好英语网黑海沉船或能揭开诺亚洪水之谜
The old town of Nessebar is near-enough an island: a half mile of weathered wooden fishing houses with terracotta-tiled roofs that sit atop a rocky head, strung to the Bulgarian coast by only a narrow land bridge. It’s also a dense stack of ruins layered on top of one another that stretch back more than 3,000 years, and is recognised by Unesco as a World Heritage site.
黑海（Black Sea）知名度假观光地内塞巴尔（Nessebar）的历史老城近似于一个海岛，四面环海，与保加利亚陆地只有一条狭长的陆桥相连接。在这块巨大的半岛岩石上面，坐落着一间间屋顶铺着红色陶土瓦片，饱经风吹雨打的渔民木制房屋，迤逦绵延半英里。这个半岛古城层层叠叠堆积着可上溯到3000多年前的历史遗迹，已被联合国教科文组织认定为世界遗产。
When walking into the old town, the twisting streets of 19th-Century fishing houses are parted by the medieval Church of St Stephen – richly decorated with murals of Jesus calming the storm and 1,000 figures from the New Testament – and the excavated ruins of the Stara Mitropolia Basilica, a cathedral dating back to the 5th Century when this was one of the most important Byzantine trading towns on the Black Sea coast.
走进这座古城，曲折的街道两旁是建于19世纪的渔民房屋。绵延的房屋被多处教堂所隔开。中世纪建造的圣斯蒂芬教堂（Church of St Stephen）装饰着取材自新约（New Testament）圣经的耶稣平息风暴的神迹故事和1000个圣经人物的壁画。还有一座挖掘出土的古老教堂，即圣索菲亚教堂（Stara Mitropolia Basilica）的遗迹，这座教堂最早建于公元5世纪，当时内塞巴尔古城是拜占庭帝国（Byzantine）在黑海海岸其中一个最重要的贸易城镇。
Archaeologists and local fishermen have found even older relics. A Greek acropolis and pottery date from before the Romans’ arrival, and there are walls built by the city’s founders, the Thracians, the horse-riding warrior people who ruled over the Balkan Peninsula more than 2,000 years ago.
考古学家和当地渔民甚至发现了更古老的遗迹。有罗马人到来之前的希腊城墙和陶器，还有更早时期色雷斯人（Thracians）修建的城墙。内塞巴尔最早是古色雷斯人的村庄，精于骑术的战斗民族色雷斯人2000多年前曾统治过巴尔干半岛（Balkan Peninsula ）。
But to find the most surprising artefacts, you’ll need to step off the island and into the surrounding sea.
但要找到最令人惊讶的文物古迹，你需要离开小岛，进入周围的海洋。
Recent oceanographic research efforts using a pair of underwater remote operated vehicles (ROVs) has ventured below the Black Sea waters and revealed pieces of ancient history never before seen in such vivid resolution. These submarine missions have discovered ships from several millennia of seafaring trade and war, including the world’s oldest intact shipwreck: a Greek trading ship from around 400BC lying uncannily well-preserved on the seabed.
最近在黑海水域所作的海洋探测，使用一对遥控潜水器（ROVs），发现了一些前所未见的高清晰分辨率的历史遗物。这些潜水探测器发现的是几千年前沉没的海上商船和战舰，其中包括一艘世界上最古老而完整的沉船。很离奇的是，这艘公元前400年左右的希腊商船葬身在内塞巴尔海岸外的深海底，历经2400年竟然完整无缺。
And among the wrecks, new evidence offers clues from more than 7,000 years ago, when some experts believe the Black Sea was just a small freshwater lake. Geological samples drilled from the seabed could, at last, settle the mystery of whether it was here that waters once rushed in, flattening civilisations and leaving behind the story we know as Noah and the great biblical flood.
从沉船残骸中收集到的新证据，为一些专家认为7000多年前的黑海只是一个小淡水湖的假说提供了线索。从海床上钻取的地质样本，可能最终解开这样一个谜团，是否在7000年前因地中海的海水涌入黑海，从而摧毁了这个区域的古文明，也留下了我们熟知的圣经记载的诺亚方舟（Noah's Ark）和大洪水的传说。
Zdravka Georgieva, maritime archaeologist at Bulgaria’s Centre for Underwater Archaeology in nearby Sozopol, was born on Nessebar and learned to dive in the shallows of the Black Sea. “I really wanted to know what is beneath, what is under the water,” said Georgieva, who first heard about the unexplored remnants of old settlements and shipwrecks at the small Nessebar Archaeological Museum, which holds a smattering of historical artefacts. “I knew from the museum, and from people here, as a teenage girl, that there are historical monuments down there and I wanted to touch them and to observe them really closely.”
在内塞巴尔附近的黑海城市索佐波尔（Sozopol）的保加利亚水下考古中心（Centre for Underwater Archaeology）的海事考古学家兹德娜乌卡‧乔治耶娃（Zdravka Georgieva）出生在内塞巴尔，她在黑海的浅海水域中学会了潜水。乔治耶娃说，她最初在小型的内塞巴尔考古博物馆（Nessebar Archaeological Museum）听说黑海海底有还未被人探索过的古人定居点遗迹和沉船的残骸，感到很好奇，“我真的很想知道有什么在下面，水下到底有什么东西。”这个博物馆收藏着一些历史文物。她说：“我还是一个十几岁的女孩时候，已听内塞巴尔博物馆和这里的人说，海里有重要的历史遗迹，那时我就想去看这些东西，很想近距离观察。”
After studying at the University of Southampton’s Marine Archaeology postgraduate centre in the UK, Georgieva has been working in her “dream job” as part of the Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project (Black Sea MAP), which aims to discover how the sea and its surroundings have changed since the last ice age by surveying the seabed.
乔治耶娃结束在英国南安普顿大学（University of Southampton）的海洋考古中心的研究生学业后，开始从事她的“理想工作”，成为黑海海洋考古工程（Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project）的成员。这个简称为黑海地图（Black Sea MAP）的计划是通过对黑海海底的探测，以了解在地球最后一个冰河时代结束后黑海和周遭环境的变化。
The Anglo-Bulgarian team, led by Prof Jon Adams from the University of Southampton, in partnership with the Centre for Underwater Archaeology, discovered the 2,400-year-old Greek trading ship last year, in addition to more than 60 wrecks found in deep waters.
由南安普顿大学的乔恩·亚当斯教授（Prof Jon Adams）领导的英国-保加利亚考古队与水下考古中心合作，于去年发现了这艘2400年历史的希腊商船，此外还在深海中发现了60多具沉船残骸。
Appearing into view as the ROVs 3D-scanned the site, the ancient ship was lying on its side, the mast and rudder clearly visible as well as rowing benches and large ceramic containers in the hold. Georgieva called it “the most spectacular find – so far.”
当潜水探测船三维扫描海床时，可以看到这艘古船倾斜在海底，桅杆和舵，以及船舱里的划浆平台和大型陶瓷容器，均清晰可见。乔治耶娃称这是这个考古团队“迄今为止最壮观的发现”。
Georgieva agrees with other marine archaeologists that we are entering a golden age of discovery around the Black Sea.
乔治耶娃和其他海洋考古学家都一致认为，黑海周边的海洋考古发现正在进入一个黄金时代。
使用遥控潜水探测器，考古学家前所未有地发现如此清晰可辨的古代沉船
Archaeologists had known that ancient civilisations had been built here and that ships had traded along the Black Sea coastline. But, until now, imaging technology was not yet advanced enough to provide a true picture of the bottom of the sea, ensuring that anything that lay down there remained shrouded in mystery.
考古学家们知道，黑海地区曾有过灿烂的古代文明，无数古代商船曾航行黑海沿岸。但是，直到现在，成像技术还不够先进，无法提供海底的真实图像，因此在黑海海底的任何东西仍然笼罩在神秘之中。
“We knew from historical sources that there had been colonisation of the Black Sea coast, from Greece, from the Mediterranean, but we hadn’t discovered anything like ships. Why? Where are they? What are the reasons we hadn’t found them?” Georgieva asked. “The last four years was a really big step... in how we investigate the submerged landscapes and shipwrecks.”
乔治耶娃说：“我们从历史资料中得知，古希腊人和地中海人曾在黑海沿岸建立过殖民地，但我们过去没有发现过这样的历史遗迹，比如船只之类的东西。为什么？这些历史遗迹在哪儿？是什么原因找不到？过去的四年终於在调查海底景貌和沉船方面，朝前行进了一大步。”
The fact that remarkably preserved ships can be found here is due to a unique aquatic phenomenon, explained famed deep-sea explorer Dr Bob Ballard.
著名的深海探险家鲍勃·巴拉德博士（Dr Bob Ballard）解释说，之所以能在这里发现保存完好的船只，是因为这里有一种独特的海水现象。
Ballard, the American oceanographer best known internationally as the man who led the discovery of the wreck of the Titanic in 1985, has had a decades-long fascination with the so-called “anoxic sea” below the Black Sea: a cold, dead, oxygenless layer blanketed underneath the warm opal waters familiar to visitors.
巴拉德是美国海洋学家，其在国际上最为人所知的是在1985年带队发现了泰坦尼克号（Titanic）的残骸。几十年来他对黑海的下层海水缺氧现象非常着迷。游客熟悉的黑海上层温暖海水覆盖着一个寒冷、缺氧，罕有生命的海洋。
“I was interested in the anoxia: when I found the Titanic, and we went inside, and saw high states of preservation – the deep sea is a giant museum,” said Ballard in a phone interview from his home in the US state of Rhode Island. As only a few types of bacteria survive in the Black Sea’s anoxic layer, this stasis is strongest here – potentially mummifying human remains and preserving the moments after a disaster in “mint condition” for millennia.
巴拉德在美国罗德岛（Rhode Island）州的家中接受电话采访时说：“我对缺氧状态很感兴趣。我发现泰坦尼克号时，进到船舱，看到原样保存程度很高，证明深海是一个巨大的博物馆。”由于黑海下层海水缺氧，只存在几种细菌，这种原始状态维持程度在这里最为强烈。有可能船难发生后的瞬间，人类文明遗迹即刻被木乃伊化，“原封原样”保存了数千年。
Between 1999 and 2014, Ballard led an expedition to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean that was the first to comprehensively explore this shadow realm. With his crew, he discovered dozens of perfectly preserved vessels, including an Ottoman trading ship that contained human remains.
1999年至2014年间，巴拉德带领探险考古队前往黑海和地中海，第一次全面探索这片水下世界。和他的船员一起，他在黑海发现了几十艘保存完好的船只，包括一艘载有人类遗骸的奥斯曼帝国商船。
“It was a good 15-year effort of mounting multiple expeditions, trying to show that the [ancient mariners were] much bolder than historians were giving them credit for – that they pursued direct deep-water trade routes, trying to show that they did not hug the coastline, but chose to go across open ocean.”
他说：“这整整15年我们发起了多次探险，试图发现古代航海者的历史功绩远比历史学家所承认的要勇敢很多，他们敢于采用直接的深海贸易路线。我们要证明他们没有只是紧紧沿着海岸线航行，而是选择大胆地穿过大海大洋。”
But both Georgieva and Ballard said deep-sea exploration provides new clues in another, perhaps even greater, mystery.
但乔治耶娃瓦和巴拉德都表示，黑海深海勘探为另一个可能更大的谜团提供了新的线索。
In the bestselling 2000 book Noah's Flood by William Ryan and Walter Pitman, marine geologists believed they had found the historical origin of the legends of a great flood that tore through ancient civilisations bordering the Mediterranean and Black Sea 7,600 years ago. Earlier told in the Babylonian creation myth, the Enuma Elish, and in the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, the story has become best known across the world in the form told in the biblical story of Noah’s Ark.
据威廉·瑞安（William Ryan）和沃尔特·皮特曼（Walter Pitman）2000年出版的畅销书《诺亚的洪水》（Noah's Flood），一些海洋地质学家们相信他们找到了7600年前那场摧毁了地中海和黑海沿岸的古代文明之大洪水的历史源头。大洪水传说因圣经诺亚方舟的故事在全世界广为人知，而比圣经更早提到大洪水的有公元前1500的巴比伦创世神话《埃努玛·埃利什》（Enuma Elish）和公元前2000年的美索不达米亚史诗《吉尔伽美什》（Gilgamesh）。
According to Ryan and Pitman, about 20,000 ago, what is now the Black Sea was cut off from the Mediterranean by a mountainous landscape.
根据瑞安和皮特曼的说法，大约2万年前，现在的黑海与地中海是被一片山地所隔断。
The Noah’s Flood theory claimed that as Earth’s last ice age ended, melting polar ice caps caused the Mediterranean waters to rise, which pushed a channel through the mountains to form what is now the Bosporus, resulting in a catastrophic seawater deluge 200 times stronger than Niagara Falls. In months, it estimated, the Black Sea inundated a land mass the size of Ireland, flooding a mile a day.
诺亚方舟的洪水理论声称，在地球上最后一个冰河时代结束时，南北两极的冰帽融化导致地中海水位突然上升，巨大洪流冲破阻隔黑海和地中海的山脉，形成一条水道，就是今天联通两个大海的博斯普鲁斯海峡（Bosporus）。这股灾难性的海水洪流，其强度是尼亚加拉瀑布（Niagara Falls）的200倍。据估计，海水每天吞没一英里的土地，在几个月内，黑海沿岸相当于爱尔兰大小的陆地被海水淹没。
Ballard, in 2000, hoped to shed light on Ryan and Pitman’s theory, when he discovered the pre-flood shoreline, and buildings from human civilisations that lived along it, 12 miles off the Turkish Black Sea coast. He believed these findings would back up the flood hypothesis.
巴拉德在2000年发现了洪水前的海岸线，以及居住在洪水前海岸线上的人类文明建筑，此处距离土耳其黑海海岸12英里。他希望这些发现将支持瑞安和皮特曼的大洪水假说。
But Black Sea MAP points in a different direction, explained Georgieva. “The geophysicists and other specialists from the oceanographic centre in Southampton, say there’s no evidence to support this theory,” she said. “What we collected doesn’t prove this catastrophic flood. Data shows a more likely gradual sea level rising.”
但是乔治耶娃解释说，“黑海地图”探测工程却有不同的发现。她说：“南安普顿海洋中心的地球物理学家和其他专家说，没有证据支持这个理论。我们收集的数据并不能证明发生过一场灾难性的大洪水。我们的数据显示，黑海海平面较可能是逐渐稳步的上升。”
With more data to be analysed, it supports the idea that the waters rose unnoticeably, by metres over centuries, even millennia.
更多的数据分析结果，支持了这样一种观点，黑海海平面的上升是让人不知不觉的，每几百年，甚至几千年，黑海海平面上涨仅仅几公尺而已。
Still, Ballard calls The Black Sea a “magical place”, an area with “an amazing amount of history”, which has more to offer archaeologists and fans of historical legend than the Noah’s Flood connection. “The Black Sea has that [the biblical connection]; it’s also were Jason and the Argonauts went in search of the Golden Fleece,” he added. “There’s so much more to be discovered in the Black Sea. I think you’re going to see the Black Sea yielding a lot of additional chapters of human history now we know where to look and how to look.”
尽管如此，巴拉德称黑海是一个“神奇的地方”，一个充满“惊人的历史传奇”的地方，除了诺亚方舟与大洪水的传说，也给考古学家和历史传说的粉丝们提供了更多的东西。他补充说：“黑海不仅与圣经有关，也是希腊神话伊阿宋和阿尔戈诸英雄（Jason and the Argonauts）去寻找金羊毛（Golden Fleece）的地方。在黑海还有更多的东西有待发现。我认为，你会看到黑海为人类历史增添了许多篇章，现在我们知道去哪里寻找和如何寻找这些失落的历史。”
For locals and visitors, the excitement being revealed offshore does not feel far away.
不过对于当地人和游客来说，黑海的考古所带来兴奋感离他们并不遥远。
Bulgaria hosts a richness of archaeological history from Roman, Greek and other ancient societies, the likes of which tourists often seek out in Mediterranean neighbours, Italy and Greece. But here, findings are being unearthed in an accelerated process, especially since 2007 when funding started arriving with Bulgaria’s accession to the European Union.
保加利亚拥有丰富的古罗马、古希腊和其他古代社会的考古历史遗迹，这是游客经常在其地中海邻国意大利和希腊寻幽探胜的类似名胜古迹。但在保加利亚，考古挖掘和研究发现正在以加速度发展。尤其是2007年保加利亚加入欧盟后，支持该国的考古研究资金源源不绝的流入。
Nessebar sits on a stretch of coast slightly more than 100km by car from the Bulgarian city of Varna in the north, and nearly 70km from the peninsula of Sozopol in the south, where dense history is laying the foundations for an emerging Bulgarian archaeological trail.
内塞巴尔坐落在保加利亚的黑海海岸线上，距北部的保加利亚城市瓦尔纳（Varna）仅100多公里，距南部的索佐波尔半岛近70公里 ，黑海沿岸厚重的历史为正在发掘的一条保加利亚考古小道奠定了基础。
In 2012, nearby Solnitsata, labelled Europe's oldest prehistoric town (albeit controversially) by its discoverers, joined already discovered marvels to the north of Nessebar such as the Varna Necropolis, the oldest gold treasure in the world dating from around 4,500BC, many years before the pyramids of Egypt.
2012年发现的索尔尼萨塔遗址（Solnitsata），是内塞巴尔北部已经发现的史前奇迹之一，发现者称此为欧洲最古老的史前城镇，据说有六千年历史，不过还存在争议。另一处史前奇迹是瓦尔纳古墓（Varna Necropolis），这是世界上最古老的黄金矿，可追溯到公元前4500年左右，比埃及金字塔还要早许多年。
While the Black Sea MAP discoveries are too deep for tourists to visit, scuba diving excursions head down to Nessebar’s original defensive walls from the time of the Thracians, and battleships from World War One and World War Two, as well as the airplane of former Bulgarian leader Todor Zhivkov, which was deliberately sunk in Varna Bay in 2011 to spawn an artificial reef.
黑海地图探测工程的发现位于深海处，游客无法参观。但已没入水中的古色雷斯人建的城堡卫墙，两次世界大战沉没的战舰,以及2011年故意沉没在瓦尔纳湾以作为人造鱼礁的前保加利亚领袖日夫科夫（Todor Zhivkov）的飞机,这些都在浅海之中，埋头浮潜就可以观赏。
To get a sense of what is out at sea, Georgieva recommends that divers visit what she calls the “open museum” of Nessebar’s fortifications, the exposed walls visible on the short walk around the edge of the island, along with similar ruins in Sozopol.
乔治耶娃建议潜水者去参观她所说的内塞巴尔防御墙的“开放博物馆”，在沿着岛的边缘走一小段路就能看到裸露的墙壁，以及参观索佐波尔的类似废墟。
But the discoveries made by the Black Sea MAP team are also being brought up into the light, and are currently on show in Lost Worlds, an exhibition touring Bulgaria where visitors can explore a digital recreation of the 2,400-year-old shipwreck and 3D printed models made from scans of it while wearing virtual reality headsets.
但黑海地图工程团队的黑暗深海发现今天也能够见光供人参观了。现在一个叫《失落的世界》的展览正在保加利亚巡回展出，参观者只要头戴虚拟实景耳机和目镜，就可以看到用数码再现的2400年前的希腊沉船和3D打印的模型。