes, with specific, culturally recognized, agreed-upon meanings, than we could very well be looking at one of the oldest systems of graphic communication in the world.
那我們回過頭來看看 無疑的,這些符號對於其創作者意義深遠 例如這兩萬五千年 在法國弗納斯屈厄山洞 (La Roque de Venasque)的淺浮雕 我們可能不知道它們的意義 但那時的人肯定知道 這些符號長時間以來,在各個地點的重複 告訴我們這些畫家 清楚知道自己在做什麼 如果我們談論的是 具體、具文化認同感和共識的幾何圖形 那在我們眼前的很可能是 世上最古老的圖案溝通系統之一
I'm not talking about writing yet. There's just not enough characters at this point to have represented all of the words in the spoken language, something which is a requirement for a full writing system. Nor do we see the signs repeating regularly enough to suggest that they were some sort of alphabet. But what we do have are some intriguing one-offs, like this panel from La Pasiega in Spain, known as "The Inscription," with its symmetrical markings on the left, possible stylized representations of hands in the middle, and what looks a bit like a bracket on the right.
當然這還稱不上的文字 這裡的符號數量沒有多到 可以代表所有口述的詞彙 要知道這是完整書寫系統的必要因素 同時這些符號的規律性 還不至於能讓我們覺得它們是一種文字 但我們卻發現到 一些比較新奇 只出現一次的符號 例如這個在西班牙的帕斯加(La Pasiega) 出現的圖案,叫做『銘文』(The Inscription) 左邊有對稱的筆劃 中間可能是雙手的風格化圖案 還有右邊看似掛號的符號
The oldest systems of graphic communication in the world -- Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, the earliest Chinese script, all emerged between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago, with each coming into existence from an earlier protosystem made up of counting marks and pictographic representations, where the meaning and the image were the same. So a picture of a bird would really have represented that animal. It's only later that we start to see these pictographs become more stylized, until they almost become unrecognizable and that we also start to see more symbols being invented to represent all those other missing words in language -- things like pronouns, adverbs, adjectives.
世上最古老的圖案溝通-- 蘇美的楔形文字、埃及的象形文字 以及中國的漢字 皆在四五千年前出現 每一個都萌芽於更早期的原型 由數字記號和象形符號組成 當中的意義和圖形是相符的 鳥的圖形顧名思義就是鳥的意思 到後期的時候 這些象形符號才變得更風格化 直到難以辨認 還有更多的符號陸續被發明 來代表該語言中其餘的文字-- 比如代名詞、副詞、形容詞
So knowing all this, it seems highly unlikely that the geometric signs from Ice Age Europe were truly abstract written characters. Instead, what's much more likely is that these early artists were also making counting marks, maybe like this row of lines from Riparo di Za Minic in Sicily, as well as creating stylized representations of things from the world around them. Could some of the signs be weaponry or housing? Or what about celestial objects like star constellations? Or maybe even rivers, mountains, trees -- landscape features, possibly like this black penniform surrounded by strange bell-shaped signs from the site of El Castillo in Spain. The term penniform means "feather-shaped" in Latin, but could this actually be a depiction of a plant or a tree? Some researchers have begun to ask these questions about certain signs at specific sites, but I believe the time has come to revisit this category as a whole. The irony in all of this, of course, is that having just carefully classified all of the signs into a single category, I have a feeling that my next step will involve breaking it back apart as different types of imagery are identified and separated off.
總而言之 看來冰河時期歐洲的幾何圖形 不太像是抽象的符號 相反,有很高的可能性 這些早期的畫家 其實是在書寫數字記號 像這些在西西里Riparo di Za Minic的線條 又或者是在創造或風格化 他們周遭的事物 是否有些代表著武器或建築? 或是天體,如星座之類的? 甚至是河流、山川、樹木--自然景觀 像是這些被奇怪的鐘狀符號 圍繞著的黑色羽狀符號 出現於西班牙的卡斯蒂略金字塔(El Castillo) Penniform 在拉丁文裡是『羽狀』的意思 但有沒有可能這其實是 一種植物或樹木的示意圖? 有些學者已經開始 針對這些特定地點找到的符號提出疑問了 但我相信是時候讓我們 整體性的重溫這主題了 諷刺的是 當我精心的把這些符號歸納成一個類別 我有預感下一步就是拆散它們 來應付不同的符號的辨識和區分
Now don't get me wrong, the later creation of fully developed writing was an impressive feat in its own right. But it's important to remember that those early writing systems didn't come out of a vacuum. And that even 5,000 years ago, people were already building on something much older, with its origins stretching back tens of thousands of years -- to the geometric signs of Ice Age Europe and far beyond, to that point, deep in our collective history, when someone first came up with the idea of making a graphic mark, and forever changed the nature of how we communicate.
請不要誤會 一個完整的書寫系統 在後期所發明的文字 本身確實是個令人敬佩的貢獻。 但切記 早期的書寫系統 並不是無中生有的 即便是五千年前 人們已經在更古老的東西上 創造新的事物 其根源可以追朔到 千萬年前-- 到冰河時期歐洲的幾何圖形 甚至更久遠以前 直到最初始的那個當下 有個人心血來潮畫出一個圖形符號 而永遠改變了我們溝通的性質
Thank you.
謝謝
(Applause)
(掌聲)