BBC 100件藏品中的世界史009:Maya Maize God Statue瑪雅玉米神像
009:EPISODE 9 - Maya maize God Statue
第九集——瑪雅玉米神像
Maya maize god (made around 1,300 years ago). Stone statue, found in Honduras
瑪雅玉米神像，石像，距今約一千三百年前，出土于洪都拉斯。
The sound of worship coming from a Christian Church in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico, indicates where the local Indian population are offering their god, not just their devotion, but also their food - it's a practice they've been following for thousands of years.
墨西哥最南端的恰帕斯州當?shù)匾婚g基督教堂傳來了禱告的聲音。這其實是當?shù)氐挠〉诎踩嗽谙蛩麄兊纳窆┓钏麄兊尿\與食物。向神靈供奉食物這種做法對他們而言已經(jīng)有數(shù)千年歷史了。
Nowadays we like to say 'we are what we eat', but for generations among the faithful, it's been equally true to say 'we worship what we eat'.
如今我們流行說“吃什么，像什么。”對于這些祖祖輩輩忠誠于了自身這種虔誠的人們，這說法應該改成“吃什么，崇拜什么。”
This willingness to venerate the food on our plate seems to arrive at a particular moment in human development - and it tells us much more about a society than its favourite supper dish.
這種崇拜我們盤中餐的意愿，似乎是在人類發(fā)展史上的某個特定時刻降臨的，而且它向我們講敘關于這個社會的故事，遠遠超過了一個民族晚餐桌上最得意的一盤佳肴。
'It's always present in one way or another - either to be eaten, or to be looked at, or to be worshipped. It is part of the cultural identity.' (Restaurateur Santiago Calva)
“它的存在是永恒的，形式是多樣的，要么是食物，要么是欣賞物，要么是崇拜的偶像。它是文化認同的一部分。”經(jīng)營餐廳的圣地亞哥·卡爾瓦說道。
Some archaeologists argue that food must always have had a divine role even for our earliest ancestors; just think of the cow goddess of Egypt, or Bacchus and Ceres of classical mythology, or Annapurna, the Hindu goddess of food. But there's a particular time, after the end of the Ice Age, so between ten and five thousand years ago roughly, when a range of new foods seems to be accompanied by a range of new gods.
一些考古學家認為食物對我們最早期的祖先而言，必定始終扮演著神圣的角色，例如埃及的牛女神，歐洲古典神話中的酒神與谷神，印度教中的食物女神安納普爾納。然而人類歷史上有一定特定時期，大概是冰河時代結束后的五千到一萬年前之間，當一系列新興食物的出現(xiàn)，伴隨而來的似乎有一系列新造的神靈。
Across the world, people began to identify particular plants that would provide them with food. In the Middle East - as we saw in the last programme - it was wheat and barley; in China millet and rice; in Papua New Guinea taro; and in Africa sorghum. And, as they did so, everywhere stories about gods emerged; gods of death and of rebirth, gods who would guarantee the cycle of the seasons and ensure the return of the crops, and gods - more importantly - that represent food itself. Today's object is myth-made material; a food god from Central America.
在世界各地，人類開始學會識別特定的植物，當成提供食物的農(nóng)作物。在中東，我們在上期節(jié)目中已經(jīng)看到的，出現(xiàn)的是小麥和大麥;在中國，小米和大米;在巴布亞新幾內(nèi)亞是芋頭;在非洲是高粱。隨著這些作物的降臨，涌現(xiàn)出各種各樣的神靈與相關他們的故事，死神、重生之神、掌管季節(jié)變換之神、保佐豐收之神，以及最最重要的，代表食物本身的神靈。今天要介紹的物品就是充滿了神話色彩，一位來自中美洲的食物之神。
Here, in the heart of the British Museum, we have a god of maize. He's a bust, carved of limestone using a stone chisel and a basalt hammer, and the features are large, symmetrical, the eyes closed, the lips parted - as though this god is in communion with a different world, quietly meditating.
在大英博物館的中央，我們有一尊玉米之神。他是一件胸像，使用石鑿和玄武巖錘在一塊石灰石上雕刻出來的。五官宏大，左右對稱，雙眼緊閉，嘴唇分開，仿佛這位神靈正在與另一個世界進行溝通，沉浸在冥想中。
The arms are bent, the palms of the hands face outwards - one raised, one lower - giving an impression of serene power. The head of the god is covered with an enormous headdress in the shape of a stylised corn cob, and his hair is like the silky strands that line the inside of a cob of corn, inside the wrapping leaves.
雙臂彎曲，雙掌手頭向上，一只抬高，一只較低;讓人感覺到一股安祥而強大的力量。神像頭部覆蓋著一個巨大的頭飾，具有很強裝飾色彩的玉米芯形狀，他的頭發(fā)就像是玉米須，絲綢般的，跟玉米芯一起被包裹在重重疊疊的玉米葉里。
Originally this statue would have sat with many other similar gods high up on a stepped pyramid-style temple in western Honduras. He was found in Copán, a major Mayan city and religious centre, whose monumental ruins you can still visit today. All of the temple's statues were commissioned by the Mayan ruler of the day, to adorn the magnificent temple that he built at Copán around AD 700. Between the head and the body you can very clearly see the join, and indeed the head looks rather too big for the body, because when the temple in Copán (in western Honduras, from which this came) was destroyed, all the statues fell, and heads and bodies were pieced together, but whether this head and this body precisely belong together is actually not the key thing - because all these gods are about the central power, the central role, of maize to the local people.
本來這尊石像應該與許多其他類似的神像一起，被供奉在洪都拉斯西部那高高的瑪雅階梯式金字塔上的寺廟里。他出土于科潘，一個重要的瑪雅城市與宗教中心;直到今天你仍然可以去探訪宏偉壯觀的遺址。當年瑪雅王下命雕刻了這里所有的神像，來裝飾這座大概公元700左右建造于科潘的雄偉廟宇。仔細觀察一下這件胸像，你可以看出頸部那邊有一條明顯的拼接線，而且這頭像放當在身體上頗顯頭重腳輕之感。其實這是因為當年出土這神像的科潘神廟曾經(jīng)被摧毀過，所有的神像都倒蹋了。后來人類重新把散落一地的各個頭像與身軀給拼湊起來，所以我們眼前這尊神像就拼成這樣子了。不過這頭與身是不是原本是一體，這倒是其次，重點是所有這位神靈都代表著瑪雅文化中的中央集權、核心作用，也就是當?shù)厝嗣竦拿}——玉米。
Our statue of the maize god is obviously a comparative new boy; he's made as late as AD 700. But he comes at the end of a very long tradition; Central Americans had been worshipping him and his predecessors for thousands of years, and his mythic story mirrors the annual planting and harvesting of the corn on which all Central American civilisation depended.
我們這奠神像相對而言可謂是個比較晚輩的小弟弟了，大概制造于公元700年左右。不過他傳承了一段相當長的傳統(tǒng);在過去幾千年的歲月里，中美洲的人們一直在祭拜他與他的各位前任，而且有關他的神話故事栩栩如生地描繪了所有中美洲文明從古以來依賴的玉米種植與收成，年年如此，生生不息。
Like the maize plant, the maize god is decapitated at harvest time, and is then reborn - fresh, young, and beautiful at the beginning of each new growing season. John Staller, anthropologist and author of the book 'Histories of Maize' explains why the maize god was a common choice for rich and powerful patrons:
就像玉米植株一樣，收割季節(jié)時，玉米神的頭顱就會被割下來，然后再重生，在每一輪新的生長季節(jié)都將青春煥發(fā)、活力充沛、健美茁壯。人類學家約翰·斯托勒著作了《玉米的歷史》這本書，他向我們解釋了為什么玉米神公認為富饒與權力的守護神：
'The elite from ancient societies focussed upon corn as having sacred kinds of properties which they then associated with themselves. And this is pretty obvious in the young maize god - the sculpture was apparently a manifestation of mythological beings resulting from the third Maya creation. There were eight mythological beings, four women and four men, who are the ancestors of all the Maya people.
“古代社會精英團隊把玉米的地位提升到神圣的財產(chǎn)，并且將自己與玉米聯(lián)系起來。這點很顯然地在這年輕的玉米神身上體現(xiàn)出來;你看，這雕像明顯是第三瑪雅人造神運動的成果。瑪雅歷史上有八位神靈，四男四女，被奠為全體瑪雅人的祖先?，斞湃苏J為他們祖先基本上是從玉米進化而來的，由黃玉米與白玉米面團做成的。
The Maya believed that their ancestors essentially came from corn, and they were formed of yellow and white maize dough. Maize was certainly a primary focus of ritual and religious veneration by ancient Meso-American people, going back all the way before the Maya and even into the Olmec civilisation.'
玉米曾經(jīng)是古代中美洲人禮儀與宗教崇拜的重中之重，可一種追溯回前瑪雅，甚至奧爾梅克文明時代。”
So our maize god is not just a hauntingly beautiful statue, he gives us a real insight into the way ancient American society thought about itself and its environment. The maize god represents both the fact of the agricultural cycle of planting, harvesting and replanting, and the faith in a parallel human cycle of birth, death and rebirth - but more, he is the very stuff of which the Central Americans are made. Where the Hebrew god made Adam out of dust, the Mayan gods used maize to make their humans. The mythical story is told in the most famous epic in the whole of the Americas, the 'Popol Vuh'. For generations, this was passed on through oral traditions before finally being written down in the seventeenth century. Here's a taste of it:
因此，我們的玉米神可不只是一位高高在上的美麗雕像，他允許我們?nèi)フ嬲w會到古代美洲社會人們是如何思考社會本身及周遭環(huán)境的。玉米神象征著農(nóng)作物種植、收獲與補植這種生生不息的循環(huán)過程，同時也象征著另一種生命的循環(huán)——人類的出生、死亡與新生命的重新誕生這種生死輪回。更重要的是，玉米神是中美洲人民存在性的最本質事物。希伯來的上帝用塵埃造出了首位人類亞當，瑪雅神用玉米來創(chuàng)造人類。在整個美洲神話中，著名史詩《波波爾烏》講敘了這個神話故事。悠悠歲月里，這故事在一代又一代人中口口相傳，一直流傳到十七世紀，終于被記載入書本。讓我們來品味一下其中一小段：
'And here is the beginning of the conception of humans and of the search for the ingredients of the human body ... So they spoke; the bearer, begetter, the makers, modellers - and a sovereign plumed serpent - they sought and discovered what was needed for human flesh.
“于是眾神就開始有了最原始的關于人類的概念，也就著手進行尋找人類肉體的工作。眾神開口說：人類應該是負重者、繼承者、創(chuàng)造者與模范者，擁有主權意識及靈蛇般的靈性。經(jīng)過千辛萬苦的苦苦尋找，眾神最終找到并發(fā)現(xiàn)了一種人類肉體需要的物質。
It was only a short while before the sun, moon and stars were to appear above the makers and modellers. Split place, bitter water place, is the name, the yellow corn, white corn, came from there. And this was when they found the staple foods, and then the yellow corn and white corn were ground. After that they put into words the making, the modelling of our first mother-father, with yellow corn, white corn alone for the flesh, food alone for the human legs and arms for our first fathers, the four human works.'
那時眾神初混沌，創(chuàng)造出日月星辰，山川河流。在那苦水之濱，養(yǎng)育了黃玉米與白玉米。眾神尋找到那里，尋找到這些糧食并進行種植。隨后他們念起了咒語，用黃玉米與白玉米造出了人類的肉體，再用其他食品做成人類的四肢，賦于了生命。這就是我們最早的父母親，眾神最初的四件人類作品。”
But why did maize become the favoured food and the revered grain of the Americas? Why not wheat or a certain type of meat? The answer lies not in maize's divine connections, but in the environment that Central America offered. In this part of the world at this time around nine thousand years ago, other food resources were very thin on the ground. There were no easily domesticated animals - as you would find pigs, sheep or cattle elsewhere - and the staples were a trinity of plants that were slowly cultivated and tamed: squashes, beans and maize. But beans and squashes don't become gods - why does maize?
但為什么唯獨玉米成為所有美洲人最為青睞的食品與崇敬的谷物?為什么不是小麥或者其它類型的肉類呢?答案卻不是因為玉米本身有何神圣性，而是由中美洲自身的環(huán)境所決定的。九千年以前，在地球的這部分地區(qū)，其他食物來源相當之貧乏。也沒有容易馴化的動物。你在其他地區(qū)可以找到的豬、羊、牛之類的，這里都沒有。當時這里人類的主食主要有三種：瓜類、豆類及玉米。那為什么豆類與瓜類都成不了神，唯獨玉米可以呢?
Well, the plant from which maize derives, the teosinte, is wonderfully adaptable. It's able to grow in both the lush wet lowlands and the dry mountainous regions, which means that farmers can plant crops in any of their seasonal dwellings. On top of that, constant harvesting of the grain encourages the plants to grow larger and more abundantly, so maize quickly became plentiful - farmers got a healthy return for investing their labour. But crucially, maize is a rich carbohydrate that gives you a rapid energy hit. But it is, let's face it, pretty stodgy, and so from very early on, farmers also cultivated an ingenious - and tasty - accompaniment; the indigenous chilli. It has virtually no nutritional value but, as we all know, it's uniquely able to liven up dull carbohydrates - and it shows that we've been foodies for as long as we've been farmers.
其實那種玉米進化而來的植物大芻草具有很奇妙的適應性。它既能夠輕輕松松生長在郁郁蔥蔥的低海拔濕地，也能毫不費力地適應干旱少雨的山區(qū)，這樣農(nóng)民就可以在任何季節(jié)任何地點種植這種植物。最重要的是，這種植物越是頻繁收割，或是可以結出更豐碩更充足的果實。因此玉米迅速成為廣受歡迎的農(nóng)作物，家書辛苦付出的汗水總能有豐富的回報。另外關鍵一點是，玉米是一種營養(yǎng)豐富的碳水化合物，能夠迅速地補充人體的能量損失。當然，我們現(xiàn)實點來說吧，玉米吃起來味道真不咋的。很早很早以前，農(nóng)民就巧妙地培育出了一種美味的調(diào)味品——土著辣椒。這種辣椒本身沒任何營養(yǎng)價值，但它恰恰能給食之無味的玉米變得好吃起來。這表明，自從我們?nèi)祟悓W會了農(nóng)耕，我們就學會當美食家了。
By AD 1000, maize had spread north and south, virtually through the whole length of the Americas; which is perhaps surprising - because, in its earliest form, not only did maize have little taste, it was practically inedible. It couldn't just be boiled and eaten straight away as it is today. Nine thousand years ago, the maize cob was very hard, and eating it raw would have made you very ill. It needed to be cooked in a mixture of water and white lime.
大概公元前1000左右，玉米已經(jīng)由南到北，幾乎遍布了整個美洲大陸了。這可能會讓令人驚奇，因為其實最早期的玉米品種，不單單食之無味，而且根本就幾乎不能食用的。不像今天的玉米，可以直接煮來吃。九千年前，玉米芯是很硬很硬的，啃不下嘴;生吃的話你又會病得很慘。它必須在水與白石灰中煮熟。用這沸騰的石灰水來處理早期玉米芯絕對是必不可少的過程。
This elaborate process of boiling the raw kernel in lime and water was essential. Without it, the two key nutrients in the vegetable - the amino acids and vitamin B - would not be released. After all that, it had to be ground into a paste and then made into an unleavened dough. The god of maize expected his disciples to work hard for their supper. Even today, maize still dominates much of Mexican cuisine, and it still carries a surprisingly powerful religious and metaphorical charge, as restaurateur Santiago Calva knows only too well:
沒這樣做，玉米中最關鍵的兩種營養(yǎng)成份氨基酸和維生素B基本就釋放不了。接著，它還要被研磨成糊狀，然后再做成一種不發(fā)酵的面團。直到今天，玉米仍然在墨西哥菜系中占有主導地們，而且它本身仍然具備有一種令人驚嘆的強大宗教與象征性的蘊意。開餐廳的圣地亞哥·卡爾瓦再清楚不過了：
'The continuous spin-offs of maize into daily life is vast and complex. At some stage there will always be maize around, and it jumps any class barrier or i
ntity. Everybody eats it and drinks it, from the richest to the poorest, from the most indigenous to the least indigenous, and that's one thing that unites more than anything else.
“不斷由玉米衍生而來的事物，輕松隨意地滲透進人們的日常生活，影響即普遍又復雜。在某些階段，我們生活周遭永遠都有玉米的存在，超過了任何障礙與身份識別。從首富到最窮的，從最土著的到最不像土著的，大家吃玉米、喝玉米汁。玉米是一種比任何事物都要強有力的共同紐帶。”
'Maize culture faces two new problems, one being the use of maize as a bio-fuel and the increment of prices, where it directly affects the Mexican population. The other problem being the genetically-modified maize, it's almost personally offensive - and religiously - that you are playing God, as it were ... it's just very sensitive. Especially when you take corn to be used for other purposes other than to be eaten or be worshipped, but rather to be put into a car - it becomes a highly controversial issue.'
“現(xiàn)在玉米文化面臨著兩個新問題，其一便是玉米作為生物燃料之后，價格不斷升高，這直接影響到了墨西哥的人口增長。另一個問題是轉基因玉米，這幾乎是一種對個人與宗教的攻擊。人類怎么可以扮演神靈的角色?這本來是神靈的權力。所以這問題相當敏感。特別是現(xiàn)在你不是把玉米拿來吃或者崇拜，而是拿來作為汽車輸料?!這問題真是相當具有爭議性。”
So even today for some people it's unthinkable that maize, the divine food, should end up in a petrol tank. Well beyond Mexico, the idea of genetic modification of crops still causes deep unease, as much religious as scientific - a sense that the natural order is being disturbed, that humans are trespassing on territory that's properly reserved for the gods. In a very real sense, the Mexican maize god is still alive, and he's not to be trifled with.
所以即使在今天對于一些人來說，神圣食品玉米居然要被運用到汽車油箱里，這簡真是不可理喻。而且在墨西哥以外的地方轉基因農(nóng)作物還是引起人們深刻的不安，不無是從科學還是宗教角度而言，人們感覺自然秩序被打亂了，或者人類正在入侵到為神保留的神圣領域。
In our next programme, we'll be turning from the food of the gods to the vessels that it's cooked in. We'll be in Japan, with some of the oldest pottery in the world, and the birth of the stew.
在我們下一期的節(jié)目里，我們把目光從食物之神轉向烹制食物的器皿。我們將會到達日本，去尋訪世界上最古老的陶器，以及燉鍋的誕生。
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