本篇文章共分 6 段，針對古代墨西哥的社會發展，從最初的狩獵社會、農村社會到後來複雜的大規模城市社會做有系統的社會發展過程的整理與說明。

本篇考題英文原文與對應之中文翻譯整理如下。練習作答解題時若有對語意不清楚之處，請仔細查閱對照，以提升閱讀理解能力。

The Development of Complex Societies in Ancient Mexico 古代墨西哥複雜社會的發展

1. 古墨西哥早期的狩獵社會

   Between 9,000 and 4,000 years ago, most of Mexico was inhabited mainly by hunter-foragers who lived in small bands that moved with the seasons to exploit cactus fruits, deer herds, nuts, and the hundreds of other plant and animal species in their range, depending on the season. Since these bands were small in size and never stayed in one place for a sufficient period of time to have much long-term effect on the plant and animal populations on which they subsisted, the hunter-foragers’ overall impact on their environment was low. A few groups along the margins of the lake in the Valley of Mexico may have been sedentary villagers, as were some groups along the coasts, and their role in the domestication of plants and animals and the eventual spread of agriculture is unclear. Some researchers suggest, however, that by about 4,000 years ago, maize cob size had become large enough that people over large areas of the Mexican highlands could subsist mainly on maize.

   在 9,000 年到 4,000 年前，墨西哥的大部分地區主要是由狩獵者居住的，他們隨著季節的變化而移動，根據季節的變化來開發仙人掌果實、鹿群、堅果和他們範圍內的數百種其他植物和動物物種。由於這些隊伍規模較小，而且從不在一個地方停留足夠長的時間，因此對他們賴以生存的植物和動物種群沒有什麼長期影響，獵戶對其環境的總體影響不大。沿著墨西哥谷地湖泊邊緣的幾個群體可能是定居的村民，就像沿海的一些群體一樣，他們在植物和動物的馴化以及農業的最終傳播中的作用尚不清楚。然而，一些研究人員認為，到大約 4,000 年前，玉米棒子的尺寸已經大到足以讓墨西哥高原大片地區的人們主要以玉米為生。

2. 玉米的馴化

   The recent re-dating of some of the supposedly earliest domesticated maize in Mesoamerica (Ancient Mexico) to about 3500 B.C. raises the possibility that initial agriculture evolved out of intensified foraging by groups of people who were relatively sedentary, perhaps living all or most of the year in one or a few places, and that they were perhaps even in the process of developing social differences (social hierarchy) that increased the intensity of their foraging. However maize was domesticated and by whom, maize appears to have reached sufficient productivity to permit the village-farming way of life soon after about 2000 B.C., and agricultural communities appeared at about this time in many different areas.

   最近將中美洲（古墨西哥）一些所謂最早的馴化玉米的時間重新確定為大約公元前 3,500 年，這就提出了一種可能性，即最初的農業是由一群相對定居的人加緊覓食演變而來的，他們也許一年中全部或大部分時間都生活在一個或幾個地方，而且他們也許甚至正在發展社會差異（社會等級），增加他們覓食的強度。無論玉米如何被馴化以及由誰來馴化，玉米似乎在大約公元前 2,000 年後不久就達到了足夠的生產力，允許村莊耕作的生活方式，而農業社區大約在這個時候出現在許多不同的地區。

3. 住屋特徵

   From the hot, wet coastal lowlands to the arid Tehuacan Valley, the earliest villages were quite similar in size and contents. Almost all houses were built using the wattle-and-daub method—sticks, branches, and cane were woven in-and-out between vertical wall poles, then covered with a mud plaster, which was dried by the hot sun. Houses, which were seldom larger than four by six meters, featured thatched roofs and tamped clay floors on which fine sand was scattered.

   從炎熱潮濕的沿海低地到乾旱的特瓦坎山谷，最早的村莊在規模和內容上都很相似。幾乎所有的房屋都是用荊條編織法建造的—在垂直的牆桿之間用棍子、樹枝和甘蔗來編織，然後覆蓋上泥漿，在烈日下曬乾。房屋的面積很少超過 4×6 米，以茅草屋頂和撒有細沙的夯土地面為特色。

4. 最初農業社會特徵

   Most of the earliest farming communities were tiny hamlets-villages of ten to twelve houses that were home to about fifty to sixty people—but some communities were larger. Most houses that have been excavated have yielded the same remains, mainly grinding stones, storage pits, pieces of large ceramic storage jars, bones of cottontail rabbits, carbonized maize fragments, and broken pieces of ceramic charcoal braziers. In addition, ovens, middens, and graves are very common. While the proportion of plant and animal foods varied somewhat, all villages probably grew maize, beans, squash, peppers, and some other crops, and hunted deer and rabbits. Each village, or each extended family, may have had a specialist who did pressure flaking of stone (to make tools), leather-working, or a similar craft, and individual villages may have concentrated on specialties like salt production, feather-weaving, shell-working, and grinding stone manufacture.

   最早的農業社區大多是小村莊—由 10 至 12 間房屋組成的村莊，大約有 50 至 60 人居住，但有些社區規模較大。大多數被挖掘出來的房屋都有相同的遺跡，主要是磨石、儲物坑、大型陶瓷儲物罐的碎片、棉尾兔的骨頭、碳化玉米的碎片和陶瓷炭火爐的碎塊。此外，烤爐、貝塚和墳墓也非常普遍。雖然植物和動物食物的比例有些不同，但所有的村莊都可能種植玉米、豆類、南瓜、辣椒和其他一些作物，並狩獵鹿和兔子。每個村莊或每個大家族都可能有一個專家，從事石料壓制（製作工具）、皮革加工或類似的工藝，個別村莊可能集中於製鹽、羽毛編織、貝殼加工和磨石製造等專業領域。

5. 複雜社會的起源

   As in Mesopotamia, China, and elsewhere, the background to the origins of complex society in Mesoamerica was a great scatter of relatively simple agricultural villages in which the mechanics of producing a reliable, expandable food supply had been mastered. An early radical break with the simple village farming tradition of Mesoamerica occurred in the sweltering lowlands of the South Gulf Coast of Mexico. Here, beginning at about 1000 B.C., people built massive clay pyramids and platforms, lived in small town groups of hundreds or even thousands, intensively farmed a variety of ecological zones, and produced what is one of the world's most valued examples of stone sculpture.

   正如在美索不達米亞、中國和其他地方一樣，中美洲複雜社會的起源背景是大量分散的相對簡單的農業村莊，在這些村莊裡，生產可靠的、可擴展的食物供應的機械已經被掌握了。與中美洲簡單村莊農業傳統的早期徹底決裂發生在墨西哥南灣海岸的炎熱低地。在這裡，大約從公元前 1000 年開始，人們建造了巨大的粘土金字塔和平台，在數百甚至數千人的小城鎮群中生活，在各種生態區集中耕作，並製作了世界上最有價值的石雕範例之一。

6. 奧爾梅克文化

   These people are known to us as the Olmec, a name derived from an ancient American word for rubber—doubtless a reference to the rubber trees that grow in this area—but a name they themselves probably did not use. Some scholars have considered the possibility that the Olmec culture was the mother culture of all later complex societies in Mesoamerica and that the Olmec were directly responsible for transforming their neighbors by military, political religious, or economic means into complex societies. Other scholars, however, have argued convincingly that the Olmec represent only one of several largely independent cases of the evolution of social complexity in Mesoamerica.

   這些人被我們稱為奧爾梅克人，這個名字來自古代美洲的橡膠一詞—無疑是指生長在這一地區的橡膠樹—但他們自己可能並沒有使用這個名字。一些學者認為，奧爾梅克文化可能是中美洲後來所有複雜社會的母體文化，奧爾梅克人直接負責通過軍事、政治宗教或經濟手段將他們的鄰居轉變為複雜社會。然而，其他學者則令人信服地主張，奧爾梅克文化只代表了中美洲社會複雜性演變過程中幾個基本獨立的案例之一。