醒一醒!歷史並不如你想的那麼美好(上)

For all we like to romanticize the past, the truth is that most of our shared history was less "awe-inspiring" and more "vomit-inducing."

人們習慣於美化過去，但事實是人類的過去並不是那麼令人驚歎的。相反，它常常會讓人感到噁心。

eii Was One Giant Garbage Dump

10.龐培是個巨型垃圾堆

Before it got buried under a cloud of ash, Pompeii was the ancient equivalent of the French Riviera. It was a place where rich Romans came to unwind after some hard empire-building. But there was one crucial difference between ancient Pompeii and a modern resort town: Pompeii was absolutely overflowing with garbage.

在被灰燼掩沒之前，古時候的意大利城市龐培相當於現在的法國裏維埃拉。龐培過去是一個吸引富有的羅馬帝國建造者在經歷艱辛的帝國建造時期後到此放鬆的療養勝地。但古時候的龐培有一點和當代的旅遊勝地大不相同，就是前者垃圾氾濫。

Instead of having a waste collection program, or even rudimentary landfills, the people of Pompeii just dropped their trash wherever they felt like it. Streets, alleys, and even cemeteries were filled with broken pottery, building remains, uneaten food, and horse carcasses. Get off the street and things were no different. There's plenty of evidence that locals treated their houses like one giant trash can, with the fossilized remains of rotting food found littering floors and piled up alongside drinking water. According to Allison Emmerson of the University of Cincinnati, trash was regarded as just a fact of life in Pompeii. Even the tombs of ancestors were considered an acceptable place to dispose of waste. That undoubtedly made the city stink to high heaven in the summer months.

在龐培，人們把垃圾隨意倒置在他們想倒置的地方，而不是建立垃圾填埋場來處理它，更別說完善的廢物收集系統了。這使得大街小巷甚至是墓地上都堆滿了陶瓷碎片、建築殘垣、剩飯剩菜還有馬的屍體。即使離開街道回到家，垃圾也還是到處亂扔。許多證據表明，當地人把他們的家當作一個巨型垃圾桶，任由腐蝕掉的食物揮灑在地面上或者任由它們堆積在飲用水附近。據辛辛那提大學的艾裏遜·埃默森表示，當時的龐培垃圾被看作是與人們生活非常密切的一部分。甚至連祖先的墓地也能被接受成爲堆放垃圾的地方。這無疑使夏季的龐培臭氣沖天。

Vikings Were Plagued With Parasites

9.被寄生蟲折磨的維京人

It's no surprise that Viking life was hard. With Vikings spending a lot of time on ships sailing rough northern seas during one campaign of conquest or another, no one would picture their lives as anything other than difficult. Even the most cynical person would likely miss one key detail, though: Viking guts were utterly infested with parasites.

我們都知道維京人的生活十分艱苦。於是，爲了生存，維京人將他們的大部分時間都花在船上，面對着波濤洶涌的大海，一次又一次地遊走在征服的途中。除了艱苦，人們實在不知道用別的什麼詞來形容維京人的生活了。但即使是最具懷疑精神的人也很可能忽略了一個重要的細節，維京人的腸子裏滿是寄生蟲。

Thanks to a culture which promoted close living with livestock, most Vikings were exposed to a whole load of nasties from a very early age. By the time they reached adulthood, their insides were crawling with the sort of creatures H.P. Lovecraft had nightmares about. Researchers who studied Viking poop have found eggs indicating chronic roundworm and liver fluke infections. Worst of all, there was evidence of whipworm. Found in piles of Viking feces dating back to 1018, whipworm would have made the Viking's lives unbearable. Aside from severe diarrhea and acrid-smelling farts, those infected could've expected painful passage of stool, growth retardation, and impaired cognitive development.

因爲對與牲畜密處的文化的倡導，大多數維京人很小就在髒兮兮的環境里長大。在他們成年後，維京人的肚子裏已經爬滿了讓霍華德·菲利普斯·洛夫克拉夫特做噩夢的生物。研究者在維京人的糞便中發現一些寄生蟲卵，表明他們深受慢性蛔蟲病和肝臟吸血蟲病的困擾。更糟的是，還有證據表明鞭蟲也是困擾他們的疾病之一。從可能追溯到1018年的維京人的排泄物中發現，鞭蟲會使維京人的生活難以忍受。除了嚴重的腹瀉和放刺激性氣味的屁的症狀，患有鞭蟲病的人還會有大便吃力、生長遲緩以及認知發展受損等問題。

eval London Stank To High Heaven

8.中世紀的倫敦臭氣熏天

Let's say you decide to skip the obvious places and take your time machine on a trip to medieval London. You'd probably be prepared for the city to be dirtier and smellier than it is now. But you might not be prepared for exactly how big a difference it would be. To be blunt, London in the Middle Ages stank to high heaven. The streets were filled to overflowing with excrement, and people routinely dumped rotting food and animal entrails out in the open to fester. In some places, this foul mixture was so deep the streets were effectively impassable.

如果你打算掠過那些顯而易見的地方，那麼請乘坐時間機器回到中世紀的倫敦吧。你或許能夠做好心理準備，接受中世紀的倫敦比現在的倫敦差太多。但是！你絕對想不到那時候的倫敦會髒成那個樣子。事實就是這樣，中世紀的倫敦臭氣瀰漫。動物糞便滿大街都是，人們習慣性地把腐爛的食物和動物內臟往街上倒，任由它們繼續腐爛。甚至有的地方被這些垃圾堆得老高，以至於行人不能輕鬆通過。

Things were no better by the river. Butchers threw rotting meat into the Thames, and blood was left to congeal on the banks in the sun. By the 14th century, the stench was so great the king was forced to ban the slaughtering of animals inside the city. To top it all off, tanneries were working around the clock to boil leather, producing a stench that suffocated the entire city.

即使是在河邊，環境也並沒有因爲飲用水源的原因而好一點。屠夫習慣把腐爛掉的肉直接丟進泰晤士河，腐肉殘留的血在陽光的作用下凝結在河岸上。在14世紀，倫敦的臭味迫使國王下令禁止城裏的動物屠宰。最嚴重的是製革廠日夜不停地煉製皮革，煮沸皮革的臭味足以窒息一整個倫敦。

issance Europe Was Crawling With Syphilis

7.梅毒猖狂的文藝復興時期的歐洲

The words "Renaissance Florence" evoke images of absurdly dressed men wandering around pristine cities, solving great mysteries, and inventing the scientific method. What they don't evoke are images of syphilitic beggars writhing in agony in the streets, their faces falling apart before onlookers' eyes. Yet, that's exactly what Michelangelo or Da Vinci could expect to see strolling through town.

"文藝復興時期的佛羅倫薩"使人們聯想到穿着荒唐的男士，他們遊走在城市整潔的街道上，解決着一個又一個謎題，想出一個又一個解決問題的科學方法。卻沒讓人想到佛羅倫薩街上痛苦地蜷縮抽搐着的患有梅毒的乞丐，他們在路人面前也完全無法顧及形象，任由扭曲的面孔損失自己的形象。但這確實是米開朗琪羅和達芬奇踱步於此時所看到的現象。

In 1495, a group of French soldiers returning from the New World had brought with them an unexpected treat. Known today as syphilis, the disease was the Renaissance equivalent of the AIDS pandemic but even scarier. The symptoms were terrifying. Weeping pustules would explode across people's faces, hair would fall out and—in the worst cases—the flesh would be eaten away right down to the bone. And since there were no hospitals or care homes to speak of, those that caught the dreaded "French disease" were left to suffer out in the open. As a result, Renaissance society was caught in a state of permanent panic about the grotesque effects of fornication. Contemporary accounts are filled with a paralyzing dread at the thought of becoming infected, and woodcuts display horrific examples of the disease. The whole of Europe was either afraid, infected, or both.

1945年，一隊從新大陸回來的法國人在回家的同時給歐洲帶來了一個"意外的驚喜"。文藝復興時期的梅毒病菌相當於現在的艾滋病病毒，但更可怕。梅毒患者的特徵十分可怕。流膿的膿包會慢慢長滿患者的整張臉，頭髮也會漸漸掉光。最糟糕的是，最後患者的皮肉都會被腐蝕掉，只剩下骨頭。因爲當時並沒有醫院或者醫療站讓人們去尋求幫助，所以在當時不幸患有這個可怕的"法國病"的人就只好被丟棄在大街上，任由他自生自滅了。所以，文藝復興時期的歐洲人長期被籠罩在這種恐懼當中，以至於沒有人敢冒着患上梅毒的風險去通姦。當代的文字記錄也充滿了對染上梅毒的恐懼。木版畫也呈現了許多梅毒患者的圖像。整個歐洲的人不是已經染上梅毒就是在每天擔心自己會染上梅毒。

ent Greek Wine Was Really Disgusting

6.超級噁心的古希臘葡萄酒

Wine was a big deal in ancient Greece. People wrote poems to the stuff, they had their own god of wine, and Homer even used it as a metaphor to describe everything from animals to the ocean. So, the first thing you'd do in ancient Athens is sample this wonderful drink, right? Only if you wanted to completely destroy your taste buds. Ancient wine was disgusting.

葡萄酒在古希臘是一種十分重要的東西。詩人非常喜歡爲葡萄酒寫詩，每個詩人都有自己最愛的葡萄酒。詩人荷馬甚至用葡萄酒比作一切出現在他詩裏的事物，從動物到海洋。那麼，當你回到古代雅典的第一件事就是小嚐一口這個神奇的飲料，對嗎？如果你想徹底毀了你的味蕾，就去吧。古時候的葡萄酒是超級噁心的。

The trouble was no one had yet figured out how to preserve wine for long periods, and ancient vintners tried all sorts of bizarre tricks. It wasn't unusual to find resin or marble dust added to wine at the vineyard, with salt and lead being two other favorites. Some simply gave up fighting nature, and they left their wines outside to oxidize until they were bursting with bacteria. As a result, wine was usually either a thick, tar-like substance we would consider undrinkable or a glass of bug-infested vinegar. Bad as all this is, it got even worse when it came time to drink the wine. Ancient Greeks would frequently cut their wine with seawater to make it more "palatable."

這是因爲古時候沒有人能夠想出長期保存葡萄酒的方法，釀酒商甚至嚐遍了所有奇怪和不奇怪的方法。有些葡萄園主很喜歡在葡萄酒裏添加樹脂和大理石灰，煙和石磨也是兩種很受人們歡迎的兩種葡萄酒保鮮劑。有的人乾脆放棄與大自然做鬥爭，讓葡萄酒自然氧化直到它們產生細菌爲止。於是，古時候的葡萄酒通常要麼是一團不能喝的厚厚的焦油狀的東西，要麼是一杯滋生蟲子的醋。這些都很噁心，但更噁心的是人們喝葡萄酒的方式。古希臘人常常在葡萄酒里加一點海水，想要使它們更加可口。

翻譯:哈利小王子 來源:前十網