百科知識視頻之煎蛋小學堂29 垃圾背后的真相

In addition to scientific equipment,the Voyager spacecraft each carry,out beyond the solar system,a golden record encoding information about the earth and our human civilization,These time capsules contain examples of the best aspects of humanity language,music,art,and scientific achievenments.

除了科學儀器之外 每艘旅行者號飛船也，向太陽系之外攜帶了，編譯有地球和我們?nèi)祟愇拿餍畔⒌慕鹳|(zhì)唱片。這些文物密藏器攜帶著人性中最美好一面的代表 語言 音樂 藝術(shù)以及科技成就。

Environmental destruction,war and cable tv didn't make the list.Neither did garbage.And yet,every single time you throw something away,you're contributing to a collective time capsule.Because buried deep within the landfills that dot the Earth lies precious information about who we are,how we live and what we really care about.

環(huán)境破壞 戰(zhàn)爭和電視當然不在列表之內(nèi)。垃圾也沒有。但是 每次你把某些東西扔出去時，都在為一個“時光膠囊”做著貢獻。因為無數(shù)寶貴的信息深藏在斑駁與世界各地的垃圾場底下 關(guān)乎到我們是誰 我們怎么生活和我們在乎什么。

Archaeologists use heaps of trash to study people and culture,and even have a special,nice-sounding name for garbage piles:middens.In one midden near Rome,archeologists uncovered 25 million containers for carrying olive oil,telling us that Romans used a LOT of olive oil,but almost none of it came from Rome,most was from Spain and Egypt.

人類學家利用一堆堆垃圾研究人類和文化。甚至還給垃圾堆起了個特殊而好聽的名字。Midden(中文：垃圾堆)。在羅馬附近的一個垃圾堆里，人類學家發(fā)現(xiàn)了2500萬個盛放橄欖油的容器，這說明羅馬人曾使用大量的橄欖油 但橄欖油都不產(chǎn)自羅馬。大多數(shù)來自西班牙和埃及。

And we know from shell middens that the Maori people of New Zealand hunted moa and seals early on,but later had to switch to fish,shellfish,and small birds as the moa and seals became overhunted.Digging through more recent history,a midden outside of George Washington's home revealed the belt buckles he wore,the china he used,and the meat he and his guest ate off of that china.

我們從貝冢里可以發(fā)現(xiàn) 新西蘭的毛利人早期曾捕獵恐鳥和海豹，但之后不得不轉(zhuǎn)而捕捉魚類 貝殼和小鳥 因為恐鳥和海豹被過度捕獵?？v觀年代更近的歷史。喬治。華盛頓家附近的一個垃圾堆里曾發(fā)現(xiàn)過他用過的皮帶扣，他用過的瓷器 還有他與賓客曾從盤子中吃過的肉。

Even now,in our era of modern record keeping and date,we some time need to look through the garbage to see what we're really like,In the 1980's,there was huge outcry about the gross quantity of garbage humans were making,with many environmental groups painting a picture of disposable diapers and fast food packaging filling up our landfills.Around the same time,a professor in Tucson interviewed people about their eating habits,then went through their trash to see what they threw away.

即使現(xiàn)在 在我們以現(xiàn)代方法保存記錄和信息的時代，我們有時還得翻遍垃圾堆來找到我們的真愛。1980年代 人類制造垃圾的總量的問題曾引起過一場大型抗議，許多環(huán)保組織打出了一次性尿布的照片 同時還有充斥著填埋場的快餐包裝盒。

It's true that we were producing a lot of trash,but when researchers examined what was in those landfills,diapers and fast food containers accounted for less than 2 percent of new landfill volume,The majority was construction waste and paper.

我們的確在制造者無數(shù)垃圾，但當研究者調(diào)查垃圾堆里到底有什么時，尿布和快餐盒僅占到了新制造垃圾總體積的不到2%。絕大多數(shù)還是建筑廢料和紙張。大約同時Tucson的一位教授調(diào)查了一群人的飲食習慣，之后翻遍了這些人家的垃圾來查看他們?nèi)拥袅耸裁础?/p>

It turns out that people and their garbage tell two very different stories,Participants overreported healthy foods,and underreported fools they considered bad,For example.they reported drinking only half as much alcohol as the bottles in their trash indicated.And everybody underreported how much fat they ate,except people who had lived through WWII.Those generations tended to overreport butter,which was heavily rationed during the war and consequently considered valuable and healthful.

結(jié)果證明 人們和垃圾所道出的事實截然不同。受訪者夸大了健康食物的量 并低估了他們認為不好的食物的量。比如 他們僅報告了垃圾桶中酒瓶所體現(xiàn) 的一半的酒量。每個人都低估了他們所攝入的脂肪，除了曾生活在二戰(zhàn)期間的人。那一代傾向于高估黃油的量，在戰(zhàn)爭期間黃油被嚴格限量供應 并以此被認為“有價值”及“健康”。

So a survey or carefully crafted time capsule is probably biased towards the best parts of our lives-the parts we want people to remember and extraterrestrials to know about.But our trash doesn't lie.

因此 調(diào)查和精心制作的時間膠囊 很可能會偏向人類最好的一面 我們想要人們記住的 讓外星生命所知道的那些事。但是垃圾不會撒謊。