大津巴布韦遗址：一段被淡忘的历史:1人民币等于津巴布韦币
时间：2019-01-08 03:17:53 来源：柠檬阅读网 本文已影响 人 
A mysterious ruin in southern Africa rises out of the highland plains. These walls have been empty for centuries and were considered old before the first
European settlers arrived here. The African people who lived around the ruins, the Shona, called them “Great Zimbabwe,” or “stone houses,” but they offered few clues to what happened to the people who lived here.
In the 1800s, European 1)colonists, who first saw the structures, did not believe that Africans could have built them. Instead, they thought the houses were the product of an ancient white civilization that disappeared thousands of years ago. Europeans admired African art, but they considered African science and technology to be 2)inferior. They believed that Europeans were
3)superior to Africans, who they thought were 4)primitive and incapable of building complex structures.
Zimbabwe was a problem for European scholars. If native Africans had built this complex of 5)granite walls and towers, it was proof that they were not inferior after all. Europeans turned to a German 6)geologist, Karl Mauch, for an explanation. Mauch tried to 7)take credit for Zimbabwe away from native Africans, and make European 8)domination seem like a natural condition.
Mauch was not the only one with a theory about Zimbabwe. Cecil Rhodes注1 was a driving force behind the European colonization of southern Africa, and he was determined to prove the theory that Great Zimbabwe had been the capital of an ancient Phoenician注2 colony. To prove his theory, Rhodes hired Richard Hall to inspect the ruins. It was Hall’s job to protect Great Zimbabwe,
but in his eagerness to find evidence of the Phoenicians, he 9)stripped the ruins of all its artifacts. 10)Archaeologists in England raised a huge 11)outcry over Hall’s poor treatment of the site, and they demanded that he be replaced.
Michael Bisson (12)Anthropologist): So an 13)unbiased professional archaeologist was sent in by the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1906, a fellow by the name of David Randall-MacIver, who conducted brief excavations in what was left of archaeological 14)deposits at the site, and came to the conclusion that they were entirely of African origin and 15)medieval in date, and he even estimated the age for the 16)elliptical building at somewhere in the 15th
century, due to his knowledge of the Chinese glassware found in the site.
MacIver found that Great Zimbabwe had been part of a 17)thriving African culture. It was home to skilled artisans and 18)stonemasons, who built the complex, and it was a magnet for trade from as far away as China.
In the 1300s, Europe was in the Middle Ages, but Great Zimbabwe’s master masons began work on their most enduring monument, the “great enclosure.”
MacIver’s findings shocked the white-dominated government of Rhodesia注3, where Great Zimbabwe stood. At the time, the idea that Africans were capable of an achievement on such a scale disproved the colonial view that Africans were uncivilized. The Rhodesian government rejected MacIver’s findings and covered up the truth until 1929, when English archaeologist Gertrude Caton-Thompson confirmed his findings.
In 1979, after years of civil war, Rhodesia came under black majority rule. The new government changed the name of the country to Zimbabwe out of respect for the ancient culture that had come before them. Today, much remains unknown about the rise and fall of Great Zimbabwe, but the people of present-day Zimbabwe will continue to explore their past, and, with the help of archaeologists, it is possible that we may one day uncover the long-hidden secrets of the men and women who built this medieval wonder.
在非洲南部的高地平原上耸立着一座神秘的废墟。这些墙垣已经空置了数百年,人们认为它年代久远,早在第一批欧洲移民到来之前便已存在。住在废墟附近的非洲绍纳人把它们称为“大津巴布韦”或“石头房子”,但是关于这片遗址的原居民,他们所能提供的线索少之又少。
19世纪,首先发现这片遗址的欧洲殖民者不相信非洲人能建造出这样的房屋。他们认为这些石屋是一个消失于几千年前的远古白人文明的产物。欧洲人热爱非洲艺术,但他们认为非洲在科学和技术方面很落后。他们相信欧洲人比非洲人优越――非洲人很原始,没有能力建造复杂的建筑物。
津巴布韦成了欧洲学者的一个难题。如果土生土长的非洲人能建造这些复杂的花岗岩石墙和塔楼,就证明非洲人实际上并不落后。于是,欧洲人找来德国地质学家卡尔・毛赫,希望他能给出解释。毛赫试图从本土非洲人手里夺走建造大津巴布韦的功劳,从而使欧洲对非洲的统治看起来更加顺理成章。
毛赫不是唯一对津巴布韦提出自己一套理论的人。塞西尔・罗兹是欧洲人对非洲南部殖民野心的背后推手之一。他决心证明大津巴布韦曾经是一个古代腓尼基人殖民地的首府。为了证明这个理论,罗兹雇用理查德・霍尔调查这片遗址。本来,保护大津巴布韦遗址是霍尔的工作,但是,因为急于找到腓尼基人的证据,他把遗址内的手工艺品都清理掉了。霍尔对这片遗址的不当对待在英国考古学家当中引起一片哗然,众人要求把他撤换掉。
迈克尔・比森(人类学家):于是在1906年,英国科学促进会派出一位不带偏见的专业考古学家――戴维・兰德尔-麦克基弗。在对残存的考古遗址进行了简单的挖掘后,他得出的结论是:这处遗址完全起源于非洲,建造于中世纪。他甚至还根据自己对遗址内发现的中国玻璃器皿的认识,估计出这座椭圆形建筑的年代大约为15世纪。
麦克基弗发现,大津巴布韦曾经是繁荣的非洲文化的一部分。它曾是建造这个建筑的能工巧匠的故乡,还吸引了远至中国的商人前来进行贸易。
14世纪的欧洲还处于中世纪,但大津巴布韦的杰出石匠已经开始建造他们最名留青史的纪念碑――“围城”。 麦克基弗的发现震惊了大津巴布韦所在地――由白人主导的罗德西亚政府。当时,“非洲人有能力建造如此规模的建筑”的看法是对“非洲人没有文明”这一殖民主义观点的公然驳斥。罗德西亚政府拒绝承认
麦克基弗的发现,并隐瞒事实,直到1929年英国考古学家格特鲁德・卡顿-汤普森确认了麦克基弗的发现为止。
1979年,经历了多年的内战之后,罗德西亚终于实现了由占人口大多数的黑人统治。出于对先人古代文化的尊敬,新政府将国名改为津巴布韦。如今,虽然关于大津巴布韦兴衰的许多情况仍然鲜为人知,但今天的津巴布韦人会继续探索他们的过去。在考古学家的帮助下,在未来的某一天,我们也许能揭开建造这片中世纪奇迹的男男女女长久以来不为人知的秘密。
