听考研真题|2024年英一阅读1:为什么战争结束之后罗马人埋下了近100万枚钉子?

Nearly 2000 years ago, as the Romans began to pull out of Scotland, they left behind a curious treasure:10 tons of nails, nearly a million of the things. 

【生词】curious adj.求知欲强的, 稀奇古怪的

【翻译】近两千年前，当罗马人开始撤离苏格兰时，他们留下了一个奇特的“宝藏”：10吨钉子，其中数量近一百万枚。

The nail hoard was discovered in 1960 in a four-metre- deep pit covered by two metres of gravel.

【生词】hoardn.积聚，囤积, 密窖, 贮藏处

gravel n.沙砾，碎石, 砾石, [医]结石

Why had the Romans buried a million nails? The likely explanation is that the withdrawal was rushed, and they didn't want the local Caledonians getting their hands on 10 tons of weapons grade iron. 

【生词】withdrawal n.撤回, 退出, 取款, 戒毒期, 孤僻

The Romans buried the nails so deep that they would not be discovered for almost two millennia.

【生词】millennia n.一千年( millennium的名词复数 )

【翻译】罗马人将钉子埋得如此之深，以至于在近两千年间这些钉子都未被发现。

Later civilizations would value the skilled blacksmith's labour in a nail even more than the raw material. 

【生词】blacksmith n.铁匠，锻工, 打铁工人, 装蹄工, 蹄铁

As Roma Agrawal explains in her new delightful book Nuts and Bolts, early 17th-century Virginians would sometimes burn down their homes if they were planning to relocate. 

【生词】relocate vt.& vi.迁移, 重新安置

This was an attempt to recover the valuable nails, which could be reused after sifting the ashes. The idea that one might burn down an entire house just to reclaim the nails underlines how scarce, costly and valuable the simple-seeming technology was.

【生词】sift n.筛，过滤; v.筛, 筛滤, 细查, 详审

reclaim vt.开拓，开垦, 感化, 取回, 沙化, 回收再利用；改造某人

The price of nails fell by 90% between the late 1700s and mid-1900s, as economist Daniel Sichel points out in a research paper. 

【翻译】正如经济学家丹尼尔·西切尔在其研究论文中指出，从18世纪末到20世纪中叶，钉子价格下降了90%。

According to Sichel, although the falling price of nails was driven partly by cheaper iron and cheaper energy, most of the credit goes to nail manufacturers who simply found more efficient ways to turn steel into nails.

【生词】credit n.赊购, 结余, 贷记, 赞扬, 为…赢得好感的人/事物; v.存钱, 把…归于, 认为…有, 相信

Nails themselves have changed over the years. but Sichel studied them because they haven't changed much. 

Roman lamps and Roman chariots are very different from LED strips and sports cars, but Roman nails are still clearly nails. 

【生词】chariot n.敞篷双轮马车

It would be absurd to try to track the changing price of sports cars since 1695,  but to ask the same question of nails makes perfect sense.

【翻译】试图追踪自1695年以来跑车价格的波动固然荒谬，但将同样的问题应用于钉子，则完全合乎逻辑。

I make no apology for being obsessed by a particular feature of everyday objects: their price. I am an economist, after all.

【生词】obsessed adj.着迷的, 一门心思的

After writing two books about the history of inventions, one thing I've learnt is that while it is the enchantingly sophisticated technologies that get all the hype. it's the cheap technologies that change the world.

【生词】enchantingly adv. 迷人地

sophisticated adj.复杂的, 精致的

hype n.天花乱坠的广告宣传; vt.大肆宣传, 夸张地宣传（某人或某事物）

【翻译】在撰写了两本关于发明史的著作后，我领悟到一点：尽管那些精妙绝伦的技术总能引发巨大轰动，但真正改变世界的却是那些低成本技术。

The Gutenberg printing press transformed civilization not by changing the nature of writing but by changing is cost--and it would have achieved limit without a parallel collapse in the paper of surfaces to write on. 

【生词】parallel adj.平行的, 相同的，类似的

collapse v.（突然）倒塌, 崩溃，瓦解

【翻译】古腾堡印刷机并未改变书写本身的性质，而是通过降低其成本，从而推动了文明的变革——若非随后在可用书写介质上出现的突破性进展，这一变革本可能止步不前。

Solar panels had a few niche uses until they became cheap; now they are transforming the global energy system.

【生词】niche adj.（营销）针对特定客户群的，细分的