进入黑暗深处——西班牙史前洞穴壁画里藏着什么秘密？

① 标题导读

② 原文与参考译文

Passage 1

The aurochs, the mammoth and the steppe bison are long extinct, but their painted likenesses still look relatively fresh across the walls and roofs of Altamira. Or so said Diego Garate Maidagan, who is one of the very few humans allowed to enter that exalted cave in northern Spain.

Passage 2

About 34,000 years ago, our distant ancestors began making frescoes with chiaroscuro effects through that suite of subterranean vaults, which remained in use for many millennia, until the cave mouth was sealed by a rockfall. The best part of a geological epoch passed before a curious gun dog clawed its way across the threshold in 1868, leading a succession of witnesses into the first such prehistoric gallery ever seen by modern eyes.

Passage 3

The technique on display at Altamira seemed much too sophisticated for troglodytic numbskulls, as Palaeolithic people were then assumed to be, and self-appointed experts from France initially declared the whole thing a hoax. Pablo Picasso is said to have visited, or at least looked at some photos, and the quote attributed to him is possibly apocryphal, but an appraisal for the ages nonetheless: "After Altamira, all is decadence."

Passage 4

"Back then, there were only three of us in my department," said Garate. "And we would each need three lifetimes to explore all those caves." So, they consulted, enlisted, and effectively deputised a taskforce from the Union of Basque Speleologists. The academics taught the spelunkers to angle their head torches a certain way, adjust their gazes just so. And, in the manner of messages appearing in shower-steam on a bathroom mirror, ghost portraits of prehistoric animals began to reveal themselves all over the Basque Country.

Passage 5

The researchers have also long suspected that low-grade inflammation may play a role in breast cancer development. — （此段为加拉特对史前艺人如剧场导演般运用空间的描述）

"We know it was important, because they invested so much time, and effort, and risk, and resources, to bring people here, and to tell them something. But what they were saying, the significance of the message … why three horses on this wall? Why two lions in some other place? We don't know, and we will never know."

Passage 6

Considering their place in the food chain, the painters could not be said to take this species very seriously. "They were meat," wrote Ehrenreich, "and they also seemed to know that they knew they were meat – meat that could think. And that, if you think about it long enough, is almost funny."

Passage 7

He moved as far as he would let himself go into the realm of informed speculation about this art. "This activity required complex logistical preparation in terms of resources. Certain people had to specialise in these tasks, leaving aside the more basic survival tasks, such as hunting and fishing. Now, this implies the creation of surpluses in some kind of hierarchy. So, what we call 'art' here, beyond the mystery of its meaning, might help us understand the organisation of that past society. And, possibly, the very origins of inequalities in humanity."

③ 核心词汇

④ 长难句语法拆解

句 1

The technique on display at Altamira seemed much too sophisticated for troglodytic numbskulls, as Palaeolithic people were then assumed to be, and self-appointed experts from France initially declared the whole thing a hoax.

句 2

"This activity required complex logistical preparation in terms of resources. Certain people had to specialise in these tasks, leaving aside the more basic survival tasks, such as hunting and fishing. Now, this implies the creation of surpluses in some kind of hierarchy."