Memories of Zhoukoudian-周口店记忆-英文

序 Foreword 周口店第1地点是个发掘和研究接近百年的重要古人类遗址。在20世纪20年代，曾经有一个广为流行的关于人类起源的假说：由于喜马拉雅山脉隆升，人类起源于中亚。周口店的发现为这个假说提供了支持。北京猿人**个完整头盖骨的发现和其石制工具的确认，解决了持续三十多年的爪哇猿人是否人类的争论，将有实物佐证的人类历史延长到50万年，从此北京猿人和爪哇猿人并列为人类*早的祖先。周口店第1地点又以人类化石之丰富和全面以及兼有丰富的文化遗存而尤胜一筹。 Locality 1 at Zhoukoudian is an important place of archaic hominid, where excavations and research have been conducted for nearly a century. There was a wide-spreading hypothesis on the origin of human beings in the 20’s of the 20th century: Humans originated from Central Asia due to the gradual elevation of the Himalayas. The discovery of the site at Zhoukoudian has supported such a theory. The finding of the first intact skull of Sinanthropus pekinensis or Peking Man and the confirmation of their stone tools have brought a 30-year-old argumentation to an end whether or not Pithecanthropus erectus or Java Man is human, thus pushing back the substantiated human history for half a million years and putting both Peking Man and Java Man side by side on the list of earliest ancestors of human beings. Locality 1 at Zhoukoudian gets a better edge by presenting a more diversified and comprehensive array of human fossil remains with rich contents of cultural relics. 1959年，东非坦桑尼亚发现170万年前的石器，将有实物佐证的人类历史延长到了一百多万年，周口店遗址的北京猿人在人类祖先中退居次席，但仍旧是全球早期人类遗迹*丰富的遗址。近年西班牙Atapuerca SH遗址拥有更多的人类化石，超过了周口店第1地点，但周口店第1地点在人类进化研究中仍旧具有其不可替代的重要地位。 Stone artifacts dating back to 1.7 million years ago were unearthed in Tanzania, eastern Africa in 1959, which traces the substantiated human history further back to more than 1 million years ago. Backing down from its first place on the earliest human list, Peking Man at the Locality 1 of Zhoukoudian still maintains the most profound cultural relics title of all early human remains across the world. Although more human fossil remains were discovered at the Atapuerca SH Site of Spain in recent years, Locality 1 at Zhoukoudian still holds its irreplaceable position in the study of human evolution. 在第1地点以后，龙骨山和附近又先后发现了山顶洞、第4地点、田园洞这些含有人化石的和另外几处含有石器的遗址，构成了周口店遗址群。其发掘、研究和诸多有关方面的历史自然是人们关注的对象。从有关周口店遗址群发掘和研究的学术论文以及当时的记录可以反映许多历史细节。从前人的回忆录之类的资料中也往往能窥见这个遗址群历史的片段。周口店北京人遗址博物馆组织一些老同志将他们记忆中关于这个遗址群经历过而又缺乏文字记录的历史片段以口述方式贡献出来，形成现在这本文集为读者提供许多前所未闻生动具体的细节，供后人参考。周口店遗址博物馆隗建华副馆长执意请我作序，我感觉为难，因为一件关于周口店的悬案久久不能释怀:周口店遗址群**件人类化石出土这样重大事件发生的年份在文献上曾有着不同的说法。根据Davidson Black（步达生）等所著1933年出版的Fossil Man in China（《中国原人史要》)第7页所载，这个遗址的**颗人牙化石是1923年出土的（原文中译：在1923年的发掘中，师丹斯基博士从周口店的洞穴堆积物中发现了在当时被他认为属于类人猿的一颗磨耗了的，石化了的人科臼齿），而根据贾兰坡等1984年所著《周口店发掘记》则记载为“在1921年发掘时就发现了一颗很可疑的牙齿”（第15页，从上下文可以肯定其所指是周口店出土的**颗人牙化石）。孰是孰非，令人困惑。上述二书的作者虽然都不是事件的亲历者，但是步达生1926或1927年到周口店，贾兰坡1931年到周口店，都不能肯定没有与亲历者交流的机会。 After Locality 1, successive sites were discovered around it like Upper Cave, Locality 4, Tianyuan Cave which have yielded human fossils and some other sites associated with stone artefacts, forming a site group at Zhoukoudian. The excavations, researches and other history of these sites naturally draw people’s eyeballs. A whole lot of historic details can be mirrored through academic papers and logbooks on the excavation and research of the site group at Zhoukoudian. People are also able to catch a glimpse of the history of the site group from the literature of the predecessors such as their memoirs. Zhoukoudian Site Museum has asked some of its veterans to orally contribute vivid and unprecedented details from their memory what the Site Group went through in this great collection for its future readers. Wei Jianhua, Deputy Director of Zhoukoudian Site Museum, insisted inviting me to write the foreword, which makes me hesitant because I have been bothered about a cold case of Zhoukoudian – literature differs in the year when the first ancient human fossil was unearthed -- an event of great historical importance. According to the statement “While excavating in 1923 Dr. Otto Zdansky recovered from the Choukoutien cave deposit a worn and fossilized hominid molar tooth which he recognized at the time of its discovery as being anthropomorphic” on page 7 in the 1933 edition of Fossil Man in China written by Davison Black, the first fossilized human molar which was unearthed from this site happened in 1923. However, based on Excavations Zhoukoudian written by Jia Lanpo and his colleague in 1984, “a highly suspicious tooth was found in the excavation that took place in 1921” (p. 15, from the context the tooth means the first human tooth fossil unearthed at Zhoukoudian). It is pretty confusing as to who is right and who is wrong. Neither of the authors was able to witness the event. Nevertheless, Davison Black visited Zhoukoudian either in 1926 or 1927 and Jia Lanpo came to the same site in 1931. So, we cannot be positive that neither had the chance to talk to the person(s) involved. 上述例子使我想到，不是在事件发生当时所写，而是后来由不同作者追记的文字中有时难免出现互相矛盾的叙述。我没有时间和精力通览本书，更不能进行考证，不敢对其中记述的诸多细节妄加评论和褒贬，只能给一些建议如下: 请编者提请各位口述者务必仔细校核文字，避免在录音转换为文字过程中出现有违其本意之处甚至错误，鉴于上述**颗人牙出土年份的悬案，我敦请读者不要忽略这样的事实:口述者包括我本人在内多已进入耄耋之年，难免有记忆不甚准确甚至失实之处。其所述内容虽然是值得参考的资料，但不可全都当作信史转述，否则可能会给后人徒增困扰。读者如发现本书文字有互相矛盾或与事件发生当时的记载或客观的信史不能兼容时，请考虑先贤儒家亚圣孟子的名言：“尽信书不如无书。”尽力进行理性思考。如果读者能在这些口述者尚未离世时把发现的疑问提出来，将有助于使其得到澄清，避免产生新的悬案，让这本文集起到更大的正面作用，尽量减少乃至避免产生负面的影响。 I may conclude from the above cases that contradictory descriptions may occur in the aftermath of an event which is not logged in time. I am not in a position to comment on the details in this book due to my limited time, energy and possibility of verifying the facts, what I can do is to offer the following advice: As an editor, you need to caution the narrator that great care must be taken to proofread the literature so as to avoid possible deviations from the original text or even mistakes in the process of switching recordings to writings. In views of the uncertainty of the year in which the above-mentioned human tooth fossil was discovered, I would strongly suggest to the readers that never neglect the fact that discrepancies or even distortion can happen to the memory of narrators in very old age including me myself. What they have stated can be of great value for reference but should never be 100% passed on to others as truth. Otherwise, it might cause confusion among people of our future generations. If the reader finds the literature in this book is self-contradictory or what is stated in this book is incompatible with actual events or facts, please bear in mind the famous motto of Mencius ”To believe everything said in the book is worse than to have no books at all.” Try rational thinking. If the reader is able to raise his/her doubts discovered in the book before the narrators pass, it will certainly be beneficial for all his/her doubts to be cleared without their running into some new ones down the road. May this collection bring more positive rather than negative impact on all our readers!