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Text 1
The Archaeologists
Who Wouldn't Dig
by John Fleischman
In
all of Greek Literature, there are few places more famous
than Pylos. And the location of Pylos was an ancient
mystery, as an old riddle goes, "There is a Pylos
in front of Pylos and there is yet another Pylos."
In our century nothing has matched
whatever happened at Pylos on April 4, 1939, probably
the luckiest first day on a dig an archaeologist ever
had. On that morning Carl W. Blegen, the preeminent
American archaeologist of the time, opened a trench
through an olive grove. There, above Pylos, he struck
what he later described as "the office of internal
revenue" in Nestor's late Bronze Age palace. A
cataclysmic fire had destroyed the palace 3 200 years
earlier, but storage jars of olive oil had exploded
near clay tablets on which the palace financial records
were kept, fired then into a crude ceramic. All told,
Blegen laid bare more than 1 000 tablets covered in
an early Greek script called Linear B, the earliest
writing then known on the European mainland.
A terrible disappointment to some
classicists (who had hoped the tablets would be filled
with poetry), the decipherment of Linear B was a revelation
to historians. The wanax, as the king of Pylos was called,
had made his scribes keep lists of everything: bath
attendants, bronze-shod chariot wheels, perfumed oil
and postings of shepherds and coastguards. The Bronze
Age Greeks, or Mycenaeans, such lists show, had created
the first highly centralized civilization in Europe—a
precursor to city-states, empires and nations from Athens
to the Soviet Union.
For Jack L. Davis, professor of Greek
archaeology at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio,
that was reason enough to revisit Pylos fifty years
after his predecessor's first excavation. Davis assembled
a consortium of archaeologists, historians, physical
scientists and students into the Pylos Regional Archaeological
Project, or PRAP. In archaeological parlance, PRAP is
"survey". By plotting the locations of ceramics,
stone tools and other artifacts that weathered out of
the soil across wide areas, PRAP determines large-scale
patterns of human activity. The shovel is the one tool
that Davis and his fellow principal investigators do
not use. PRAP does not dig.
Archaeologists who don't excavate?
Surely that is heresy. Yet, surveys are a well-established
archaeological practice. American anthropologists working
in the Southwest and in Meso-America refined the technique
in the 1960s and 1970s. Later, British archaeologists
picked up the New World habit, wedded it to French modernist
theories on the history of "ordinary" life
and brought it to bear on Old World problems. Still,
nothing as ambitious as the PRAP survey has ever been
tried on mainland Greece. "It's one thing when
you find a hundred or even a thousand artifacts in a
square kilometer," Davis says of North American
surveys, "but in the Aegean we're finding hundreds
of thousands of artifacts in a square kilometer."
The results of that work are already
available on the World Wide Web. The subversive stuff,
however, is in Davis's mild-mannered book titled Sandy
Pylos, which will be published by University of
Texas Press next year. Sandy Pylos quietly undermines
many conventional assumptions about archaeology and
history. Without lifting a shovel, Davis's team have
uncovered nothing less than "the history, not just
of one archaeological site, but of an entire landscape,"
as Davis writes in the book's foreword, "and not
just in a single period, but at all times in the past."
The location of Pylos was an ancient
mystery even to the ancients. As the Greek geographer
Strabo noted, quoting an old riddle: "There is
a Pylos in front of Pylos and there is yet another Pylos."
Even Greeks of the Classical Age knew only that Nestor's
Pylos lay near the town they called Koryfasio, which
is somewhere else entirely.
When I decided to retrace Blegen's
footsteps and talk with Davis, I had to take an all-day
bus ride from smog-bound Athens across the rocky Peloponnesus
to Pylos in western Messenia. Eight hours later, dehydrated
and reeking of tobacco smoke, I staggered off the bus
in Pylos and fell straight into the confusion over place
names in Modern Greece. In 1827, after the Greeks won
their independence, the Ottoman Navarino was renamed
Pylos. But Ottoman Navarino had never been ancient Pylos.
The Pylos I was looking for turned out to be a short
but terrifying taxi ride away: fourteen kilometers north
of town, along the Bay of Navarino and then several
hundred yards abruptly uphill, to the beak of a sharp
ridge called Ano Englianos.
Blegen's dig
is now covered by a huge, open-sided sheet-metal hangar,
erected by the Greek government to protect the low,
rubble footprint of the late Bronze Age palace. The
day after my arrival, I wandered through the ankle-high
maze of the palace remains in search of the great central
megaron, or throne room, where the wanax presided. From
scraps of fallen plaster, Blegen had reconstructed some
of the palace's brilliant decorations. There were frescoes
of deer, doves, bare-chested warriors, a singer and
his lyre: a splendid setting for a warrior-king─even
one surrounded by accountants. Down the hall, the Linear
B archives never bothered to name the King, but they
did name the place.
This was Pylos, the Pylos before
there were any others. Standing outside the ruin, looking
across the plain below to the Bay of Navarino and the
Ionian Sea beyond, I could understand why the later
Greeks could not find Pylos: they were convinced that
Homer's "sandy Pylos" had to be near the sea. Why
Pylos was here in the hills was a question PRAP would
later answer for me.
A journalist visiting a working archaeological
site usually can count on a grand tour of the "dig",
a tortured plot of ground covered with grid markers,
tools and heaps of dirt waiting to be screened. There,
in the holy trenches, he will be shown graduate students
with serious sunburn working the earth with dental picks
and dustpans.
Davis did not have a single trench
to show me. Survey work is done by walking, he explained
as we sat in the cool of the evening at PRAP headquarters
in the village of Hora. Every morning between fifteen
and twenty PRAP students fan out in teams across the
rugged hills and coastline around the old palace. At
fifteen-meter intervals they pace off precise quadrants,
collecting surface artifacts and environmental data.
The teams press on regardless of topography, heat and
the infamous Greek macchia, chaparral-like underbrush
that grows luxuriantly even where shepherds and their
goats have given up.
At day's end the PRAP walkers carry
their surface finds back to a temporary museum in a
Hora schoolhouse. There the finds' locations are logged
in a marvelous computer information base and the sherds
are stored in recycled five-gallon oilcans.
Broken pottery is a virtually catastrophe-proof
record of human settlement. Invaders may loot precious
metals and survivors may scavenge building materials,
but no one ever carries off the broken pottery─no one,
that is, except archaeologists. Aegean pottery types,
from the truly ancient to the nearly modern, have been
so thoroughly characterized that PRAP pottery experts
can usually sort the fragments as easily as if they
were sorting socks.
At many archaeological sites, soil
stratigraphy is everything: it gives context to artifacts,
showing when and how they were deposited and what the
environmental conditions were at the time. But farmers
have churned up Western Messenia for 6 000 years; in
some places the ground has eroded so deeply that they
plow up the soft bedrock marl directly for soil. Over
time the surface of the soil has become a historical
hodgepodge: bits of late Bronze Age oil jars are mixed
indiscriminately with eighteenth-century Roman roof
tiles. Nevertheless, as sherds weather to the surface,
they create a rough statistical model of what's below.
Collected and plotted, the age-sorted sherds pile up
electronically around certain sites, indicating peaks
of activity and population. Survey is about finding
such patterns.
Readers who dip into Sandy Pylos
for the "truth" behind Homeric epics or Greek
nationalism will be swept away instead by a torrent
of time rushing across Messenia. The book synthesizes
new data, old documents and novel analyses, and it draws
perspectives from at least a dozen disciplines. The
evidence comes from everything from core drilling to
medieval financial records newly uncovered from state
archives in Istanbul and Italy.
The story begins with the clash of
the African and Eurasian tectonic plates that pushed
up the Taygetus Mountains as well as other chains running
from Greece to the Balkans. Two million years of stream
erosion went on to create two rugged coastal valleys,
and a series of ice ages left the slopes covered with
pine forests. Then in about 15 000 B.C., people first
began to leave traces of other habitation.
Evidence of farming dates from about
4000 B.C., first in the form of light tools along stream
bottoms and then, after 3000 B.C., in the form of plows.
In the next 1000 years both the human population and
the number of grazing livestock exploded. Those explosions
set off the first of what pollen and soil samples show
were four waves of dramatic environmental change, which
gradually wiped out the native vegetation and stripped
away most of the topsoil. The second wave coincided
with the rise of Mycenaean culture in about 1400 B.C.
and the third, in about 500 B.C., with the new intensive
agricultural practices of the Classical world. PRAP's
physical scientists charted those changes, concluding,
for instance, that in the fourth century B.C. olive
trees were cultivated on a quarter of the surface area
of the Pylos region. The fourth, last and ongoing wave
of destruction dates from modern times, with the rise
of the bulldozer and the chemical sprayer.
Each wave of environmental change
marks a major change in human activity, or─in the common
parlance─history. Take those olive groves. Here the
environmental and archaeological survey data come together
in intriguing ways. Until PRAP, the early Classical
period was the black hole of the Messenian past. In
the eighth century B.C. Sparta swallowed up its western
neighbor in a series of shadowy wars, and the Spartan
grip was not broken until 371 B.C., when the Spartans
were defeated by the Theban general Epaminondas at the
Battle of Leuctra. The Spartans had little interest
in recording their own history, much less the history
of the subjugated people of Messenia. Only through the
curiosity of other Greeks, particularly such nosy Athenians
as Thucydides, can contemporary scholars glimpse the
fate of Spartan vassals, who were reduced to the status
of perioikoi (literally "dwellers around"),
with no political rights, or to helots, who were state-owned
slaves. What were the Spartans up to for all those centuries
before Messenia regained its independence?
Elsewhere in Greece at that time
numerous scattered farmsteads were the agricultural
rule. But in Messenia PRAP found no sherds from Spartan-era
farmsteads. After reviewing PRAP's exhaustive survey
records, the archaeologists Ann B. Harrison, of the
J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and Nigel Spencer,
of the Institute of Archaeology of the University of
Oxford in England, concluded that such farmsteads never
existed on the PRAP site. Instead the population was
crowded into large villages and small towns─so that
their Spartan overlords could control or overawe them,
presumably─and the olive groves were tended by helots.
With the defeat of Sparta, PRAP's sherd patterns also
show, the population spread out through the countryside.
(1872 words) TOP
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课文一
不愿挖掘的考古学家
约翰·弗莱斯曼
在所有希腊文献中，没有比皮勒斯更著名的地方了，它的具体位置是一个千古之谜，正如古老的谜语所说，“皮勒斯的前面有一个皮勒斯，另外还有一个皮勒斯。”
本世纪还没有什么可与1939年4月4日发生在皮勒斯的任何事情相比，那一天也许是一位考古学家一项挖掘工作中最幸运的首日挖掘。那天早上，那个时代杰出的美国考古学家卡尔·W·布雷根，挖开了一条穿越橄榄园的沟渠。那里，就在皮勒斯城上面，他发现了青铜时代晚期内斯特王宫的“内部税收办公室”——他后来这样描述。3200年前，一场灾难性的大火毁灭了王宫，而存储在罐子里的橄榄油在载有王宫财政记录的泥板附近爆炸，并将它们烧成粗糙的陶瓷。布雷根总共发掘了1000多片陶板，上面布满了被称作B类线形文字的希腊字母，这是当时欧洲大陆所知的最早的文字记录。
翻译出来的B类线形文字使一些古典学者极为失望（他们原希望上面会记满了诗歌），对历史学家却是一个新发现。皮勒斯的国王让他的书记员记下所有的事情：浴室侍从、青铜车轮、香油、牧师和海岸警卫的任命，等等。这些记载表明，青铜时代的希腊人，或迈锡尼人，已经建立了欧洲第一个高度集中的文明——是从雅典到苏联的所有城邦、帝国和国家的先驱。
对于俄亥俄洲辛辛那提大学希腊考古学教授杰克·L·戴维斯来说，这足以成为在他的前辈首次发掘50年后再度拜访皮勒斯的理由。戴维斯召集了一批考古学家，历史学家，物理学家和学生，组成了皮勒斯地区考古工程，或称作PRAP。用考古学的说法，PRAP是一项“调查”。在大范围的区域内陶器、石具和其它物品露出土壤，经受风吹雨打，PRAP通过考察它们的位置，确定大规模的人类活动方式。铲子是戴维斯和他的主要调查者弃之不用的工具。PRAP拒绝挖掘。
不进行挖掘的考古学家？这肯定是异端邪说。但是调查是考古学公认的做法。在西南部和中美洲工作的美国人类学家在60和70年代完善了这一技术。后来，英国考古学家借鉴了新大陆的这一做法，把它同法国现代主义关于“普通”生活历史的理论结合起来，用它来解决旧大陆的问题。然而，在希腊，还没有进行过
像PRAP的调查这样雄心勃勃的计划。“在一平方公里内发现一百件或甚至一千件文物是一回事，”戴维斯谈到北美调查时说，“但在爱琴海我们是在一平方公里内发现成千上万件的东西。”
这次工作的结果已经发布在环球网上。但是，颠覆性的东西是在戴维斯语气温和的《沙地皮勒斯》一书中，书将于明年由德克萨斯大学出版社出版。《沙地皮勒斯》悄悄地否定了许多考古学和历史学的传统假定。正如戴维斯在书的前言中写的，没有进行丝毫挖掘，戴维斯和他的小组不仅仅发现了“一个考古点的历史，而是发现了整个区域的历史，而且，不仅仅是一个时期的历史，而是过去所有时期的历史。”
即使对古人来说，皮勒斯的位置也是一个古老的谜。就像希腊地理学家斯特拉伯引用一个谜语时说的，“皮勒斯的前面有一个皮勒斯，另外还有一个皮勒斯。”即使是古典时期的希腊人也只知道内斯特的皮勒斯位于一个他们叫做克里法索的城镇附近，而那完全是另一个地方。
当我决定沿着布雷根的脚印，同戴维斯交谈。我不得不乘坐一整天的公共汽车，从大雾弥漫的雅典，途径伯罗奔尼撒半岛的山区，来到西梅塞尼亚的皮勒斯。8个小时后，已经脱水的我，带着一身雪茄烟味，摇摇晃晃地在皮勒斯下车，一下子就被现代希腊语地名搞糊涂了。1827年希腊独立后，奥托曼·那瓦利诺被重命名为皮勒斯。而奥托曼·那瓦利诺决不是古代的皮勒斯。要到达我所寻找的皮勒斯，需要再乘坐出租车，路途虽短却极为艰难：从城镇往北行14公里，沿着那瓦利诺海湾，然后沿着突兀的山坡爬行数百码，爬上被称作阿诺·恩格利诺斯的陡峭山脊顶部。
布雷根的挖掘现在被一个巨大的四周敞开的金属板搭的棚子覆盖。这个棚由希腊政府建造，用来保护青铜时代后期王宫低矮，破碎的残骸。到达后次日，我在脚踝高的宫殿遗址迷宫中游荡，寻找国王的中央大厅，和放有宝座的房间。从一些石膏的残片中，布雷根已经复原了宫殿中一些杰出的装饰物。有描绘鹿、鸽子、裸胸的武士、一位歌手和他的竖琴的壁画：对一位武士兼国王来说，这个背景富丽堂皇，尽管他的周围是会计师。大厅内，B类线形文字的档案并没有告诉我们国王的名字，但它们确实记载了这个地方的名字。
这就是皮勒斯，先于任何皮勒斯的皮勒斯。站在废墟外面，眺望山下平原那边的瓦利诺海湾和远处的落尼亚海，我能够理解为什么后来的希腊人找不到皮勒斯：他们相信，荷马的“沙地皮勒斯”一定在大海附近。为什么皮勒斯却在这里的山上这个问题，PRAP后来会为我回答。
采访正在工作的考古场地的记者通常可以指望一次很棒的“挖掘地”游览，一块面目全非的土地，到处是格子标记、工具、和成堆的需要筛选的土。在那些神圣的沟渠里，人们会给他看被太阳晒黑的研究生们用微型锄头和畚箕处理泥土。
而戴维斯没有一条挖掘的沟渠可以给我看。凉爽的夜晚，我们坐在位于赫拉村的PRAP总部，戴维斯向我解释说，调查工作是通过步行完成的。每天早上，15到20名学生分组呈扇形从王宫向崎岖的山间和海岸出发。每隔15米他们用步子测出准确的象限，收集地面的物品和环境数据。他们向前推进，不论是何种地形，多热的天气，还有希腊著名的地中海沿岸茂密的灌木丛林，这是连牧羊人和他们的羊群也不去的地方。
晚上，PRAP的步行者把他们在地面发现的物品带回设在赫拉村学校校舍内的一个临时博物馆内。那里，所有这些发现物品的地理位置被存储在一个惊人的计算机信息库中，而碎片则存放在循环使用的5加仑的油箱中。
破碎的陶器实际上是不因灾难而消失的人类生活记录。侵略者可能会洗劫珍稀的金属物品，幸存者可能会四处寻找建筑材料，但从来没有人会将碎陶器拿走——没有人，也就是说，除了考古学家。爱琴陶器品种，从真正古老的到几乎是现代的，特征清清楚楚，PRAP的陶器专家们可以易如反掌地将它们分选，好像分选袜子一样。
在很多考古场地，地层的岩石组成意味着一切：它解释物品的环境，显示它们是什么时候、如何被埋起来的，当时的环境条件如何。然而农民们已经在西梅塞尼亚的土地上翻搅了6000年；一些地方的地表已经腐蚀很深，以至他们可以直接耕起柔软的岩床泥灰土当土壤。随着时间的流逝，这些土壤已经变成了一个历史大杂烩：青铜时代晚期的油罐碎片同18世纪罗马屋顶瓦片混杂在一起。当这些碎片露出地面，就形成了地表下物质的大致数据模式。这些搜集和整理的按年代划分的陶器碎片经过电子计算机处理，标在一些场地周围，表明人类活动和人口的高峰点。而调查就是要找到这样的模式。
阅读《沙地皮勒斯》以寻找荷马史诗或希腊民族主义背后“真相”的读者，会被流过梅塞尼亚大地的时间激流冲走。书中综合了新的数据，古老的文献和新颖的分析，并运用了至少十几个学科的视角。所展示的证据来源广泛，从岩心钻探到在伊斯坦布尔和意大利的国家档案馆新发现的中世纪财政记录。
故事的开始，是非洲大陆板块和欧亚板块的撞击，隆起了泰杰特斯山脉和蔓延在希腊和巴尔干半岛的支脉。两百万年的河流冲蚀形成了两个高低起伏的海岸山谷，而一系列的冰川时代使山坡覆盖上松林。于是，在大约公元15000年前，人类开始留下其它的活动痕迹。
这里从大约公元前4000年就有了农业生产的痕迹，最初是沿着河谷使用轻便工具，公元前3000年后使用犁。之后的1000年中，人口和牲畜数量都急剧膨胀。这些膨胀引起花粉样本和土壤样本所展示的四个激进环境变化浪潮中的第一个——渐渐地抹去原有的植被，侵蚀掉大部分的表层土。第二个浪潮和公元前1400年崛起的迈锡尼文化在时间上刚好一致；第三个浪潮在公元前500年，古典时期新的精耕细作的农业。PRAP的物理学家将这些变化绘制成图表，得出了很多结论。例如，在公元前4世纪，皮勒斯四分之一的土地种植了橄榄树。第四个浪潮，也就是最后一个，同时是正在进行的破坏浪潮，起源于现代，伴随着推土机和化学喷雾器的出现。
每次环境变化浪潮都标志人类活动的一个巨大变化——或者，用通俗的语言讲——是历史的巨大变化。以那些橄榄丛林为例。这里，环境调查数据和考古调查数据错综复杂。在PRAP的研究之前，早期古典时期一直是梅塞尼亚历史上的黑洞。公元前8世纪，斯巴达通过一系列神出鬼没的战争，吞并了它的西部邻邦。而直到公元前371年，斯巴达人在卢卡特拉之战中败于底比斯将军俄帕米侬达斯，斯巴达的统治才覆灭。斯巴达人没有兴趣记录下自己的历史，更别说它属下的梅塞尼亚人的历史。只有通过其他好奇的希腊人，特别是爱管闲事的雅典人修西德底斯，当代学者才能对这些沦为斯巴达奴隶的人的命运略知一二。他们被贬为边缘人，没有政治权利；或成为国家拥有的奴隶。那么，在梅塞尼亚重新获得独立之前的那几个世纪里，斯巴达人做了些什么呢？
当时希腊的其它地方分布着许多农庄，这是普遍的农业状况。但PRAP在梅塞尼亚没有发现斯巴达时代农舍的残迹。洛杉矶J·保罗·盖提博物馆的考古学家安·B·哈里森，和英国牛津大学考古研究所的奈杰尔·斯宾塞，在看过PRAP详尽的调查报告后得出结论：在PRAP的调查地点，从没有农舍形式存在。相反，人口集中在大的村庄和小城镇中，——也许这样，他们的斯巴达统治者就可以控制并威慑他们——橄榄园则由国家拥有的奴隶看管。PRAP的陶器碎片还表明，随着斯巴达人的失败，人口开始向农村扩散。
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Text 2
History
by
Genevieve Zito Berkhofer & Robert F. Berkhofer,
Jr.
History is the study of the human
past. Historians study records of past events and prepare
new records based on their research. These records,
as well as the events themselves, are also commonly
called history.
The past has left many traces, including
traditions, folk tales, works of art, archaeological
objects, and books and other written records. Historians
use all these sources, but they mainly study the past
as it has been recorded in written documents. Thus,
history is generally limited to human events that have
taken place since the development of writing about 5
500 years ago.
Historians study all aspects of past
human life─social and cultural conditions as well as
political and economic events. Some study the past simply
to understand better how people of other times acted
and thought. Other historians seek to draw lessons from
those actions and thoughts as a guide for decisions
and policies today. However, they disagree about history's
lessons, and so there are many different interpretations
of the past.
History became a field of study in
many schools during the 1800's. Today, students throughout
the world study history in school. They learn about
the past chiefly from textbooks but also through such
activities as field trips to historical sites and visits
to museums. Most nations require schools to teach their
country's heritage as a means of developing patriotism.
History is thus used not only to tell students how their
national way of life developed but also to justify and
support national ideals and institutions.
Until the 1900's, historians primarily
studied political events. They wrote almost exclusively
about diplomacy, wars, and affairs of state. Today,
historians also study many other subjects. Some examine
economic and social conditions. Others trace the development
of religions, the arts, or other elements of culture.
History is often classified as one
of the social sciences, along with such fields as economics,
psychology, and sociology. However, historians differ
from other social scientists in the way in which they
study social processes. Other social scientists seek
to develop general laws by examining patterns of behavior
that recur throughout time. In contrast, historians
study the conditions or events of a particular time.
Historians may use theories from the other social sciences
to help explain these conditions and events. But historians
rarely attempt to develop general laws.
The field of history is so vast that
historians have traditionally split it into divisions.
The three main divisions of history are based on period,
nation, and topic. Periods of time form the chief divisions
in the study of history. Historians divide Western history
into three periods. They are (1) ancient times, from
about 3000 B.C. to the A.D. 400's; (2) medieval times,
the 400's to the 1500's; and (3) modern times, the 1500's
to the present. Scholars may divide these periods into
many shorter periods. For example, a historian may study
a particular century or a certain period, such as the
High Middle Ages (about the 1200's) or the Age of Reason
(1700's).
The division of history into periods
helps historians organize and focus their studies. However,
this division may distort the evidence presented by
history. For years, historians considered the medieval
era as a period of superstition and disorganization
that came between two supposedly better periods of history.
This viewpoint prevented them from realizing that the
Middle Ages had a vitality of its own and formed the
basis of modern European civilization.
The division of history into ancient,
medieval, and modern periods applies only to European
societies. Historians who study Asian or African societies
base their work on entirely different periods. Even
the dating system differs because Western society uses
the birth of Jesus Christ as a dividing line. The years
before the birth of Christ are designated B.C. (before
Christ), and those thereafter are considered A.D. (anno
Domini─in the year of our Lord).
The division of history by nation
involves, for example, the study of American, Chinese,
or French history. The division by topic enables historians
to deal with particular aspects of past human activity.
Many historians study economic, social, and intellectual
history in addition to studying traditional political
history. Some historians focus on such specialized topics
as the history of science, of an ethnic group, or of
a city.
The study of history involves many processes and techniques,
but most historians follow a few basic steps in their work. First, they
select for study an issue or person from some period of the past. Next,
they try to read a variety of source materials─everything written
by or about the subject. Then they interpret the information obtained
from these sources. Finally, they write a narrative history or a biography.
Historians use two main types of
sources in their research, primary sources and secondary
sources. Primary sources consist of documents and other
records produced during the period being studied. They
include books, diaries, letters, and government records.
Motion pictures and tape recordings may serve as primary
sources for events of the 1900's. Secondary sources
are materials prepared later by people who studied the
primary sources.
Historians choose documents that
reveal most accurately the facts they wish to know.
Therefore, they prefer primary sources to secondary
ones, and confidential reports to public ones. Historians
who study recent events use a special type of source.
They go to participants in those events and record their
oral testimony. Such oral history supplements documentary
history.
The scarcity of sources is a great
problem for historians, whose work sometimes resembles
that of detectives. Many activities and thoughts of
ordinary people, plus other useful data, were never
recorded. Much that was written down has been lost or
destroyed through the years. Also, historians often
must rely on the writings of only a few people. Such
writings are mere fragments on which to base a reconstruction
of the past.
Historians analyze the documents
with which they work to determine the reliability of
these sources. They compare documents with other sources
and also check for such flaws as errors in the order
of events or variations in writing style. In addition,
the historian must determine whether the author's account
of events can be trusted.
Basic historical facts are data generally
accepted by all historians because the evidence for
them seems unquestionable. However, historians often
disagree about the meaning and significance of such
facts. These experts try to be as unbiased as possible,
but their own beliefs and prejudices influence their
interpretation. For example, a historian's social, economic,
and religious views help determine what he or she accepts
as "normal" in another person. This judgment,
in turn, determines what the historian accepts as reliable
testimony or as a likely sequence of events. Such interpretation
explains why historians who use the same data may disagree
about events and their significance.
Some historians rely heavily on information
from other social sciences to form their interpretations.
For example, the study of history that uses theories
and insights from psychology is called psychohistory.
Similarly, some historians use statistical methods to
interpret data from such sources as old censuses and
account books. This approach is called cliometrics.
As the last step in interpretation,
a historian prepares a written account of events. The
writing of history is part of a field called historiography.
Some of the best historians use the techniques of the
novelist and dramatist to entertain as well as inform.
Since ancient times, scholars have
developed theories of history that attempt to explain
the entire course of human events through some general
principle. For example, the ancient Greeks regarded
history as a cycle of events that repeated itself endlessly.
In contrast, the traditional Christian theory considers
history as a series of events with a beginning and an
end. According to this theory, God directs human events
toward the final goal of the redemption of humanity.
This theory dominated nearly all the history written
in Europe during the Middle Ages.
In modern times, scholars have proposed
many other theories. During the late 1700's and the
1800's, philosophers developed the concept of history
as a process of inevitable progress. They believed this
progress would eventually lead to a thoroughly logical
social order based on a scientific understanding of
human events.
The German historian Oswald Spengler
argued in his book The Decline of the West (1918-1922)
that civilizations, like organisms, go through a cycle
of birth, development, and death. Arnold Toynbee, a
British historian, also presented a cyclical theory
in his 12-volume work, A Study of History (1934-1961).
However, Toynbee disagreed with Spengler's belief that
modern Western civilization is already doomed.
Nearly all theories of history assume
that it has meaning and purpose, but there is no overwhelming
evidence to support this concept. In fact, many scholars
today question whether history has any meaning other
than that which people read into it. As a result, most
modern philosophers have turned away from such theories.
Instead, they examine such issues as the nature of history
as a field of knowledge and the method of explanation
used by historians.
The world's oldest written history
comes from China. Archaeologists have discovered records
of Chinese history written before 1000 B.C. The first
great Chinese historian, Sima Qian, wrote the earliest
major history of China about 100 B.C.
Western historical writing began
in ancient Greece. The first major Greek historian was
Herodotus, who lived during the 400's B.C. He wrote
a long account of the wars between the Greeks and the
Persians. Herodotus, who is often called the "Father
of History", had few Greek documents and could
not read Persian. Therefore, he based his narrative
primarily on tradition and oral testimony. He added
fictitious details to make it more lively, but modern
historians have confirmed the basic accuracy of his
writing. Herodotus' most famous successor, Thucydides,
strove to write critically and accurately. His History
of the Peloponnesian War is an authentic account
of the 27-year war in which Sparta finally defeated
Athens in 404 B.C.
Several ancient Romans also became
famous historians. Livy wrote a long, detailed narrative
called History from the Founding of the City.
It tells the story of Rome from the city's birth until
9 B.C. Cornelius Tacitus is known especially for his
Histories and Annals. These works examine
Roman history from the death of the emperor Augustus
in A.D. 14 through the reign of Vitellius, which ended
in A.D. 69.
Christian writers, including a number
of monks, contributed almost all the historical accounts
of medieval times that were written during that period.
Some Christian historians attempted to write a universal
history by combining Jewish and Christian history with
the record of the Greek and Roman past. During the early
300's, Eusebius, the bishop of Caesarea in Palestine,
produced the most important universal history of that
type. In another work, Ecclesiastical History,
Eusebius presented a history of Christianity to show
that God controlled human events. During the 400's,
Saint Augustine developed this idea fully into a philosophy
of history in his book The City of God.
The greatest historian of the early
Middle Ages was an English monk named Bede. His major
work, Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation
(731), is still the principal source for English history
up to that time. Bede and the other medieval historians
tried to show the hand of God in historical events.
Today, their works are significant chiefly as records
of the events of their times.
During the 1300's, a great Arab historian
named Ibn Khaldun wrote his seven-volume Universal
History, a study of world civilization. Also at
this time in Europe, people other than members of the
clergy started to write histories. European historians
of the 1400's began to concentrate more on the human
view of events and less on the divine aspect.
An important early modern historian
was the British scholar Edward Gibbon. His masterpiece,
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
(1776-1788), reveals Gibbon's accurate and thorough
scholarship. This work also reflects the bias against
Christianity of Gibbon and other great thinkers of his
day. Gibbon's book blames Christianity in part for the
fall of the Roman Empire.
The methods of modern historical
study developed during the 1800's, and history became
a recognized academic field. Leopold von Ranke, a German
historian, had the most significant impact on the development
of history in the 1800's. Ranke, who is known as the
"Father of Modern History", devised the basic
methods used by modern historians to analyze and evaluate
documents. He also introduced the use of seminars for
training future historians in methods of research.
Ranke mainly studied political history.
During the 1900's, however, European and American historians
began to emphasize the importance of social and economic
forces in history. Today, historians study these and
all other aspects of the human past.
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课文二
历史
历史研究人类的过去。历史学家们研究以往事件的记录，并在研究的基础上做出新的记录。这些记录同事件本身一样，一般也称为历史。
过去留下了许多痕迹，包括传统习俗、民间传说、工艺品、考古文物、书籍及其它书面记录等等。所有这些资源对历史学家来说都是有用的，不过他们主要研究用书面文件记录的过去。所以，历史一般限于大约5500年前书写发展之后人类发生的事件。
历史学家们研究过去人类生活的各个方面，包括社会文化状况以及政治经济事件。一些历史学家研究过去，纯粹是为了更好地了解其他时代人们的行为和思想；而另一些历史学家们则是为了从那些行为和思想中汲取教训，作为今天作出决定和政策的向导。然而，对于历史教训这些历史学家们的意见往往不一，因此，对过去有许多不同的阐释。
十九世纪，历史成为众多学校里的一个研究领域。现在，全球各地的学生在学校学习历史。他们主要是学习课本，有时也到历史古迹实地踏访并参观博物馆。大部分国家要求学校教授该国的传统，以此来培养爱国主义精神。因此，历史不但使学生了解自己国家的生活方式如何发展变化，也被用来维护和支持民族理念和国家制度。
二十世纪以前，历史学家研究的主要是政治事件。他们研究的几乎毫无例外地是外交、战争和国家事务等。而现在的历史学家们还研究其它许多课题。一些人研究经济和社会状况。还有的人则探讨宗教、艺术及其它文化因素的发展。
历史常常被划分为一门社会科学，同属社会科学的还有如经济学、心理学和社会学等学科。尽管如此，历史学家在研究社会过程的方式上有别于其他社会科学家。其他社会科学家们是通过分析反复出现的行为模式，从中总结出一些基本规律。与此相对照，历史学家们研究的是一个特定时期的状况或事件。他们或许会利用其它社会学科的理论来解释这些状况和事件，但很少会去总结基本规律。
历史的研究领域非常广博，以致历史学家按照传统分属不同的分支。历史学三大分支，基础是时代、国别和主题。不同的时代构成了历史学研究的主要分支。历史学家们把西方历史分为三个阶段：（1）古代（公元前3000年~公元五世纪）、（2）中世纪（公元五世纪到公元十六世纪）、（3）现代（公元十六世纪至今）。学者们可以将这些时代划分成更多更短的时代。例如，某个历史学家可能会研究某一特定的世纪或时代，比如说中世纪鼎盛期（公元十三世纪左右）或理性时代（十八世纪）。
将历史分为不同的历史阶段，可以帮助历史学家们组织和关注自己的研究。但是，这种分类可能会扭曲历史提供的证据。多年来，历史学家们将中世纪看作是迷信与无序的时代；位于两个较好的时代之间。这种看法使他们难以认识到这样一个事实：中世纪亦是个有其自身活力的时代，并构成了现代欧洲文明的基础。
将历史分为古代、中世纪、和现代只适用于欧洲社会。那些研究亚洲或非洲社会的历史学家们划分时代与此截然不同。甚至连时间系统也不相同，因为欧洲社会用基督的诞生日作为分界线，在此以前的叫公元前（基督诞生前），之后的叫公元（耶酥纪元）。
按照国家对历史进行的划分，比如美国的、中国的、或法国的历史研究。按题材分类使历史学家们能够针对人类历史活动的某一方面进行研究。研究传统的政治历史之外，许多历史学家还研究经济、社会和思想历史。有的历史学家则集中研究科学史，一个种族的历史或一个城市的历史这样专门的题目。
历史研究涵括许多过程和技巧，但大多数历史学家们都遵循一些基本的步骤。首先，他们从历史某一时代中选出一人或一事进行研究；其次，历史学家们会去阅读各种各样的资料——不管是当事人写的还是别人写的。然后，他们对从这些资料中获得的信息进行阐释。最后，他们写作一本叙述事件的历史或传记。
研究中，历史学家们使用两种材料：一手资料和二手资料。一手资料包括被研究的时期产生的文献及其它记录，包括书籍、日记、书信和政府记录等。二十世纪的电影和录音也可以作为一手资料。二手资料则是后来研究一手资料的人产生的资料。
历史学家们挑选那些最能准确地反映他们想知道的历史事实的文献。所以，他们喜欢一手资料甚于二手资料，喜欢机密报告甚于公开报道。研究近期事件的历史学家则使用一种特殊的方法。他们找到事件的参加者，然后记下他们的口述证明。这样的口述历史补充了文献记述的历史。
资料短缺对于一个历史学家来说是个大问题，有时他们工作起来就像侦探。普通人的许多活动、想法及其它有用的资料，从来没有记录。记录下来的东西又有许多或者丢失或者被毁坏。再加上历史学家通常依赖的著述仅出自少数的几个人。这样的著述只是赖以重新建构过去的残片而已。
历史学家们分析他们研究的文献，决定这些资料的可信性。他们将这些文献与其它资料进行比较，并审查诸如事件顺序之类的错误和写作风格的变化。除此以外，历史学家还必须弄清楚作者对事件的叙述是否可信。
基本的历史事实是大体上所有的历史学家都接受的数据，因为它们的证据似乎毋庸置疑。但是，历史学家们经常就这些事实的意义及重要性争论不休。这些专家们想尽可能不带偏见，可他们自己的信仰和偏见影响他们的解释。例如，一个历史学家的社会、经济、和宗教观，会在他或她判断另外一个人的行为是否“正常”时起作用。反过来，这一判断又会决定该历史学家接受他认为的可信的证明或事件可能的顺序。这就说明，为什么使用相同资料的历史学家会对某一事件或其重要性争论不休。
有些历史学家很大程度上依赖其它社会科学的信息来形成自己的解释。比如，利用心理学的理论和观点研究历史称之为心理历史学。同样，一些历史学家用统计学方法来解释来自时间久远的人口普查和帐簿这样的资料的数据。这种研究方法称之为计量历史学。
历史学家研究的最后一步是准备一份历史事件的书面叙述，写作历史是被称做历史编纂学领域的一部分。有些最好的历史学家使用小说家和剧作家的技巧，既提供信息，又有娱乐功能。
自古代起，学者们就一直在发展历史理论，试图通过一些一般原理来解释人类事件的整个进程。比如说，古希腊人认为历史是由事件构成的循环，无始无终地重复自己。与此形成对照，传统的基督教理论则认为历史是一系列事件，有始有终。根据这一理论，上帝指引人类一步步走向最终目标：人类的拯救。这一理论几乎统治了中世纪时期欧洲所有的历史著述。
在现代，学者们提出了许多其它理论。在十八世纪晚期和十九世纪，哲学家们提出了历史是一个必然进步的过程的观点。他们认为，这一过程会最终走向一个建立在对人类事件的科学理解的基础上的，完全合乎逻辑的社会秩序。
德国历史学家奥斯瓦尔德·斯宾格
勒在其著作《西方的衰落》（1918-1922）一书中称，文明正如一个有机体，会经过诞生、发展和死亡这样一个循环。英国历史学家阿诺德·汤因比在其十二卷本著作《历史研究》中也提出了循环理论。但是，汤因比不同意斯宾格勒关于现代文明已经走到了末日的主张。
几乎所有的历史理论都认为，历史有意义和目的，但是没有充足的证据来支持该观点。实际上，现在许多学者提出疑问，除了人们强加给历史的意义之外，历史是否有任何意义。结果，大多数现代哲学家们已经抛弃了这样的理论。他们转而考察作为知识一个领域的历史的本质，和历史学家解释方法这样的问题。
世界上最古老的书面历史来自中国。考古学家们已经发现了写于公元前一千年之前的中国历史记录。中国第一位伟大的历史学家司马迁在大约公元前一百年时写了最早的重要的中国历史著作。
西方历史著述始于古希腊。第一位重要的希腊历史学家是希罗多德，他生活在公元前五世纪。他对发生在希腊人和波斯人之间的战争作了长篇的叙述。希罗多德常常被称为“历史之父”。他没有多少希腊语文献，也不懂波斯语。所以，他的叙述主要是以传统和口头证实为基础。为了使自己的叙述更生动一些，他添加了一些假想的细节。不过现代历史学家们已经证明，他的叙述大体上是准确的。希罗多德最出名的继承者修西得底斯，尽力进行客观和准确的记述。他的《伯罗奔尼撒战争史》是一部对长达二十七年，斯巴达人最终于公元前404年击败雅典人的战争的真实记载。
几位古罗马人也成了著名的历史学家。利维写了一部篇幅很长，细节丰富的叙事作品，称为《罗马史》。它讲述罗马从城市建立到公元前九世纪的历史。科尼硫斯·塔西佗特别以其《历史》和《编年史》闻名于世。这些著作研究了从公元14年奥古斯都国王去世到公元69年维提硫斯统治结束之间的罗马历史。
中世纪时期写的几乎所有历史记录，都出自于基督教作家，包括一些僧侣。一些信仰基督教的历史学家试图将犹太史、基督教史、过去的希腊和罗马文献合为一体，写一部通史。在四世纪早期，时任巴勒斯坦恺撒利亚主教的优西比乌斯写了此类著作中最重要的一部。在他另一部作品《基督教教会史》中，优西比乌斯记述了基督教史，来表明是上帝在控制人类历史。五世纪的时候，圣奥古斯丁在他的著作《上帝之城》中，把这种观念充分发展成了一门历史哲学。
中世纪早期最著名的历史学家是英国僧侣比德。他的主要作品《英格兰人教会史》（731）仍然是到那时为止的英国历史的主要资料来源。比德及其他中世纪历史学家试图揭示上帝在历史事件中的作用。现在，他们的作品作为他们时代发生的事件的记录依然重要。
十四世纪的时候，阿拉伯伟大的历史学家伊本·赫勒敦写下了七卷本的《通史》，是研究世界文明的著作。欧洲也是在这个时候，不是教会成员的人开始撰写历史著作。十五世纪欧洲历史学家开始更多关注人对历史事件的看法；较少关注神的一面。
英国学者爱德华·吉本是一位重要的早期现代历史学家。其杰出作品《罗马帝国衰亡史》（1776-1788），显示出吉本准确而透彻的学者风范。这部著作还反映了作者及其同时代伟大思想家们对基督教的偏见。吉本在书中将罗马帝国的衰亡部分地归因于基督教。
现代历史研究的方法在十九世纪得到了发展；同时，历史学成为公认的学术领域。德国历史学家列奥波尔德·冯·兰克对十九世纪历史学的发展有着最为深远的影响。他被称为“现代历史学之父”，创造了现代历史学家分析和评价文献的基本方法。他还引入了专题演讲，在研究方法方面培养未来的历史学家。
兰克研究的主要是政治史。但在二十世纪，欧洲和美国的历史学家开始强调历史中社会经济力量的重要性。今天，历史学家的研究不但包括这些方面，还包括人类历史所有其它方面。
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