David Sanders
People here don’t seem to realize that in the time of Plato and Aristotle, the Golden Age of Greek civilization, the Pyramids were already 2000 years old. The idea that civilization started in Greece is a Victorian notion, because they couldn’t accept that Europeans had received their knowledge from other “races” (races being another Victorian notion).

這里的人似乎沒有意識到,在柏拉圖和亞里士多德時代,也就是希臘文明的黃金時代,金字塔已經(jīng)有2000年的歷史了。認為文明起源于希臘是維多利亞時代的觀念,因為他們無法接受歐洲人從其他“種族”(種族是另一個維多利亞時代的概念)那里獲得知識的事實。

Agriculture was key, because civilization can only develop where there is a surplus in economic terms. But there were other fertile river valleys. I remember reading in Fukiyama - although I don’t think he claims it as his own idea - that a fertile area where people could not migrate from allowed leaders to capture that surplus and use it.

農(nóng)業(yè)是關(guān)鍵,因為只有在經(jīng)濟上有剩余的地方,文明才能發(fā)展。但還有其他肥沃的河谷地帶。我記得在福山的著作中讀到過,雖然我不認為這是他自己的觀點,但一個人們無法遷徙的肥沃地區(qū)讓領(lǐng)導(dǎo)者能夠掌控這份剩余,并加以利用。

So for example in Egypt, there was a broad, fertile valley surrounded by desert. As the population grew, they couldn’t just migrate out into the desert, so leaders were able to exercise control and use the surplus to develop infrastructure and technologies.

例如,在埃及,存在著一個被沙漠包圍的廣闊肥沃的河谷。隨著人口增長,他們不能簡單地遷移到沙漠中,所以領(lǐng)導(dǎo)者能夠行使控制權(quán),并利用剩余來發(fā)展基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施和技術(shù)。

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