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翻译：郑远涛
Mystic Place: Nazca Lines
World’s Greatest 1)Scratch Pad
In the hot desert of southwest Peru, between the Andes Mountains and the Peruvian coast, lies what many have called one of the most puzzling 2)enigmas of 3)archeology. Huge 4)geometric patterns and spirals, animal figures, and thousands of perfectly straight lines are 5)etched onto the desert’s surface. The last of them were drawn about a thousand years ago. Known as the Nazca lines, the drawings have 6)confused scientists since they were first discovered in the 1920s.
From ground level, the earth drawings seem like a confusing mass of lines. It’s only when viewed from the air that one sees how the lines and figures show a sense of purpose and organization. But what is the purpose? And how did they get such large drawings one of the lines is 65 kilometres long, and some of the animal drawings are more than two soccer fields in lengthso 7)precise?
Ever since the founder of Peruvian archeology, Julio Tello, first recorded the lines in 1926, scientists have spent years puzzling over the 8)riddle of the Nazca lines. Still, not one clear theory exists today that answers these basic questions, making the drawings one of the world’s most 9)fascinating unsolved mysteries.
Thousands of Lines, Hundreds of Patterns
10)Scattered over about 500 square kilometres of dry 11)plateau between two river valleys around the city of Nazca, perhaps the most famous of the drawings are the 12)biomorphic figures: a spider, a monkey, a whale, a snake, a lizard, a flower, a man and 18 bird shapes. There are about 50 of these figures ranging in size from 25 metres to 275 metres long.
Most of the desert has perfectly straight lines of 1,300 kilometres, some as narrow as 6 inches(15 centimetres)and others as wide as hundreds of metres, 13)crisscrossing or running 14)parallel to each other. There are also 300 geometric figures, mostly 15)trapezoids, triangles, zig-zags and spirals.
The Nazcans
The Nazca lines are thought to have been made by the Nazca Indians who lived in the region between 300 BC and 800 AD. Their pottery has been found at the Nazca lines. Unfortunately, they didn’t leave any 16)evidence of a written language, and none of their 17)descendants survive today.
But we do know that they were farmers. And they worshipped 18)deities. Some of the pictures on their pottery are figures with both animal and human characteristics and some are very scary features. Their huge burial sites also show that they paid special attention to their dead, placing them in their graves in the 19)fetal position, wrapped with beautiful cloths.
A Question of Precision
The Nazca lines aren’t the only geoglyphs注1 in the world. The drawings at Nazca, however, are unique because they are so large and so 20)densely packed within a 500 square kilometre area. How did the Nazcans make them so precise? And why?
As it turns out, how they got their drawings so precise is the one question on which scientists can agree. The Peruvian desert provided a perfect 21)backdrop for the Nazcan “artists. ”Covered by fist-sized 22)volcanic rocks, the desert makes a sharp contrast to the soft yellow soil only inches underneath the stones. By simply removing the overlying stones and 23)piling them on each side, the Nazcans were able to sketch their drawings onto the ground. In another climate, the drawings would have been ruined in months, but Nazca is one of the driest and most windless regions on Earth. Climate and geology created an ideal medium for the Nazcansleaving their 24)distinctive images to be admired and 25)pondered over thousands of years later.
For the straight lines, two wooden stakes could be used to guide the placement of a third stake along the line. One person “sights alongthe first two stakes and instructs a second person where to place the third stake. Strings could also have been used to help ensure the lines were straight. This process could be repeated for hundreds of kilometres like this.
Possible Purpose?
Spanning 500 square kilometres of the Peruvian desert, the Nazca lines have led to some wild theories about their purpose. Runways for alien spaceships, or the site of huge pre-Columbian注注2 Olympic Games may sound pleasing, but the truth may lie closer to the agricultural heart of the land.
Paul Kosok, an American geographer, proposed that the straight lines 26)represented “The largest astronomy book in the world,believing they were intended to point to astronomical events at the horizon. He came to this 27)conclusion after seeing the sun setting almost exactly over the end of one of the long single lines on June 22, the 28)winter solstice in the Southern 29)Hemisphere. The theory was further explored by Maria Reiche, a German 30)mathematician who spent more than half of her life measuring and mapping the lines. She believed that the lines 31)predict the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets and stars and that they were used to determine the correct time of year for planting seeds, the 32)annual appearance of water in the rivers, and the right times to harvest the crops.
The astronomical 33)hypothesis, however, was pretty much 34)disproved in 1968, when American astronomer Gerald Hawkins 35)analyzed the lines by computer. Hawkins found that the Nazca lines at least the ones he studied were 36)random, astronomically speaking.
But both the astronomy hypothesis and 37)rebuttal were misguided in one critical aspect, says Dr. Persis B. Clarkson, an archeologist and geoglyph expert at the University of Winnipeg. They both 38)assumed the Nazca Indians had the same 39)constellations that the Europeans did.
“Very little attempt has been made to look at Andean conceptions for constellations,says Clarkson, leaving any earlier astronomical interpretations with a western and northern hemisphere 40)bias.
Clarkson believes the lines were made in relation to 41)irrigation systems and religious 42)pilgrimages. The idea was first proposed by Peruvian scholar Mejia Xesspe in 1926, when he suggested they might be sacred roads.
Many questions still remain. Perhaps the legacy of the Nazca lines is to 43)captivate our imaginations. As Maria Reiche once said, “we will never know all the answers, that’s what a good mystery is all about.”
世上最巨型的便笺本
在秘鲁西南部炎热的沙漠里，在安第斯山脉与秘鲁海岸之间，有一个被许多人称为考古学最大谜团的奇观：巨大的几何图形与螺旋纹、动物图案，以及成千上万笔直的线条，标画在沙漠的表面上，其中年代最晚的完成于约一千年前。这些通称为纳斯卡线画的图案自20世纪20年代被发现以来，就一直让科学家们迷惑不解。
从平地上看，这些大地图画似乎只是一堆杂乱无章的线条。唯有从空中俯瞰才能看出，这些线条与图案是有章法、有目的的。但究竟其目的何在？古人又是怎样把这些图画绘得如此巨大（其中一条线长达65千米，而有些动物画的长度超过两个足球场）而精确的呢？
自从秘鲁考古学的开山祖师朱利奥·泰娄在1926年首次记录这些线画以来，科学家们耗费了多年时间，努力揭开纳斯卡线画之谜。然而，至今仍没有一个理论能解释清楚所有的基本问题。这令纳斯卡线画成为世界上最耐人寻味的不解之谜之一。
成千的线，上百的图
线画位于纳斯卡市周围，夹于两个河谷之间，散布在方圆500平方千米的干旱高原上，其中最著名的大概是那些生物图案：一只蜘蛛、一只猴子、一头鲸鱼、一条蛇、一只蜥蜴、一朵花、一个人，以及18个鸟状图形。这类图案共有50个左右，长度从25米到275米不等。
这块沙漠被总长1300千米的笔直线条所占据。线条中窄者窄至6英寸（15厘米），宽者可达几百米，彼此或交叉，或平行。另有大约300个几何形状，多数是梯形、三角、之字形和螺旋形。
纳斯卡人
据推断，纳斯卡线画是由纳斯卡印第安人创作的，他们从公元前300年到公元800年居住在该地区。在纳斯卡线画的位置，曾发掘出该民族的陶器。可惜的是，这个民族并没有留下任何文字存在的证据，而且其后代也已绝迹。
但我们确实知道的是，纳斯卡人是农耕民族，有拜神的习俗。他们某些陶器上的形象兼有动物和人的特征，有些形象的脸部很可怕。纳斯卡人巨大的墓葬地也显示出他们对死者格外重视。死者以蜷于母胎的姿势埋葬，身裹华服。
线画为何如此精确
在地雕作品中，纳斯卡线画并非全球孤例，但其巨大、其集中于方圆500平方千米的高密度，却是独一无二的。纳斯卡人是怎样绘制出如此精确的线画的呢？他们目的何在？
科学家们经过研究，对纳斯卡人能精确作画的原因达成了共识。秘鲁的沙漠就是纳斯卡“艺术家”的天然画板。沙漠被拳头大的火山砾石覆盖，而数英寸厚的砾石底下就是柔软的黄土，两者对比鲜明。纳斯卡人只需移去压在上面的石头，把它们堆放在两旁，就能够在大地上留下图画的印痕。换一种气候，这些画过不了几个月就会被湮灭，然而纳斯卡却是全世界最干燥无风的地区之一。气候与地质条件的共同作用，为纳斯卡人创造出理想的传达媒介，让他们得以留下如此独特的图画，供人类于千载之后瞻仰和思索。
至于直线的划法，可先用两条木桩来定位，把第三条木桩沿线置放。一人看准前两条木桩之间连线的位置以后，便可以指导第二人把第三条木桩放到那里去。弦也是可以用来辅助画直线的工具。这个过程可能要重复几百千米。
目的众说纷纭
纳斯卡线画在秘鲁沙漠上横亘500平方千米，令人产生各种浮想联翩的猜测，其中包括外星宇宙飞船的跑道、哥伦布到达美洲前举行奥林匹克运动会的场地等等。这些说辞也许很动听，而事实却可能与这片土地的农耕传统有更大关联。
美国地理学家保罗·柯索克提出，这些直线是“世界上最大的天文学图谱”，认为其功用是指向地平线上出现的天文现象。他曾经目睹太阳几乎准确无误地从其中一条长直线尽头的上方没入地平线，当时是6月22日—南半球的冬至，此后他得出了上述结论。大半生测绘这些直线的德国数学家玛丽亚·茹艾克则进一步深入研究了柯索克的理论。她相信，这些直线预示着太阳、月亮、行星与恒星的位置，用于决定播种的适当农时、河中水流一年一度的出现时刻，以及收获庄稼的确切日子。
然而，在1968年，美国天文学家杰拉德·霍金斯几乎彻底推翻了天文学假说。当时他用计算机分析了部分纳斯卡线条，发现它们从天文学角度而言是缺乏规律的。
（加拿大）温尼泊大学考古与地雕专家珀西斯·B·克拉克森博士认为，天文学假说及其驳论都在一个关键方面犯了错误，即两者都假定纳斯卡的印第安人使用了与欧洲人相同的星座。
“几乎没有人考虑过安第斯人对星座的认识，”克拉克森如是说。这便造成了此前的天文学解释无意识中先入为主地把西方与北半球因素作为了推论的前提。
克拉克森相信，线画是为了灌溉系统和宗教朝圣的需要而创造的。这种观点由秘鲁学者梅吉阿·泽斯丕于1926年最早提出，他认为这些线条也许是朝圣路。
依然有许多疑团得不到圆满的解释。也许可以说，纳斯卡线画留给后世的遗产，就是让我们浮想联翩。正如玛丽亚·茹艾克尝言：“我们永远也不会知道全部的答案，这就是不解之谜的魅力所在。”
Mystic Place: Nazca Lines
World’s Greatest 1)Scratch Pad
In the hot desert of southwest Peru, between the Andes Mountains and the Peruvian coast, lies what many have called one of the most puzzling 2)enigmas of 3)archeology. Huge 4)geometric patterns and spirals, animal figures, and thousands of perfectly straight lines are 5)etched onto the desert’s surface. The last of them were drawn about a thousand years ago. Known as the Nazca lines, the drawings have 6)confused scientists since they were first discovered in the 1920s.
From ground level, the earth drawings seem like a confusing mass of lines. It’s only when viewed from the air that one sees how the lines and figures show a sense of purpose and organization. But what is the purpose? And how did they get such large drawings one of the lines is 65 kilometres long, and some of the animal drawings are more than two soccer fields in lengthso 7)precise?
Ever since the founder of Peruvian archeology, Julio Tello, first recorded the lines in 1926, scientists have spent years puzzling over the 8)riddle of the Nazca lines. Still, not one clear theory exists today that answers these basic questions, making the drawings one of the world’s most 9)fascinating unsolved mysteries.
Thousands of Lines, Hundreds of Patterns
10)Scattered over about 500 square kilometres of dry 11)plateau between two river valleys around the city of Nazca, perhaps the most famous of the drawings are the 12)biomorphic figures: a spider, a monkey, a whale, a snake, a lizard, a flower, a man and 18 bird shapes. There are about 50 of these figures ranging in size from 25 metres to 275 metres long.
Most of the desert has perfectly straight lines of 1,300 kilometres, some as narrow as 6 inches(15 centimetres)and others as wide as hundreds of metres, 13)crisscrossing or running 14)parallel to each other. There are also 300 geometric figures, mostly 15)trapezoids, triangles, zig-zags and spirals.
The Nazcans
The Nazca lines are thought to have been made by the Nazca Indians who lived in the region between 300 BC and 800 AD. Their pottery has been found at the Nazca lines. Unfortunately, they didn’t leave any 16)evidence of a written language, and none of their 17)descendants survive today.
But we do know that they were farmers. And they worshipped 18)deities. Some of the pictures on their pottery are figures with both animal and human characteristics and some are very scary features. Their huge burial sites also show that they paid special attention to their dead, placing them in their graves in the 19)fetal position, wrapped with beautiful cloths.
A Question of Precision
The Nazca lines aren’t the only geoglyphs注1 in the world. The drawings at Nazca, however, are unique because they are so large and so 20)densely packed within a 500 square kilometre area. How did the Nazcans make them so precise? And why?
As it turns out, how they got their drawings so precise is the one question on which scientists can agree. The Peruvian desert provided a perfect 21)backdrop for the Nazcan “artists. ”Covered by fist-sized 22)volcanic rocks, the desert makes a sharp contrast to the soft yellow soil only inches underneath the stones. By simply removing the overlying stones and 23)piling them on each side, the Nazcans were able to sketch their drawings onto the ground. In another climate, the drawings would have been ruined in months, but Nazca is one of the driest and most windless regions on Earth. Climate and geology created an ideal medium for the Nazcansleaving their 24)distinctive images to be admired and 25)pondered over thousands of years later.
For the straight lines, two wooden stakes could be used to guide the placement of a third stake along the line. One person “sights alongthe first two stakes and instructs a second person where to place the third stake. Strings could also have been used to help ensure the lines were straight. This process could be repeated for hundreds of kilometres like this.
Possible Purpose?
Spanning 500 square kilometres of the Peruvian desert, the Nazca lines have led to some wild theories about their purpose. Runways for alien spaceships, or the site of huge pre-Columbian注注2 Olympic Games may sound pleasing, but the truth may lie closer to the agricultural heart of the land.
Paul Kosok, an American geographer, proposed that the straight lines 26)represented “The largest astronomy book in the world,believing they were intended to point to astronomical events at the horizon. He came to this 27)conclusion after seeing the sun setting almost exactly over the end of one of the long single lines on June 22, the 28)winter solstice in the Southern 29)Hemisphere. The theory was further explored by Maria Reiche, a German 30)mathematician who spent more than half of her life measuring and mapping the lines. She believed that the lines 31)predict the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets and stars and that they were used to determine the correct time of year for planting seeds, the 32)annual appearance of water in the rivers, and the right times to harvest the crops.
The astronomical 33)hypothesis, however, was pretty much 34)disproved in 1968, when American astronomer Gerald Hawkins 35)analyzed the lines by computer. Hawkins found that the Nazca lines at least the ones he studied were 36)random, astronomically speaking.
But both the astronomy hypothesis and 37)rebuttal were misguided in one critical aspect, says Dr. Persis B. Clarkson, an archeologist and geoglyph expert at the University of Winnipeg. They both 38)assumed the Nazca Indians had the same 39)constellations that the Europeans did.
“Very little attempt has been made to look at Andean conceptions for constellations,says Clarkson, leaving any earlier astronomical interpretations with a western and northern hemisphere 40)bias.
Clarkson believes the lines were made in relation to 41)irrigation systems and religious 42)pilgrimages. The idea was first proposed by Peruvian scholar Mejia Xesspe in 1926, when he suggested they might be sacred roads.
Many questions still remain. Perhaps the legacy of the Nazca lines is to 43)captivate our imaginations. As Maria Reiche once said, “we will never know all the answers, that’s what a good mystery is all about.”
世上最巨型的便笺本
在秘鲁西南部炎热的沙漠里，在安第斯山脉与秘鲁海岸之间，有一个被许多人称为考古学最大谜团的奇观：巨大的几何图形与螺旋纹、动物图案，以及成千上万笔直的线条，标画在沙漠的表面上，其中年代最晚的完成于约一千年前。这些通称为纳斯卡线画的图案自20世纪20年代被发现以来，就一直让科学家们迷惑不解。
从平地上看，这些大地图画似乎只是一堆杂乱无章的线条。唯有从空中俯瞰才能看出，这些线条与图案是有章法、有目的的。但究竟其目的何在？古人又是怎样把这些图画绘得如此巨大（其中一条线长达65千米，而有些动物画的长度超过两个足球场）而精确的呢？
自从秘鲁考古学的开山祖师朱利奥·泰娄在1926年首次记录这些线画以来，科学家们耗费了多年时间，努力揭开纳斯卡线画之谜。然而，至今仍没有一个理论能解释清楚所有的基本问题。这令纳斯卡线画成为世界上最耐人寻味的不解之谜之一。
成千的线，上百的图
线画位于纳斯卡市周围，夹于两个河谷之间，散布在方圆500平方千米的干旱高原上，其中最著名的大概是那些生物图案：一只蜘蛛、一只猴子、一头鲸鱼、一条蛇、一只蜥蜴、一朵花、一个人，以及18个鸟状图形。这类图案共有50个左右，长度从25米到275米不等。
这块沙漠被总长1300千米的笔直线条所占据。线条中窄者窄至6英寸（15厘米），宽者可达几百米，彼此或交叉，或平行。另有大约300个几何形状，多数是梯形、三角、之字形和螺旋形。
纳斯卡人
据推断，纳斯卡线画是由纳斯卡印第安人创作的，他们从公元前300年到公元800年居住在该地区。在纳斯卡线画的位置，曾发掘出该民族的陶器。可惜的是，这个民族并没有留下任何文字存在的证据，而且其后代也已绝迹。
但我们确实知道的是，纳斯卡人是农耕民族，有拜神的习俗。他们某些陶器上的形象兼有动物和人的特征，有些形象的脸部很可怕。纳斯卡人巨大的墓葬地也显示出他们对死者格外重视。死者以蜷于母胎的姿势埋葬，身裹华服。
线画为何如此精确
在地雕作品中，纳斯卡线画并非全球孤例，但其巨大、其集中于方圆500平方千米的高密度，却是独一无二的。纳斯卡人是怎样绘制出如此精确的线画的呢？他们目的何在？
科学家们经过研究，对纳斯卡人能精确作画的原因达成了共识。秘鲁的沙漠就是纳斯卡“艺术家”的天然画板。沙漠被拳头大的火山砾石覆盖，而数英寸厚的砾石底下就是柔软的黄土，两者对比鲜明。纳斯卡人只需移去压在上面的石头，把它们堆放在两旁，就能够在大地上留下图画的印痕。换一种气候，这些画过不了几个月就会被湮灭，然而纳斯卡却是全世界最干燥无风的地区之一。气候与地质条件的共同作用，为纳斯卡人创造出理想的传达媒介，让他们得以留下如此独特的图画，供人类于千载之后瞻仰和思索。
至于直线的划法，可先用两条木桩来定位，把第三条木桩沿线置放。一人看准前两条木桩之间连线的位置以后，便可以指导第二人把第三条木桩放到那里去。弦也是可以用来辅助画直线的工具。这个过程可能要重复几百千米。
目的众说纷纭
纳斯卡线画在秘鲁沙漠上横亘500平方千米，令人产生各种浮想联翩的猜测，其中包括外星宇宙飞船的跑道、哥伦布到达美洲前举行奥林匹克运动会的场地等等。这些说辞也许很动听，而事实却可能与这片土地的农耕传统有更大关联。
美国地理学家保罗·柯索克提出，这些直线是“世界上最大的天文学图谱”，认为其功用是指向地平线上出现的天文现象。他曾经目睹太阳几乎准确无误地从其中一条长直线尽头的上方没入地平线，当时是6月22日—南半球的冬至，此后他得出了上述结论。大半生测绘这些直线的德国数学家玛丽亚·茹艾克则进一步深入研究了柯索克的理论。她相信，这些直线预示着太阳、月亮、行星与恒星的位置，用于决定播种的适当农时、河中水流一年一度的出现时刻，以及收获庄稼的确切日子。
然而，在1968年，美国天文学家杰拉德·霍金斯几乎彻底推翻了天文学假说。当时他用计算机分析了部分纳斯卡线条，发现它们从天文学角度而言是缺乏规律的。
（加拿大）温尼泊大学考古与地雕专家珀西斯·B·克拉克森博士认为，天文学假说及其驳论都在一个关键方面犯了错误，即两者都假定纳斯卡的印第安人使用了与欧洲人相同的星座。
“几乎没有人考虑过安第斯人对星座的认识，”克拉克森如是说。这便造成了此前的天文学解释无意识中先入为主地把西方与北半球因素作为了推论的前提。
克拉克森相信，线画是为了灌溉系统和宗教朝圣的需要而创造的。这种观点由秘鲁学者梅吉阿·泽斯丕于1926年最早提出，他认为这些线条也许是朝圣路。
依然有许多疑团得不到圆满的解释。也许可以说，纳斯卡线画留给后世的遗产，就是让我们浮想联翩。正如玛丽亚·茹艾克尝言：“我们永远也不会知道全部的答案，这就是不解之谜的魅力所在。”